Book: The Inner Shrine

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"We get a good many things we're not worthy of; but they help us just
the same."

"This wouldn't help me," he returned, speaking very slowly. "I shouldn't
know what to do with it. It would be as useless to me in my new
conditions as a chaplet of pearls to a slave in the galleys. So, what
would you do?"

"I'd do right at any cost."

She scarcely knew that the words were spoken, so intent was her thought
on the strange mixture of elements in his personality. It was not until
she had waited in vain for a response that she found the echo of her
speech still in her mental hearing and recognized its import. Her first
impulse was to cry out and take it back; but she restrained herself and
waited. It was an instant in which the love of daring, that was so
instinctive in her nature, blew, as it were, a trumpet-challenge to the
same passion in his own, while they sat staring at each other, wide-eyed
and speechless, in the dancing firelight.




XXIV


On the following day the Marquis de Bienville found the execution of any
intentions he might have had toward Derek Pruyn postponed by the
circumstance that Miss Regina van Tromp was dead. The helpless,
inarticulate life, which for three years had served as a bond to hold
more active existences together, had failed suddenly, leaving in the
little group a curious impression of collapse. It became perceptible
that the hushed sick-room, where Miss Lucilla and Mrs. Eveleth were the
only ministrants, had in reality been a centre for those who never
entered it. Now that the living presence was withdrawn, there came the
consciousness of dispersing interests, inseparable from the passing away
of the long established, which gives the spirit pause. The days before
the funeral became a period of suspended action, in which Life refrained
from too marked a manifestation of its energies, out of reverence for
Death. Even when the grave was filled in, and the will read, and the
family face to face with its new conditions, there was a respectful
absence of hurry in beginning the work of reconstruction. The lull
lasted, in fact, till James van Tromp arrived from Paris; and it was
broken then only by the banker's desire "to get things settled" with all
possible speed, so that he might return to the Rue Auber.

The first sign of real disintegration came from Mrs. Eveleth. She had
waited for the arrival of the man whom she looked upon now as her
confidential adviser, to make the announcement that, since Miss Lucilla
would no longer need her, she meant to have a home of her own. The
economies she had been able to practise during the last two years,
together with a legacy from Miss van Tromp, would, when added to "her
own income," provide her with modest comfort for the rest of her days.
There was something triumphant in the way in which she proclaimed her
independence of the daughter-in-law who had been the author of so many
of her woes. It was the old banker himself who brought this intelligence
to Diane.

During the fortnight he had been in New York he had formed an almost
daily habit of dropping in on her. She was the more surprised at his
doing so from the fact that her detachment from the rest of the circle
of which she had formed a part was now complete. She had gone to see
Miss Lucilla with words of sympathy, but her reception was such that she
came away with cheeks flaming. Miss Lucilla had said nothing; she had
only wept; but she had wept in a way to show that Diane herself, more
than the departed Miss Regina, was the motive of her grief. After that
Diane had remained shut up in her linen-room, finding in its occupied
seclusion something of the peace which the nun seeks in the cloister.

There was no one but the old man to push his way into her sanctuary, and
for his visits she was grateful. They not only relieved the tedium of
her days, but they brought her news from that small world into which her
most vital interests had become absorbed.

"So the old lady is set up for life on your money," he observed, as he
watched Diane hold a white table-cloth up to the light and search it for
imperfections.

"It isn't my money now; and even if it were I'd rather she had the use
of it. She would have had much more than that if it hadn't been for me."

"She might; and then again she mightn't. Who told _you_ what would have
happened--if everything had been different from what it is? There are
people who think they would have had plenty of money if it hadn't been
for me; but that doesn't prove they're right."

"In any case I'm glad she has it."

"That's because you're a very foolish little woman, as I told you when
you came to me three years ago. I said then that you'd be sorry for it
some day--"

"But I'm not."

"Tut! tut! Don't tell me! Can't I see with my own eyes? No woman could
lose her good looks as you've done and not know she's made a mistake.
How old are you now?"

"I'm twenty-seven."

"Dear me! dear me! You look forty."

"I feel eighty."

"Yes; I dare say you do. Any one who's got into so many scrapes as you
have must feel the burden of time. I don't think I ever saw a young
woman make such poor use of her opportunities. Why didn't you marry
Derek Pruyn?"

Diane kept herself quite still, her needle arrested half-way through its
stitch. She took time to reflect that it was useless to feel annoyed at
anything he might say, and when she formed her answer it was in the
spirit of meeting him in his own vein.

"What makes you think I ever had the chance?"

"Because I gave it to you myself."

"You, Mr. van Tromp?"

"Yes; me. I did all that wire-pulling when you first came to New York;
and I did it just so that you might catch him."

"Oh?"

"I did," he declared, proudly. "And if you had been the woman I took you
for, you could have had him."

"But suppose I--didn't want him?"

"Oh, don't tell me that," he said, pityingly. "Why shouldn't you want
him?--just as much as he'd want you?"

"Well, I'll put it that way if you like. Suppose he didn't want me?"

"Then the more fool he. I picked you out for him on purpose."

"May I ask why?"

"Certainly. I saw he was getting on in life, and, as he'd been a good
many years a widower, I imagined he'd had some difficulty in getting any
one to have him. If he's good-looking, he's not what you'd call very
bright; and he's got a temper like--well, I won't say what. I'd pity the
woman who got him, that's all; and so--"

"And so you thought you'd pity me."

"I did pity you as it was. It seemed to me you couldn't be worse off,
not even if you married Derek Pruyn."

