The Inner Shrine Part 37

"Oh, what's the good? It's too late to rectify anything now. They must know at her house by this time that she has gone to meet me."

"No; I've antic.i.p.ated that. They understand that she's here, at the Bay Tree Inn--with me."

He moved away from her with a quick backward leap.

"With you? You've done that? You've seen them? You've told them? You're a wonderful woman, Mrs. Eveleth. I see now what you've been up to," he added, with a shrill, nervous laugh. "You've been turning me round your little finger, and I'm hanged if you haven't done it very cleverly.

You've failed in this one point, however, that you haven't done it quite cleverly enough. I stay."

"Very well; but you won't refuse to let me stay too--for the reasons that I gave you at first."

"You're wily, I must say! If you can't get best, you're willing to take second best. Isn't that it?"

"That's it exactly. I did hope that no marriage would take place between Dorothea and you to-night. I hoped that, before you came to that, you'd realize to what a degree you're taking advantage of her wilfulness and her love for you--for it's a mixture of both--to put her in a false position, from which she'll never wholly free herself as long as she lives. I hoped you'd be man enough to go back and win her from her father by open means. Failing all that, I hoped you'd let me blunt the keenest edge of your folly by giving to your marriage the countenance which my presence at it could bestow. Was there any harm in that? Was there anything for you to resent, or for me to be ashamed of? Is a good thing less good because I wish it, or a wise thought less wise because I think it? You talk of turning you round my little finger, as though it was something at which you had to take offence. My dear boy, that only shows how young you are. Every good woman, if I may call myself one, turns the men she cares for round her little finger, and it's the men who are worth most in life who submit most readily to the process. When you're a little older, when, perhaps, you have children of your own, you'll understand better what I've done for you to-night; and you won't use toward my memory the tone of semi-jocular disdain that has entered into nearly every word you've addressed to me this evening. Now, if you'll excuse me," she added, wearily, "I think I'll go in. I'm very tired, and I'll rest till Dorothea comes. When she arrives you must bring her to me directly; and she must stay with me till I take her to--the wedding. My room is the first door on the left of the main entrance."

She was half-way across the terrace when he called out to her, the boyish tremor in his voice more accentuated than before.

"Wait a minute. There's lots of time." She came back a few paces toward him. "Shouldn't I look very grotesque if I hooked it?"

"Not half so grotesque as you'll look to-morrow morning when you have to go back to town and tell every one you meet that you and Dorothea Pruyn have run away and got married. That's when you'll look foolish and cut a pathetic figure. As things are it could be kept between two or three of us; but if you go on, you'll be in all the papers by to-morrow afternoon. Of course your mother knows?"

"I suppose so; I wired when I thought it was too late for her to spread the alarm. But I don't mind about her. She'll be only too glad to have me back at any price."

"Then--I'd go."

The light from the hotel was full on his face, and she could almost have kissed him for his doleful, crestfallen expression.

"Well--I will."

There was no heroism in the way in which he said the words, and the spring disappeared from his walk as he went back to the hotel to pay his bill and order out his "machine." Diane smiled to herself to see how his head drooped and his shoulders sagged, but her eyes blinked at the mist that rose before them. After all, he was little more than a schoolboy, and he and Dorothea were but two children at play.

She did not continue her own way into the hotel. Now that the first part of her purpose in coming had been accomplished, she was free to remember what the comedy with Carli had almost excluded from her mind--that within an hour or two Derek Pruyn and she might be face to face again.

The thought made her heart leap as with sudden fright. Fortunately, Dorothea would have arrived by that time, and would stand between them, otherwise the mere possibility would have been overwhelming.

Yes; Dorothea ought to be coming soon. She looked at her watch, and found it was nearly eleven. On the stillness of the night there came a sound, a clatter, a whiz, a throb--the unmistakable noise of an automobile. She hurried to the end of the terrace; but it was not Dorothea coming; it was Carli going away. She breathed more freely, standing to see him pa.s.s, and knowing that he was really gone.

A minute later he went by in the moonlight, waving his hand to her as she stood silhouetted on the terrace above him. Then, to her annoyance, the motor stopped and he leaped out. For a moment her heart stood still in alarm, for if he was coming back the work might be to do all over again. He did come back, scrambling up the steps till he was at her feet. But it was only to seize her hand and kiss it hastily, after which, without a word, he was off again. Then once more the huge machine clattered and whizzed and throbbed, rattling its way down the drive and on into the dark, till all sound died away in the solemn winter silence.

XXI

During the next half-hour small practical tasks occupied Diane's mind and kept the thought of Derek Pruyn's arrival from becoming more than a subconscious dread. She informed the manager of her success with his mysterious young guest, and arranged that Dorothea, when she came, should spend the night with her. Then she put herself in telephonic communication, first with Mrs. Wappinger, and then with Fulton. She gave the former the intelligence that Carli had departed, and received from the latter the information that Simmons had found his master, who had been able to leave for Lakefield by the ten-five train. These steps being taken, there was nothing to do but to sit down and wait for Dorothea. Allowing thirty or forty minutes for possible delays, she calculated that the girl ought to arrive a good half-hour before her father. This would give her time to deal with each separately, clearing up misunderstandings on both sides, and preparing the way for such a meeting as would lead to mutual concessions and future peace.

