Part 28 (2/2)
”It doesn't justify; it only explains. Responsibility presses less heavily on the individual when it's shared.”
”But wouldn't the person--you'll forgive me, dear, won't you, if I'm going too far?--wouldn't the person who has to take his part in that kind of responsibility be a doubtful keeper of one's happiness?”
Miss Grimston, half lowering her eyes, looked at her visitor with slumberous suspension of expression, and made no reply.
”If a man isn't good--” Miss Lucilla began again, tremblingly.
”No man is perfect.”
”True, dear; and yet are there not certain qualities which we ought to consider as essentials--?”
”Monsieur de Bienville has those qualities for me.”
”But surely, dear, you can't mean--?”
”Yes, I do mean.”
The avowal was made quietly, with the still bearing of one who gives a few drops of confession out of deep oceans of reserve. Miss Lucilla gazed at her in astonishment. That her parents should sacrifice her was not surprising; but that she should be willing to sacrifice herself went beyond the limits of thought. The revelation that Marion could actually love the man was so startling that it shocked her out of her timidity, loosening the strings of her eloquence and unsealing the sources of her maternal tenderness. There was nothing original in Miss Lucilla's subsequent line of argument. It was the old, oft-uttered, futile appeal to the head, when the heart has already spoken. It premised the possibility of placing one's affections where one cannot give one's respect, regardless of the fact that the thing is done a thousand times a day. It reasoned, it predicted, it implored, with an effect no more disintegrating on the girl's decision than moonbeams make upon a mountain. Through it all, she sat and listened with the veiled eyes and mysterious impa.s.sivity which gave to her personality a curiously incalculable quality, as of a force presenting none of the ordinary phenomena by which to measure or compute it.
It was not till Miss Lucilla touched on the subject of honor that she obtained any sign of the effect she was producing. It was no more, on Marion's part, than an uneasy movement, but it betrayed its cause. Miss Lucilla pressed her point with renewed insistence, and presently two big tears hung on the long, black lashes and rolled down.
”I should like to see Mrs. Eveleth.”
Like the hasty raising and dropping of a curtain on some jealously guarded view, the words gave to Miss Lucilla but a fleeting glimpse of what was pa.s.sing in the obscure recesses of the girl's heart; but she determined to make the most of it by fixing, there and then, the day and hour when, without apparently forcing the event, the two might come face to face on the neutral ground of Gramercy Park.
It was a meeting that, when it took place, would have been attended with embarra.s.sment had not both young women been practised in the ways of their little world. Progress in mutual understanding was made the easier by the existence, on both sides, of the European view of life, with its fusion of interests, its softness of outline, its give and take of toleration, in contradistinction to the sharp, clear, insistent American demands for a certain line of conduct and no other. Five minutes had not gone by in talk before each found in the other's presence that sense of repose which comes from similar habits of thought and a common native idiom. Whatever grounds for difference they might find, they were, at least, ranged on the same side in that battle which the two hemispheres half unconsciously wage upon each other as to the main purposes of life.
Thus they were able to approach their subject without that first preliminary shock which makes it difficult for races to agree; and thus, too, Marion Grimston found herself, before she was aware of it, pouring out to Diane Eveleth that heart which, in response to Miss Lucilla's tender pleading, had been dumb.
They sat in the big, sombre library where, only a few days before, Diane had seen Derek Pruyn turn his back on her, without even a gesture of farewell. On the long mahogany table the red azalea was in almost pa.s.sionate luxuriance of blossom; while through the open window faint odors of lilac came from Miss Lucilla's bit of garden.
”I don't want you to think him worse than you're obliged to,” Marion said, as though in defence of the stand her heart had taken. ”I've been told that very few men possess the two kinds of courage--the moral and the physical. Savonarola had the one and Nelson had the other; but neither of them had both. And of the two, for me, the physical is the essential. I can't help it. If I had to choose between a soldier and a saint, I'd take the soldier. When the worst is said of Monsieur de Bienville, it must be admitted that he's brave.”
”I've always understood that he was a good rider and a good shot,” Diane admitted. ”I've no doubt that in battle he would conduct himself like a hero.”
The girl's head went up proudly, and from the languorous eyes there came one splendid flash before the lids fell over them again.
”I know he would; and when a man has that sort of courage he's worth saving.”
”You admit, then, that he needs to be--saved?” Again the heavy lids were lifted for one brief, search-light glance.
”Yes; I admit that. I believe he has wronged you. I can't tell you how I know it; but I do. It's to tell you so that I've asked you to come here.
I hoped to make you see, as I do, that he's capable of doing it without appreciating the nature of his crime. If we could get him to see that--”
”Then--what?”
”He'd make you reparation.”
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