Book: The Inner Shrine

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"I don't know anything at all about you," was the not encouraging
response.

"Of course there's no reason why you should--" Diane hastened to say,
apologetically.

"None whatever," he assured her.

"Only that a good many people do know us--"

"I dare say. I haven't the honor to be among the number."

"And I thought that possibly--just possibly--you might be predisposed in
my favor."

"A banker is never predisposed in favor of any one--not even his own
flesh and blood."

"I didn't know that," Diane persisted, bravely, "otherwise I might just
as well have gone to anybody else."

"Just as well."

"Would you like me to go now?"

The question took him by surprise, and before replying he looked at her
again with queer, bulgy eyes peering through big circular glasses, in a
way that made Diane think of an ogre in a fairy tale.

"You're not here for what I like," he said at last, "but for what you
want yourself."

"That's true," Diane admitted, ruefully, "but I might go away. I _will_
go away, if you say so."

"You'll please yourself. I didn't send for you, and I'll not tell you to
go. How old are you?"

It was Diane's turn to be surprised, but she brought out her age
promptly.

"Twenty-four."

"You look older."

"That's because I've had so much trouble, perhaps. It's because we're in
trouble that I've come to you, Mr. van Tromp."

"I dare say. I didn't suppose you'd come to ask me to dinner. There are
not many days go by without some one expecting me to pull him out of the
scrape he would never have got into if it hadn't been for his own
fault."

"I'm afraid that's very like my case."

"It's like a good many cases. You're no exception to the rule."

"And what do you do at such times, if I may ask?"

"You may ask, but I'll not tell you. You're here on your own business, I
presume, and not on mine."

"I thought that perhaps you'd be good enough to make mine yours. Though
we've never met, I have seen you at various times, and it always seemed
to me that you looked kind; and so--"

"Stop right there, ma'am!" he cried, putting up a warning hand. "'Most
important business,' was what you said in your note, otherwise I
shouldn't have consented to see you. If you have any business, state it,
and I'll say yes or no, as it strikes me. But I'll tell you beforehand
that there isn't a chance in a thousand but what it'll be no."

"I did come because I thought you looked kind," Diane declared,
indignantly, "and if you think it was for any other reason whatever,
you're absolutely mistaken."

"Then we'll let it be. I can't help my looks, nor what you think about
them. The point is that you're here for something; so let's know what it
is."

"You make it very hard for me," Diane said, almost tearfully, "but I'll
try. I must tell you, first of all, that we've lost a great deal of
money."

"That's no new situation."

"It is to me; and it's even more so to my poor mother-in-law. I should
think you must have heard of her at least. She is Mrs. Arthur Eveleth.
Her maiden name was Naomi de Ruyter, of New York."

"Very likely."

"Her husband was related, on his mother's side, to the Van Tromps--the
same family as your own."

"That's more likely still. There are as many Van Tromps in New York as
there are shrimps on the Breton coast, and they're all related to me,
because I'm supposed to have a little money."

"I sha'n't let you offend me," Diane said, stoutly, "because I want your
help."

"That's a very good reason."

"But since you take so little interest in us I will not attempt to
explain how it is that we've come to such misfortune."

"I'll take that for granted."

"The blow has fallen more heavily on my mother-in-law than on me. She
has lost everything she had in the world; while I have still my own
money--my _dot_--and a little over from the sale of my jewels."

"Well?"

"If you'd ever seen her, you would know how terrible, how impossible,
such a situation is for her. She's the sort of woman who ought to have
money--who _must_ have money. And so I thought if I came to you--"

"I'd give her some."

"No," Diane said, quickly, with a renewed touch of indignation, "but
that you'd help me to do it."

He looked at her with an odd, upward glance under his shaggy,
overhanging brows, while the protruding lower lip went a shade further
out.

"Help you to do it? How?"

"By letting her have mine."

Again he looked at her, almost suspiciously.

"You've got plenty to give away, I suppose?"

"On the contrary, I've pitifully little; but such as it is, I want her
to have it all. She could live on it--with economy; or at least she says
I could."

"And can't you?"

"I don't want to. As there isn't enough for two, I wish to settle it on
her. Isn't that the word?--settle?"

"It'll do as well as another. And what do you propose to do yourself?"

"Work."