Physically tired, she took off her hat and threw herself on the couch in her little sitting-room. By sheer force of will she continued to shut out Derek from her thought, concentrating all her mental faculties on the arguments and persuasions she should bring to bear on Dorothea. She had no nervousness on this account. The naughty, headstrong child that runs away from home does not get far without a realizing sense of its happy shelter. She divined that the long ride through the dark, with an unknown man, toward an unknown goal, would have already subdued Dorothea's spirits to the point where she would be only too glad to find herself dropping into familiar, feminine arms.

At eleven o'clock she got up from her couch with a vague impulse to be in a more direct att.i.tude of welcome. At half-past eleven she went to the office to inquire of the manager how long a motor going slowly should take to reach Lakefield from New York, a.s.suming that it had got away from the city about six o'clock. Alarmed by his reply, she begged him to keep a certain number of the servants up, and the hotel in readiness to cope with any emergency or accident, promising liberal remuneration for all unusual work. After that came another long hour of waiting. It was about half-past twelve when there was a sound of a carriage coming up the driveway. It was probably Derek; and yet there was a possibility that, the automobile having broken down, Reggie and Dorothea had been obliged to finish their journey in a humbler way than that in which they had started. Diane hurried to the terrace. The moon had disappeared, but the stars were out, and the night had grown colder.

The pines surrounding the hotel shot up weirdly against the midnight sky, soughing with a low murmur, like the moan of primeval nature. Up the ascent from the main road the carriage crept wearily, while Diane's heart poured itself out in a sort of incoherent prayer that Dorothea might have arrived before her father. The horses dragged themselves to the steps, and Derek Pruyn sprang out.

Instinctively Diane fell back.

"Oh, it's you," she gasped, unable for the instant to say more.

"Yes," he returned, quickly, peering down into her face. "What news?"

"Dorothea hasn't come. The--the other person has gone."

"Gone? How--gone?"

"He went away of his own accord."

"That is, you sent him."

"Not exactly; he was willing to go. He saw he'd been doing wrong."

A porter having come from the hotel and seized Derek's valise, it was necessary for them to go in and attend to the small preliminaries of arrival. When they were finished Derek returned to Diane, who had seated herself in a wicker chair beside one of the numerous tea-tables to which a large part of the hall was given up. Under the eye of the drowsy clerk, who still kept his place at the office desk, she felt a certain sense of protection, even though the width of the hotel lay between them.

"Now, tell me," Derek said, in his quick, commanding tones; "tell me everything."

The repressed intensity of his bearing had on Diane the effect of making her more calmly mistress of herself. Quietly, and in a manner as matter-of-fact as she could make it, she told her tale from the beginning.

She narrated her summons from Mrs. Wappinger, her visit to his own house, her arrangements there, her journey to Lakefield, and her interview with Carli Wappinger. Without making light of what he and Dorothea had undertaken to do, she reduced their fault to a minimum, turning it into indiscretion rather than anything more grave. She laid stress on the excellence of the young man's character, as well as on the promptness with which he had relinquished his part in the plan as soon as he saw its true nature. In spite of himself Derek began to think of the lad as of one who had sprung to his help in a moment of need, and to whom he was indebted for a service. Not until Diane ceased speaking was he able to brush this absurd impression away, in the knowledge that Dorothea, who should have arrived nearly two hours ago, was still out in the dark.

That, for the moment, was the one fact to which everything else was subordinate.

"I can't understand it," he said, nervously. "If they left New York by six, or even seven, they should have been here by eleven at the latest.

That would have given them time for slow going or taking a circuitous route."

He rose nervously from his seat, interviewed the clerk at the desk, went out on the terrace, listened in the silence, walked restlessly up and down, and, returning to Diane, enumerated the different possibilities that would reasonably account for the delay. Glad of this preoccupation, since it diverted thought from their more personal relations, she pointed out the wisdom of accepting whatever explanation was least grave until they knew the certainty. When he had gone out several times more, to listen on the terrace, he came back, and, resuming his seat, said, brusquely:

"You look tired. You ought to get some rest."

The tone of intimate care reached Diane's heart more directly than words of greater import.

"I would," she said, simply--"that is, I'd go to my room if I thought you'd be kind to Dorothea when she came."

"And _don't_ you think so?"

"I think you'd want to be," she smiled, "if you knew how."

"But I shouldn't know how?"

"You see, it's a situation that calls directly for a woman; and you're so essentially a man. When Dorothea arrives, she won't be a headstrong, runaway girl; she'll be a poor little terrified child, frightened to death at what she has done, and wanting nothing so much as to creep sobbing into her mother's arms and be comforted. If you could only--"

"I'll do anything you tell me."

"It's no use telling; you have to know. It's a case in which you must act by instinct, and not by rule of thumb."

In her eagerness to have something to say which would keep conversation away from dangerous themes, she spoke exhaustively on the subject of parental tact, holding well to the thread of her topic until she perceived that he was not so much listening to what she said as thinking of her. But she had gained her point, and led him to see that Dorothea was to be treated leniently, which was sufficient for the moment.