Book: The Inner Shrine

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"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."

"That's your way of putting it, but I'll put it in mine. If it hadn't
been for the magnitude of the sacrifice you're willing to make for me, I
shouldn't have dared to hope that you loved me. When all pretexts and
secondary causes have been considered and thrust aside, that's why I'm
here, and for no other reason whatever. If you love me," he continued,
"why should you hesitate any longer? If you love me, why seek for
reasons to justify the simple prompting of your heart? What have you and
I got to do with other people's opinions? When there's a plain,
straightforward course before us, why not go right on and follow it?"

She raised her eyes for one brief glance.

"You forget."

The words were spoken quietly, but they startled him.

"Yes, Diane; I do forget. Rather, there's nothing left for me to
remember. I know what you'd have me recall. I'll speak of it this once
more, to be silent on the subject forever. I want you to forgive me. I
want to tell you that I, too, have repented."

"Repented of what?"

"Of the wrong I've done you. I believe your soul to be as white as all
this whiteness around you."

"Then," she continued, questioning gently, "you've changed your point of
view during the last six months?"

"I have. You charged me then with being willing to come down to your
level; now I'm asking you to let me climb up to it. I see that I was a
self-righteous Pharisee, and that the true man is he who can smite his
breast and say, God be merciful to me a sinner!"

"A sinner--like me."

"I don't want to be led into further explanations," he said, suddenly on
his guard against her insinuations. "You and I have said too much to
each other not to be able to be frank. Now, I've been frank enough.
You've understood what I've felt at other times; you understand what I
feel to-day. Why draw me out, to make me speak more plainly?"

"I am not drawing you out," she declared. "If I ask you a question or
two, it was to show you that not even the woman that you take me
for--not even the forgiven penitent--could be a good wife for you. I
can't marry you, Mr. Pruyn. I must beg you to let that answer be
decisive."

There was decision in the way in which she folded her work and smoothed
the white brocaded surface in her lap. There was decision, too, in the
quickness with which he rose and stood looking down at her. For a second
she expected him to turn from her, as he had turned once before, and
leave her with no explanation beyond a few laconic words. She held her
breath while she awaited them.

"Then that means," he said, at last, "that you put me in the position of
taking all, while you give all."

"I don't put you in any position whatever. The circumstances are not of
my making. They are as much beyond my control as they are beyond yours."

"They're not wholly beyond mine. If there are some things I can't do,
there are some I can prevent."

"What things?"

His tone alarmed her, and she struggled to her feet.

"You're willing to make me a great sacrifice; but at least I can refuse
to accept it."

"What do you mean?" She moved slightly back from him, behind the
protection of one of the tables piled breast-high with its white load.

"You're willing to lose for me the last vestige of your good name--"

"I don't care anything about that," she said, hurriedly.

"But I do. I won't let you."

"How can you stop me?" she asked, staring at him with large, frightened
eyes.

"I shall tell Dorothea's part in the story."

"You'd--?" she began, with a questioning cry.

"All who care to hear it, shall. They shall know it from its beginning
to its end. They shall lose no detail of her folly or of your wisdom."

"You would sacrifice your child like that?"

"Yes, like that. Neither she nor I can remain so indebted to any one, as
you would have us be to you."

"You--wouldn't--be--indebted--to--me?"

"Not to so terrible an extent. If it's a choice between your good name
and hers--hers must go. She'd agree with me herself. She wouldn't
hesitate for one single fraction of an instant--if she knew. She'd be
grateful to you, as I am; but she couldn't profit by your magnanimity."

"So that the alternative you offer me is this: I can protect myself by
sacrificing Dorothea, or I can marry you, and Dorothea will be saved."

"I shouldn't express it in just those words, but it's something like
it."

"Then I'll marry you. You give me a choice of evils, and I take the
least."

"Oh! Then to marry me would be--an evil?"

"What else do you make it? You'll admit that it's a little difficult to
keep pace with you. You come to me one day accusing me of sin, and on
another announcing my contrition, while on the third you may be in some
entirely different mood about me."

"You can easily render me ridiculous. That's due to my awkwardness of
expression and not to anything wrong in the way I feel."