Diane forced the word in a little gasp of humiliation, but she got it
out.

"And what'll you work at?"

"I don't know yet, exactly. I shall have to see. My mother-in-law is
going to America; and when she does I'll join her."

"Humph! My good woman, you wouldn't do more than just keep ahead of
starvation."

"Oh, I shouldn't expect to do more. If I succeeded in that--I should
live."

"How much money have you got?"

"It's all here," she answered, picking up the black satchel and opening
it. "These are my securities, and I'm told they're very good."

"And do you take them round with you every time you go shopping?"

"No," Diane smiled, somewhat wanly. "They've been in the hands of the
Messrs. Hargous for a good many years past. They are entirely at my own
disposal--not in trust, they said; so that I had a right to take them
away. I thought I would just bring them to you."

"What for?"

"To keep them for my mother-in-law and pay her the interest, or whatever
it is."

"Why didn't you leave them with Hargous?"

"I was afraid, from some things he said, he would object to what I
wanted to do."

"And what made you think I wouldn't object to it, too?"

"Two or three reasons. First, Monsieur Hargous is not an American, and
you are; and I'd been told that Americans always like to help one
another--"

"I don't know who could have put that notion into your head."

"And, then, from the few glimpses I've had of you--I _will_ say it!--I
thought you looked kind."

"Well, now that you've had a better look, you see I don't. How much
money have you got? You haven't told me that yet."

"Here's the memorandum. They said they were mostly bonds, and very good
ones."

[Illustration: DRAWN BY FRANK CRAIG
THE BANKER TOOK A LONGER TIME THAN WAS NECESSARY TO SCAN THE POOR LITTLE
LIST]

With the slip of paper in his hand the banker leaned back in the chair,
and took a longer time than was necessary to scan the poor little list.
In reality he was turning over in his mind the unexpected features of
the case, venturing a peep at Diane as she sat meekly awaiting the end
of his perusal.

"Hasn't it occurred to you," he asked, at last, "that you could leave
your affairs in Hargous' hands, and still turn over to your
mother-in-law whatever sums he paid you?"

"Yes; but she wouldn't take the money unless she thought it was her very
own."

"But it isn't her very own. It's yours."

"I want to make it hers. I want to transfer it to her absolutely--so
that no one else, not even I, shall have a claim upon it. There must be
ways of doing that."

"There are ways of doing that, but as far as she's concerned it comes to
the same thing. If she won't touch the income, she will refuse to accept
the principal."

"I've thought of that, too; and it's among the reasons why I've come to
you. I hoped you'd help me--"

"To tell a lie about it."

"I should think it might be done without that. My mother-in-law is a
very simple woman in business affairs. She has been used all her life to
having money paid into her account, when she had only the vaguest idea
as to where it came from. If you should write to her now and say that
some small funds in her name were in your hands, and that you would pay
her the income at stated intervals, nothing would seem more natural to
her. She would probably attribute it to some act of foresight on her
son's part, and never think I had anything to do with it at all."

For three or four minutes he sat in meditation, still glancing at her
furtively under his shaggy brows, while she waited for his decision.

"I don't approve of it at all," he said, at last.

"Don't say that," she pleaded. "I've hoped so much that you'd--"

"At the same time I won't say that the thing isn't feasible. I'll just
verify these bonds and certificates, and--"

He took them, one by one, from the bag, and, having compared them with
the list, replaced them.

"And," he continued, "you can come and see me again at this time
to-morrow."

"Oh, thank you!"

"You can thank me when I've done something--not before. Very likely I
sha'n't do anything at all. But in the mean while you may leave your
satchel here, and not run the risk of being robbed in the street. If I
refuse you to-morrow--as is probable I shall--I'll send a man with you
to see you and your money safely back to Hargous."

He touched a bell, and a young man entered. On directions from the
banker the clerk left the room, taking the bag with him; while Diane,
feeling that her errand had been largely accomplished, rose to leave.

"You can't go without the receipt for your securities. How do you know
I'm not stealing them from you? What right would you have to claim them
when you came again? Sit down now and tell me something more about
yourself."

Half smiling, half tearfully, Diane complied. Before the clerk returned
she had given a brief outline of her life, agreeing in all but the tone
of telling with much of what Mr. Grimston had stated half an hour
earlier.

