The Inner Shrine Part 43

"But why? It was better for her that she shouldn't."

"For her, perhaps; but not for every one else. You see, I lost my way two or three times; though, as I had been over the ground twice already, I was always able to right myself after a while. Near Trenton, Dorothea got frightened, and when I peeped inside I could see she was crying. As all danger was over then, I stopped and let her see who I was."

"Was she angry?"

"Quite the contrary! The poor child was terrified at her own rashness, and very much relieved to find she had been kept from being as foolish as she had intended. I got in beside her, and let her have her cry out in comfort. After that we ate some sandwiches and took heart. It was weird work, in the dead of night and along the lonely roads; but we pushed on, and crept into Philadelphia between one and two in the morning."

"That was a very brave, act, Mademoiselle." Bienville's eyes glistened and his face lighted up with an ardor that was not dampened by the casual, almost listless, air with which she told her story.

"It might have been better if I had let the whole thing alone."

"Why so?"

"You can rarely interfere in other people's affairs without doing more harm than good. If I had let them go their own way, Diane Eveleth wouldn't have been put in a false position."

"Ah?"

"That's the other part of the story. If I had known, I should have left the matter in her hands. She would have managed it better than I. As it was, she made my bit of help superfluous."

"I should find it hard to credit that," he said, twisting his fingers nervously.

"You won't when I tell you."

In the quiet, unaccentuated manner in which she had given her own share in the action she gave Diane's. Shading her eyes with the hand-screen, she was able to watch his play of feature, and note how the first forced smile of bravado faded into an expression of crestfallen gravity.

"You see," she concluded, "they were frantic at Dorothea's failure to appear. When you arrived they naturally thought it was she; and if Derek Pruyn hadn't lost his head when he saw you, he wouldn't have tried to thrust her out of sight as though she were caught in a crime. It was so like a man to do it; a woman would have had a dozen ways of disarming your suspicion, while he did the very thing to arouse it. I don't blame you for thinking what you did--not in the least. I don't even blame you for telling it, since it would seem to bear out--what you said before. I should only blame you--"

"Yes, Mademoiselle? You would only blame me--?"

"I should only blame you if--now that you know the truth--you didn't correct the impression you have given."

"Are you going to begin on that again?" he asked, in a tone of disappointment.

"I'm not beginning again, because I've never ceased. If I say anything new on the subject, it is this--that it's time the final word was spoken."

"I agree with you there; it _is_ time for that word; but you must speak it."

There was a ring of energy in his voice which caused her to turn from her contemplation of the fire and look at him. When she did he had taken on a new air of resolution.

"I think it's time we came to a definite understanding," he went on, "and that you should see how the matter looks from my point of view. You speak of doing right, Mademoiselle, as if it were an easy thing. You don't realize that, for me, it would have to be the last act but one in life."

In spite of the shock, she ignored his implied confession, going on to speak in the tone of ordinary conversation.

"The last act but one? I don't understand you."

"Really? I'm surprised at that. You're so good a sportsman that I should think you'd see that if I do what you ask there will be only one more thing left for me."

For a few minutes she looked at him silently, with fixed gaze, taking in the full measure of his meaning.

"That's folly," she said at last.

"Is it? Not for me. It might be for some people, but--not for me. You must remember who I am. I'm a Frenchman. I'm an aristocrat. I'm a Bienville. I'm a member of a cla.s.s, of a clan, that lives and breathes on--honor. I can do without almost everything in the world but that. I can do without money, I can do without morals, I can do without most kinds of common honesty, I can do without nearly all the Christian virtues, and still keep my place among my friends; but I can't do without that particular shade of conduct which they and I understand by the word honor."

"But aren't you doing without it as it is?"

"No; because there again our code is special to ourselves. With us the crime is not in suspicion or supposition; it isn't even in detection.

It's in admission. It's in confession. All sorts of things may be thought of you, and said of you, and even known of you, and you can bluff them out; but when you have acknowledged them--you're doomed."

"Even so, isn't it better to acknowledge them--and _be_ doomed?"

"That's the question. That's what I have to decide. That's where you must help me decide. If you had allowed me, I should have made up my own mind, on my own responsibility; but you won't let me. Now that the incident at Lakefield is no good as evidence, I see that you will never rest until we come to the plainest of plain speech. The problem I've had to solve is this: Is Diane Eveleth to be happy, or am I? Is she to rise while I go under, or shall I keep her down and stay on the surface?

Since it's her life or mine, which is it to be? The alternative may be a brutal one, but there it is."

"And you've decided in your own favor?"

"So far. I've been actuated by the instinct of self-preservation."

"And are you going to persist in it?"

"That's for you to tell me. But I should like to remind you first of this, that if I don't--I go."

"And what if--if I went with you?"

"You couldn't. The journey would be too long."

"But you needn't go so far if I'm there."

"I couldn't take you with me. You must understand that. I once knew an American girl who married a man who cheated at cards, and buried herself alive with him. I wouldn't let a woman do that for me."

"But if she wanted to?"

"In that case she ought to be protected from herself. There's no use in ruining two lives where one will do."

"There's such a thing as losing your life to find it."

"If so, it's something for me to do--alone."

"Isn't it a kind of moral cowardice to say that?"

"I don't think so. To me it seems only looking things squarely in the face. I'm not the sort of man for whom there's any possibility of beginning life anew. A man like me can't live things down. When once, by his own confession, he has lost his honor, there's no rehabilitation that can make him a man again. Like Cain, he has got to go out from the presence of the Lord; only, unlike Cain, there's no land of Nod waiting to receive him. There's no place for him anywhere on earth. A few years ago, when I was motoring in the Black Forest with the d'Aubignys, we dropped into a little hole of an inn as nearly out of the world as anything could be. As we approached the door a man got up from a bench and shambled away. When he had got to what he considered a safe distance he turned to look at us. I knew him. It was Jacques de la Tour de Lorme."

"Really?"

"The poor wretch had hidden himself in that G.o.d-forsaken spot, where he supposed no one would be able to track him down; but we had done it.

I've never forgotten his weary gait or the woe-begone look in his eyes.

It is what would come to me if I waited for it."

"I don't see why. There's no similarity between the cases. Jacques de La Tour de Lorme did wrong he never could put right. You'd be doing the very thing he found impossible." He shook his head. "It wouldn't make any difference in my world. n.o.body there would think of the right or the wrong; they'd only consider what I'd owned to. It's the confession that would ruin me."