Book: The Inner Shrine

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Keeping her hands rigidly within her muff, and with a slight, dignified
inclination of the head, she turned from him.

She was half-way to the door before Derek recovered himself sufficiently
to speak.

"May I ask," he inquired, "what your objections are?"

She turned where she stood, but did not come back toward him.

"I have only one. The position you suggest would be intolerable to your
daughter and odious to me."

"But," he asked, with a perplexed contraction of the brows, "isn't it
what companions to young ladies are generally engaged for?"

"I was never engaged as a companion before, so I'm not qualified to say.
I only know--"

She stopped, as if weighing her words.

"Yes?" he insisted; "you only know--what?"

"That no girl with spirit--and Miss Pruyn _is_ a girl with spirit--would
submit to that kind of tyranny."

"It wouldn't be tyranny in this case; it would be authority."

"She would consider it tyranny--especially after the freedom you've
allowed her."

"But you admit that it's freedom that ought to be curbed?"

"Quite so; but aren't there methods of restriction other than those of
compulsion?"

"Such as--what?"

"Such as special circumstances may suggest."

"And in these particular circumstances--?"

"I'm not prepared to say. I'm not sufficiently familiar with them."

"Precisely; but I am."

"You're familiar with them from a man's point of view," she smiled; "but
it's one of those instances in which a man's point of view counts for
very little."

"Admitting that, what would be your advice?"

"I have none to give."

"None?"

She shook her head. Leaving his fortified position by the mantelpiece,
he took a step or two toward her.

"And yet when I began to speak you seemed favorably inclined to the
offer I was making you. You must have had ideas on the subject, then."

"Only vague ones. I made the mistake of supposing that yours would be
equally so."

"And with your vague ideas, your intention was--?"

"To adapt myself to circumstances; I couldn't tell beforehand what they
would be. I imagined that what you wanted for your daughter was the
society of an experienced woman of the world; and I am that, whatever
else I may not be."

"You're very young to make the claim."

"There are other ways of gaining experience than by years; and," she
added, with the intention to divert the conversation from herself, "the
small store I happen to possess I was willing to share with your
daughter, in whatever way she might have need of it."

"But not in my way."

"Not in your way, perhaps, but for the furthering of your purposes."

"How could you further my purposes when you wouldn't do what I wanted?"

"By getting her to do it of her own accord."

"Could you promise me she would?"

"I couldn't promise you anything at all. I could only do my best, and
see how she would respond to it."

"She's a very good little girl," he hastened to declare.

"I'm sure of that. Though I don't know her well, I've seen her often
enough to understand that whatever mistakes she may make, they are those
of youth and independence. She is only a motherless girl who has been
allowed--who, in a certain way, has been obliged--to look after herself.
I've noticed that underneath her self-reliant manner she's very much a
child."

"That's true."

"But I should never treat her as a child, except--except in one way."

"Which would be--?"

"To give her plenty of affection."

"She's always had that."

"Yes, yours; she hasn't had her mother's. Don't think me cruel in saying
it, but no girl can grow up nourished only by her father's love, and not
miss something that the good God intended her to have. The reason women
are so essential to babies and men is chiefly because of their faculty
for understanding the inarticulate. With all your daughter has had,
there is one great thing that she hasn't had; and if you had placed me
near her, my idea, which I call vague, would have been--as far as any
one could do it now--to supply her with some of that."

Derek retreated again to the fireside, alarmed by a language
suspiciously like that he had heard on other occasions concerning the
motherless condition of his child. Was it going to turn out that all
women were alike? There had been minutes during the last half-hour when,
as he looked into Diane's face, it seemed to him that here at last was
one as honest as air and as straightforward as light. But no experienced
woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that
this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower. She must either
avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing
it. It took him a few minutes to perceive that Diane had chosen the
latter course, and had done it with a fine disdain of anything he might
choose to think. She was not of the order of women who hesitate for
petty considerations, or who stoop to small manoeuvrings.

"I'm afraid I must go now," she said, when he had stood some time
without speaking.

"Don't go yet. Sit down."

His tone was still one of command, but not of the same quality of
command as that which he had used on her entry. He brought her a chair,
and she seated herself again.

