Читать книгу The Inner Shrine - Basil King - Страница 4

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I

Though she had counted the strokes of every hour since midnight, Mrs. Eveleth had no thought of going to bed. When she was not sitting bolt upright, indifferent to comfort, in one of the stiff-backed, gilded chairs, she was limping, with the aid of her cane, up and down the long suite of salons, listening for the sound of wheels. She knew that George and Diane would be surprised to find her waiting up for them, and that they might even be annoyed; but in her state of dread it was impossible to yield to small considerations.

She could hardly tell how this presentiment of disaster had taken hold upon her, for the beginning of it must have come as imperceptibly as the first flicker of dusk across the radiance of an afternoon. Looking back, she could almost make herself believe that she had seen its shadow over her early satisfaction in her son's marriage to Diane. Certainly she had felt it there before their honeymoon was over. The four years that had passed since then had been spent—or, at least, she would have said so now—in waiting for the peril to present itself.

And yet, had she been called on to explain why she saw it stalking through the darkness of this particular June night, she would have found it difficult to give coherent statement to her fear. Everything about her was pursuing its normally restless round, with scarcely a hint of the exceptional. If life in Paris was working up again to that feverish climax in which the season dies, it was only what she had witnessed every year since the last days of the Second Empire. If Diane's gayety was that of excitement rather than of youth, if George's depression was that of jaded effort rather than of satiated pleasure, it was no more than she had seen in them at other times. She acknowledged that she had few facts to go upon—that she had indeed little more than the terrified prescience which warns the animal of a storm.

There were moments of her vigil when she tried to reassure herself with the very tenuity of her reasons for alarm. It was a comfort to think how little there was that she could state with the definiteness of knowledge. In all that met the eye George's relation to Diane was not less happy than in the first days of their life together. If, on Diane's part, the spontaneity of wedded love had gradually become the adroitness of domestic tact, there was nothing to affirm it but Mrs. Eveleth's own power of divination. If George submitted with a blinder obedience than ever to each new extravagance of Diane's Parisian caprice, there was nothing to show that he lived beyond his means but Mrs. Eveleth's maternal apprehension. His income was undoubtedly large, and, for all she knew, it justified the sumptuous style Diane and he kept up. Where the purchasing power of money began and ended was something she had never known. Disorder was so frequent in her own affairs that when George grew up she had been glad to resign them to his keeping, taking what he told her was her income. As for Diane, her fortune was so small as to be a negligible quantity in such housekeeping as they maintained—a poverty of dot which had been the chief reason why her noble kinsfolk had consented to her marriage with an American. Looking round the splendid house, Mrs. Eveleth was aware that her husband could never have lived in it, still less have built it; while she wondered more than ever how George, who led the life of a Parisian man of fashion, could have found the means of doing both.

Not that her anxiety centred on material things; they were too remote from the general activities of her thought for that. She distilled her fear out of the living atmosphere around her. She was no novice in this brilliant, dissolute society, or in the meanings hidden behind its apparently trivial concerns. Hints that would have had slight significance for one less expert she found luminous with suggestion; and she read by signs as faint as those in which the redskin detects the passage of his foe across the grass. The odd smile with which Diane went out! The dull silence in which George came home! The manufactured conversation! The forced gayety! The startling pause! The effort to begin again, and keep the tone to one of common intercourse! The long defile of guests! The strangers who came, grew intimate, and disappeared! The glances that followed Diane when she crossed a room! The shrug, the whisper, the suggestive grimace, at the mention of her name! All these were as an alphabet in which Mrs. Eveleth, grown skilful by long years of observation, read what had become not less familiar than her mother-tongue.

The fact that her misgivings were not new made it the more difficult to understand why they had focussed themselves to-night into this great fear. There had been nothing unusual about the day, except that she had seen little of Diane, while George had remained shut up in his room, writing letters and arranging or destroying papers. There had been nothing out of the common in either of them—not even the frown of care on George's forehead, or the excited light in Diane's eyes—as they drove away in the evening, to dine at the Spanish Embassy. They had kissed her tenderly, but it was not till after they had gone that it seemed to her as if they had been taking a farewell. Then, too, other little tokens suddenly became ominous; while something within herself seemed to say, "The hour is at hand!"

The hour is at hand! Standing in the middle of one of the gorgeous rooms, she repeated the words softly, marking as she did so their incongruity to herself and her surroundings. The note of fatality jarred on the harmony of this well-ordered life. It was preposterous, that she, who had always been hedged round and sheltered by pomp and circumstance, should now in her middle age be menaced with calamity. She dragged herself over to one of the long mirrors and gazed at her reflection pityingly.

The twitter of birds startled her with the knowledge that it was dawn. From the Embassy George and Diane were to go on to two or three great houses, but surely they should be home by this time! The reflection meant the renewal of her fear. Where was her son? Was he really with his wife, or had the moment come when he must take the law into his own hands, after their French manner, to avenge himself or her? She knew nothing about duelling, but she had the Anglo-Saxon mother's dread of it. She had always hoped that, notwithstanding the social code under which he lived, George would keep clear of any such brutal senselessness; but lately she had begun to fear that the conventions of the world would prove the stronger, and that the time when they would do so was not far away.

Pulling back the curtains from one of the windows, she opened it and stepped out on a balcony, where the long strip of the Quai d'Orsay stretched below her, in gray and silent emptiness. On the swift, leaden-colored current of the Seine, spanned here and there by ghostly bridges, mysterious barges plied weirdly through the twilight. Up on the left the Arc de Triomphe began to emerge dimly out of night, while down on the right the line of the Louvre lay, black and sinister, beneath the towers and spires that faintly detached themselves against the growing saffron of the morning. High above all else, the domes of the Sacred Heart were white with the rays of the unrisen sun, like those of the City which came down from God.