"Oh, but isn't it out of the heart that the mouth speaketh? I think so.
You've advanced some excellent reasons why I should become your wife,
and I can see that you're quite capable of believing them. At one time
it was because I needed a home, at another because I needed protection,
while to-day, I understand, it is because I love you."

"Is this fair?"

"I dare say you think it isn't; but then you haven't been tried and
judged half a dozen times, unheard, as I've been. I'll confess that
you've shown the most wonderful ingenuity in trying to get me into a
position where I should be obliged to marry you, whether I would or not;
and now you've succeeded. Whether the game is worth the candle or not is
for you to judge; my part is limited to saying that you've won. I'm
ready to marry you as soon as you tell me when."

"To save Dorothea?"

"To save Dorothea."

"And for no other reason?"

"For no other reason."

"Then, of course, I can't keep you to your word."

"You can't release me from it except on one condition."

"Which is--?"

"That Dorothea's secret shall be kept."

"I must use my own judgment about that."

"On the contrary, you must use mine. You've made me a proposal which I'm
ready to accept. As a man of honor you must hold to it--or be silent."

"Possibly," he admitted, on reflection. "I shall have to think it over.
But in that case we'd be just where we were--"

"Yes; just where we were."

"And you'd be without help or protection. That's the thought I can't
endure, Diane. Try to be just to me. If I make mistakes, if I flounder
about, if I say things that offend you, it's because I can't rest while
you're exposed to danger. Alone, as you are, in this great city,
surrounded by people who are not your friends, a prey to criticism and
misapprehension, when it is no worse, it's as if I saw you flung into
the arena among the beasts. Can you wonder that I want to stand by you?
Can you be surprised if I demand the privilege of clasping you in my
arms and saying to the world, This is my wife? When Christian women were
thrown to the lions there was once a heathen husband who leaped into the
ring, to die at his wife's side, because he could do no more. That's my
impulse--only I could save you from the lions. I couldn't protect you
against everything, perhaps, but I could against the worst. I know I'm
stupid; I know I'm dull. When I come near you, I'm like the clown who
touches some exquisite tissue, spun of azure; but I'm like the clown who
would fight for his treasure, and defend it from sacrilegious hands, and
spend his last drop of blood to keep it pure. It's to be put in a
position where I can't do that that I find hard. It's to see you so
defenceless--"

"But I'm not defenceless."

"Why not? Whom have you? Nobody--nobody in this world but me."

"Oh yes, I have."

"Who?"

She smiled faintly at the fierceness of his brief question.

"It's no one to whom you need feel any opposition, even though it's some
one who can do for me what you cannot."

"What I cannot?"

"What you cannot; what no man can. _Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor_.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Derek, He has
purged me with hyssop, even though it has not been in the way you think.
With the hyssop of what I've had to suffer He has purged me from so many
things that now I see I can safely commit my cause to Him."

"So that you don't need me?"

She looked at him in silence before she replied:

"Not for defence."

"Nor for anything else?"

She tried to speak, but her voice failed her.

"Nor for anything else?" he asked again.

Her voice was faint, her head sank, her body trembled, but she forced
the one word, "No."




XXIII


"Mademoiselle has sent for me?" Bienville kissed the hand that Miss
Grimston, without rising from her comfortable chair before the fire,
lifted toward him. The hand-screen with which she shielded her face
protected her not only from the blaze, but from his scrutiny. In the
same way, the winter gloaming, with its uncertain light, nerved her
against her fear of self-betrayal, giving her that assurance of being
mistress of herself which she lacked when he was near.

"I did send for you. I wanted to see you. Won't you sit down?"

"I've been expecting the summons," he said, significantly, taking the
seat on the other side of the hearth.

"Indeed? Why?"

"I thought the day would come when you would be more just to me."

"You thought I'd--hear things?"

"Perhaps."

"I have. That's why I asked you to come."

During the brief silence before she spoke again he was able to
congratulate himself on his diplomacy. He had checked his first impulse
to come to her with his great news immediately on his return from
Lakefield. He had seen how relatively ineffective the information would
be were it to proceed bluntly from himself. He had even restrained Mrs.
Bayford's enthusiasm, in order to let the intelligence filter gently
through the neutral agencies of common gossip. In this way it would seem
to Miss Grimston a discovery of her own, and appeal to her as an
indirect corroboration of his word. He had the less scruple in taking
these precautions in that he believed Diane to have justified anything
he might have said of her. It was no small relief to a man of honor to
know he had not been guilty of a gratuitous slander, even though it was
only on a woman. He awaited Miss Grimston's next words with complacent
expectancy, but when they came they surprised him.