"It has been all my fault," she declared, as the young man re-entered.
"There's been nobody to blame but me."

"I see that well enough," the old man agreed, and once more she prepared
to depart.

"Look at your receipt. Compare it with the list there on the desk."
Diane obeyed, though her eyes swam so that she could not tell one word
from another. "Is it all right? Then so much the better. You'll find me
at the same time to-morrow--if you're not late."

"Since you won't let me thank you, I must go without doing so," she
began, tremulously, "but I assure you--"

"You needn't assure me of anything, but just come again to-morrow."

She smiled through the mist over her eyes, and bowed.

"I shall not be--late," was all she ventured to say, and turned to leave
him.

She had reached the door, and half opened it, when she heard his voice
behind her.

"Stay! Just a minute! I'd like to shake hands with you, young woman."

Diane turned and allowed him to take her hand in a grip that hurt her.
She was so astounded by the suddenness of the act, as well as by the
rapidity with which he closed the door behind her, that her tears did
not actually fall until she found herself in the public department of
the bank, outside.




IV


On board the _Picardie_, steaming to New York, Mrs. Eveleth and Diane
were beginning to realize the gravity of the step they had taken. As
long as they remained in Paris, battling with the sordid details of
financial downfall, America had seemed the land of hope and
reconstruction, where the ruined would find to their hands the means
with which to begin again. The illusion had sustained them all through
the first months of living on little, and stood by them till the very
hour of departure. It faded just when they had most need of it--when the
last cliffs of France went suddenly out of sight in a thick fog-bank of
nothingness; and the cold, empty void, through which the steamer crept
cautiously, roaring from minute to minute like a leviathan in pain,
seemed all that the universe henceforth had to offer them. They would
have been astonished to know that, beyond the fog, Fate was getting the
New World ready for their reception, by creating among the rich those
misfortunes out of which not infrequently proceed the blessings of the
poor.

When that excellent aged lady, Miss Regina van Tromp, sister to the
well-known Paris banker, was felled by a stroke of apoplexy, the
personal calamity might, by a mind taking all things into account, have
been considered balanced by the circumstance that it was affording
employment to some refined woman of reduced means, capable of taking
care of the invalid. It had the further advantage that, coming suddenly
as it did, it absorbed the attention of Miss Lucilla van Tromp, the sick
lady's companion and niece, who became unable henceforth to give to the
household of her cousin, Derek Pruyn, that general supervision which a
kindly old maid can exercise in the home of a young and prosperous
widower. Were Destiny on the lookout for still another opening, she
could have found it in the fact that Miss Dorothea Pruyn, whose father's
discipline came by fits and starts, while his indulgence was continuous,
had reached a point in motherless maidenhood where, according to Miss
Lucilla, "something ought to be done." There was thus unrest, and a
straining after new conditions, in that very family toward which Mrs.
Eveleth's imagination turned from this dreary, leaden sea as to a
possible haven.

Since the wonderful morning when the banker had brought her the news of
her little inheritance her thoughts had dwelt much on Van Tromps and
Pruyns, as representatives of that old New York clan with which she
deigned to claim alliance; and she found no small comfort in going over,
again and again, the details of the interview which had brought her once
more into contact with her kin. James van Tromp, she informed Diane, as
they lay covered with rugs in their steamer-chairs, had been gruff in
manner, but kind in heart, like all the Van Tromps she had ever heard
of. He had not scrupled to dwell upon her past extravagance, but he had
tempered his remarks by commending her resolution to return to her old
home and friends. In the matter of friends, he assured her, she would
find herself with very few. She would be forgotten by some and ignored
by others; while those who still took an interest in her would resent
the fact that in the days of her prosperity she had neglected them. In
any case, she must have the meekness of the suppliant. As her means at
most would be small, she must be grateful if any of her relatives would
take her without wages, as a sort of superior lady's maid, and save her
the expense of board and lodging.

"And so you see, dear," she finished, humbly, "it's going to be all
right. George thought of me; and far more than any money, I value that.
James van Tromp said that this sum had been placed in his hands some
time ago to be specially used for me, and I couldn't help understanding
what that meant. When my boy saw the disaster coming he did his best to
protect me; and it will be my part now to show that he did enough."

If Diane listened to these familiar remarks, it was only to take a dull
satisfaction in the working of her scheme; but Mrs. Eveleth's next words
startled her into sudden attention.