It was so different from the cheerful Paris of broad daylight that she was drawing back with a shudder, when over the Pont de la Concorde she discerned the approach of a motor-brougham.

Closing the window, she hurried to the stairway. It was still night within the house, and the one electric light left burning drew forth dull gleams from the wrought-metal arabesques of the splendidly sweeping balustrades. When, on the ringing of the bell, the door opened and she went down, she had the strange sensation of entering on a new era in her life.

Though she recalled that impression in after years, for the moment she saw nothing but Diane, all in vivid red, in the act of letting the voluminous black cloak fall from her shoulders into the sleepy footman's hands.

"Bonjour, petite mère!" Diane called, with a nervous laugh, as Mrs. Eveleth paused on the lower steps of the stairs.

"Where is George?"

She could not keep the tone of anxiety out of her voice, but Diane answered, with ready briskness:

"George? I don't know. Hasn't he come home?"

"You must know he hasn't come home. Weren't you together?"

"We were together till—let me see!—whose house was it?—till after the cotillon at Madame de Vaudreuil's. He left me there and went to the Jockey Club with Monsieur de Melcourt, while I drove on to the Rochefoucaulds'."

She turned away toward the dining-room, but it was impossible not to catch the tremor in her voice over the last words. In her ready English there was a slight foreign intonation, as well as that trace of an Irish accent which quickly yields to emotion. Standing at the table in the dining-room where refreshments had been laid, she poured out a glass of wine, and Mrs. Eveleth could see from the threshold that she drank it thirstily, as one who before everything else needs a stimulant to keep her up. At the entrance of her mother-in-law she was on her guard again, and sank languidly into the nearest chair. "Oh, I'm so hungry!" she yawned, pulling off her gloves, and pretending to nibble at a sandwich. "Do sit down," she went on, as Mrs. Eveleth remained standing. "I should think you'd be hungry, too."

"Aren't you surprised to see me sitting up, Diane?"

"I wasn't, but I can be, if that's my cue," Diane laughed.

At the nonchalance of the reply Mrs. Eveleth was, for a second, half deceived. Was it possible that she had only conjured up a waking nightmare, and that there was nothing to be afraid of, after all? Possessing the French quality of frankness to an unusual degree, it was difficult for Diane to act a part at any time. With all her Parisian finesse her nature was as direct as lightning, while her glance had that fulness of candor which can never be assumed. Looking at her now, with her elbows on the table, and the sandwich daintily poised between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, it was hard to connect her with tragic possibilities. There were pearls around her neck and diamonds in her hair; but to the wholesomeness of her personality jewels were no more than dew on the freshness of a summer morning.

"I thought you'd be surprised to find me sitting up," Mrs. Eveleth began again; "but the truth is, I couldn't go to bed while—"

"I'm glad you didn't," Diane broke in, with an evident intention to keep the conversation in her own hands. "I'm not in the least sleepy. I could sit here and talk till morning—though I suppose it's morning now. Really the time to live is between midnight and six o'clock. One has a whole set of emotions then that never come into play during the other eighteen hours of the day. They say it's the minute when the soul comes nearest to parting with the body, so I suppose that's the reason we can see things, during the wee sma' hours, by the light of the invisible spheres."

"I should be quite content with the light of this world—"

"Oh, I shouldn't," Diane broke in, with renewed eagerness to talk against time. "It's like being content with words, and having no need of music. It's like being satisfied with photographs, and never wanting real pictures."

"Diane," Mrs. Eveleth interrupted, "I insist that you let me speak."

"Speak, petite mère? What are you doing but speaking now? I'm scarcely saying a word. I'm too tired to talk. If you'd spent the last eight or ten hours trying to get yourself down to the conversational level of your partners, you'd know what I've been through. We women must be made of steel to stand it. If you had only seen me this evening—"

"Listen to me, Diane; don't joke. This is no time for that."

"Joke! I never felt less like joking in my life, and—"

She broke off with a little hysterical gasp, so that Mrs. Eveleth got another chance.

"I know you don't feel like joking, and still less do I. There's something wrong."

"Is there? What?" Diane made an effort to recover herself. "I hope it isn't indiscreet to ask, because I need the bracing effect of a little scandal."

"Isn't it for you to tell me? You're concealing something of which—"

"Oh, petite mère, is that quite honest? First, you say there's something wrong; and then, when I'm all agog to hear it, you saddle me with the secret. That's what you call in English a sell, isn't it? A sell! What a funny little word! I often wonder who invents the slang. Parrots pass it along, of course, but it must take some cleverness to start it. And isn't it curious," she went on, breathlessly, "how a new bit of slang always fills a vacant place in the language? The minute you hear it you know it's what you've always wanted. I suppose the reason we're obliged to use the current phrase is because it expresses the current need. When the hour passes, the need passes with it, and something new must be coined to meet the new situation. I should think a most interesting book might be written on the Psychology of Slang, and if I wasn't so busy with other things—"

"Diane, I entreat you to answer me. Where is George?"

"Why, I must have forgotten to tell you that he went to the Jockey Club with Monsieur de Melcourt—"

"You did tell me so; but that isn't all. Has he gone anywhere else?"

"How should I know, petite mère? Where should he go but come home?"

"Has he gone to fight a duel?"

The question surprised Diane into partially dropping her mask. For an instant she was puzzled for an answer.

"Men who fight duels," she said, at last, "don't generally tell their wives beforehand."

"But did George tell you?"

Again Diane hesitated before speaking.

"What a queer question!" was all she could find to say.

"It's a question I have a right to ask."

"But have I a right to answer?"

"If you don't answer, you leave me to infer that he has."

"Of course I can't keep you from inferring, but isn't that what they call meeting trouble half-way?"

