Book: The Inner Shrine

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"Not merely because of that," Derek permitted himself to say.

"We needn't weigh motives as if they were golddust. When we have their
general trend we have enough. I only want you to see that I understand
you, while I must ask you not to be hurt if I still persist in not
availing myself of your courtesy. I wish you wouldn't question me any
more about it, because there are situations in which one cheapens things
by the very effort to put them into words. If you were a woman, you'd
comprehend my feeling--"

"Let us assume that I do, as it is. I have still another suggestion to
make. Admitting that I stay at Rhinefields, why can't you ask your
mother-in-law to come and make you a couple of weeks' visit there?"

For a moment Diane forgot the restraint she made it a habit to impose
upon herself in the new conditions of her life, and slipped back into
the spontaneous manner of the past.

"How tiresome you are! I never knew any one but a child twist himself in
so many directions to get his own way."

"You see, I'm accustomed to having my own way. You ought not to think of
resisting me."

"I'm not resisting you; I'm only eluding your grasp. There's one great
obstacle to what you've just been good enough to propose: my
mother-in-law couldn't come. Miss Lucilla van Tromp couldn't spare her.
As a matter of fact, she--Miss Lucilla--asked me to go to Newport and stay
with her all the time Dorothea is with the Prouds; but I declined the
invitation. You see now that I don't lack cool and comfortable quarters
because I couldn't get them."

"I see," he nodded. "You evidently prefer--this."

"I'll tell you what I prefer: I prefer a breathing-space in which to
commune with my own soul."

"You could commune with your own soul at Rhinefields."

"No, I couldn't. It's an exercise that requires not only solitude and
seclusion, but a certain withdrawal from the world. If I were in France,
I should go and spend a fortnight in my old convent at Auteuil; but in
this country the nearest approach I can make to that is to be here where
I am. After all that has happened in the last year and more, I am trying
to find myself again, so to speak--I'm trying to re-establish my
identity with the Diane de la Ferronaise, who seems to me to have faded
back into the distant twilight of time. Won't you let me do it in my own
way, and ask me no more questions? Yes; I see by your face that you
will; and we can be friends again. Now," she added, briskly, springing
up and touching a bell, "you're going to have some of my iced coffee.
I've taught them to make it, just as I used to have it at the
Mauconduit--that was our little place near Compiegne--and I know you'll
find it refreshing."

It was half an hour later, while he was taking leave of her, that a
thought occurred to him which promised to be fruitful of new resources.

"Very well," he declared, as they were parting, "if you persist in
staying here, I, too, shall persist in looking in whenever I come to
town--which will have to be pretty often just now--to see that you're
not down with some sort of fever."

"But," she laughed, "I thought you were going away--to Canada?"

"I'm not obliged to; and you've rather succeeded in dissuading me."

"Then let me succeed in dissuading you from everything. Don't come here
again--please don't."

"I certainly shall."

"I'm generally out."

"In that case I shall stay till you come in."

"Of course I can't keep you from doing that. I will only say that the
American man I've had in mind for the past few months--wouldn't."

The fact that he did not go back to University Place, either on this or
any subsequent occasion when she thought it well to withdraw there,
emphasized his helplessness to aid her. By the time autumn returned, and
the household was once more settled in town, he had grown aware that
between Diane and himself there was an impalpable wall of separation,
which he could no more pass than he could transcend the veil between
material existence and the Unseen World. He began to perceive that what
he had called detachment of manner, more or less purposely maintained,
was in reality an element in the situation which from the beginning had
precluded friendship. Diane and he could not be friends in any of the
ordinary senses of the word. As employer and employed their necessary
dealings might be friendly; but to anything more personal, under the
present arrangement, there was attached the impossible condition of
stepping off from terra firma into space.

The obvious method of putting their mutual relationship on a basis
richer in future potentialities Derek still felt himself unable to adopt
of his own initiative act. The vow which bound him to his dead wife was
one from which circumstances--and not merely his own fiat--must absolve
him; but as winter advanced it seemed to him that life had begun to
speak on the subject with a voice of imperative command.

