During the next half-hour small practical tasks occupied Diane's mind
and kept the thought of Derek Pruyn's arrival from becoming more than a
subconscious dread. She informed the manager of her success with his
mysterious young guest, and arranged that Dorothea, when she came,
should spend the night with her. Then she put herself in telephonic
communication, first with Mrs. Wappinger, and then with Fulton. She gave
the former the intelligence that Carli had departed, and received from
the latter the information that Simmons had found his master, who had
been able to leave for Lakefield by the ten-five train. These steps
being taken, there was nothing to do but to sit down and wait for
Dorothea. Allowing thirty or forty minutes for possible delays, she
calculated that the girl ought to arrive a good half-hour before her
father. This would give her time to deal with each separately, clearing
up misunderstandings on both sides, and preparing the way for such a
meeting as would lead to mutual concessions and future peace.
Physically tired, she took off her hat and threw herself on the couch in
her little sitting-room. By sheer force of will she continued to shut
out Derek from her thought, concentrating all her mental faculties on
the arguments and persuasions she should bring to bear on Dorothea. She
had no nervousness on this account. The naughty, headstrong child that
runs away from home does not get far without a realizing sense of its
happy shelter. She divined that the long ride through the dark, with an
unknown man, toward an unknown goal, would have already subdued
Dorothea's spirits to the point where she would be only too glad to find
herself dropping into familiar, feminine arms.
At eleven o'clock she got up from her couch with a vague impulse to be
in a more direct attitude of welcome. At half-past eleven she went to
the office to inquire of the manager how long a motor going slowly
should take to reach Lakefield from New York, assuming that it had got
away from the city about six o'clock. Alarmed by his reply, she begged
him to keep a certain number of the servants up, and the hotel in
readiness to cope with any emergency or accident, promising liberal
remuneration for all unusual work. After that came another long hour of
waiting. It was about half-past twelve when there was a sound of a
carriage coming up the driveway. It was probably Derek; and yet there
was a possibility that, the automobile having broken down, Reggie and
Dorothea had been obliged to finish their journey in a humbler way than
that in which they had started. Diane hurried to the terrace. The moon
had disappeared, but the stars were out, and the night had grown colder.
The pines surrounding the hotel shot up weirdly against the midnight
sky, soughing with a low murmur, like the moan of primeval nature. Up
the ascent from the main road the carriage crept wearily, while Diane's
heart poured itself out in a sort of incoherent prayer that Dorothea
might have arrived before her father. The horses dragged themselves to
the steps, and Derek Pruyn sprang out.
Instinctively Diane fell back.
"Oh, it's you," she gasped, unable for the instant to say more.
"Yes," he returned, quickly, peering down into her face. "What news?"
"Dorothea hasn't come. The--the other person has gone."
"Gone? How--gone?"
"He went away of his own accord."
"That is, you sent him."
"Not exactly; he was willing to go. He saw he'd been doing wrong."
A porter having come from the hotel and seized Derek's valise, it was
necessary for them to go in and attend to the small preliminaries of
arrival. When they were finished Derek returned to Diane, who had seated
herself in a wicker chair beside one of the numerous tea-tables to which
a large part of the hall was given up. Under the eye of the drowsy
clerk, who still kept his place at the office desk, she felt a certain
sense of protection, even though the width of the hotel lay between
them.
"Now, tell me," Derek said, in his quick, commanding tones; "tell me
everything."
The repressed intensity of his bearing had on Diane the effect of making
her more calmly mistress of herself. Quietly, and in a manner as
matter-of-fact as she could make it, she told her tale from the beginning.
She narrated her summons from Mrs. Wappinger, her visit to his own house,
her arrangements there, her journey to Lakefield, and her interview with
Carli Wappinger. Without making light of what he and Dorothea had
undertaken to do, she reduced their fault to a minimum, turning it into
indiscretion rather than anything more grave. She laid stress on the
excellence of the young man's character, as well as on the promptness
with which he had relinquished his part in the plan as soon as he saw
its true nature. In spite of himself Derek began to think of the lad as
of one who had sprung to his help in a moment of need, and to whom he
was indebted for a service. Not until Diane ceased speaking was he able
to brush this absurd impression away, in the knowledge that Dorothea,
who should have arrived nearly two hours ago, was still out in the dark.
That, for the moment, was the one fact to which everything else was
subordinate.
"I can't understand it," he said, nervously. "If they left New York by
six, or even seven, they should have been here by eleven at the latest.
That would have given them time for slow going or taking a circuitous
route."
He rose nervously from his seat, interviewed the clerk at the desk, went
out on the terrace, listened in the silence, walked restlessly up and
down, and, returning to Diane, enumerated the different possibilities
that would reasonably account for the delay. Glad of this preoccupation,
since it diverted thought from their more personal relations, she
pointed out the wisdom of accepting whatever explanation was least grave
until they knew the certainty. When he had gone out several times more,
to listen on the terrace, he came back, and, resuming his seat, said,
brusquely:
"You look tired. You ought to get some rest."