"I must meet trouble as it comes to me."

"But not before it comes. That's my point."

"It has come. It's here. I'm sure of it. He's gone to fight. You know it. You've sent him. Oh, Diane, if he comes to harm his blood will be on your head."

Diane shrugged her shoulders, and took another sandwich.

"I don't see that. In the first place, it's quite unlikely there'll be any blood at all—or more than a very little. One of the things I admire in men—our men, especially—is the maximum of courage with which they avenge their honor, coupled with the minimum of damage they work in doing it. It must require a great deal of skill. I know I should never have the nerve for it. I should kill my man every time he didn't kill me. But they hardly ever do."

"How can you say that? Wasn't Monsieur de Cretteville killed? And Monsieur Lalanne?"

"That makes two cases. I implied that it happens sometimes—generally by inadvertence. But it isn't likely to do so in this instance—at least not to George. He's an excellent shot—and I believe it was to be pistols."

"Then it's true! Oh, my God, I know I shall lose him!"

Mrs. Eveleth flung her cane to the floor and dropped into a seat, leaning on the table and covering her face with her hands. For a minute she moaned harshly, but when she looked up her eyes were tearless.

"And this is my reward," she cried, "for the kindness I've shown you! After all, you are nothing but a wanton."

Diane kept her self-control, but she grew pale.

"That's odd," was all she permitted herself to say, delicately flicking the crumbs from her fingertips; "because it was to prove the contrary that George called Monsieur de Bienville out."

"Bienville! You've stooped to him?"

"Did I say so?" Diane asked, with a sudden significant lifting of the head.

"There's no need to say so. There must have been something—"

"There was something—something Monsieur de Bienville invented."

"Wasn't it a pity for him to go to the trouble of invention—?"

"When he could have found so much that was true," Diane finished, with dangerous quietness. "That's what you were going to say, isn't it?"

"You have no right to ascribe words to me that I haven't uttered. I never said so."

"No; that's true; I prefer to say it for you. It's safer, in that it leaves me nothing to resent."

"Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!" Mrs. Eveleth moaned, wringing her hands. "My boy is gone from me. He will never come back. I've always been sure that if he ever did this, it would be the end. It's my fault for having brought him up among your foolish, hot-headed people. He will have thrown his life away—and for nothing!"

"No; not that," Diane corrected; "not even if the worst comes to the worst."

"What do you mean? If the worst comes to the worst, he will have sacrificed himself—"

"For my honor; and George himself would be the first to tell you that it's worth dying for."

Diane rose as she spoke, Mrs. Eveleth following her example. For a brief instant they stood as if measuring each other's strength, till they started with a simultaneous shock at the sharp call of the telephone from an adjoining room. With a smothered cry Diane sprang to answer it, while Mrs. Eveleth, helpless with dread, remained standing, as though frozen to the spot.

"Oui—oui—oui," came Diane's voice, speaking eagerly. "Oui, c'est bien Madame George Eveleth. Oui, oui. Non. Je comprends. C'est Monsieur de Melcourt. Oui—oui—Dites-le-moi tout de suite—j'insiste—Oui—oui. Ah-h-h!"

The last, prolonged, choking exclamation came as the cry of one who sinks, smitten to the heart. Mrs. Eveleth was able to move at last. When she reached the other room, Diane was crouched in a little heap on the floor.

"He's dead? He's dead?" the mother cried, in frenzied questioning.

But Diane, with glazed eyes and parted lips, could only nod her head in affirmation.

II

During the days immediately following George Eveleth's death the two women who loved him found themselves separated by the very quality of their grief. While Diane's heart was clamorous with remorse, the mother's was poignantly calm. It was generally remarked, in the Franco-American circles where the tragedy was talked of, that Mrs. Eveleth displayed unexpected strength of character. It was a matter of common knowledge that she shrank from none of the terrible details it was necessary to supervise, and that she was capable of giving her attention to her son's practical affairs.

It was not till a fortnight had passed that the two women came face to face alone. The few occasions on which they had met hitherto had been those of solemn public mourning, when the great questions between them necessarily remained untouched. The desire to keep apart was common to both, for neither was sufficiently mistress of herself to be ready for a meeting.

The first move came from Diane. During her long, speechless days of self-upbraiding certain thoughts had been slowly forming themselves into resolutions; but it was on impulse rather than reflection that, at last, she summoned up strength to knock at Mrs. Eveleth's door.

She entered timidly, expecting to find some manifestation of grief similar to her own. She was surprised, therefore, to see her mother-in-law sitting at her desk, with a number of businesslike papers before her. She held a pencil between her fingers, and was evidently in the act of adding up long rows of figures.

"Oh, come in," she said, briefly, as Diane appeared. "Excuse me a minute. Sit down."

Diane seated herself by an open window looking out on the garden. It was a hot morning toward the end of June, and from the neighboring streets came the dull rumble of Paris. Beyond the garden, through an opening, she could see a procession of carriages—probably a wedding on its way to Sainte-Clotilde. It was her first realizing glimpse of the outside world since that gray morning when she had driven home alone, and the very fact that it could be pursuing its round indifferent to her calamity impelled her to turn her gaze away.

It was then that she had time to note the changes wrought in Mrs. Eveleth; and it was like finding winter where she expected no more than the first genial touch of autumn. The softnesses of lingering youth had disappeared, stricken out by the hard, straight lines of gravity. Never having known her mother-in-law as other than a woman of fashion, Diane was awed by this dignified, sorrowing matron, who carried the sword of motherhood in her heart.

It was a long time before Mrs. Eveleth laid her pencil down and raised her head. For a few minutes neither had the power of words, but it was Diane who spoke at last.

"I can understand," she faltered, "that you don't want to see me; but I've come to tell you that I'm going away."