It was the middle of January, when a small, accidental happening drew
all his growing but still debatable intentions into one sharp point of
resolution. It was such an afternoon as comes rarely, even in the
exhilarating winter of New York--an afternoon when the unfathomable blue
of the sky overhead runs through all the gamut of tones from lavender to
indigo; when the air has the living keenness of that which the Spirit
first breathed into the nostrils of man; when the rapture of the heart
is that of neither passion, wine, nor nervous excitement, but comes
nearer the exaltation of deathless youth in a deathless world than
anything else in a temporary earth. It was a day on which even the jaded
heart is in the mood to begin all over again, in renewed pursuit of the
happiness which up to now has been elusive. To Derek, whose heart was by
no means jaded, it was a day on which the instinctive hope of youth,
which he supposed he had outlived, proved itself of one essence with the
conscious passion of maturity.

When, as he walked homeward along Fifth Avenue, he overtook Diane, also
making her way homeward, the happy occurrence seemed but part of the
general radiance permeating life. The chance meeting on the neutral
ground of out-of-doors took Diane by surprise; and before she had time
to put up her guards of reserve she had betrayed her youth in a shy
heightening of color. Under the protection of the cheerful, slowly
moving crowd she felt at liberty to drop for a minute the subdued air of
his daughter's paid companion, and in her replies to what he said she
spoke with some of her old gayety of verve. It was an unfortunate moment
in which to yield to this temptation, for it was, perhaps, the only
occasion since her coming to New York on which she was closely observed.

Engrossed as they were, the one with the other, they had insensibly
relaxed their pace, becoming mere strollers on the outside edge of the
throng. The sense of being watched came to both of them at once, and,
looking up at the same moment, they saw, approaching at a snail's pace,
an open Victoria, in which were two ladies, to whom they were objects of
plainly expressed interest. The elder was an insignificant little woman,
who looked as though she were being taken out by her costly furs, while
the younger was a girl of some two or three and twenty, of a type of
beauty that would have been too imperious had it not been toned down by
that air which to the unintelligent means boredom, though the wise know
it to spring from something gone amiss in life. Both ladies kept their
eyes fixed so exclusively on Diane that they had almost passed before
remembering to salute Derek with a nod.

"I've seen those ladies somewhere," Diane observed, when they had gone
by.

"I dare say. They've probably seen you, too. The elder is Mrs. Bayford,
sister of Mr. Grimston, my uncle's partner in Paris. The girl is Marion
Grimston, his daughter."

"I remember perfectly now. They used to come to our charity sales,
and--and--anything of that kind."

Pruyn laughed.

"Anything, you mean, that was open to all comers. Mrs. Grimston would be
flattered."

"I didn't mean to speak slightingly," she hastened to say. "There were
plenty of nice people in Paris whom I didn't know."

"And plenty, I imagine, who thought you ought to have known them. Mrs.
Grimston, and Mrs. Bayford, too, would have been among that number."

"Well, you see I do know them--by sight. I recall Miss Grimston
especially. She's so handsome."

"I shall tell her that to-night."

"To-night?"

"Yes; it's with them that Dorothea and I are dining. The name conveying
nothing to you, you probably didn't remember it. The fact is that, as
Mrs. Bayford is the sister of my uncle's partner--my partner, too--I
make it a point to be very civil to her twice a year--once when I dine
with her, and once when she dines with me. The annual festivals have
been delayed this season because she has only just returned from a long
visit to Japan and India, with Marion in her wake."

There had been so much to say which, in the glamour of that glorious
afternoon, was more important that no further time was spent on the
topic. Derek forgot the meeting till Mrs. Bayford recalled it to him as
he sat beside her in the evening. She was one of those small, ill-shapen
women whose infirmities are thrown into more conspicuous relief by dress
and jewels and _decolletage_. Seated at the head of her table, she
produced the impression of a Goddess of Discord at a feast of
well-meaning, hapless mortals.

"I want a word with you," she said, parenthetically, to Derek, on her
left, before turning her attention to the more important neighbor on her
right.

"One is scant measure," he laughed, in reply, "but I must be grateful
even for that."

It was the middle of dinner before she took notice of him again, but
when she did she plunged into her subject boldly.

"I suppose you didn't think I knew who you were walking with this
afternoon?"

"Yes, I did, because the lady recognized you. She said you and Mrs.
Grimston were among the nice people in Paris whom she hadn't met--but
whom she knew very well by sight."

If Derek thought this reply calculated to appease an angry deity, he
discovered his mistake.

