Part 22 (1/2)
”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 fas.h.i.+on 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?”