"You're going away? Where?"

The words were spoken gently and as if in some absence of mind. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Eveleth was scarcely thinking of Diane's words—she was so intent on the poor little, tear-worn face before her. She had always known that Diane's attractions were those of coloring and vivacity, and now that she had lost these she was like an extinguished lamp.

"I haven't made up my mind yet," Diane replied, "but I want you to know that you'll be freed from my presence."

"What makes you think I want to be—freed?"

"You must know that I killed George. You said that night that his blood would be on my head—and it is."

"If I said that, I spoke under the stress of terror and excitement—"

"You needn't try to take back the words; they were quite true."

"True in what sense?"

"In almost every sense; certainly in every sense that's vital. If it hadn't been for me, George would be here now."

"It's never wise to speculate on what might have happened if it hadn't been for us. There's no end to the useless torture we can inflict on ourselves in that way."

"I don't think there ought to be an end to it."

"Have you anything in particular to reproach yourself with?"

"I've everything."

"That means, then, that there's no one incident—or person—I didn't know but—" She hesitated, and Diane took up the sentence.

"You didn't know but what I had given George specific reason for his act. I may as well tell you that I never did—at least not in the sense in which you mean it. George always knew that I loved him, and that I was true to him. He trusted me, and was justified in doing so. It wasn't that. It was the whole thing—the whole life. There was nothing worthy in it from the beginning to the end. I played with fire, and while George knew it was only playing, it was fire all the same."

"But you say you were never—burnt."

"If I wasn't, others were. I led men on till they thought—till they thought—I don't know how to say it—"

"Till they thought you should have led them further?"

"Precisely; and Bienville was one of them. It wasn't entirely his fault. I allowed him to think—to think—oh, all sorts of things!—and then when I was tired of him, I turned him into ridicule. I took advantage of his folly to make him the laughing-stock of Paris; and to avenge himself he lied. He said I had been his—No; I can't tell you."

"I understand. You needn't tell me. You needn't tell me any more."

"There isn't much more to tell that I can put into words. It was always—just like that—just as it was with Bienville. He wasn't the only one. I made coquetry a game—but a game in which I cheated. I was never fair to any of them. It's only the fact that the others were more honorable than Bienville that's kept what has happened now from having happened long ago. It might have come at any time. I thought it a fine thing to be able to trifle with passion. I didn't know I was only trifling with death. Oh, if I had been a good woman, George would have been with us still!"

"You mustn't blame yourself," the mother-in-law said, speaking with some difficulty, "for more than your own share of our troubles. I want to talk to you quite frankly, and tell you things you've never known. The beginning of the sorrows that have come to us dates very far back—back to a time before you were born."

"Oh?"

Diane's brown eyes, swimming in tears, opened wide in a sort of mournful curiosity.

"I admit," Mrs. Eveleth continued, "that in the first hours of our—our bereavement I had some such thoughts about you as you've just expressed. It seemed to me that if you had lived differently, George might have been spared to us. It took reflection to show me that if you had lived differently, George himself wouldn't have been satisfied. The life you led was the one he cared for—the one I taught him to care for. The origin of the wrong has to be traced back to me."

"To you?" Diane uttered the words in increasing wonder. It was strange that a first rôle in the drama could be played by any one but herself.

"I've always thought it a little odd," Mrs. Eveleth observed, after a brief pause, "that you've never been interested to hear about our family."

"I didn't know there was anything to tell," Diane answered, innocently.

"I suppose there isn't, from your European point of view; but, as we Americans see things, there's a good deal that's significant. Foreigners care so little about who or what we are, so long as we have money."

Diane raised her hand in a gesture of deprecation, intimating that such was not her attitude of mind.

"And I've never wanted to bore you with what, after all, wasn't necessary for you to hear. I shouldn't do so now if it had not become important. There's a great deal to settle and arrange."

"I can understand that there must be business affairs," Diane murmured, for the sake of saying something.

"Exactly; and in order to make them clear to you, I must take you a little further back into our history than you've ever gone before. I want you to see how much more responsible I am than you for our calamity. You were born into this life of Paris, while I came into it of my own accord. You did nothing but yield naturally to the influences around you, while I accepted them after having been fully warned. If you knew a little more of our American ideals I should find it easier to explain."

"I should like to hear about them," Diane said, sympathetically. The new interest was beginning to take her out of herself.

"My husband and I," Mrs. Eveleth went on again, "belong to that New York element which dates back to the time when the city was New Amsterdam, and the State, the New Netherlands. To you that means nothing, but in America it tells much. I was Naomi de Ruyter; my husband, on his mother's side, was a Van Tromp."

"Really?" Diane murmured, feeling that Mrs. Eveleth's tone of pride required a response. "I know there's a Mr. van Tromp here—the American banker."

"He is of the same family as my husband's mother. For nearly three hundred years they've lived on the island of Manhattan, and seen their farms and pastures grow into the second city in the world. The world has poured in on them, literally in millions. It would have submerged them if there hadn't been something in that old stock that couldn't be kept down. However high the tide rose, they floated on the top. My people were thrifty and industrious. They worked hard, saved money, and lived in simple ways. They cared little for pleasure, for beauty, or for any of the forms of art; but, on the contrary, they lived for work, for religion, for learning, and all the other high and serious pursuits. It was fine; but I hated it."

"Naturally."

"I longed to get away from it, and when I married I persuaded my husband to give up his profession and his home in order to establish himself here."

"But surely you can't regret that? You were free."

"Only the selfish and the useless are ever free. Those who are worth anything in this world are bound by a hundred claims upon them. They must either stay caught in the meshes of love and duty, or wrench themselves away—and that's what I did. Perhaps I suffered less than many people in doing the same thing; but I cannot say that I haven't suffered at all."

