"She"s barely seventeen--no more than a child."
"But a motherless child, and one who has been allowed a great deal of liberty."
"Is there any reason why a girl shouldn"t be a free creature?"
"Only the reason why a boy shouldn"t be one."
"That"s different. A boy would be getting into mischief."
"Even a girl isn"t proof against that possibility. It mayn"t be a boy"s kind of mischief, but it"s a kind of her own."
Unwilling to credit this statement, and yet unable to contradict it, Pruyn continued his march for a minute or two in silence, while Miss Lucilla waited nervously for him to speak again. It was one of the few points in the round of daily existence on which she was prepared to give him battle. It was part of the ridiculous irony of life that Derek, with the domestic incompetency natural to a banker and a club-man, should have a daughter to train, while she whose instinct was so pa.s.sionately maternal must be doomed to spinsterhood. She had never made any secret of the fact that to watch Derek bringing up Dorothea made her as fidgety as if she had seen him tr.i.m.m.i.n.g hats, though she recognized the futility of trying to s.n.a.t.c.h the task from his hands in order to do it properly.
The utmost she had been able to accomplish was to be allowed to plod daily from Gramercy Park to Fifth Avenue, in the hope of keeping bad from becoming worse; and even this insufficient oversight must be discontinued now, since Aunt Regina would monopolize her care. If she took the matter to heart, it was no more, she thought, than she had a right to do, seeing that Derek was almost like a younger brother, and, with the exception of Uncle James in Paris, and Aunt Regina in New York, her nearest relative in the world.
As she glanced up at him from time to time she reflected, with some pride, that no one could have taken him for anything but what he was--a rising young New York banker of some hereditary line. As in certain English portraits there is an inborn apt.i.tude for statesmanship, so in Derek Pruyn there was that air, almost inseparable from the Van Tromp kinship, of one accustomed to possess money, to make money, to spend money, and to support moneyed responsibilities. The face, slightly stern by nature, slightly grave by habit, and tanned by outdoor exercise, was that of a man who wields his special kind of power with a due sense of its importance, and yet wields it easily. Nature having endowed the Van Tromps with every excellence but that of good looks, it was Miss Lucilla"s tendency to depreciate beauty; but she was too much a woman not to be sensible of the charms of six feet two, with proportionate width of shoulder, and a way of standing straight and looking straight, incompatible with anything but "acting straight," that was full of a fine dominance. That he should be carefully dressed was but a detail in the exact.i.tude which was the main element in his character; while his daily custom of wearing in his b.u.t.ton-hole a dark-red carnation, a token of some never-explained memory of his dead wife, indicated a capacity for sober romance which she did not find displeasing.
"Then what would you do about it?" he asked, at last, pausing abruptly in his walk and confronting her.
"There isn"t much choice, Derek. Human society is so const.i.tuted as to leave us very little opportunity for striking into original paths. Aunt Regina has told you many a time what was possible, and you didn"t like it; but I"ll repeat it if you wish. You could send her to a good boarding-school--"
Never!
"Or you could have a lady to chaperon her properly."
"Rubbish!"
"Well, there you are, Derek. You refuse the only means that could help you in your situation; and so you leave Dorothea a prey to a woman like Mrs. Wappinger. You"ll excuse me for mentioning it; but--"
"I"d excuse you for mentioning anything; but even Mrs. Wappinger ought to have justice. You know as well as I do that Uncle James wanted to marry her, and that it was only her own common-sense that saved us from having her as an aunt. You may not admire her type, but you can"t deny that it"s one which has a legitimate place in American civilization.
Ours isn"t a society that can afford to exclude the self-made man, or his widow."
"That may be quite true, Derek; only in that case you have also to reckon with--his son."
Derek bounded away once more, making manifest efforts to control himself before he spoke again.
"You know this subject is most distasteful to me, Lucilla," he said, severely.
"I know it is; and it"s equally so to me. But I see what"s going on, and you don"t--there"s the difference. What should a young man like you know about bringing up a school-girl? To see you intrusted with her at all makes me very nearly doubt the wisdom of the ends of Providence. She"s a good little girl by nature, but your indulgence would spoil an angel."
"I don"t indulge her. I"ve forbidden her to do lots of things."
"Exactly; you come down on the poor thing when she"s not doing any harm, and you put no restrictions on the things in which she"s wilful. If there"s a girl on earth who is being brought up backward, it"s Dorothea Pruyn."
"She"s my child. I presume I"ve got a right to do what I like with her."
"You"ll find that you"ve done what you don"t like with her, when you"ve allowed her to get into a ridiculous, unmaidenly flirtation with the young man Wappinger."
"I shouldn"t let that distress me if I were you. As far as Dorothea is concerned, your young man Wappinger doesn"t exist."
"That"s as it may be," Miss Lucilla sniffed, now on the brink of tears.
"That"s as it is," he insisted, picking up his hat.
"It"s to be regretted," he added, with dignity, as he took his leave, "that on this subject you and I cannot see alike; but I think you may trust me not to endanger the happiness of my child."
