Book: The Inner Shrine

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"You mustn't blame yourself," the mother-in-law said, speaking with some
difficulty, "for more than your own share of our troubles. I want to
talk to you quite frankly, and tell you things you've never known. The
beginning of the sorrows that have come to us dates very far back--back
to a time before you were born."

"Oh?"

Diane's brown eyes, swimming in tears, opened wide in a sort of mournful
curiosity.

"I admit," Mrs. Eveleth continued, "that in the first hours of our--our
bereavement I had some such thoughts about you as you've just expressed.
It seemed to me that if you had lived differently, George might have
been spared to us. It took reflection to show me that if you _had_ lived
differently, George himself wouldn't have been satisfied. The life you
led was the one he cared for--the one I taught him to care for. The
origin of the wrong has to be traced back to me."

"To you?" Diane uttered the words in increasing wonder. It was strange
that a first role in the drama could be played by any one but herself.

"I've always thought it a little odd," Mrs. Eveleth observed, after a
brief pause, "that you've never been interested to hear about our
family."

"I didn't know there was anything to tell," Diane answered, innocently.

"I suppose there isn't, from your European point of view; but, as we
Americans see things, there's a good deal that's significant. Foreigners
care so little about who or what we are, so long as we have money."

Diane raised her hand in a gesture of deprecation, intimating that such
was not her attitude of mind.

"And I've never wanted to bore you with what, after all, wasn't
necessary for you to hear. I shouldn't do so now if it had not become
important. There's a great deal to settle and arrange."

"I can understand that there must be business affairs," Diane murmured,
for the sake of saying something.

"Exactly; and in order to make them clear to you, I must take you a
little further back into our history than you've ever gone before. I
want you to see how much more responsible I am than you for our
calamity. You were born into this life of Paris, while I came into it of
my own accord. You did nothing but yield naturally to the influences
around you, while I accepted them after having been fully warned. If you
knew a little more of our American ideals I should find it easier to
explain."

"I should like to hear about them," Diane said, sympathetically. The new
interest was beginning to take her out of herself.

"My husband and I," Mrs. Eveleth went on again, "belong to that New York
element which dates back to the time when the city was New Amsterdam,
and the State, the New Netherlands. To you that means nothing, but in
America it tells much. I was Naomi de Ruyter; my husband, on his
mother's side, was a Van Tromp."

"Really?" Diane murmured, feeling that Mrs. Eveleth's tone of pride
required a response. "I know there's a Mr. van Tromp here--the American
banker."

"He is of the same family as my husband's mother. For nearly three
hundred years they've lived on the island of Manhattan, and seen their
farms and pastures grow into the second city in the world. The world has
poured in on them, literally in millions. It would have submerged them
if there hadn't been something in that old stock that couldn't be kept
down. However high the tide rose, they floated on the top. My people
were thrifty and industrious. They worked hard, saved money, and lived
in simple ways. They cared little for pleasure, for beauty, or for any
of the forms of art; but, on the contrary, they lived for work, for
religion, for learning, and all the other high and serious pursuits. It
was fine; but I hated it."

"Naturally."

"I longed to get away from it, and when I married I persuaded my husband
to give up his profession and his home in order to establish himself
here."

"But surely you can't regret that? You were free."

"Only the selfish and the useless are ever free. Those who are worth
anything in this world are bound by a hundred claims upon them. They
must either stay caught in the meshes of love and duty, or wrench
themselves away--and that's what I did. Perhaps I suffered less than
many people in doing the same thing; but I cannot say that I haven't
suffered at all."

"But you've had a happy life--till now."

"I've had what I wanted--which may be happiness, or may not be."

"I've heard that you were very much admired. Madame de Nohant has told
me that when you appeared at the Tuileries, no one was more graceful,
not even the Empress herself."