"But you've had a happy life—till now."

"I've had what I wanted—which may be happiness, or may not be."

"I've heard that you were very much admired. Madame de Nohant has told me that when you appeared at the Tuileries, no one was more graceful, not even the Empress herself."

"I had what I wanted," Mrs. Eveleth repeated, with a sigh. "I don't deny that I enjoyed it; and yet I question now if I did right. When my husband died, and George was a little boy, my friends made one last effort to induce me to take him back, and bring him up in his own country. I ignored their opinions, because all their views were so different from mine. I was young and independent, and enamoured of the life I had begun to lead. I had scruples of conscience from time to time; but when George grew up and developed the tastes I had bred in him, I let other considerations go. I was pleased with his success in the little world of Paris, just as I had been flattered by my own. When he fell in love with you I urged him to marry you, not because of anything in yourself, but because you were Mademoiselle de la Ferronaise, the last of an illustrious family. I looked upon the match as a useful alliance for him and for me. I encouraged George in extravagance. I encouraged him when he began to live in a style far more expensive than anything to which he had been accustomed. I encouraged him when he built this house. I wanted to impress you; I wanted you to see that the American could give you a more splendid home than any European you were likely to marry, however exalted his rank. I was not without fears that George was spending too much money; but we've always had plenty for whatever we wanted to do; and so I let him go on when I should have stopped him. It was my vanity. It wasn't his fault. He inherited a large fortune; and if I had only brought him up wisely, it would have been enough."

"And wasn't it enough?"

In spite of her growing dread, Diane brought out the question firmly. Mrs. Eveleth sat one long minute motionless, with hands clasped, with lips parted, and with suspended breath.

"No."

The monosyllable seemed to fill the room. It echoed and re-echoed in Diane's ears like the boom of a cannon. While her outward vision took in such details as the despair in Mrs. Eveleth's face, the folds of crape on her gown, the Watteau picture on the panel of moss-green and gold that formed the background, all the realities of life seemed to be dissolving into chaos, as the glories of the sunset sink into a black and formless mass. When Mrs. Eveleth spoke again, her voice sounded as though it came from far away.

"I want to take all the blame upon myself. If it hadn't been for me, George would never have gone to such extremes."

"Extremes?"

Diane spoke not so much from the desire to speak as from the necessity of forcing her reeling intelligence back to the world of fact.

"I'm afraid there's no other word for it."

"Do you mean that there are debts?"

"A great many debts."

"Can't they be paid?"

"Most of them can be paid—perhaps all; but when that is done I'm afraid there will be very little left."

"But surely we haven't lived so extravagantly as that. I know I've spent a great deal of money—"

"It hasn't been altogether the style of living. When my poor boy saw that he was going beyond his means he tried to recoup himself by speculation. Do you know what that is?"

"I know it's something by which people lose money."

"He had no experience of anything of the kind, and his men of business tell me he went into it wildly. He had that optimistic temperament which always believes that the next thing will be a success, even though the present one is a failure. Then, too, he fell into the hands of unscrupulous men, who made him think that great fortunes were to be made out of what they call wildcat schemes, when all the time they were leading him to ruin."

Ruin! The word appealed to Diane's memory and imagination alike. It came to her from her remotest childhood, when she could remember hearing it applied to her grandfather, the old Comte de la Ferronaise. After that she could recollect leaving the great château in which she was born, and living with her parents, first in one European capital, and then in another. Finally they settled for a few years in Ireland, her mother's country, where both her parents died. During all this time, as well as in the subsequent years in a convent at Auteuil, she was never free from the sense of ruin hanging over her. Though she understood well enough that her way of escape lay in making a rich marriage, it was impressed upon her that the meagreness of her dot would make her efforts in this direction difficult. When, within a few months of leaving the convent, she was asked by George Eveleth to become his wife, it seemed as if she had reached the end of her cares. She had the less scruple in accepting what he had to give in that she honestly liked the generous, easy-going man who lived but to gratify her whims. During the four years of her married life she had spent money, not merely for the love of spending, but from sheer joy in the sense that Poverty, the arch-enemy, had been defeated; and lo! he was springing at her again.

"Ruin!" she echoed, when Mrs. Eveleth had let fall the word. "Do you mean that we're—ruined?"

"It depends on how you look at it. You will always have your own small fortune, on which you can live with economy."

"But you will have yours, too."

Mrs. Eveleth smiled faintly.

"No; I'm afraid that's gone. It was in George's hands, and I can see he tried to increase it for me, by doing with it—as he did with his own. I'm not blaming him. The worst of which he can be accused is a lack of judgment."

"But there's this house!" Diane urged, "and all this furniture!—and these pictures!"

She glanced up at the Watteau, the Boucher, and the Fragonard, which gave the key to the decorations of the dainty boudoir. The faint smile still lingered on Mrs. Eveleth's lips, as it lingers on the face of the dead.

"There'll be very little left," she repeated.

"But I don't understand," Diane protested, with a perplexed movement of the hand across her brow. "I don't know much about business, but if it were explained to me I think I could follow."

"Come and sit beside me at the desk," Mrs. Eveleth suggested. "You will understand better if you see the figures just as they stand."

She went over the main points, one by one, using the same untechnical simplicity of language which George's men of business had employed with herself. The facts could be stated broadly but comprehensively. When all was settled the Eveleth estate would have disappeared. Diane would possess her small inheritance, which was a thing apart. Mrs. Eveleth would have a few jewels and other minor personal belongings, but nothing more. The very completeness of the story rendered it easy in the telling, though the largeness of the facts made it impossible for Diane to take them in. It was an almost unreasonable tax on credulity to attempt to think of the tall, fragile woman sitting before her, with luxurious nurture in every pose of the figure, in every habit of the mind, as penniless. It was trying to account for daylight without a sun.