"I wondered a little why you should have been at Lakefield."

"I'm afraid you'll think it was for a very foolish reason," he laughed,
"but I'll tell you, if you want to know. I went because I thought you
were there."

"I? At three o'clock in the morning?"

"It was like this," he went on. "You'll pardon me if I say anything to
give you offence, but you'll understand the reason why. On the day when
we all lunched together at the Restaurant Blitz--you, Madame your aunt,
your friend Monsieur Reggie Bradford, and I--I was a little jealous of
some understanding between you two, in which I was not included. You
spoke together in whispers, and exchanged glances in such a way that all
my fears were aroused. Afterward you went away with him. That evening,
at the Stuyvesant Club, I heard a strange rumor. It was whispered from
one to another until it reached me. Your friend Monsieur Bradford is not
a silent person, and what he knows is sure to become common property.
The rumor--which I grant you was an absurd one--was to the effect that
he had persuaded you to run away and marry him; and that you had
actually been seen on the way to Lakefield in his car."

"I was in his car. That's quite true."

"Ah? Then there was some foundation for the report. Madame your aunt
will have told you how I hurried here, about eleven o'clock that night.
You had disappeared, leaving nothing behind but an enigmatic note saying
you would explain your absence in the morning. What was I to think,
Mademoiselle? I was afraid to think. I didn't stop to think. I
determined to follow you. It was too late for any train, so I took an
auto. I reached the Bay Tree Inn--and saw what I saw. _Voila_!"

A smile of amusement flickered over her grave features, but she made no
remark.

"If I was guilty of an indiscretion in following you, Mademoiselle," he
pursued, "it was because of my great love for you. If you had chosen to
marry some one else, I couldn't have kept you from it; but at least I
was determined to try. Though I thought it incredible that you should
take a step like that, in secrecy and flight, yet I find so many strange
ways of marrying in America that I must be pardoned for my fear. As it
is, I cannot regret it, since, by a miracle, it gave me proof of that
which you have found it so difficult to believe. It has grieved me more
than I could ever make you understand to know that during all these
months you have doubted me."

"I'm sure of that," she said, softly, gazing into the fire. "But haven't
you wondered where I was that night when you followed me to Lakefield?"

"If I have, I shouldn't presume to inquire."

"It's a secret; but I should like to tell it to you. I know you'll guard
it sacredly, because it concerns--a woman's honor."

Though she did not look up, she felt the startled toss of the head,
characteristic of his moments of alarm.

"If Mademoiselle is pleased to be satirical--"

"No. There's no reason why I should be satirical. If, in spite of
everything, my confidence in you wasn't absolute, I shouldn't risk a
name I hold so dear as that of Dorothea Pruyn."

"_Tiens!_" he exclaimed, under his breath.

"Miss Pruyn is a charming girl, but she's been very foolish. What she
did was not quite so bad in American eyes as it would be in French ones,
but it was certainly very wilful. If you heard rumors of an elopement,
it was hers."

"_Mon Dieu!_ With the big Monsieur Reggie?"

"Not quite. I needn't tell you the young man's name; it will be enough
to say that the big Monsieur Reggie, as you call him, was in his
confidence. It was Reggie who undertook to convey Dorothea to Lakefield,
where she was to meet the bridegroom-elect and marry him."

"And then?"

"Then Reggie told me. It was silly of any one to intrust him with a
mission of the kind, for he couldn't possibly keep it to himself. He
told me while we were lunching at the Blitz. That's what he was
whispering. That's why I went away with him after lunch and left you
with my aunt. I saw you were annoyed, but I couldn't help it."

"You wanted to dissuade him?"

"I tried; but I saw it was too late for that. Reggie wouldn't desert his
friend at the last minute. The only concession I could wring from him
was that he should let me take his place in the motor."

"You?"

"I drive at least as well as Mr. Bradford. I made him see that in case
of accident it would make all the difference in the world to Miss
Pruyn's future life to be with a woman, rather than a man."