"I had what I wanted," Mrs. Eveleth repeated, with a sigh. "I don't deny
that I enjoyed it; and yet I question now if I did right. When my
husband died, and George was a little boy, my friends made one last
effort to induce me to take him back, and bring him up in his own
country. I ignored their opinions, because all their views were so
different from mine. I was young and independent, and enamoured of the
life I had begun to lead. I had scruples of conscience from time to
time; but when George grew up and developed the tastes I had bred in
him, I let other considerations go. I was pleased with his success in
the little world of Paris, just as I had been flattered by my own. When
he fell in love with you I urged him to marry you, not because of
anything in yourself, but because you were Mademoiselle de la
Ferronaise, the last of an illustrious family. I looked upon the match
as a useful alliance for him and for me. I encouraged George in
extravagance. I encouraged him when he began to live in a style far more
expensive than anything to which he had been accustomed. I encouraged
him when he built this house. I wanted to impress you; I wanted you to
see that the American could give you a more splendid home than any
European you were likely to marry, however exalted his rank. I was not
without fears that George was spending too much money; but we've always
had plenty for whatever we wanted to do; and so I let him go on when I
should have stopped him. It was my vanity. It wasn't his fault. He
inherited a large fortune; and if I had only brought him up wisely, it
would have been enough."

"And wasn't it enough?"

In spite of her growing dread, Diane brought out the question firmly.
Mrs. Eveleth sat one long minute motionless, with hands clasped, with
lips parted, and with suspended breath.

"No."

The monosyllable seemed to fill the room. It echoed and re-echoed in
Diane's ears like the boom of a cannon. While her outward vision took in
such details as the despair in Mrs. Eveleth's face, the folds of crape
on her gown, the Watteau picture on the panel of moss-green and gold
that formed the background, all the realities of life seemed to be
dissolving into chaos, as the glories of the sunset sink into a black
and formless mass. When Mrs. Eveleth spoke again, her voice sounded as
though it came from far away.

"I want to take all the blame upon myself. If it hadn't been for me,
George would never have gone to such extremes."

"Extremes?"

Diane spoke not so much from the desire to speak as from the necessity
of forcing her reeling intelligence back to the world of fact.

"I'm afraid there's no other word for it."

"Do you mean that there are debts?"

"A great many debts."

"Can't they be paid?"

"Most of them can be paid--perhaps all; but when that is done I'm afraid
there will be very little left."

"But surely we haven't lived so extravagantly as that. I know I've spent
a great deal of money--"

"It hasn't been altogether the style of living. When my poor boy saw
that he was going beyond his means he tried to recoup himself by
speculation. Do you know what that is?"

"I know it's something by which people lose money."

"He had no experience of anything of the kind, and his men of business
tell me he went into it wildly. He had that optimistic temperament which
always believes that the next thing will be a success, even though the
present one is a failure. Then, too, he fell into the hands of
unscrupulous men, who made him think that great fortunes were to be made
out of what they call wildcat schemes, when all the time they were
leading him to ruin."

Ruin! The word appealed to Diane's memory and imagination alike. It came
to her from her remotest childhood, when she could remember hearing it
applied to her grandfather, the old Comte de la Ferronaise. After that
she could recollect leaving the great chateau in which she was born, and
living with her parents, first in one European capital, and then in
another. Finally they settled for a few years in Ireland, her mother's
country, where both her parents died. During all this time, as well as
in the subsequent years in a convent at Auteuil, she was never free from
the sense of ruin hanging over her. Though she understood well enough
that her way of escape lay in making a rich marriage, it was impressed
upon her that the meagreness of her _dot_ would make her efforts in this
direction difficult. When, within a few months of leaving the convent,
she was asked by George Eveleth to become his wife, it seemed as if she
had reached the end of her cares. She had the less scruple in accepting
what he had to give in that she honestly liked the generous, easy-going
man who lived but to gratify her whims. During the four years of her
married life she had spent money, not merely for the love of spending,
but from sheer joy in the sense that Poverty, the arch-enemy, had been
defeated; and lo! he was springing at her again.

"Ruin!" she echoed, when Mrs. Eveleth had let fall the word. "Do you
mean that we're--ruined?"

"It depends on how you look at it. You will always have your own small
fortune, on which you can live with economy."

"But you will have yours, too."

Mrs. Eveleth smiled faintly.

"No; I'm afraid that's gone. It was in George's hands, and I can see he
tried to increase it for me, by doing with it--as he did with his own.
I'm not blaming him. The worst of which he can be accused is a lack of
judgment."

"But there's this house!" Diane urged, "and all this furniture!--and
these pictures!"

She glanced up at the Watteau, the Boucher, and the Fragonard, which
gave the key to the decorations of the dainty boudoir. The faint smile
still lingered on Mrs. Eveleth's lips, as it lingers on the face of the
dead.

"There'll be very little left," she repeated.

