Greetings having been exchanged, it was Miss Lucilla's policy to draw
her uncle away to some other room, leaving Marion free to have her
conference with Pruyn; but the old man settled himself in his chair
again, with no intention of quitting the field. Derek, too, entered on
the task of dislodging him, but without success. Nursing his knee, and
peering at Marion with bulgy, short-sighted eyes, the banker kept her
answering questions as to Mrs. Bayford's health, blind to her obvious
nervousness and distress.
The cousins exchanged baffled, impatient glances, while Lucilla managed
to say in an undertone: "Take Marion to the drawing-room. We'll never
get him to go."
Derek was about to comply with this suggestion, when the footman threw
open the library door again. For a moment no one appeared, though a
sound of smothered voices from the hall caused the four within the room
to sit in strangely aroused expectancy.
"No, no; I can't go in," came a woman's whispered protest. "You can do
it without me."
"You must!" was the man's response; and a second later Bienville was on
the threshold, standing aside as Diane Eveleth entered.
Derek sprang to his feet, but, as if petrified by a sense of his own
impotence, stood still. Miss Lucilla, with the instincts of the hostess
awake, even in these strange conditions, went forward, with her hand
half outstretched and the words "Monsieur de Bienville" on her lips. The
old banker rose, and, taking Diane's hand, drew it within his arm in a
protecting way for which she was grateful, while she suffered him to
lead her some few steps apart. Marion Grimston alone, seated in a
distant corner, did not move. With her arm resting on a small table, she
watched the rapidly enacted scene with the detachment of a spectator
looking at a play. She had thrown back her black veil over her hat, and
against the dark background her face had the grave, marble whiteness of
classic features in stone.
During the minute of interrogatory silence that ensued, Bienville, with
quick reversion to the habits of the drawing-room, was able to
re-establish his self-control. With his hat, his gloves, and his stick,
he had that air of the casual visitor which helped to give him back the
sensation of having his feet on accustomed ground.
"I must beg your pardon, Miss van Tromp, for disturbing you," he said,
addressing himself to Miss Lucilla, who stood in the foreground. "I
shouldn't have done so if I hadn't something of great importance to
say."
His voice was so calm that Miss Lucilla could not do otherwise than
reply in the same vein of commonplace formality.
"I'm very glad to see you, Monsieur de Bienville. Won't you sit down? I
was just going to ring for tea."
"Thank you," he said, with a wave of the hand that declined without
words the proffered entertainment. "Perhaps I had better say what I have
to say--and go."
"Oh, if you think so--!"
Having fulfilled her necessary duties as mistress of the house, she felt
at liberty to fall back, leaving Bienville isolated in the doorway.
"Mr. Pruyn," he said, after further brief hesitation, "I come to make a
confession which can scarcely be a confession to any one in this
room--but you."
Derek grew white to the lips, but remained motionless, while Bienville
went on.
"On the way up from South America last spring I said certain things
about a certain lady which were not true. I said them first out of
thoughtless folly; but I maintained them afterward with deliberate
intent. When I pretended to take them back, I did so in a way which, as
I knew, must convince you further."
"It did."
As he brought out the two words, Derek tried to look at Diane, but she
was clinging to the arm of old James van Tromp, while her frightened
eyes were riveted on Bienville.
"I'm telling you the truth to-day," Bienville continued, "partly because
circumstances have forced my hand, partly because some one whom I
greatly respect desires it, and partly because something within
myself--I might almost call it the manhood I've been fighting
against--has made it imperative. I've come to the point where my
punishment is greater than I can bear. I'm not so lost to honor as not
to know that life is no longer worth the living when honor is lost to
me."
He spoke without a tremor, leaning easily on the cane he held against
his hip.
"I must do myself the justice to say that the wrong of which I was
guilty had its origin, at the first, in a sort of inadvertence. I had no
intention of doing any one irreparable harm. I was taking part in a
game, but I meant to play it fairly. The lady of whom I speak would bear
me out when I say that the people among whom she and I were born--in
France--in Paris--engage in this game as a sort of sport, and we call
it--love. It isn't love in any of the senses in which you understand it
here. We give it a meaning of our own. It's a game that requires the
combination of many kinds of skill, and, if it doesn't call for a
conspicuous display of virtues, it lays all the greater emphasis on its
own few, stringent rules. Like all other sports, it demands a certain
kind of integrity, in which the moralist could easily pick holes, but
which nevertheless constitutes its saving grace. Well, in this game of
love I--cheated. I said, one day, that I had won, when I hadn't won. I
said it to people who welcomed my victory, not through friendship for
me, but from envy of--her." The perspiration began to stand in beads
upon Bienville's forehead, but he held himself erect and went on with
the same outward tranquillity. His eyes were fixed on Pruyn's, and
Pruyn's on his, in a gaze from which even the nearest objects were
excluded. "In the little group in which we lived her position was
peculiar. She was both within our gates and without them. While she was
one of us by birth, she was a stranger by education and by marriage. She
was admitted with a welcome, and at the same time with a question. She
was a mark for enmity from the very first. There was something about
her that challenged our institutions. In among our worn-out passions and
moribund ideals she brought a freshness we resented. She made our
prejudices seem absurd from contrast with her own sanity, and showed our
moral standards to be rotten by the light of the something clear and
virginal in her character. I can't tell you how this effect was brought
about, but there were few of us who weren't aware of it, as there were
few of us who didn't hate it. There was but one impulse among us--to
catch her in a fault, to make her no better than ourselves. The daring
of her innocence afforded us many opportunities; and we made use of
them. One man after another confessed himself defeated. Then came my
turn. I wasn't merely defeated; I was put to utter rout, with ridicule
and scorn. That was too much for me. I couldn't stand it; and--and--I
lied."
