The Inner Shrine Part 22

"I don't know that it would be of any use to say it, unless it could be proved."

"Did you ask him to give you proof?"

"No; because you had already provided me with that.

"How?"

"Surely you must remember telling me that you had ruined one rich man, and might ruin another: that no man could cope with a woman such as you were two or three years ago. There were these things--there were other things--many other things--"

"And that's what you understood from them?"

"I understood nothing whatever. If I thought of such words at all, it was to attribute them to a morbid sensibility. It wasn't until I got their interpretation that they came back to me. It wasn't until I had met some one who knew you before I did, and better than I did--"

"It wasn't till then that you thought of me what no man ever thinks of a woman until he is ready to trample her in the mire, under his feet."

Straightening himself up, as a man who defends his position, he took an argumentative tone.

"What motive would Bienville have for lying?--to a stranger?--and about a stranger? There are moments when you know a man is telling you the truth, as if he were in the confessional. He wasn't speaking of you, but of himself. Not only were no names mentioned, but he had no reason to think I had ever heard of the woman he talked to me about, nor has he yet. If it hadn't been for your own half-hints, your own half-confessions, I doubt if I should ever have had more than a suspicion of--of--the truth."

"I could have explained everything," she said, with a break in her voice. "I've never concealed from you the fact that there was a time in my life when I was very indiscreet. I lived like the women of fashion around me. I was inconsiderate of other people. I did things that were wrong. But before I knew you I had repented of them."

"Quite so; but, unfortunately, what is conventionally known as a repentant woman is not the sort of person I would have chosen to be near my child."

She rose, wearily, dragging herself toward the desk. "Now that I've heard your opinion of me," she said, quietly, "I suppose you have no reason for detaining me any longer."

"Are you going away?" he asked, sharply.

"What else is there for me to do?"

"Have you nothing to say in your own defence?"

"You haven't asked me to say anything. You've tried and condemned me unheard. Since you adopt that method of justice I'm forced to abide by it. I'm not like a person who has rights or who can claim protection from any outside authority. You're not only judge and jury to me, but my final court of appeal. I must take what you mete out to me--and bear it."

"I don't want to be hard on you," he groaned.

"No; I can believe that. I dare say the situation is just as cruel for you as for me. When circ.u.mstances become so entangled that you can't explain them, everybody has to suffer."

"I'm glad you can do me that justice. My life for the past week--ever since Bienville began to talk to me--has been h.e.l.l."

"I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry to have brought it on you. I'm afraid, too, that the future may be harder for you still; for no man can do a woman such wrong as you're doing me, and not pay for it."

"Wrong? Can you honestly say I'm doing you wrong, Diane? Isn't it true--you'll pardon me if I put my questions bluntly, the circ.u.mstances don't permit of sparing either your feelings or my own--isn't it true that for two or three years before your husband's death your name in Paris was nothing short of a byword?"

"I'm not sure of what you mean by a byword. I acknowledge that I braved public opinion, and that much ill was said of me--often, more than I deserved."

"Isn't it true that your name was connected with that of a man called Lalanne, and that he was killed in a duel on your account?"

"It's true that Monsieur Lalanne made love to me; it's also true that he was killed in a duel; but it's not true that it was on my account. The instance is an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the degree to which the true and the false are mixed in Parisian gossip--perhaps in all gossip--and a woman's reputation blasted. Unhappily for me, I felt myself young and strong enough to be indifferent to reputation. I treated it with the neglect one often bestows upon one's health--not thinking that there would come a day of reckoning."

"If there had been only one such case it might have been allowed to pa.s.s; but what do you say of De Cretteville? what of De Melcourt? what of Lord Wendover?"

"I have nothing to say but this: that for such scandal I've a rule, from which I have no intention of departing even now: I neither tell it, nor listen to it, nor contradict it. If it pleases the Marquis de Bienville to repeat it, and you to give it credence, I can't stoop to correct it, even in my own defence."

"G.o.d knows I'm not delving into scandal, Diane. If I bring up these miserable names, it's only that you may have the opportunity to right yourself."

"It's an opportunity impossible for me to use. If I were to attempt to unravel the strand of truth from the web of falsehood, it would end in your condemning me the more. The canons of conduct in France are so different from those in America that what is permissible in one country is heinous in the other. In the same way that your young girls shock our conceptions of propriety, our married women shock yours. It would be useless to defend myself in your eyes, because I should be appealing to a standard to which I was never taught to conform."

"I thought I had taken that into consideration. I'm not entirely ignorant of the conditions under which you've lived, and I meant to have allowed for them. But isn't it true that you exceeded the very wide lat.i.tude recognized by public opinion, even in a place like Paris?"

"I didn't take public opinion into account. I was reckless of its injustice, as I was careless of its applause. I see now, however, that indifference to either brings its punishment."

"Those are abstract ideas, and I'm trying to deal with concrete facts.

Isn't it true that George Eveleth was a rich man when you married him, and that your extravagance ruined him?"

"It helped to ruin him. I plead guilty to that. I had no knowledge of the value of money; but I don't offer that as an excuse."

"Isn't it true that the Marquis de Bienville was your lover, and that you were thinking of deserting your husband to go with him?"

"It's true that the Marquis de Bienville asked me to do so, and that I was rash enough to turn him into ridicule. I shouldn't have done it if I had known that there was a man in the world capable of taking such a revenge upon a woman as he took on me."

"What revenge?"

"The revenge you're executing at this minute. He said--what very few men, thank G.o.d, will say of a woman, even when it's true, and what it takes a dastard to say when it's not true. Even in the case of the fallen woman there's a chivalrous human pity that protects her; while there's something more than that due to the most foolish of our s.e.x who has not fallen. I took it for granted that, at the worst, I could count on that, until I met your friend. His cup of vengeance will be full when he learns that he has given you the power to insult me."

"I don't mean to insult you," he said, in a dogged voice, "but I mean, if possible, to know the truth."

"I'm not concealing it. I'm ready to tell you anything."

"Then, tell me this: isn't it the case that when George Eveleth discovered your relations with Bienville, he challenged him?"

"It's the case that he challenged him, not because of what he discovered, but of what Monsieur de Bienville said."

"At their encounter, didn't Bienville fire into the air--?"

"I've never heard so."

"And didn't George Eveleth fall from a self-inflicted shot?"

"No. He died at the hand of the Marquis de Bienville."

"So you told me once before, though you didn't tell me the man's name.

But, Diane, aren't you convinced in your heart that George Eveleth knew that which made his life no longer worth the living?"

"Do you mean that he knew something--about me?"

"Yes--about you."

"That's the most cruel charge Monsieur de Bienville has invented yet."