"But I don't understand," Diane protested, with a perplexed movement of
the hand across her brow. "I don't know much about business, but if it
were explained to me I think I could follow."

"Come and sit beside me at the desk," Mrs. Eveleth suggested. "You will
understand better if you see the figures just as they stand."

She went over the main points, one by one, using the same untechnical
simplicity of language which George's men of business had employed with
herself. The facts could be stated broadly but comprehensively. When all
was settled the Eveleth estate would have disappeared. Diane would
possess her small inheritance, which was a thing apart. Mrs. Eveleth
would have a few jewels and other minor personal belongings, but nothing
more. The very completeness of the story rendered it easy in the
telling, though the largeness of the facts made it impossible for Diane
to take them in. It was an almost unreasonable tax on credulity to
attempt to think of the tall, fragile woman sitting before her, with
luxurious nurture in every pose of the figure, in every habit of the
mind, as penniless. It was trying to account for daylight without a sun.

"It can't be!" Diane cried, when she had done her best to weigh the
facts just placed before her.

Mrs. Eveleth shook her head, the glimmering smile fixed on her lips as
on a mask.

"It is so, dear, I'm afraid. We must do our best to get used to it."

"I shall never get used to it," Diane cried, springing to her
feet--"never, never!"

"It will be hard for you to do without all you've had--when you've had
so much--but--"

"Oh, it isn't that," Diane broke in, fiercely. "It isn't for me. I can
do well enough. It's for you."

"Don't worry about me, dear. I can work."

The words were spoken in a matter-of-fact tone, but Diane recoiled at
them as at a sword-thrust.

"You can--what?"

It was the last touch, not only of the horror of the situation, but of
its ludicrous irony.

"I can work, dear," Mrs. Eveleth repeated, with the poignant
tranquillity that smote Diane more cruelly than grief. "There are many
things I could do--"

"Oh, don't!" Diane wailed, with pleading gestures of the hands. "Oh,
don't! I can't bear it. Don't say such things. They kill me. There must
be some mistake. All that money can't have gone. Even if it was only a
few hundred thousand francs, it would be something. I will not believe
it. It's too soon to judge. I've heard it took a long time to settle up
estates. How can they have done it yet?"

"They haven't. They've only seen its possibilities--and
impossibilities."

"I will never believe it," Diane burst out again. "I will see those men.
I will tell them. I am positive that it cannot be. Such injustice would
not be permitted. There must be laws--there must be something--to
prevent such outrage--especially on you!" She spoke vehemently, striding
to and fro in the little room, and brushing back from time to time the
heavy brown hair that in her excitement fell in disordered locks on her
forehead. "It's too wicked. It's too monstrous. It's intolerable. God
doesn't allow such things to happen on earth, otherwise He wouldn't be
God! No, no; you cannot make me think that such things happen. You work!
The Mater Dolorosa herself was not called upon to bear such humiliation.
If God reigns, as they say He does--"

"But, Diane dear," Mrs. Eveleth interrupted, gently, "isn't it true that
we owe it to George's memory to bear our troubles bravely?"

"I'm ready to bear anything bravely--but this."

"But isn't this the case, above all others, in which you and I should be
unflinching? Doesn't any lack of courage on our parts imply a reflection
on him?"

"That's true," Diane said, stopping abruptly.

"I don't know how far you honor George's memory--?"

"George's memory? Why shouldn't I honor it?"

"I didn't know. Some women--after what you've just discovered--"

"I am not--some women! I am Diane Eveleth. Whatever George did I shared
it, and I share it still."

"Then you forgive him?"

"Forgive him?--I?--forgive him? No! What have I to forgive? Anything he
did he did for me and in order to have the more to give me--and I love
him and honor him as I never did till now."

Mrs. Eveleth rose and stood unsteadily beside her desk.

"God bless you for saying that, Diane."

"There's no reason why He should bless me for saying anything so
obvious."

"It isn't obvious to me, Diane; and you must let _me_ bless you--bless
you with the mother's blessing, which, I think, must be next to God's."

Then opening her arms wide, she sobbed the one word "Come!" and they had
at last the comfort, dear to women, of weeping in each other's arms.




III


In the private office of the great Franco-American banking-house of Van
Tromp & Co., the partners, having finished their conference, were about
to separate.

"That's all, I think," said Mr. Grimston. He rose with a jerky movement,
which gave him the appearance of a little figure shot out of a box.

