Chapter 16

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.

XXII

Derek Pruyn was guilty of an injustice to the Marquis de Bienville in supposing he would make the incident at Lakefield a topic of conversation among his friends. His sense of honor alone would have kept him from betraying what might be looked upon as an involuntary confidence, even if it had not better suited his purposes to intrust the matter, in the form of an amusing anecdote, told under the seal of secrecy, to Mrs. Bayford. In her hands it was like invested capital, adding to itself, while he did nothing at all. Months of insinuation on his part would have failed to achieve the result that she brought about in a few days' time, with no more effort than a rose makes in shedding perfume.

Before Derek had been able to recover from the feeling of having passed through a strange waking dream, before Dorothea and he had resumed the ordinary tenor of their life together, before he had seen Diane again, he was given to understand that the little scene on Bienville's arrival at the Bay Tree Inn was familiar matter in the offices, banks, and clubs he most frequented. The intelligence was conveyed by a score of trivial signs, suggestive, satirical, or over-familiar, which he would not have perceived in days gone by, but to which he had grown sensitive. It was clear that the story gained piquancy from its contrast with the staidness of his life; and his most intimate friends permitted themselves a little covert "chaff" with him on the event. He was not of a nature to resent this raillery on his own account; it was serious to him only because it touched Diane.

For her the matter was so grave that he exhausted his ingenuity in devising means for her protection. He refrained from even seeing her until he could go with some ultimatum before which she should be obliged to yield. An unsuccessful appeal to her, he judged, would be worse than none at all; and until he discovered arguments which she could not controvert he decided to hold his peace.

Action of some sort became imperative when he found that Miss Lucilla Van Tromp had heard the story and drawn from it what seemed to her the obvious conclusion.

"I should never have believed it," she declared, tearfully, "if you hadn't admitted it yourself. I told Mrs. Bayford that nothing but your own words would convince me that any such scene had taken place."

"Allowing that it did, isn't it conceivable that it might have had an honorable motive?"

"Then, what is it? If you could tell me that--"

"I could tell you easily enough if there weren't other considerations involved. I should think that in the circumstances you could trust me."

"Nobody else does, Derek."

"Whom do you mean by nobody else?--Mrs. Bayford?"

"Oh, she's not the only one. If your men friends don't believe in you--"

"They believe in me, all right; don't you worry about that."

"They may believe in you as men believe in one another; but it isn't the way I believe in people."

"I know how you believe in people if ill-natured women would let you alone. You wouldn't mistrust a thief if you saw him stealing your watch from your pocket."

"That's not true, Derek. I can be as suspicious as any one when I like."

"But don't you see that your suspicion doesn't only light, on me? It strikes Diane."

"That's just it."

"Lucilla! he cried, reproachfully.

"Well, Derek, you know how loyal I've been to her. It's been harder, too, than you've ever been aware of; for I haven't told you--I _wouldn't_ tell you--one-half the things that people have hinted to me during the past two years."

"Yes; but who? A lot of jealous women--"

"It's no use saying that, Derek; because your own actions contradict you. Why did Diane leave your house, if it wasn't that you believed--?"

"Don't." He raised his hand to his face, as if protecting himself from a blow.

"I wouldn't," she cried, "if you didn't make me. I say it only in self-defence. After all, you can only accuse me of what you've done yourself. Diane made me think at first that you had misjudged her; but I see now that if she had been a good woman you wouldn't have sent her away."

"I didn't send her away. She went."

"Yes, Derek; but why?"

"That has nothing to do with the question under discussion."

"On the contrary, it has everything to do with it. It all belongs together. I've loved Diane, and defended her; but I've come to the point where I can't do it any longer. After what's happened--"

"But, I tell you, what's happened is nothing! If it was only right for me to explain it to you, as I shall explain it to you some day, you'd find you owed her a debt that you never could repay."

"Very well! I won't dispute it. It still doesn't affect the main point at issue. Can you yourself, Derek, honestly and truthfully affirm that you look upon Diane as a good woman, in the sense that is usually attached to the words?"

"I can honestly and truthfully affirm that I look upon her as one of the best women in the world."

"That isn't the point. Louise de la Vallière became one of the best women in the world; but there are some other things that might be said of her. But I'll not argue; I'll not insist. Since you think I'm wrong, I'll take your own word for it, Derek. Just tell me once, tell me without quibble and on your honor as my cousin and a gentleman, that you believe Diane to be--what I've supposed her to be hitherto, and what you know very well I mean, and I'll not doubt it further."

For a moment he stood speechless, trying to formulate the lie he could utter most boldly, until he was struck with the double thought that to defend Diane's honor with a falsehood would be to defame it further, while a lie to this pure, trusting, virginal spirit would be a crime.

"Tell me, Derek," she insisted; "tell me, and I'll believe you."

He retreated a pace or two, as if trying to get out of her presence.

"I'm listening, Derek; go on; I'm willing to take your word."