"Did she have the indecency to say she hadn't met me?"

"I think she did; but she probably didn't know that the word indecency
could apply to anything connected with you."

"Why, I was introduced to her four times in one season!"

"I suppose she hasn't as good a memory as yours."

"Oh, as for that, it wasn't a matter of memory. Nobody was permitted to
forget her--she was quite notorious."

"I've always heard that in Paris the mere possession of beauty is enough
to keep any one in the public eye."

"It wasn't beauty alone--if she _has_ beauty; though for my part I can't
see it."

"It _is_ of rather an elusive quality."

"It must be. But if it exists at all, I can tell you that it's of a
dangerous quality."

"Hasn't that always been the peculiarity of beauty ever since the days
of Helen of Troy?"

"I'm sure I can't say. I've always tried to steer clear of that sort of
thing--"

"That must be an excellent plan; only it deprives one of the power of
speaking as an authority, doesn't it?"

"I don't pretend to speak as an authority. If I say anything at all,
it's what everybody knows."

"What everybody knows is generally--scandal."

"This was certainly scandal; but it wasn't the fact that everybody knew
it that made it so."

"Then I'm sure you wouldn't wish to repeat it."

"I don't see why you should be sure of anything of the kind. I consider
it my duty to repeat it."

"Then you won't be surprised if I consider it mine to contradict it."

"Certainly not. I shouldn't be surprised at anything you could do,
Derek, after what I've heard since I came home."

"I won't ask you what that is--"

"No; your own conscience must tell you. No one can go on as you've been
doing, and not know he must be talked about."

"I've always understood that that was more flattering than to be
ignored."

"It depends. There's such a thing as receiving that sort of flattery
first, only to be ignored in the sequel. I speak as your friend, Derek--"

"I thoroughly understand that; but may I ask if it's in the way of
warning or of threat?"

"It's in the way of both. You must see that, whatever risks I may be
prepared to run myself, as long as I have Marion with me I can't expose
her to--"

"To what?"

Notwithstanding his efforts to keep the conversation to a tone of
banter, acrimonious though it had to be, Derek was unable to pronounce
the two brief syllables without betraying some degree of anger. Glancing
up at him as she shrank under her weight of jewels, Mrs. Bayford found
him very big and menacing; but she was a brave woman, and if she
shrivelled, it was only as a cat shrivels before springing at a mastiff.

"I can't expose her to the chance of meeting--"

She paused, not from hesitation, but with the rhetorical intention of
making the end of her phrase more telling.

"My future wife," he whispered, before she had time to go on. "It's only
fair to tell you that."

"Good heavens! You're not going to marry the creature!"

Mrs. Bayford brought out the words with the dramatic action and
intensity they deserved. In the hum of talk around and across the table
it was doubtful whether or not they were heard, and yet more than one of
the guests glanced up with a look of interrogation. Dorothea caught her
father's eyes in a gaze which he had some difficulty in returning with
the proper amount of steadiness; but Mrs. Berrington Jones came to the
rescue of the company by asking Mrs. Bayford to tell the amusing story
of how her bath had been managed in Japan.

So the incident passed by, leaving a sense of mystery in the air; though
for Derek, all sense of annoyance disappeared in the knowledge that he
was Diane's champion.

He was thinking over the incident in the luxurious semi-darkness of the
electric brougham as they were going homeward, when the clear voice of
Dorothea broke in on his meditation.

"Are you going to be married, father?"

The question could not be a surprise to him after the occurrence at the
table, but he was not prepared to give an affirmative answer on the spur
of the moment.

"What makes you ask?" he inquired, after a second's reflection.

"I heard what Mrs. Bayford said."

"And how should you feel if I were?"

"It would depend."

"On what?"

"On whether or not it was any one I liked."

"That's fair. And if it was some one whom you did like?"

"Then it would depend on whether or not it was--Diane."

"And if it was Diane?"

"I should be very glad."

"Why?"

She slipped her arm through his and snuggled up to him.

"Oh, for a lot of reasons. First, because I've always supposed you'd be
getting married one day; and I've been terribly afraid you'd pick out
some one I couldn't get along with."

"Have I ever shown any symptom to justify that alarm?"

"N--no; but you never can tell--with a man."

"Can you be any surer with a woman?"