Mr. van Tromp remained seated at the broad, flat-topped desk, his head
bent at an angle which gave Mr. Grimston a view of the tips of shaggy
eyebrows, a broad nose, and that peculiar kind of protruding lower lip
before which timid people quail. As there was no response, Mr. Grimston
looked round vaguely on the sombre, handsome furnishings, fixing his
gaze at last on the lithographed portrait of Mr. van Tromp senior, the
founder of the house, hanging above the mantelpiece.

"That's all, I think," Mr. Grimston repeated, raising his voice slightly
in order to drown the rumble that came through the open windows from the
rue Auber.

Suddenly Mr. van Tromp looked up.

"I've just had a letter," he said, in a tone indicating an entirely new
order of discussion, "from a person who signs herself Diana--or is it
Diane?--Eveleth."

"Oh, Diane! She's written to you, has she?" came from Mr. Grimston, as
his partner searched with short-sighted eyes for the letter in question
among the papers on the desk.

"You know her, then?"

"Of course I know her. You ought to know her, too. You would, if you
didn't shut yourself up in the office, away from the world."

"N-no, I don't recall that I've ever met the lady. Ah, here's the note,
just sit down a minute while I read it."

Mr. Grimston shot back into his seat again, while Mr. van Tromp wiped
his large, circular glasses.

"'Dear Mr. van Tromp,' she begins, 'I am most anxious to talk to you on
very important business, and would take it as a favor if you would let
me call on Tuesday morning and see you very privately. Yours sincerely,
Diane Eveleth.' That's all. Now, what do you make of it?"

The straight smile, which was all the facial expression Mr. Grimston
ever allowed himself, became visible between the lines of his closely
clipped mustache and beard. He took his time before speaking, enjoying
the knowledge that this was one of those social junctures in which he
had his senior partner so conspicuously at a disadvantage.

"It's a bad business, I'm afraid," he said, as though summing up rather
than beginning.

"What does the woman want with me?"

"That, I fear, is painfully evident. You must have heard of the Eveleth
smash a couple of months ago. Or--let me see!--I think it was just when
you were in New York. No; you'd be likely not to hear of it. The
Eveleths have so carefully cut their American acquaintance for so many
years that they've created a kind of vacuum around themselves, out of
which the noise of their doings doesn't easily penetrate. They belong to
that class of American Parisians who pose for going only into French
society."

"I know the kind."

"Mrs. Grimston could tell you all about them, of course. Equally at home
as she is in the best French and American circles, she hears a great
many things she'd rather not hear."

"She needn't listen to 'em."

"Unfortunately a woman in her position, with a daughter like Marion, is
obliged to listen. But that's rather the end of the story--"

"And I want the beginning, Grimston, if you don't mind. I want to know
why this Diane should be after me."

"She's after money," Mr. Grimston declared, bluntly. "She's after money,
and you'd better let me manage her. It would save you the trouble of the
refusal you'll be obliged to make."

"Well, tell me about her and I'll see."

Mr. Grimston stiffened himself in his chair and cleared his throat.

"Diane Eveleth," he stated, with slow, significant emphasis, "is an
extremely fascinating woman. She has probably turned more men round her
little finger than any other woman in Paris."

"Is that to her credit or her discredit?"

"I don't want to say anything against Mrs. Eveleth," Mr. Grimston
protested. "I wish she hadn't come near us at all. As it is, you must be
forewarned."

"I'm not particular about that, if you'll give me the facts."

"That's not so easy. Where facts are so deucedly disagreeable, a fellow
finds it hard to trot out any poor little woman in her weaknesses. I
must make it clear beforehand that I don't want to say anything against
her."

"It's in confidence--privileged, as the lawyers say. I sha'n't think the
worse of her--that is, not much."

"Poor Diane," Mr. Grimston began again, sententiously, "is one of the
bits of human wreckage that have drifted down to us from the
pre-revolutionary days of French society. Her grandfather, the old Comte
de la Ferronaise, belonged to that order of irreconcilable royalists who
persist in dashing themselves to pieces against the rising wall of
democracy. I remember him perfectly--a handsome old fellow, who had lost
an arm in the Crimea. He used to do business with us when I was with
Hargous in the rue de Provence. Having impoverished himself in a plot in
favor of the Comte de Chambord, somewhere about 1872, he came utterly to
grief in raising funds for the Boulanger craze, in the train of the
Duchesse d'Uzes. He died shortly afterward, one of the last to break his
heart over the hopeless Bourbon cause."