"It can't be!" Diane cried, when she had done her best to weigh the facts just placed before her.

Mrs. Eveleth shook her head, the glimmering smile fixed on her lips as on a mask.

"It is so, dear, I'm afraid. We must do our best to get used to it."

"I shall never get used to it," Diane cried, springing to her feet—"never, never!"

"It will be hard for you to do without all you've had—when you've had so much—but—"

"Oh, it isn't that," Diane broke in, fiercely. "It isn't for me. I can do well enough. It's for you."

"Don't worry about me, dear. I can work."

The words were spoken in a matter-of-fact tone, but Diane recoiled at them as at a sword-thrust.

"You can—what?"

It was the last touch, not only of the horror of the situation, but of its ludicrous irony.

"I can work, dear," Mrs. Eveleth repeated, with the poignant tranquillity that smote Diane more cruelly than grief. "There are many things I could do—"

"Oh, don't!" Diane wailed, with pleading gestures of the hands. "Oh, don't! I can't bear it. Don't say such things. They kill me. There must be some mistake. All that money can't have gone. Even if it was only a few hundred thousand francs, it would be something. I will not believe it. It's too soon to judge. I've heard it took a long time to settle up estates. How can they have done it yet?"

"They haven't. They've only seen its possibilities—and impossibilities."

"I will never believe it," Diane burst out again. "I will see those men. I will tell them. I am positive that it cannot be. Such injustice would not be permitted. There must be laws—there must be something—to prevent such outrage—especially on you!" She spoke vehemently, striding to and fro in the little room, and brushing back from time to time the heavy brown hair that in her excitement fell in disordered locks on her forehead. "It's too wicked. It's too monstrous. It's intolerable. God doesn't allow such things to happen on earth, otherwise He wouldn't be God! No, no; you cannot make me think that such things happen. You work! The Mater Dolorosa herself was not called upon to bear such humiliation. If God reigns, as they say He does—"

"But, Diane dear," Mrs. Eveleth interrupted, gently, "isn't it true that we owe it to George's memory to bear our troubles bravely?"

"I'm ready to bear anything bravely—but this."

"But isn't this the case, above all others, in which you and I should be unflinching? Doesn't any lack of courage on our parts imply a reflection on him?"

"That's true," Diane said, stopping abruptly.

"I don't know how far you honor George's memory—?"

"George's memory? Why shouldn't I honor it?"

"I didn't know. Some women—after what you've just discovered—"

"I am not—some women! I am Diane Eveleth. Whatever George did I shared it, and I share it still."

"Then you forgive him?"

"Forgive him?—I?—forgive him? No! What have I to forgive? Anything he did he did for me and in order to have the more to give me—and I love him and honor him as I never did till now."

Mrs. Eveleth rose and stood unsteadily beside her desk.

"God bless you for saying that, Diane."

"There's no reason why He should bless me for saying anything so obvious."

"It isn't obvious to me, Diane; and you must let me bless you—bless you with the mother's blessing, which, I think, must be next to God's."

Then opening her arms wide, she sobbed the one word "Come!" and they had at last the comfort, dear to women, of weeping in each other's arms.

III

In the private office of the great Franco-American banking-house of Van Tromp & Co., the partners, having finished their conference, were about to separate.

"That's all, I think," said Mr. Grimston. He rose with a jerky movement, which gave him the appearance of a little figure shot out of a box.

Mr. van Tromp remained seated at the broad, flat-topped desk, his head bent at an angle which gave Mr. Grimston a view of the tips of shaggy eyebrows, a broad nose, and that peculiar kind of protruding lower lip before which timid people quail. As there was no response, Mr. Grimston looked round vaguely on the sombre, handsome furnishings, fixing his gaze at last on the lithographed portrait of Mr. van Tromp senior, the founder of the house, hanging above the mantelpiece.

"That's all, I think," Mr. Grimston repeated, raising his voice slightly in order to drown the rumble that came through the open windows from the rue Auber.

Suddenly Mr. van Tromp looked up.

"I've just had a letter," he said, in a tone indicating an entirely new order of discussion, "from a person who signs herself Diana—or is it Diane?—Eveleth."

"Oh, Diane! She's written to you, has she?" came from Mr. Grimston, as his partner searched with short-sighted eyes for the letter in question among the papers on the desk.

"You know her, then?"

"Of course I know her. You ought to know her, too. You would, if you didn't shut yourself up in the office, away from the world."

"N-no, I don't recall that I've ever met the lady. Ah, here's the note, just sit down a minute while I read it."

Mr. Grimston shot back into his seat again, while Mr. van Tromp wiped his large, circular glasses.

"'Dear Mr. van Tromp,' she begins, 'I am most anxious to talk to you on very important business, and would take it as a favor if you would let me call on Tuesday morning and see you very privately. Yours sincerely, Diane Eveleth.' That's all. Now, what do you make of it?"

The straight smile, which was all the facial expression Mr. Grimston ever allowed himself, became visible between the lines of his closely clipped mustache and beard. He took his time before speaking, enjoying the knowledge that this was one of those social junctures in which he had his senior partner so conspicuously at a disadvantage.

"It's a bad business, I'm afraid," he said, as though summing up rather than beginning.

"What does the woman want with me?"

"That, I fear, is painfully evident. You must have heard of the Eveleth smash a couple of months ago. Or—let me see!—I think it was just when you were in New York. No; you'd be likely not to hear of it. The Eveleths have so carefully cut their American acquaintance for so many years that they've created a kind of vacuum around themselves, out of which the noise of their doings doesn't easily penetrate. They belong to that class of American Parisians who pose for going only into French society."

"I know the kind."

"Mrs. Grimston could tell you all about them, of course. Equally at home as she is in the best French and American circles, she hears a great many things she'd rather not hear."