The tone of intimate care reached Diane's heart more directly than words
of greater import.
"I would," she said, simply--"that is, I'd go to my room if I thought
you'd be kind to Dorothea when she came."
"And _don't_ you think so?"
"I think you'd want to be," she smiled, "if you knew how."
"But I shouldn't know how?"
"You see, it's a situation that calls directly for a woman; and you're
so essentially a man. When Dorothea arrives, she won't be a headstrong,
runaway girl; she'll be a poor little terrified child, frightened to
death at what she has done, and wanting nothing so much as to creep
sobbing into her mother's arms and be comforted. If you could only--"
"I'll do anything you tell me."
"It's no use telling; you have to know. It's a case in which you must
act by instinct, and not by rule of thumb."
In her eagerness to have something to say which would keep conversation
away from dangerous themes, she spoke exhaustively on the subject of
parental tact, holding well to the thread of her topic until she
perceived that he was not so much listening to what she said as thinking
of her. But she had gained her point, and led him to see that Dorothea
was to be treated leniently, which was sufficient for the moment.
"Now," she finished, rising, "I think I'll take your advice, and go and
rest till she comes. That's my door, just opposite. I chose the room for
its convenience in receiving Dorothea. You'll be sure to call me, won't
you, the minute you hear the sound of wheels?"
He had sat gazing up at her, but now he, too, rose. It was a minute at
which their common anxiety regarding Dorothea slipped temporarily into
the background, allowing the main question at issue between them to
assert itself; but it asserted itself silently. He had meant to speak,
but he could only look. She had meant to withdraw, but she remained to
return his look with the lingering, quiet, steady gaze which time and
place and circumstance seemed to make the most natural mode of
expression for the things that were vital between them. What passed thus
defied all analysis of thought, as well as all utterance in language,
but it was understood by each in his or her own way. To her it was the
greeting and farewell of souls in different spheres, who again pass one
another in space. For him it was the dumb, stifled cry of nature, the
claim of a heart demanding its rightful place in another heart, the
protest of love that has been debarred from its return by a cruel code
of morals, a preposterous convention, grown suddenly meaningless to a
woman like her and to a man like him. Something like this it would have
been a relief to him to cry out, had not the strong hand of custom been
upon him and forced him to say that which was far below the pressure of
his yearning.
"This isn't the time to talk about what I owe you," he said, feeling the
insufficiency of his words; "it's too much to be disposed of in a few
phrases."
"On the contrary, you owe me nothing at all."
"We'll not dispute the point now."
"No; but I'd rather not leave you under a misapprehension. If I've done
anything to-night--been of any use at all--it's been simply because I
loved Dorothea--and--and--it was right. When it was in my power, I
couldn't have refused to do it for any one--for any one, you
understand."
"Oh yes, I understand perfectly; but _any one_, in the same
circumstances, would feel as I do. No, not as I do," he corrected,
quickly. "No one else in the world could feel--"
"I'm really very tired," she said, hurriedly; "I'll go now; but I count
on you to call me."
He watched her while she glided across the room; but it was only when
her door had closed and he had dropped into his seat that he was able to
state to himself the fact that the mere sight of her again had
demolished all the barricades he had been building in his heart against
her for the last six months. They had fallen more easily than the walls
of Jericho at the blast of the sacred horn. The inflection of her voice,
the look from her eyes, the gestures of her hands, had dispelled them
into nothingness, like ramparts of mist. But it was not that alone! He
was too much a man of affairs not to give credit to the practical
abilities she had shown that night. No graces of person or charms of
mind or resources of courage could have called forth his admiration more
effectively than this display of prosaic executive capacity. What had to
be done she had done more promptly, wisely, and easily than any man
could have accomplished it. She had foreseen possibilities and
forestalled accident with a thoroughness which he himself could not have
equalled.
"My God!" he groaned, inwardly, "what a wife she would have made for any
man! How I could have loved her, if it hadn't been for--"
He stopped abruptly and leaped to his feet, looking around dazed on the
great empty hail, at the end of which a porter slept in his chair, while
the clerk blinked drowsily behind his desk.
"I do love her," he declared to himself. "All summer long I have uttered
blasphemies. I do love her. Whatever she may have been, she shall be my
wife."
Out on the terrace the cold wind was grateful, and he stood for a minute
bareheaded, letting it blow over his fevered face and through his hair.
It had risen during the last hour, making the pines rock slowly in the
starlight and swelling their moan into deep sobs.
As Derek Pruyn paced the terrace in strained expectation he was deceived
again and again into the thought that something was approaching. Now it
was the champing and stamping of horses toiling up the ascent; now it
was the bray and throb of the automobile; now it was the voices of men,
conversing or calling or breaking into laughter. Twenty times he
hastened to the steps at the end of the terrace, sure he could not have
been mistaken, only to hear the earth-forces sob and sough and shout
again, as if in derision of this puny, presumptuous mortal, with his
evanescent joy and pain.