"Did you make her see it, too?"

"I didn't try. The arrangements these wise young people had made
rendered the substitution easy. Dorothea had apparently considered it
part of the romance not to know with whom she was going, or where she
was being taken. At the time and place appointed she found an
automobile, driven by a person in a big fur coat, a cap, and goggles. It
was agreed that she should enter and ask no questions."

"And did she?"

"She fulfilled her engagement to the letter. As soon as she was seated I
drove away; and for six hours I didn't hear a sound from her."

"Six hours? Did it take you all that time to reach Lakefield?"

"I didn't go to Lakefield. I took her to Philadelphia. My one object was
to keep her from meeting the young man that night; but perhaps that's
where I made my mistake."

"But why? It was better for her that she shouldn't."

"For her, perhaps; but not for every one else. You see, I lost my way
two or three times; though, as I had been over the ground twice already,
I was always able to right myself after a while. Near Trenton, Dorothea
got frightened, and when I peeped inside I could see she was crying. As
all danger was over then, I stopped and let her see who I was."

"Was she angry?"

"Quite the contrary! The poor child was terrified at her own rashness,
and very much relieved to find she had been kept from being as foolish
as she had intended. I got in beside her, and let her have her cry out
in comfort. After that we ate some sandwiches and took heart. It was
weird work, in the dead of night and along the lonely roads; but we
pushed on, and crept into Philadelphia between one and two in the
morning."

"That was a very brave, act, Mademoiselle." Bienville's eyes glistened
and his face lighted up with an ardor that was not dampened by the
casual, almost listless, air with which she told her story.

"It might have been better if I had let the whole thing alone."

"Why so?"

"You can rarely interfere in other people's affairs without doing more
harm than good. If I had let them go their own way, Diane Eveleth
wouldn't have been put in a false position."

"Ah?"

"That's the other part of the story. If I had known, I should have left
the matter in her hands. She would have managed it better than I. As it
was, she made my bit of help superfluous."

"I should find it hard to credit that," he said, twisting his fingers
nervously.

"You won't when I tell you."

In the quiet, unaccentuated manner in which she had given her own share
in the action she gave Diane's. Shading her eyes with the hand-screen,
she was able to watch his play of feature, and note how the first forced
smile of bravado faded into an expression of crestfallen gravity.

"You see," she concluded, "they were frantic at Dorothea's failure to
appear. When you arrived they naturally thought it was she; and if Derek
Pruyn hadn't lost his head when he saw you, he wouldn't have tried to
thrust her out of sight as though she were caught in a crime. It was so
like a man to do it; a woman would have had a dozen ways of disarming
your suspicion, while he did the very thing to arouse it. I don't blame
you for thinking what you did--not in the least. I don't even blame you
for telling it, since it would seem to bear out--what you said before. I
should only blame you--"

"Yes, Mademoiselle? You would only blame me--?"

"I should only blame you if--now that you know the truth--you didn't
correct the impression you have given."

"Are you going to begin on that again?" he asked, in a tone of
disappointment.

"I'm not beginning again, because I've never ceased. If I say anything
new on the subject, it is this--that it's time the final word was
spoken."

"I agree with you there; it _is_ time for that word; but you must speak
it."

There was a ring of energy in his voice which caused her to turn from
her contemplation of the fire and look at him. When she did he had taken
on a new air of resolution.

"I think it's time we came to a definite understanding," he went on,
"and that you should see how the matter looks from my point of view. You
speak of doing right, Mademoiselle, as if it were an easy thing. You
don't realize that, for me, it would have to be the last act but one in
life."

In spite of the shock, she ignored his implied confession, going on to
speak in the tone of ordinary conversation.

"The last act but one? I don't understand you."

"Really? I'm surprised at that. You're so good a sportsman that I should
think you'd see that if I do what you ask there will be only one more
thing left for me."

For a few minutes she looked at him silently, with fixed gaze, taking in
the full measure of his meaning.

"That's folly," she said at last.

"Is it? Not for me. It might be for some people, but--not for me. You
must remember who I am. I'm a Frenchman. I'm an aristocrat. I'm a
Bienville. I'm a member of a class, of a clan, that lives and breathes
on--honor. I can do without almost everything in the world but that. I
can do without money, I can do without morals, I can do without most
kinds of common honesty, I can do without nearly all the Christian
virtues, and still keep my place among my friends; but I can't do
without that particular shade of conduct which they and I understand by
the word honor."