"You said just now," he began, resuming his former attitude, with his
arm on the mantelpiece, "that you didn't expect me to be so definite.
Suppose I had been indefinite; then what would you have done?"

"I should have been indefinite, too."

"That's all very well; but, you see, I have to look at things from the
point of view of business."

"And is there never anything indefinite in business?"

"Not if we can help it."

"And what happens when you can't help it?"

"Then we have to look for some one to whose discretion we can trust."

"Exactly; and, if you'll allow me to say it, Miss Pruyn is at an age and
in a position where she needs a friend armed with discretion rather than
authority."

"Well, suppose we were agreed about everything--the discretion and
all--what would you begin by doing?"

"I shouldn't begin by doing anything. I should try to win your
daughter's confidence; and if I couldn't do that I should go away."

"So that in the end it might happen that nothing would be accomplished."

"It might happen so. I shouldn't expect it. Good hearts are generally
sensitive to good influences; and beneath her shell of manner Miss Pruyn
strikes me as neither more nor less than a dear little girl."

Again he was suspicious of a bid for favor; but again Diane's air of
almost haughty honesty negatived the thought.

"I'm glad you see that," was the only comment he made. "But," he added,
once more taking a step or two toward her, "when you had won her
confidence, then you would do things that I suggested, wouldn't you?"

"I shouldn't have to. She would probably do them herself, and a great
deal better than you or I."

"I don't see how you can be sure of that. If you don't make her--"

"When you've watered your plant and kept it in the sunshine you don't
have to make it bloom. It will do that of itself."

"But all these young men?--and this young Wappinger--?"

"I should let them alone."

"Not young Wappinger!"

"What harm is he doing? I admit that the present situation has its
foolish aspects from your point of view and mine; but I can think of
things a great deal worse. At least you know there is nothing
clandestine going on; and young people who have the virtue of being open
have the very first quality of all. If you let them alone--or leave them
to sympathetic management--you will probably find that they will outgrow
the whole thing, as children outgrow an inordinate love of sweets."

There was a brief pause, during which he stood looking down at her, a
smile something like that of amusement hovering about his lips.

"So that, in your judgment," he began again, "the whole thing resolves
itself into a matter of discretion. But now--if you'll pardon me for
asking anything so blunt--how am I to know that you would be discreet?"

For an instant she lifted her eyes to his, as if begging to be spared
the reply.

"If it's not a fair question--" he began.

"It _is_ a fair question," she admitted; "only it's one I find difficult
to answer. If it wasn't important--urgently important--that I should
obtain work, I should prefer not to answer it at all. I must tell you
that I haven't always been discreet. I've had to learn discretion--by
bitter lessons."

"I'm not asking about the past," he broke in, hastily, "but about the
future."

"About the future one cannot say; one can only try."

"Then suppose we try it?"

His own words took him by surprise, for he had meant to be more
cautious; but now that they were uttered he was ready to stand by them.
Once more, as it seemed to him, he could detect the light of relief
steal into her expression, but she made no response.

"Suppose we try it?" he said again.

"It's for you to decide," she answered, quietly. "My position places me
entirely at the disposal of any one who is willing to employ me."

"So that this is better than nothing," he said, in some disappointment
at her lack of enthusiasm.

"I shouldn't put it in that way," she smiled; "but then I shouldn't put
it in any way, until I saw whether or not I gave you satisfaction. You
must remember you're engaging an untried person; and, as I've told you,
I have nothing in the way of recommendations."

"We will assume that you don't need them."

"It's a good deal to assume; but since you're good enough to do it, I
can't help being grateful. Is there any particular time when you would
like me to begin?"

"Perhaps," he suggested, drawing up a small chair and seating himself
nearer her, "it would be best to settle the business part of our
arrangement first. You must tell me frankly if there is anything in what
I propose that you don't find satisfactory."