"Then I repeat," he said, weakly, "that I believe her, I _know_ her, to be one of the best women in the world."

"Like Louise de la Vallière?"

"Yes," he shouted, maddened to the retort, "like Louise de la Vallière! And what then?" He stood as if demanding a reply. "Nothing. I have no more to say."

"Then I have; and I'll ask you to listen." He drew near to her again and spoke slowly. "There were doubtless many good women in Jerusalem in the time of Herod and Pilate and Christ; but not the least held in honor among us to-day is--the Magdalen. That's one thing; and here's something more. There is joy, so we are told, in the presence of the angels of God--plenty of it, let us hope!--but it isn't over the ninety-and-nine just persons who need no repentance, so much as over the one poor, deserted, lonely sinner that repenteth--that repenteth, Lucilla, do you hear?-and you know whom I mean."

With this as his confession of faith he left her, to go in search of Diane. He had formed the ultimatum before which, as he believed, she should find herself obliged to surrender.

It was a day on which Diane's mood was one of comparative peace. She was engrossed in an occupation which at once soothed her spirits and appealed to her taste. Madame Cauchat, the land-lady, bewailing the continued illness of her lingère, Diane had begged to be allowed to take charge of the linen-room of the hotel, not merely as a means of earning a living, but because she delighted in such work. Methodical in her habits and nimble with her needle, the neatness, smoothness, and purity of piles of white damask stirred all those house-wifely, home-keeping instincts which are so large a part of every Frenchwoman's nature. Her fingers busy with the quiet, delicate task of mending, her mind could dwell with the greater content on such subjects as she had for satisfaction.

They were more numerous than they had been for a long time past. The meeting at Lakefield had changed her mental attitude toward Derek Pruyn, taking a large part of the pain out of her thoughts of him, as well as out of his thoughts of her. She had avoided seeing him after that one night, and she had heard nothing from him since; but she knew it was impossible for him to go on thinking of her altogether harshly. She had been useful to him; she had saved Dorothea from a great mistake; she had done it in such a way that no hint of the escapade was likely to become known outside of the few who had taken part in it; she had put herself in a relation toward him which, as a final one, was much to be preferred to that which had existed before. She could therefore pass out of his life more satisfied than she had dared hope to be with the effect that she had had upon it. As she stitched she sighed to herself with a certain comfort, when, glancing up, she saw him standing at the door. The nature of her thoughts, coupled with his sudden appearance, drew to her lips a quiet smile.

"They shouldn't have shown you in here," she protested, gently, letting her work fall to her lap, but not rising from her place.

"I insisted," he explained, briefly, from the threshold.

"You can come in," she smiled, as he continued to stand in the doorway. "You can even sit down." She pointed to a chair, not far from her own, going on again with her stitching, so as to avoid the necessity for further greeting. "I suppose you wonder what I'm doing," she pursued, when he had seated himself.

"I'm not wondering at that so much as whether you ought to be doing it."

"I can relieve your mind on that score. It's a case, too, in which duty and pleasure jump together; for the delight of handling beautiful linen is like nothing else in the world."

"It seems to me like servants' work," he said, bluntly.

"Possibly; but I can do servants' work at a pinch--especially when I like it."

"I don't," he declared.

"But then you don't have to do it."

"I mean that I don't like it for you."

"Even so, you wouldn't forbid my doing it, would you?"

"I wish I had the right to. I've come here this afternoon to ask you again if you won't give it to me."

For a few minutes she stitched in silence. When she spoke it was without stopping her work or lifting her head.

"I'm sorry that you should raise that question again. I thought it was settled."

"Supposing it was, it can be reopened--if there's a reason."

"But there is none."

"That's all you know about it. There's a very important reason."

"Since--when?"

"Since Lakefield."

"Do you mean anything that Monsieur de Bienville may have said?"

"I do."

"That wouldn't be a reason--for me."

"But you don't know--"

"I can imagine. Monsieur de Bienville has already done me all the harm he can. It's beyond his power to hurt me any more."

"But, Diane, you don't know what you're saying. You don't know what he's doing. He's--he's--I hardly know how to put it--He's destroying your reputation."

She glanced up with a smile, ceasing for an instant to sew.

"You mean, he's destroying what's left of it. Well, he's welcome! There was so little of it--"

"For God's sake, Diane, don't say that; it breaks my heart. You must consider the position that you put me in. After you've rendered me one the greatest services one person can do another, do you think I can sit quietly by while you are being robbed of the dearest thing in life, just because you did it?"

"I should be sorry to think the opinion other people hold of me to be the dearest thing in life; but, even if it were, I'd willingly give it up for--Dorothea."

"It isn't for Dorothea; it's for me."

"Well, wouldn't you let me do it--for you? I'm not of much use in the world, but it would make me a little happier to think I could do any one a good turn without being promised a reward."

"A reward! Oh, Diane!"

"It's what you're offering me, isn't it? If it hadn't been for--for--the great service you speak about, you wouldn't he here, asking me again to be your wife."