"Haven't I heard you say that you knew James van Tromp's nephew, Derek
Pruyn?"

"I did know him," Diane answered, with a trace of hesitation.

"You knew him well?"

"Not exactly; it was different from--well."

"Different? How? Did you meet him often?"

"Never often; but when we did meet--"

The possibilities implied in Diane's pause induced Mrs. Eveleth to turn
in her chair and look at her.

"You've never told me about that."

"There wasn't much to tell. Don't you know what it is to have met, just
a few times in your life, some one who leaves behind a memory out of
proportion to the degree of the acquaintance? It was something like that
with this Mr. Pruyn."

"Where was it? In Paris?"

"I met him first in Ireland. He was staying with some friends of ours
the last year mamma and I lived at Kilrowan. What I remember about him
was that he seemed so young to be a widower--scarcely more than a boy."

"Is that all?"

"It's very nearly all; but there _is_ something more. He said one day
when we were talking intimately--we always seemed to talk intimately
when we were together--that if ever I was in trouble, I was to remember
him."

"How extraordinary!"

"Yes, it was. I reminded him of it when we met again. That was the year
I was going out with Marie de Nohant, just before George and I were
married."

"And what did he say then?"

"That he repeated the request."

"Extraordinary!" Mrs. Eveleth commented again. "Are you going to do
anything about it?"

"I've thought of it," Diane admitted, "but I don't believe I can."

"Wouldn't it be a pity to neglect so good an opportunity?"

"It might rather be a pity to avail one's self of it. There are things
in life too pleasant to put to the test."

"He might like you to do it. After all, he's a connection."

Not caring to continue the subject, Diane murmured something about
feeling cold, and rose for a little exercise. Having advanced as far
forward as she could go, she turned her back upon her fellow-passengers,
stretched in mute misery in their chairs or huddled in cheerful groups
behind sheltering projections, and stood watching the dip and rise of
the steamer's bow as it drove onward into the mist. Whither was she
going, and to what? With a desperate sense of her ignorance and
impotence, she strained her eyes into the white, dimly translucent bank,
from which stray drops repeatedly lashed her face, as though its
vaporous wall alone stood between her and the knowledge of her future.

* * * * *

If she could have seen beyond the fog and carried her vision over the
intervening leagues of ocean, so as to look into a large, old-fashioned
New York house in Gramercy Park, she would have found Derek Pruyn and
Lucilla van Tromp discussing one of the cardinal points on which that
future was to turn.

That it was not an amusing conversation would have been clear from the
agitation of Derek's manner as he strode up and down the room, as well
as from the rigidity with which his cousin, usually a limp person, held
herself erect, in the attitude of a woman who has no intention of
retiring from the stand she has taken.

"You force me to speak more plainly than I like, Derek," she was saying,
"because you make yourself so obtuse. You seem to forget that years have
a way of passing, and that Dorothea is no longer a very little girl."

"She's barely seventeen--no more than a child."

"But a motherless child, and one who has been allowed a great deal of
liberty."

"Is there any reason why a girl shouldn't be a free creature?"

"Only the reason why a boy shouldn't be one."

"That's different. A boy would be getting into mischief."

"Even a girl isn't proof against that possibility. It mayn't be a boy's
kind of mischief, but it's a kind of her own."

Unwilling to credit this statement, and yet unable to contradict it,
Pruyn continued his march for a minute or two in silence, while Miss
Lucilla waited nervously for him to speak again. It was one of the few
points in the round of daily existence on which she was prepared to give
him battle. It was part of the ridiculous irony of life that Derek, with
the domestic incompetency natural to a banker and a club-man, should
have a daughter to train, while she whose instinct was so passionately
maternal must be doomed to spinsterhood. She had never made any secret
of the fact that to watch Derek bringing up Dorothea made her as fidgety
as if she had seen him trimming hats, though she recognized the futility
of trying to snatch the task from his hands in order to do it properly.
The utmost she had been able to accomplish was to be allowed to plod
daily from Gramercy Park to Fifth Avenue, in the hope of keeping bad
from becoming worse; and even this insufficient oversight must be
discontinued now, since Aunt Regina would monopolize her care. If she
took the matter to heart, it was no more, she thought, than she had a
right to do, seeing that Derek was almost like a younger brother, and,
with the exception of Uncle James in Paris, and Aunt Regina in New York,
her nearest relative in the world.