"No; and that's one of my other reasons. I'm not very sure about
myself."

"You don't mean that it's to be young Wap--?" he began, uneasily.

"I suppose it will have to be he--or some one else. They keep at me."

"And you don't know how long you may be able to hold out."

"I'm holding out as well as I can," she laughed, "but it can't go on
forever. And then--if I do--"

"Well--what?"

"You'd be left all alone, and, of course, I should be worried about
that--unless you--you--"

"Unless I married some one."

"No; not some one; no one--but Diane."

They were now at their own door, but before she sprang out she drew down
his face to hers and kissed him.




IX


During the succeeding week Derek Pruyn, having practically announced an
engagement which did not exist, found himself in a somewhat ludicrous
situation. Too proud to extort a promise of secrecy from Mrs. Bayford,
he knew the value of his indiscretion--if indiscretion it were--to any
purveyor of tea-table gossip; and while Diane and he remained in the
same relative positions he was sure it was being bruited about, with his
own authority, that they were to become man and wife. It did not
diminish the absurdity of the situation that he was debarred from
proposing and settling the affair at once by the grotesque fact that he
actually had not time.

There was certainly little opportunity for lovemaking in those hurried
days of preparing for his long absence in South America. He was often
obliged to leave home by eight in the morning, rarely returning except
to go wearily to bed. Though nothing had been said to him, he had more
than one reason for suspecting that Mrs. Bayford was at work; and, at
the odd minutes when he saw Diane, it seemed to him as if her clearness
of look was extinguished by an expression of perplexity.

He would have reproached himself more keenly for his lack of energy in
overcoming obstacles had it not been for the fact that, owing to their
peculiar position as members of one household, and that household his,
he was planning to ask Diane to become his wife on that occasion when he
would also be bidding her adieu. She would thus be spared the
difficulties of a trying situation, while she would have the season of
his absence in which to adjust her mind to the revolution in her life.
He resolved to adhere to this intention, the more especially as a small
family dinner at Gramercy Park, from which he was to go directly to his
steamer, would give him the exact combination of circumstances he
desired.

When, after dinner, Miss Lucilla's engineering of the company allowed
him to find himself alone with Diane in the library, he made her sit
down by the fireside, while he stood, his arm resting on the
mantelpiece, as on the afternoon of their first serious interview, over
a year before. As on that other occasion, so, too, on this, she sat
erect, silent, expectant, waiting for him to speak. What was coming she
did not know; but she felt once more his commanding dominance, with its
power to ordain, prescribe, and regulate the conditions of her life.

"Doesn't this make you think of--our first long talk together?"

"I often think of it," Diane said, faintly, trying to assume that they
were entering on an ordinary conversation. "As you didn't agree with
me--"

"I do now," he said, quickly. "I see you were right, in everything. I
want to thank you for what you've done for Dorothea--and for me. I
didn't dream, a year ago, that the change in both of us could be so
great."

"Dorothea was a sweet little girl, to begin with--"

"Yes; but I don't want to talk about that now. She will express her own
sense of gratitude; but in the mean while I want to tell you mine. You
will understand something of its extent when I say that I ask you to be
my wife."

Diane neither spoke nor looked at him. The only sign she gave of having
heard him was a slight bowing of the head, as of one who accepts a
decree. The first few instants' stillness had the ineffable quality
which might spring from the abolition of time when bliss becomes
eternity. There was a space, not to be reckoned by any terrestrial
counting, during which each heart was caught up into wonderful spheres
of emotion--on his side the relief of having spoken, on hers the joy of
having heard; and though it passed swiftly it was long enough to give to
both the vision of a new heaven and a new earth. It was a vision that
never faded again from the inward sight of either, though the mists of
mortal error began creeping over it at once.

"If I take you by surprise--" he began, as he felt the clouds of reality
closing round him.

"No," she broke in, still without looking up at him; "I heard you
intended to ask me."

Though he made a little uneasy movement, he knew that this was precisely
what she might have been expected to say.

"I thought you had possibly heard that," he said, in her own tone of
quiet frankness, "and I want to explain to you that what happened was an
accident."

"So I imagined."

"If I spoke of you as my future wife, I must ask you to believe that it
was in the way of neither ill-timed jest nor foolish boast."