"I'm sure there won't be," Diane murmured, faintly, with a feeling akin
to shame that any one should be offering to pay for such feeble services
as hers. She was thankful that the winter dusk, creeping into the room,
hid the surging of the hot color in her face, as Derek talked of sums of
money and dates of payment. She did her best to pretend to give him her
attention, but she gathered nothing from what he said. If she had any
coherent thought at all, it was of the greatness, the force, the
authority, of one who could control her future, and dictate her acts,
and prescribe her duties, with something like the power of a god. In
times past she would have tried to weave her spell around this strong
man, in sheer wantonness of conquest, as Vivian threw her enchantments
over Merlin; now she was conscious only of a strange willingness to
submit to him, to take his yoke, and bow down under it, serving him as
master.

She was glad when he ended, leaving her free to rise and say his
arrangements suited her exactly. She had promised to join Miss Lucilla
van Tromp and Mrs. Eveleth at tea, and perhaps he would come with her.

"No, I'll run away now," he said, accompanying her to the door, "if
you'll be good enough to make my excuses to Lucilla. But one word more!
You asked me when you had better begin. I should say as soon as you can.
As I may leave for Rio de Janeiro at any time, it would be well for
things to be in working order before I go."

So it was settled, and as she departed he opened the door for her and
held out his hand. But once more the little black muff came into play,
and Diane walked out as she had come in, with no other salutation than a
dignified inclination of the head.

Derek closed the door behind her and stood with his hand on the knob. He
took the gentle rebuke like a man.

"I'm a cad," he said to himself. "I'm a cad."

Returning to his former place on the hearth, he remained long, gazing
into the dying embers, and rehearsing the points of the interview in his
mind. The gloaming closed around him, and he took pleasure in the fancy
that she was still sitting there--silent, patient, erect, with that
pinched look of privation so gallantly borne.

"By Jove! she's a brave one!" he murmured, under his breath. "She's a
brick. She's a soldier. She's a lady. She's the one woman in the world
to whom I could intrust my child."

Then, as his head sank in meditation, he shook himself as though to wake
up from sleep into actual day.

"I've been dreaming," he said--"I've been dreaming. I must get away. I
must go back to the office. I must get to work."

But instead of going he threw himself into one of the deep arm-chairs.
Dropping off into a reverie, he conjured up the scene which had long
been the fairest in his memory.

It was the summer. It was the country. It was a garden. In the long bed
the carnations of many colors were bending their beauty-drunken heads,
while over them a girl was stooping. She picked one here, one there, in
search of that which would suit him best. When she had found it--deep
red, with shades in the inner petals nearly black--she turned to offer
it. But when she looked at him, he saw it was--Diane.




VIII


It had apparently been decreed that Derek Pruyn was not to go to South
America that year. On more than one occasion he had been delayed on the
eve of sailing. From February the voyage was postponed to May, and from
May to September. In September it had ceased for the moment to be
urgent, while remaining a possibility. It was the February of a year
later before it became a definite necessity no longer to be put off.

In the mean while, under the beneficent processes of time, sunshine, and
Diane Eveleth's cultivation, Miss Dorothea Pruyn had become a "bud." The
small, hard, green thing had unfolded petals whose delicacy, purity, and
fragrance were a new contribution to the joy of living. Society in
general showed its appreciation, and Derek Pruyn was proud.

He was more than proud; he was grateful. The development that had
changed Dorothea from a forward little girl into a charming maiden, and
which might have been the mere consequence of growth, was to him the
evident fruit of Diane's influence. The subtle differences whereby his
own dwelling was transformed from a handsome, more or less empty, shell
into an abode of the domestic amenities sprang, in his opinion, from a
presence shedding grace. All the more strange was it, therefore, that
both presence and influence remained as remote from his own personal
grasp as music on the waves of sound or odors in the air. Of the many
impressions produced by a year of Diane's residence beneath his roof,
none perplexed him more than her detachment. Moreover, it was a
detachment as difficult to comprehend in quality as to define in words.
There was in her attitude nothing of the retreating nymph or of the
self-effacing sufferer. She took her place equally without obtrusiveness
and without affectation. Such effects as she brought about came without
noise, without effort, and without laboriousness of good intention.
Simple and straightforward in all her ways, she nevertheless contrived
to throw into her relations with himself an element as impersonal as
sunshine.

In the first days of her coming it was he who, in pursuance of his
method of reserve, had held aloof. He had been frequently absent from
New York, and, even when there, had lived much at one or another of his
clubs. Weeks had already passed when the perception stole on him that
his goings and comings meant little more to her than to the trees waving
in the great Park before his door.