"But aren't you doing without it as it is?"

"No; because there again our code is special to ourselves. With us the
crime is not in suspicion or supposition; it isn't even in detection.
It's in admission. It's in confession. All sorts of things may be
thought of you, and said of you, and even known of you, and you can
bluff them out; but when you have acknowledged them--you're doomed."

"Even so, isn't it better to acknowledge them--and _be_ doomed?"

"That's the question. That's what I have to decide. That's where you
must help me decide. If you had allowed me, I should have made up my own
mind, on my own responsibility; but you won't let me. Now that the
incident at Lakefield is no good as evidence, I see that you will never
rest until we come to the plainest of plain speech. The problem I've had
to solve is this: Is Diane Eveleth to be happy, or am I? Is she to rise
while I go under, or shall I keep her down and stay on the surface?
Since it's her life or mine, which is it to be? The alternative may be a
brutal one, but there it is."

"And you've decided in your own favor?"

"So far. I've been actuated by the instinct of self-preservation."

"And are you going to persist in it?"

"That's for you to tell me. But I should like to remind you first of
this, that if I don't--I go."

"And what if--if I went with you?"

"You couldn't. The journey would be too long."

"But you needn't go so far if I'm there."

"I couldn't take you with me. You must understand that. I once knew an
American girl who married a man who cheated at cards, and buried herself
alive with him. I wouldn't let a woman do that for me."

"But if she wanted to?"

"In that case she ought to be protected from herself. There's no use in
ruining two lives where one will do."

"There's such a thing as losing your life to find it."

"If so, it's something for me to do--alone."

"Isn't it a kind of moral cowardice to say that?"

"I don't think so. To me it seems only looking things squarely in the
face. I'm not the sort of man for whom there's any possibility of
beginning life anew. A man like me can't live things down. When once, by
his own confession, he has lost his honor, there's no rehabilitation
that can make him a man again. Like Cain, he has got to go out from the
presence of the Lord; only, unlike Cain, there's no land of Nod waiting
to receive him. There's no place for him anywhere on earth. A few years
ago, when I was motoring in the Black Forest with the d'Aubignys, we
dropped into a little hole of an inn as nearly out of the world as
anything could be. As we approached the door a man got up from a bench
and shambled away. When he had got to what he considered a safe distance
he turned to look at us. I knew him. It was Jacques de la Tour de
Lorme."

"Really?"

"The poor wretch had hidden himself in that God-forsaken spot, where he
supposed no one would be able to track him down; but we had done it.
I've never forgotten his weary gait or the woe-begone look in his eyes.
It is what would come to me if I waited for it."

"I don't see why. There's no similarity between the cases. Jacques de La
Tour de Lorme did wrong he never could put right. You'd be doing the
very thing he found impossible." He shook his head. "It wouldn't make
any difference in my world. Nobody there would think of the right or the
wrong; they'd only consider what I'd owned to. It's the confession that
would ruin me."

"Surely you exaggerate. You could do it quietly. No one need
know--outside Derek Pruyn and two or three more of us."

"I don't do
things in that way," he said, with an odd return of his old-time pride.
"If I put the woman right, it shall be in the eyes of the world. I don't
ask to have things made easy for me. If I do it at all, I shall do it
thoroughly. I'm not afraid of it or of anything it entails. It's a
curious thing that a man of my make-up is afraid of being ridiculed or
being given the cold shoulder, but he's not afraid to die."

Though he was looking straight at her, he was too deeply engrossed in
his own thoughts to see how proudly her head went up, or to note the
flash of splendid light in which her glance enveloped him.

"I was all ready to die," he pursued, in the same meditative tone, "that
morning in the Pre Catalan. George Eveleth could have had my life for
the asking. I'd never known him to miss his mark, and he wouldn't have
missed me--if he hadn't had another destination for his bullet. I've
regretted it more than once. I've had pretty nearly all that life could
give me--and I've made a mess of it."

"You haven't had--love," she ventured.

"Love?" he echoed, with a short laugh. "I've had every kind of love but
one; and that I'm not worthy of."

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