As she glanced up at him from time to time she reflected, with some
pride, that no one could have taken him for anything but what he was--a
rising young New York banker of some hereditary line. As in certain
English portraits there is an inborn aptitude for statesmanship, so in
Derek Pruyn there was that air, almost inseparable from the Van Tromp
kinship, of one accustomed to possess money, to make money, to spend
money, and to support moneyed responsibilities. The face, slightly stern
by nature, slightly grave by habit, and tanned by outdoor exercise, was
that of a man who wields his special kind of power with a due sense of
its importance, and yet wields it easily. Nature having endowed the Van
Tromps with every excellence but that of good looks, it was Miss
Lucilla's tendency to depreciate beauty; but she was too much a woman
not to be sensible of the charms of six feet two, with proportionate
width of shoulder, and a way of standing straight and looking straight,
incompatible with anything but "acting straight," that was full of a
fine dominance. That he should be carefully dressed was but a detail in
the exactitude which was the main element in his character; while his
daily custom of wearing in his button-hole a dark-red carnation, a token
of some never-explained memory of his dead wife, indicated a capacity
for sober romance which she did not find displeasing.

"Then what would you do about it?" he asked, at last, pausing abruptly
in his walk and confronting her.

"There isn't much choice, Derek. Human society is so constituted as to
leave us very little opportunity for striking into original paths. Aunt
Regina has told you many a time what was possible, and you didn't like
it; but I'll repeat it if you wish. You could send her to a good
boarding-school--"

Never!

"Or you could have a lady to chaperon her properly."

"Rubbish!"

"Well, there you are, Derek. You refuse the only means that could help
you in your situation; and so you leave Dorothea a prey to a woman like
Mrs. Wappinger. You'll excuse me for mentioning it; but--"

"I'd excuse you for mentioning anything; but even Mrs. Wappinger ought
to have justice. You know as well as I do that Uncle James wanted to
marry her, and that it was only her own common-sense that saved us from
having her as an aunt. You may not admire her type, but you can't deny
that it's one which has a legitimate place in American civilization.
Ours isn't a society that can afford to exclude the self-made man, or
his widow."

"That may be quite true, Derek; only in that case you have also to
reckon with--his son."

Derek bounded away once more, making manifest efforts to control himself
before he spoke again.

"You know this subject is most distasteful to me, Lucilla," he said,
severely.

"I know it is; and it's equally so to me. But I see what's going on, and
you don't--there's the difference. What should a young man like you know
about bringing up a school-girl? To see you intrusted with her at all
makes me very nearly doubt the wisdom of the ends of Providence. She's a
good little girl by nature, but your indulgence would spoil an angel."

"I don't indulge her. I've forbidden her to do lots of things."

"Exactly; you come down on the poor thing when she's not doing any harm,
and you put no restrictions on the things in which she's wilful. If
there's a girl on earth who is being brought up backward, it's Dorothea
Pruyn."

"She's my child. I presume I've got a right to do what I like with her."

"You'll find that you've done what you don't like with her, when you've
allowed her to get into a ridiculous, unmaidenly flirtation with the
young man Wappinger."

"I shouldn't let that distress me if I were you. As far as Dorothea is
concerned, your young man Wappinger doesn't exist."

"That's as it may be," Miss Lucilla sniffed, now on the brink of tears.

"That's as it is," he insisted, picking up his hat.

"It's to be regretted," he added, with dignity, as he took his leave,
"that on this subject you and I cannot see alike; but I think you may
trust me not to endanger the happiness of my child."

* * * * *

Even if Diane could have transcended space to assist at this brief
interview, she would probably have missed its bearing on herself; but
had she transported her spirit at the same instant to still another
scene, the effect would have been more enlightening. While she still
stood watching the rise and dip of the steamer's bow, Mrs. Wappinger, in
a larger and more elaborate mansion than the old-fashioned house in
Gramercy Park, was reading to her son such portions of a letter from
James van Tromp as she considered it discreet for him to hear. A stout,
florid lady, in jovial middle age, her appearance as an agent in her
affairs would certainly have surprised Diane, had the vision been
vouchsafed to her.

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