"That, I understand you to say, was the grandfather of the young woman
who is after money. She's a Frenchwoman, then?"

"She's half French. That was her grandfather. The father was of much the
same type, but a lighter weight. He married an Irish beauty, a Miss
O'Hara, as poor as himself. He died young, I believe, and I'd lost sight
of the lot, till this Mademoiselle Diane de la Ferronaise floated into
view, some five years ago, in the train of the Nohant family. Her
marriage to George Eveleth, which took place almost at once, was looked
upon as an excellent thing all round. It rid the Nohants of a poor
relation, and helped to establish the Eveleths in the heart of the old
aristocracy. Since then Diane has been going the pace."

"What pace?"

"The pace the Eveleth money couldn't keep up with; the pace that made
her the most-talked-of woman in a society where women are talked of more
than enough; the pace that led George Eveleth to put a bullet through
his head under pretence of fighting a duel."

"Dear me! Dear me! A most unusual young woman! Do you tell me that her
husband actually put an end to himself?"

"So I understand. The affair was a curious one; but Bienville swears he
fired into the air, and I believe him. Besides, George Eveleth was found
shot through the temple, and no one but himself could have inflicted a
wound like that. To make it conclusive, Melcourt and Vernois, who were
seconds, testify to having seen the act, without having the time to
prevent it. You can see that it is a relief to me to be able to take
this view of the case--on poor Marion's account."

"Marion--your daughter! Was she mixed up in the affair?"

"Mixed up is a little to much to say. I don't mind telling you in
confidence that there was something between her and Bienville. I don't
know where it mightn't have ended; but of course when all this happened,
and we got wind of Bienville's entanglement with Mrs. Eveleth, we had to
put a stop to the thing, and pack her off to America. She'll stay there
with her aunt, Mrs. Bayford, till it blows over."

"And your friend Bienville? Hasn't he brought himself within the
clutches of the law?"

"George Eveleth was officially declared a suicide. He had every reason
to be one--though I don't want to say anything against Mrs. Eveleth.
When Bienville refused to put an end to him, he evidently decided to do
it himself. His family know nothing about that, so please don't let it
slip out if you see Diane. With her notions, the husband fallen in her
cause has perished on the field of honor; and if that's any comfort to
her, let her keep it. As for Bienville, he's joined young Persigny, the
explorer, in South America. By the time he returns the affair will have
been forgotten. He's a nice young fellow, and it's a thousand pities he
should have fallen into the net of a woman like Mrs. Eveleth. I don't
want to say anything against her, you understand--"

"Oh, quite!"

"But--"

Mr. Grimston pronounced the word with a hard-drawn breath, and presented
the appearance of a man who restrains himself. He was still endeavoring
to maintain this attitude of repression when a discreet tap on the door
called from Mr. van Tromp a gruff "Come in." A young man entered with a
card.

"She's here," the banker grunted, reading the name.

Mr. Grimston shot up again.

"Better let me see her," he insisted, in a warning tone.

"No, no. I'll have a look at her myself. Bring the lady in," he added,
to the young man in waiting.

"Then I'll skip," said Mr. Grimston, suiting the action to the word by
disappearing in one direction as Diane entered from another.

Mr. van Tromp rose heavily, and surveyed her as she crossed the floor
toward him. He had been expecting some such seductive French beauty as
he had occasionally seen on the stage on the rare occasions when he went
to a play; so that the trimness of this little figure in widow's dress,
with white bands and cuffs, after the English fashion, somewhat
disconcerted him. Unaccustomed to the ways of banks, Diane half offered
her hand, but, as he was on his guard against taking it, she stood still
before him.

"Mrs. Eveleth, I believe," he said, when he had surveyed her well. "Have
the goodness to sit down, and tell me what I can do for you."

Diane took the seat he indicated, which left a discreet space between
them. The heavy black satchel she carried she placed on the floor beside
her. When she raised her veil, Mr. van Tromp observed to himself that
the pale face, touching in expression, and the brown eyes, in which
there seemed to lurk a gentle reproach against the world for having
treated her so badly, were exactly what he would have expected in a
woman coming to borrow money.

"I've come to you, Mr. van Tromp," Diane began, timidly, "because I
thought that perhaps--you might know--who I am."

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