Part 26 (1/2)

Diane nodded, unable, for the minute, to speak.

”But we know how--he died.”

”Mr. Pruyn tells me that we don't.”

”I beg you not to put it in that way,” Derek said, hurriedly. ”I repeated only what was told me, and what was afterward verified. Do you not think we can spare Mrs. Eveleth what must be so painful?”

”There's no need to spare me, Mr. Pruyn. I think I've reached the point to which old people often come--where they can't feel any more.”

”Oh, mother, don't say that,” Diane wailed, with a curiously childlike cry. She had never before called Mrs. Eveleth mother, and the word sounded strangely in this room which had not heard it since Miss Lucilla was a little girl. ”My mother would rather know,” she declared, almost proudly, speaking again to Pruyn, ”than be kept in ignorance of something in which she could help me so much.”

”What is it?” Mrs. Eveleth asked, eagerly.

Then Diane told her. It had been stated, so she said, that George had not fallen in her defence, but by his own hand--to escape her; and there was no one in the world but his own mother to give this monstrous calumny the lie. During the recital Mrs. Eveleth sat with clasped hands, but with head sinking lower at each word. Once she murmured something which only Miss Lucilla was near enough to hear:

”Then that's why they wouldn't let me look at him in his coffin.”

”He did love me, didn't he?” Diane cried. ”He was happy with me, wasn't he, mother dear? He understood me, and upheld me, and defended me, whatever I did. He didn't want to leave me. He knew I should never have cared for the loss of the money--that we could have faced that together. Tell them so, mother; tell them.”

For the first time since he had known her Derek saw Diane forget her reserve in eager pleading. She stepped forward from Miss Lucilla's embrace, standing before Mrs. Eveleth with palms opened outward, in an att.i.tude of pet.i.tion. The older woman did not raise her head nor speak.

”He was happy with me,” Diane insisted. ”I made him happy. I wasn't the best wife he could have had, but he was satisfied with me as I was, in spite of my imperfections. He was worried sometimes, especially toward--toward the last; but he wasn't worried about me, was he, mother dear?”

Still the mother did not speak nor raise her head. Diane took a step nearer and began again.

”I didn't know we were living beyond our means. I didn't know what was going on around me. I reproach myself for that. A wiser woman _would_ have known; but I was young, and foolish, and very, very happy. I didn't know I was ruining George, though I'm ready to take all the responsibility for it now. But he never blamed me, did he, mother?

never, by a word, never by a look. Oh, speak, and tell them!”

Her voice came out with a sharp note of anxiety, in which there was an inflection almost of fear; but when she ceased there was silence.

”Pet.i.te mere,” she cried, ”aren't you going to say anything?”

The bowed head remained bowed; the only sign came from the trembling of the extended hand, resting on the top of the stick.

”If you don't speak,” Diane cried again, ”they'll think it's because you don't want to.”

If there was a response to this, it was when the head bent lower.

”Mother,” Diane cried, in alarm, ”I've no one in the world to speak a word for me but you. If you don't do it, they'll believe I drove George to his death--they'll say I was such a woman that he killed himself rather than live with me any longer.”

Suddenly Mrs. Eveleth raised her head and looked round upon them all.

Then she staggered to her feet.

”Take me away!” she said, in a dead voice, to Lucilla van Tromp. ”Help me! Take me away! I can't bear any more!” Leaning on Miss Lucilla's arm, she advanced a step and paused before Diane, who stood wide-eyed, and awe-struck rather than amazed, at the magnitude of this desertion. ”May G.o.d forgive you, Diane,” she said, quietly, pa.s.sing on again. ”I try to do so; but it's hard.”

While Derek's eyes were riveted on Diane, she stood staring vacantly at the empty doorway through which Mrs. Eveleth and Miss Lucilla had pa.s.sed on their way up-stairs. This abandonment was so far outside the range of what she had considered possible that there seemed to be no avenues to her intelligence through which the conviction of it could be brought home. She gazed as though her own vision were at fault, as though her powers of comprehension had failed her.