"She needn't listen to 'em."

"Unfortunately a woman in her position, with a daughter like Marion, is obliged to listen. But that's rather the end of the story—"

"And I want the beginning, Grimston, if you don't mind. I want to know why this Diane should be after me."

"She's after money," Mr. Grimston declared, bluntly. "She's after money, and you'd better let me manage her. It would save you the trouble of the refusal you'll be obliged to make."

"Well, tell me about her and I'll see."

Mr. Grimston stiffened himself in his chair and cleared his throat.

"Diane Eveleth," he stated, with slow, significant emphasis, "is an extremely fascinating woman. She has probably turned more men round her little finger than any other woman in Paris."

"Is that to her credit or her discredit?"

"I don't want to say anything against Mrs. Eveleth," Mr. Grimston protested. "I wish she hadn't come near us at all. As it is, you must be forewarned."

"I'm not particular about that, if you'll give me the facts."

"That's not so easy. Where facts are so deucedly disagreeable, a fellow finds it hard to trot out any poor little woman in her weaknesses. I must make it clear beforehand that I don't want to say anything against her."

"It's in confidence—privileged, as the lawyers say. I sha'n't think the worse of her—that is, not much."

"Poor Diane," Mr. Grimston began again, sententiously, "is one of the bits of human wreckage that have drifted down to us from the pre-revolutionary days of French society. Her grandfather, the old Comte de la Ferronaise, belonged to that order of irreconcilable royalists who persist in dashing themselves to pieces against the rising wall of democracy. I remember him perfectly—a handsome old fellow, who had lost an arm in the Crimea. He used to do business with us when I was with Hargous in the rue de Provence. Having impoverished himself in a plot in favor of the Comte de Chambord, somewhere about 1872, he came utterly to grief in raising funds for the Boulanger craze, in the train of the Duchesse d'Uzès. He died shortly afterward, one of the last to break his heart over the hopeless Bourbon cause."

"That, I understand you to say, was the grandfather of the young woman who is after money. She's a Frenchwoman, then?"

"She's half French. That was her grandfather. The father was of much the same type, but a lighter weight. He married an Irish beauty, a Miss O'Hara, as poor as himself. He died young, I believe, and I'd lost sight of the lot, till this Mademoiselle Diane de la Ferronaise floated into view, some five years ago, in the train of the Nohant family. Her marriage to George Eveleth, which took place almost at once, was looked upon as an excellent thing all round. It rid the Nohants of a poor relation, and helped to establish the Eveleths in the heart of the old aristocracy. Since then Diane has been going the pace."

"What pace?"

"The pace the Eveleth money couldn't keep up with; the pace that made her the most-talked-of woman in a society where women are talked of more than enough; the pace that led George Eveleth to put a bullet through his head under pretence of fighting a duel."

"Dear me! Dear me! A most unusual young woman! Do you tell me that her husband actually put an end to himself?"

"So I understand. The affair was a curious one; but Bienville swears he fired into the air, and I believe him. Besides, George Eveleth was found shot through the temple, and no one but himself could have inflicted a wound like that. To make it conclusive, Melcourt and Vernois, who were seconds, testify to having seen the act, without having the time to prevent it. You can see that it is a relief to me to be able to take this view of the case—on poor Marion's account."

"Marion—your daughter! Was she mixed up in the affair?"

"Mixed up is a little to much to say. I don't mind telling you in confidence that there was something between her and Bienville. I don't know where it mightn't have ended; but of course when all this happened, and we got wind of Bienville's entanglement with Mrs. Eveleth, we had to put a stop to the thing, and pack her off to America. She'll stay there with her aunt, Mrs. Bayford, till it blows over."

"And your friend Bienville? Hasn't he brought himself within the clutches of the law?"

"George Eveleth was officially declared a suicide. He had every reason to be one—though I don't want to say anything against Mrs. Eveleth. When Bienville refused to put an end to him, he evidently decided to do it himself. His family know nothing about that, so please don't let it slip out if you see Diane. With her notions, the husband fallen in her cause has perished on the field of honor; and if that's any comfort to her, let her keep it. As for Bienville, he's joined young Persigny, the explorer, in South America. By the time he returns the affair will have been forgotten. He's a nice young fellow, and it's a thousand pities he should have fallen into the net of a woman like Mrs. Eveleth. I don't want to say anything against her, you understand—"

"Oh, quite!"

"But—"

Mr. Grimston pronounced the word with a hard-drawn breath, and presented the appearance of a man who restrains himself. He was still endeavoring to maintain this attitude of repression when a discreet tap on the door called from Mr. van Tromp a gruff "Come in." A young man entered with a card.

"She's here," the banker grunted, reading the name.

Mr. Grimston shot up again.

"Better let me see her," he insisted, in a warning tone.

"No, no. I'll have a look at her myself. Bring the lady in," he added, to the young man in waiting.

"Then I'll skip," said Mr. Grimston, suiting the action to the word by disappearing in one direction as Diane entered from another.

Mr. van Tromp rose heavily, and surveyed her as she crossed the floor toward him. He had been expecting some such seductive French beauty as he had occasionally seen on the stage on the rare occasions when he went to a play; so that the trimness of this little figure in widow's dress, with white bands and cuffs, after the English fashion, somewhat disconcerted him. Unaccustomed to the ways of banks, Diane half offered her hand, but, as he was on his guard against taking it, she stood still before him.

"Mrs. Eveleth, I believe," he said, when he had surveyed her well. "Have the goodness to sit down, and tell me what I can do for you."

Diane took the seat he indicated, which left a discreet space between them. The heavy black satchel she carried she placed on the floor beside her. When she raised her veil, Mr. van Tromp observed to himself that the pale face, touching in expression, and the brown eyes, in which there seemed to lurk a gentle reproach against the world for having treated her so badly, were exactly what he would have expected in a woman coming to borrow money.