The discovery that he had been taking such pains to abstract himself
from eyes which scarcely noticed whether he was there or not brought
with it a little bitter raillery at his own expense. He was piqued at
once in his self-love and in his masculine instinct for domination. It
seemed to be out of the natural order of things that his thoughts should
dwell so much on a woman to whom he was only a detail in the scheme of
her surroundings--superior to the butler, and more animate than the
pictures on the wall, but as little in her consciousness as either. It
was certainly an easy opportunity in which to display that
self-restraint which he had undertaken to make his portion; but when the
heroic nature finds no obstacles to overcome, it has a tendency to
create them.

Without obtruding himself upon Diane, Derek began to dine more
frequently at his own house. On those occasions when Dorothea went out
alone it was impossible for the two who remained at home to avoid a kind
of conversation, which, with the topics incidental to the management of
a common household, often verged upon the intimate. When Diane
accompanied his daughter to the opera, he adopted the habit of dropping
into the box, and perhaps taking them, with some of Dorothea's friends,
to a restaurant for supper. He planned the little parties and excursions
for which Dorothea's "budding" offered an excuse; and, while he
recognized the subterfuge, he made his probable journey, with the long
absence it would involve, serve as a palliation. Since, too, there was
no danger to Diane, there could be the less reason for stinting himself
in the pleasure of her presence, so long as he was prepared to pay for
it afterward in full.

Thus the first winter had gone by, until with the shifting of the
environment in summer a certain change entered into the situation. The
greater freedom of country life on the Hudson made it requisite that
Diane should be more consciously circumspect. In her detachment Derek
noticed first of all a new element of intention; but since it was the
first sign she had given of distinguishing between him and the dumb
creation, it did not displease him. While he could not affirm that she
avoided him, he saw less of her than when in town. During those
difficult moments when they had no guests and Dorothea was making visits
among her friends, Diane found pretexts for slipping away to New York,
on what she declared to be business of her own--availing herself of the
seclusion of the little French hostelry that had first given her
shelter.

It was at times such as these that Derek began to perceive what she had
become to him. As long as she was near him he could keep his feelings
within the limitations he had set for them; but in her absence he was
restless and despondent till she returned. The brutality of life, which
made him master of the beauty of the country and the coolness of the
hills, while it drove her to stifle in the town, stirred him with
alternate waves of indignation and compassion.

There was a torrid afternoon in August when the sight of her, trudging
along the dusty highway to the station, almost led him to betray himself
by his curses upon fate. Dorothea having left for Newport in the
morning, Diane was, as usual, seeking the privacy of University Place
for the two weeks the girl's visit was to last. Understanding her desire
not to be alone with him for even a few hours when there was no third
person in the house, Derek had taken the opportunity to motor for lunch
to a friend's house some miles away. With the intention of not returning
till after she had gone, he had ordered a carriage to be in readiness to
drive her to her train; but his luncheon was scarcely ended when the
thought occurred to him that, by hurrying back, he might catch a last
glimpse of her before she started.

He had already half smothered her in dust when he perceived that the
little woman in black, under a black parasol, was actually Diane. To his
indignant queries as to why she should be plodding her way on foot, with
this scorching sun overhead, her replies were cheerful and
uncomplaining. A series of small accidents in the stable--such had
constantly happened at her own little chateau in the Oise--having made
it inadvisable to take the horses out, one of the men had conveyed her
luggage to the station, while she herself preferred to walk. She was
used to the exigencies of country life, in both France and Ireland; and
as for the heat, it was a detail to be scorned. Dust, too, was only
matter out of place, and a necessary concomitant of summer. Would he not
drive on, without troubling himself any more about her?

No; decidedly he would not. She must get in and let him take her to the
station. There he could work off his wrath only by buying her ticket and
seeing to her luggage; while his charge to the negro porter to look to
her comfort was of such a nature that during the whole of the journey
she was pelted with magazine literature and tormented with glasses of
ice-water.