"It was certainly good of you to give me the opportunity; and if I had
only known--"

"You would have let it slip through your fingers just the same. You're
one of the young women who will always stand in their own light. I dare
say, now, that if I told you I was willing to marry you myself, you
wouldn't profit by the occasion."

"I should never want to profit by your loss, Mr. van Tromp."

"But suppose I could afford--to lose?"

Unable to answer him there, she held her peace, though it was a relief
that, before he had time to speak again, a page-boy knocked at the door
and entered with a card. Diane took it hastily and read the name.

"Tell the gentleman I can't see him," she said, with a visible effort to
speak steadily.

"Wait!" the banker ordered, as the boy was about to turn. "Who is it?"
Without ceremony he drew the card from Diane's hand and looked at it.
"Heu!" he cried. "It's Bienville, is it? Of course you'll see him; of
course you will; of course! Here, boy, I'll go with you."

Returning to Gramercy Park after this interview, the banker pottered
about his apartment until, on hearing the door-bell ring, he looked out
of the window and recognized Derek Pruyn's chauffeur. On the stairs, as
he went down, he heard Miss Lucilla's voice in the hall.

"Oh, come in, Derek. Marion isn't here yet, but she won't be long. I
asked you to come punctually, because I gathered from her note that she
wanted to see you very particularly, and without Mrs. Bayford's
knowledge. She has evidently something on her mind that she wants to
tell you."

"Hello, dears!" the old man interrupted suddenly, as, leaning heavily on
the baluster, he descended the stairs. "I've got good news for you."

"Good news, Uncle James?" Miss Lucilla said, reproachfully. With her
long, grave face, and in her heavy crape, she looked as though she found
good news decidedly out of place.

"The very best," the banker declared, reaching the hall and taking his
nephew and niece each by an arm. "Come into the library and I'll tell
you. There!" he went on, pushing Miss Lucilla into an arm-chair. "Sit
down, Derek, and make yourself comfortable. Now, listen, both of you.
Perhaps you're going to have a new aunt."

"Oh, Uncle James!" Miss Lucilla cried, in the voice of a person about to
faint.

"You're going to be married!" Derek roared, with the fury of a father
addressing a wayward son.

"The young woman," the banker went on to explain, "is of French
extraction, but Irish on the mother's side."

Derek grasped the arms of his chair and half rose, making an
inarticulate sound.

"'Sh! 'Sh!" the old man went on, lifting a warning hand. "She'd had
reverses of fortune; but that wasn't the reason why she came to me.
Though her husband had just died, leaving nothing, she had her own
_dot_, on the income of which she could have lived. But that didn't suit
her. Her husband had left a mother, who had neither _dot_ nor anything
else in the world. At the age of sixty the old woman was a pauper. My
little lady came to see me in order to transfer all her own money
secretly to her mother-in-law, and face the world herself with empty
hands."

"My God!" Derek breathed, just audibly. Miss Lucilla sat upright and
tense, hot tears starting to her eyes.

"Plucky, wasn't it?" the uncle went on, complacently. "I didn't approve
of it at first, but I let her do it in the end, knowing that some good
fellow would make it up to her."

"Don't joke, uncle," Derek cried, nervously. "It's too serious for
that."

"I'm not joking. It's what I did think. And if the world wasn't full of
idiots who couldn't tell diamonds from glass, a little woman like that
would have been snapped up long ago."

Derek sprang up and strode across the room.

"Do you mean to tell me," he demanded, turning abruptly, "that she made
over all her money to Mrs. Eveleth--a woman who has deserted her, like
the rest of us?"

"That's what she did; but there's this to be said for the old lady, that
she doesn't know it. She thinks it's the wreck of her own fortune, and
Diane wouldn't let me tell her the truth. Since you seem to be
interested in the little story," he added, with sarcasm, "you may hear
all about it."

With tolerable accuracy he gave the details of his first interview with
Diane, three years previous. Long before he finished, Lucilla was
weeping silently, while Derek stood like a man turned to stone. Even the
banker's own face took on an expression of whimsical gravity as he said
in conclusion:

"And so I've decided to give her a home--that is," he added,
significantly, "if no one else will."

"Do you mean that for me?" Derek asked, in a tone too low for Lucilla to
hear it.

"Oh no--not particularly. I mean it for--any one."

"Because," Derek went on, "as for me--I'm not worthy to have her under
my roof."

The banker made no comment, sitting in a hunched attitude and humming to
himself in a cracked voice while Derek stared down at him.

They were still in this position when Marion Grimston was shown in.




XXV


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.




XXVI


"No; stay where you are; I'll go." Derek spoke with the terse command of
subdued excitement, almost pushing Diane back, as she, too, attempted to
go to Marion's assistance. She sank obediently into one of the great
chairs, too dazed even for curiosity as to what was passing in the hail.
Derek closed the door behind him, and, though confused sounds of voices
and shuffling feet reached her, she gave them but a dulled attention. It
was not till he came back that her stunned intelligence revived
sufficiently to enable her to think.

He closed the door again, throwing himself wearily into another of the
big leathern chairs.

"They've taken her into Lucilla's room. She'll be all right now. It was
better that it should end like that."

"I'm not so sure. I'm afraid for him."

"Oh, he'll survive it."

"You don't know our Frenchmen. They're not like you, nor any of your
men. With their sensitiveness to honor and their indifference to moral
right, it's difficult for you to understand them. I shouldn't be
surprised at anything he might do."

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