"Oh, Bienville, that will do!" Diane cried out, in a pleading wail.
"Don't say any more!"
"I'm not sure that there's any more I need to say. The rest can be
easily understood. Every one knows how a man who lies once is obliged to
lie again, and again, and yet again, unless he frees himself as I do.
When I began I thought I had it in me to go on heroically--but I hadn't.
I can't keep it up. I'm not one of the master villains, who command
respect from force of prowess. I'm a weakling in evil, as in good, fit
neither for God nor for the devil. But that's my affair. I needn't
trouble any one here with what only concerns myself. It's too
late for me to make everything right now; but I'll do what I can
before--before--I mean," he stammered on, "I'll write. I'll write to the
people--there were only a few of them--to whom I actually used the words
I did. I'll ask them to correct the impression I have given. I know
they'll do it, when they know--"
He stopped helplessly. The lustre died out of his eyes, and his pallor
became sallowness.
"But I've said enough," he began again, making a tremendous effort to
regain his self-mastery. "You can have no doubt as to my meaning; and
you will be able to fill in anything I may have left unspoken. Now," he
added, sweeping the room with a look--"now--I'd better--go."
"No, by God! you infernal scoundrel," shouted Derek Pruyn, "you shall
not go."
All the suffering of months shot out in the red gleam of his eyes, while
the muscular tension of his neck was like that of an infuriated mastiff.
In three strides he was across the room, with clinched fist uplifted.
Bienville had barely time in which to fold his arms and stand with feet
together and head erect, awaiting the blow.
"Go on," he said, as Derek stood with hand poised above him. "Go on."
There was a second of breathless stillness. Then slowly the clinched
fingers began to relax and the open hand descended, softly, gently, on
Bienville's shoulder. Between the two men there passed a look of things
unspeakable, till, with bent head and drooping figure, Derek wheeled
away.
"I'll say good-by--now."
Bienville's voice was husky, but he bowed with dignity to each member of
the company in turn and to Marion Grimston last. "Raoul!" The name
arrested him as he was about to go. He looked at her inquiringly.
"Raoul," she said again, without rising from her place, "I promised that
if you ever did what you've done to-day I would be your wife."
"You did," he answered, "but I've already given you to understand that I
claim no such reward."
"It isn't you who would be claiming the reward; it's I. I've suffered
much. I've earned it."
"The very fact that you've suffered much would be my motive in not
allowing you to suffer more."
"Raoul, no man knows the sources of a woman's joy and pain. How can you
tell from what to save me?"
"There's one thing from which I _must_ save you: from uniting your
destiny with that of a man who has no future--from pouring the riches
of your heart into a bottomless pit, where they could do no one any
good. I thank you, Mademoiselle, with all my soul. I've asked you many
times for your love; and of the hard things I've had to do to-day, the
hardest is to give it back to you, now, when at last you offer it. Don't
add to my bitterness by urging it on me."
"But, Raoul," she cried, raising herself up, "you don't understand. We
regard these things differently here from the way in which you do in
France. It may be true, as you say, that in losing your honor you've
lost all--in French eyes; but we don't feel like that. We never look on
any one as beyond redemption. We should consider that a man who has been
brave enough to do what you've done to-day has gone far to establish his
moral regeneration. We can honor him, in certain ways--in _certain_
ways, Raoul--almost more than if he had never done wrong at all.
None of us would condemn him, or cast a stone at him--should we,
Lucilla?--should we, Mr. Pruyn?"
"No, no," Miss Lucilla sobbed. "We'd pity him; we'd take him to our
hearts."
"She's right, Bienville," Derek muttered, nodding toward Marion. "Better
do just as she says."
"I'm a Frenchman. I'm a Bienville. I can't accept mercy."
"But you can bestow it," the girl cried, passionately. "Any one would
tell you that, after all that has happened--after this--I should be
happier in sharing your life than in being shut out of it. I appeal to
you, Miss Lucilla! I appeal to you, Diane!--wouldn't any woman be proud
to be the wife of Raoul de Bienville after what he has done this
afternoon, no matter how the world turned against him?"
"These ladies, in the goodness of their hearts, might say anything they
chose; but nothing would alter their conviction that for you to be my
wife would be only to add misery to mistake."
"That's so," the old banker corroborated, smacking his lips, "but you
wouldn't be much worse when you'd done that than you are now; so why not
just let her have her way?"
Bienville tried to speak again, but his dry lips refused to frame the
words.
"Noble ... impossible ... drag you down," came incoherently from him,
when by a quick backward movement he stepped over the threshold into the
semi-obscurity of the hail.
The act was so sudden that seconds had already elapsed before Marion
Grimston uttered the cry that rent her like the wail of some strong,
primordial creature without the power of tears.
"Raoul, come back!"
With rapid motion she glided across the room and was in the hail.
"Raoul, come back!"
She had descended the hail, and had almost reached him as he opened the
door to pass out.
"Raoul, I love you!"
But the door closed as, falling against it, she sank to the floor.
Before Miss Lucilla and James van Tromp could reach her she was already
losing consciousness.