The Inner Shrine Part 15

"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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sume that you don't need them."

"It's a good deal to a.s.sume; 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 G.o.d. 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 m.u.f.f 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 k.n.o.b. 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, sh.e.l.l 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mspect. 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 compa.s.sion.

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 gla.s.ses of ice-water.