So another hour passed. His mind was not of the imaginative order which
invents disaster in moments of suspense, so that he was able to keep his
watch more patiently than many another might have done. Once he tried to
smoke; but the mere scent of tobacco seemed out of place in this curious
world, alive with odd psychical suggestions, and he threw the cigar away
into the darkness, where its light glowed reproachfully, like a dying
eye, till it went out.
It was after three when a sudden sound from the driveway struck his ear;
but he had been deceived so often that he would pay it no attention.
Though it seemed like the unmistakable approach of an automobile, it had
seemed so before, and he would not even look round till he had reached
the distant end of the terrace. When he turned he could see through the
trees, and along the dark line of the avenue, the advance of the
heralding light. Dorothea had come at last. She was even close upon
them. In a few more seconds she would be alighting at the steps.
He hurried inside to wake the porter and warn Diane.
"She's here!" he called, rapping sharply at her door. "Please come!
Quick!"
There was a response and a hurried movement from within, but he did not
wait for her to appear. When she came out of her room she could see from
the light thrown over the terrace that the motor had already stopped at
the steps. Some one was getting out, and she could hear men's voices.
Advancing to a spot midway between her room and the main entry, she
stood waiting for Derek to bring her his daughter. A moment later he
sprang into the light of the doorway with features white and alarmed.
"Go back!" he cried to her, with a commanding gesture. "Go back!"
"But what's the matter?"
"Go back!" he ordered, more imperiously than before.
"Oh, Derek, it's Dorothea! She's hurt. I must go to her. I will not go
back."
She rushed toward the entry, but he caught her and pushed her back.
"I tell you you must go back," he repeated.
"It's Dorothea!" she cried. "She's hurt! She's killed! Let me go! She
needs me!"
"It isn't Dorothea," he whispered, forcing her over the threshold of her
own room and trying to close the door upon her.
"Then what is it?" she begged. "Tell me now. You're hurting me. Let me
go! You're killing me."
"It's--"
But there was no need to say more, for the main door swung open again
and the Marquis de Bienville entered, followed by a porter carrying his
valise.
At his appearance Derek relinquished Diane's hands, and Diane herself
was so astonished that she stepped plainly into view. Not less
astonished than herself, Bienville stopped stock-still, looked at her,
looked into the room behind her, looked at Derek with a long,
half-amused, comprehending stare, lifted his hat gravely, and passed on.
When he had gone there was a minute of dead silence. With parted lips
and awe-stricken eyes Diane gazed after him till he had spoken to the
clerk at the desk and passed on into the darker recesses of the hotel.
When she turned toward Derek he was smiling, with what she knew was an
effort to treat the situation lightly.
"Well, this time we've given him something to talk about," he laughed,
bravely.
She shrugged her shoulders and spread apart her hands with one of her
habitual, fatalistic gestures.
"I don't mind. He can't do me more harm than he's done already. It's not
of him that I'm thinking, but of Dorothea. She hasn't come."
"No, she hasn't come."
The fact had grown alarming, so much so as to make the incident of
Bienville's appearance seem in comparison a matter of little moment.
Diane remained on the threshold of her room, and Derek in the hail
outside, while, for mutual encouragement, they rehearsed once more the
list of predicaments in which the young people might have found
themselves without serious danger.
Diane was about to withdraw, when a man ran down the hall calling:
"The telephone!--for the gentleman!"
Derek started on a run, Diane following more slowly. When she reached
the office Derek had the receiver to his ear and was talking.
"Yes, Fulton. Go on. I hear.... Who has rung you up?... I didn't
catch ... Miss--who? Oh, Miss Marion Grimston. Yes?... In Philadelphia,
at the Hotel Belleville.... Yes; I understand... and Miss Dorothea is
with her.... Good!... Did she say how she got there?... Will explain
when we get back to New York to-morrow morning.... All right.... Yes,
to lunch.... She said Miss Dorothea was quite well, and satisfied with
her trip!... That's good.... Well, good-night, Fulton. Sorry to have
kept you up."
He put up the receiver and turned to Diane.
"Did you understand?"
"Perfectly. I think I know what has happened. I can guess."
"Then, I'll be hanged if I can. What is it?"
"I'll let them tell you that themselves. I'm too tired to say anything
more to-night."
She kept close to the office where the clerk was shutting books and
locking drawers preparatory to closing.
"You must let me come and thank you--" he began.
"You must thank Miss Marion Grimston," she interrupted, "for any real
service. All I've done for you, as you see, has been to bring you on an
unnecessary journey."
"For me it has been a journey--into truth."
"I'll say good-night now. I shall not see you in the morning. You'll not
forget to be very gentle with Dorothea, will you--and with him?
Good-night again--good-night."
Smiling into his eyes, she ignored the hand he held out to her and
slipped away into the semi-darkness as the impatient clerk began turning
out the lights.