"I've come to you, Mr. van Tromp," Diane began, timidly, "because I thought that perhaps—you might know—who I am."

"I don't know anything at all about you," was the not encouraging response.

"Of course there's no reason why you should—" Diane hastened to say, apologetically.

"None whatever," he assured her.

"Only that a good many people do know us—"

"I dare say. I haven't the honor to be among the number."

"And I thought that possibly—just possibly—you might be predisposed in my favor."

"A banker is never predisposed in favor of any one—not even his own flesh and blood."

"I didn't know that," Diane persisted, bravely, "otherwise I might just as well have gone to anybody else."

"Just as well."

"Would you like me to go now?"

The question took him by surprise, and before replying he looked at her again with queer, bulgy eyes peering through big circular glasses, in a way that made Diane think of an ogre in a fairy tale.

"You're not here for what I like," he said at last, "but for what you want yourself."

"That's true," Diane admitted, ruefully, "but I might go away. I will go away, if you say so."

"You'll please yourself. I didn't send for you, and I'll not tell you to go. How old are you?"

It was Diane's turn to be surprised, but she brought out her age promptly.

"Twenty-four."

"You look older."

"That's because I've had so much trouble, perhaps. It's because we're in trouble that I've come to you, Mr. van Tromp."

"I dare say. I didn't suppose you'd come to ask me to dinner. There are not many days go by without some one expecting me to pull him out of the scrape he would never have got into if it hadn't been for his own fault."

"I'm afraid that's very like my case."

"It's like a good many cases. You're no exception to the rule."

"And what do you do at such times, if I may ask?"

"You may ask, but I'll not tell you. You're here on your own business, I presume, and not on mine."

"I thought that perhaps you'd be good enough to make mine yours. Though we've never met, I have seen you at various times, and it always seemed to me that you looked kind; and so—"

"Stop right there, ma'am!" he cried, putting up a warning hand. "'Most important business,' was what you said in your note, otherwise I shouldn't have consented to see you. If you have any business, state it, and I'll say yes or no, as it strikes me. But I'll tell you beforehand that there isn't a chance in a thousand but what it'll be no."

"I did come because I thought you looked kind," Diane declared, indignantly, "and if you think it was for any other reason whatever, you're absolutely mistaken."

"Then we'll let it be. I can't help my looks, nor what you think about them. The point is that you're here for something; so let's know what it is."

"You make it very hard for me," Diane said, almost tearfully, "but I'll try. I must tell you, first of all, that we've lost a great deal of money."

"That's no new situation."

"It is to me; and it's even more so to my poor mother-in-law. I should think you must have heard of her at least. She is Mrs. Arthur Eveleth. Her maiden name was Naomi de Ruyter, of New York."

"Very likely."

"Her husband was related, on his mother's side, to the Van Tromps—the same family as your own."

"That's more likely still. There are as many Van Tromps in New York as there are shrimps on the Breton coast, and they're all related to me, because I'm supposed to have a little money."

"I sha'n't let you offend me," Diane said, stoutly, "because I want your help."

"That's a very good reason."

"But since you take so little interest in us I will not attempt to explain how it is that we've come to such misfortune."

"I'll take that for granted."

"The blow has fallen more heavily on my mother-in-law than on me. She has lost everything she had in the world; while I have still my own money—my dot—and a little over from the sale of my jewels."

"Well?"

"If you'd ever seen her, you would know how terrible, how impossible, such a situation is for her. She's the sort of woman who ought to have money—who must have money. And so I thought if I came to you—"

"I'd give her some."

"No," Diane said, quickly, with a renewed touch of indignation, "but that you'd help me to do it."

He looked at her with an odd, upward glance under his shaggy, overhanging brows, while the protruding lower lip went a shade further out.

"Help you to do it? How?"

"By letting her have mine."

Again he looked at her, almost suspiciously.

"You've got plenty to give away, I suppose?"

"On the contrary, I've pitifully little; but such as it is, I want her to have it all. She could live on it—with economy; or at least she says I could."

"And can't you?"

"I don't want to. As there isn't enough for two, I wish to settle it on her. Isn't that the word?—settle?"

"It'll do as well as another. And what do you propose to do yourself?"

"Work."

Diane forced the word in a little gasp of humiliation, but she got it out.

"And what'll you work at?"

"I don't know yet, exactly. I shall have to see. My mother-in-law is going to America; and when she does I'll join her."

"Humph! My good woman, you wouldn't do more than just keep ahead of starvation."

"Oh, I shouldn't expect to do more. If I succeeded in that—I should live."

"How much money have you got?"

"It's all here," she answered, picking up the black satchel and opening it. "These are my securities, and I'm told they're very good."

"And do you take them round with you every time you go shopping?"

"No," Diane smiled, somewhat wanly. "They've been in the hands of the Messrs. Hargous for a good many years past. They are entirely at my own disposal—not in trust, they said; so that I had a right to take them away. I thought I would just bring them to you."

"What for?"

"To keep them for my mother-in-law and pay her the interest, or whatever it is."

"Why didn't you leave them with Hargous?"

"I was afraid, from some things he said, he would object to what I wanted to do."

"And what made you think I wouldn't object to it, too?"

"Two or three reasons. First, Monsieur Hargous is not an American, and you are; and I'd been told that Americans always like to help one another—"

"I don't know who could have put that notion into your head."

"And, then, from the few glimpses I've had of you—I will say it!—I thought you looked kind."

"Well, now that you've had a better look, you see I don't. How much money have you got? You haven't told me that yet."

"Here's the memorandum. They said they were mostly bonds, and very good ones."