"You needn't assure me of that, because I could never have thought so.
If I want assurance at all it's on other points."

"If I can explain them--"

"I can almost explain them myself. What I require is rather in the way
of corroboration. Wasn't it much as the knight of old threw the mantle
of his protection over the shoulders of a distressed damsel?"

"I know what you mean; but I don't admit the justice of the simile."

"But if you did admit it, wouldn't it be something like what actually
occurred?"

"You're putting questions to me," he said, smiling down at her; "but you
haven't answered mine."

"I must beg leave to point out," she smiled, in return, "that you
haven't asked me one. You've only stated a fact--or what I presume to be
a fact. But before we can discuss it I ought to be possessed of certain
information; and you've put me in a position where I have a right to
demand it."

After brief reflection Derek admitted that. As nearly as he could recall
the incident at Mrs. Bayford's dinner-party, he recounted it.

"You see," he explained, in summing up, "that, as a snobbish person, she
could hardly be expected to forgive you for forgetting her, when she had
been introduced to you four times in a season. She not unnaturally
fancied you forgot her on purpose, so to speak--"

"I suppose I did," she murmured, penitently.

"What?" he asked, with sudden curiosity. "Would you--"

"I wouldn't now. I used to then. Everybody did it, when people were
introduced to us whom we didn't want to know. I've done it when it
wasn't necessary even from that point of view--out of a kind of sport, a
kind of wantonness. I've really forgotten about Mrs. Bayford now--
everything except her face--but I dare say I remembered perfectly well,
at the time. It would have been nothing unusual if I had."

"In that case," he said, slowly, "you can't be surprised--"

"I'm not," she hastened to say. "If Mrs. Bayford retaliates, now that
she has the power, she's within her right--a right which scarcely any
woman would forego. It was perfectly natural for Mrs. Bayford to speak
ill of me; and it was equally natural for you to spring to my defence.
You'd have sprung to the defence of any one--"

"No, no," he interjected, hurriedly.

"Of any one whom you--respected, as I hope you respect me. You've
offered me," she went on, her eyes filling with sudden tears--"you've
offered me the utmost protection a man can give a woman. To tell you how
deeply I'm touched, how sincerely I'm grateful, is beyond my power; but
you must see that I can't avail myself of your kindness. Your very
willingness to repeat at leisure what you said in haste makes it the
more necessary that I shouldn't take advantage of your chivalry."

"Would that be your only reason for hesitating to become my wife?"

The deep, vibrant note that came into his voice sent a tremor through
her frame, and she looked about her for support. He himself offered it
by taking both her hands in his. She allowed him to hold them for a
second before withdrawing behind the intrenched position afforded by the
huge chair from which she had risen, and on the back of which she now
leaned.

"It's the reason that looms largest," she replied--"so large as to put
all other reasons out of consideration."

"Then you're entirely mistaken," he declared, coming forward in such a
way that only the chair stood between them. "It's true that at Mrs.
Bayford's provocation I spoke in haste, but it was only to utter the
resolution I had taken plenty of time to form. If I were to tell you how
much time, you'd be inclined to scorn me for my delay. But the truth is
I'm no longer a very young man; in comparison with you I'm not young at
all. You yourself, as a woman of the world, must readily understand that
at my age, and in my position, prudence is as honorable an element in
the offer I am making you as romance would be in a boy's. I make no
apology for being prudent. I state the fact that I've been so only that
you may know that I've tried to look at this question from every point
of view--Dorothea's as well as yours and mine. I took my time about it,
and long before I warned Mrs. Bayford that she was speaking of one who
was dear to me, my mind was made up. With such hopes as I had at heart
it would have been wrong to have allowed her to go on without a word of
warning."

"I can see that it would have that aspect."

"Then, if you can see that, you must see that I speak to you now in all
sincerity. My desire isn't new. I can truthfully say that, since the
first day I saw you, your eyes and voice have haunted me, and the
longing to be near you has never been absent from my heart. I'll be
quite frank with you and say that, before you came here, it was my
avowed intention not to marry again. Now I have no desire on earth--my
child apart--so strong as to win you for my wife. The year we've spent
under the same roof must have given you some idea of the man whom you'd
be marrying; and I think I can promise you that with your help he would
be a better man than in the past. Won't you say that I may hope for it?"

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