That night he found himself impelled by his sense of honor as a
gentleman to write a letter of apology for the indignity she had been
exposed to while in his house. When it had gone he considered it
insufficient, and only the reflection that he ought to have business in
town next day kept him from following it up with a second note.

Arrived in New York, where the city was burning as if under a sun-glass,
he found his chief subject for consideration to be the choice of a club
at which to lunch. There, in the solitude of the deserted smoking-room,
where the heat was tempered, the glare shut out, and the very footfall
subdued, he thought of the little hotel in University Place. Because
human society had mysterious unwritten laws, the woman he loved was
forced to steal away from the freshness and peace of green fields and
sweeping river, to take refuge amid the noisome ugliness from which, in
spite of her courage, her exquisite nature must shrink. He, whose needs
were simple, as his tastes were comparatively coarse, could command the
sybaritic luxury of a Roman patrician, while she, who could not lift her
hand without betraying the habits of inborn refinement, was exposed not
only to vulgar contact, but to a squalor of discomfort as odious as
vice. The thought was a humiliation. Even if he had not loved her, it
would have seemed almost the duty of a man of honor to step in between
her and the cruel pathos of her lot.

It was a curious reflection that it was the very fact that he did love
her which held him back. Could he have turned toward Paradise and said
to the sweet soul waiting for him there, "This woman has need of me, but
you alone reign in my heart," he would have felt more free to act. But
the time when that would have been possible had gone by. Anything he
might do now would be less for her need than his own; and his own he
could endure if loyalty to his past demanded it. None the less was it
necessary to find a way in which to come to Diane's immediate relief;
and by the time he had finished his cigar he thought he had discovered
it.

"Having been obliged to run up to town," he explained, when she had
received him in the little hotel parlor, "I've dropped in to tell you
that I'm going away for a few weeks into Canada."

"Isn't it rather hot weather for travelling?" she asked, with that
clear, smiling gaze which showed him at once that she had seen through
his pretext for coming.

"It won't be hot where I'm going--up into the valley of the Metapedia."

"It's rather a sudden decision, isn't it?"

"N--no. I generally try to get a little sport some time during the
year."

"Naturally you know your own intentions best. I only happen to remember
that you said, yesterday morning, you hoped not to leave Rhinefields
till the middle of next month."

"Did I say that? I must have been dreaming?"

"Very likely you were. Or perhaps you're dreaming now."

"Not at all; in fact, I'm particularly wide awake. I see things so
clearly that I've looked in to tell you some of them. You must get out
of this stifling hole and go back to Rhinefields at once."

"I don't like that way of speaking of a place I've become attached to.
It isn't a stifling hole; it's a clean little inn, where the service is
the very law of kindness. The art may be of a period somewhat earlier
than the primitive," she laughed, looking round at the highly colored
chromos of lake and mountain scenery hanging on the walls, "and the
furniture may not be strictly in the style of Louis Quinze, but the host
and hostess treat me as a daughter, and every garcon is my slave."

"I can quite understand that; but all the same it's no fit place for
you."

"I suppose the fittest place for any one is the place in which he feels
at home."

"Don't say that," he begged, with sudden emotion in his voice.

"I think I ought to say it," she insisted, "first of all because it's
true; and then because you would feel more at ease about me if you knew
just how it's true."

"You know that I'm not at ease about you."

"I know you think I must be discontented with my lot, when--in a certain
sense--I'm not at all so. I don't pretend that I prefer working for a
living to having money of my own; but I've found this"--she hesitated,
as if thinking out her phrase--"I've found that life grows richer as it
goes on, in whatever way one has to live it. It's as if the streams that
fed it became more numerous the farther one descended from the height."

"I'm glad you're able to say that--"

"I can say it very sincerely; and I lay stress upon it, because I know
you're kind enough to be worried about me. I wish I could make you
understand how little reason there is for it, though you mustn't think
that I'm not touched by it, or that I mistake its motive. I've come to
see that what I've often heard, and used scarcely to believe, is quite
true, that American men have an attitude toward women entirely different
from that of our men. Our men probably think more about women than any
other men in the world; but they think of them as objects of prey--with
joys and sorrows not to be taken seriously. You, on the contrary, are
willing to put yourself to great inconvenience for me, merely because I
am a woman."

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