Even if Diane could have transcended s.p.a.ce to a.s.sist at this brief interview, she would probably have missed its bearing on herself; but had she transported her spirit at the same instant to still another scene, the effect would have been more enlightening. While she still stood watching the rise and dip of the steamer"s bow, Mrs. Wappinger, in a larger and more elaborate mansion than the old-fashioned house in Gramercy Park, was reading to her son such portions of a letter from James van Tromp as she considered it discreet for him to hear. A stout, florid lady, in jovial middle age, her appearance as an agent in her affairs would certainly have surprised Diane, had the vision been vouchsafed to her.
Pa.s.sing over those sentences in which the old man admitted the wisdom of her decision in rejecting his proposals, on the ground that he saw now that the married state would not have suited him, Mrs. Wappinger came to what was of common interest.
""... You will remember, my good friend,"" she read, with a strong Western accent, ""that both at the time of, and since, your husband"s death I have been helpful to you in your business affairs, and laid you under some obligation to me. I have, therefore, no scruple in asking you to fulfil a few wishes of mine, in token of such grat.i.tude as I conceive you to feel. There will arrive in your city by the steamer _Picardie_, on the twenty-eighth day of this month, two foolish women, answering to the name of Eveleth--mother-in-law and daughter-in-law--both widows--and presenting the sorry spectacle of Naomi and Ruth returning to the Land of Promise, after a ruinous sojourn in a foreign country--with whose history you are familiar from your reading of the Scriptures.""
"Is there a Bible in the house, mother?" Carli Wappinger asked, swinging himself on the piano-stool.
"I think there must be--somewhere. There used to be one. But, hush! Let me go on. "They will descend,"" she continued to read, ""at a modest French hostelry in University Place, to which I have commended them, as being within their means. I desire, first, that you will make their acquaintance at your earliest possible convenience. I desire, next, that you will invite them to your house on some occasion, presumably in the afternoon, when you can also ask my nephew, Derek Pruyn, and Lucilla van Tromp, my niece, to meet them. I desire, furthermore, that though you may use my name to the Mesdames Eveleth, as a pa.s.sport to their presence, you will in no wise speak of me to my relatives in question, or give them to understand that I have inspired the invitation you will accord them....""
Mrs. Wappinger threw down the letter with the emphasis of gesture which was one of her characteristics.
"There!" she exclaimed, in a loud, hearty voice, not without a note of triumph; "that"s what I call a chance."
"Chance for what, mother?"
"Chance for a good many things--and first of all for bearding Lucilla van Tromp right in her own den."
"I don"t see--"
"No; but I do. We"re on to a big thing. I"ve got to go right there; and she"s got to come right here. She"s held off, and she"s kept me off; but now the ice"ll be broken with a regular thaw."
"Still, I don"t see. It"s one thing to invite her, to oblige old man Van Tromp; but it"s another thing to get her to come."
"She"ll come fast enough--this time; she"ll come as if she was shot here by a secret spring. There is a secret spring, you may take my word for it. I don"t know what it is, and I don"t care; it"s enough for me to know that it"s in good working order--which it is, if James van Tromp has got his hand on it. James van Tromp may look like a fool and talk like a fool, but he isn"t a fool--No, sir!"
It is commonly believed that a woman never thinks otherwise than gently of the man who has wanted to marry her; and if this be the rule, Mrs.
Wappinger was no exception to it. As she sat on the sofa in her son"s room, the mere mention of the old man"s name, attended by the kindly opinion she had just expressed, sent her off into sudden reverie. While it was quite true that, in her own phrase, she "would no more have married him than she would have married a mole," it was none the less flattering to have been desired. The onlooker, like Lucilla van Tromp or Derek Pruyn, might wonder what were those hidden forces of affinity which led a man to single Mrs. Wappinger out of all the women in the world; but to Mrs. Wappinger herself the circ.u.mstance could not be otherwise than pleasing.
Seeing her pensive, Carli swung himself back to the keyboard again, pounding out a few bars of the dance music in Strauss" _Salome_, of which the score lay open before him. He was a good-looking young man of twenty-two, of whom any mother, not too exacting, might be proud. Very blond--with well-chiselled features and waving hair--not so tall as to make his excessive slimness seem disproportionate--there was something in the perfection with which he was "turned out" that gave him the air of a "creation." Mrs. Wappinger"s joy in him was the more satisfying because of the fact that, relative to herself, he was in the line of progress. He was the blossom of culture, travel, and sport, borne by her own strenuous generation of successful material effort. To the things to which he had attained she felt that in a certain sense she had attained herself, on the principle of _facit per alium, facit per se._ In the social position she had reached it was a pleasure to know that Harvard, Europe, and money had given Carli a refinement that made up in some measure for her own deficiencies.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" he asked, breaking off in the midst of the cruel ecstasy of the daughter of Herodias, and swinging himself back, so as to confront her.
"I"m going to give a little tea," Mrs. Wappinger answered, with decision; "a _tay antime,_ as the French say. I shall have these two Eveleths--or whatever their name is--Lucilla van Tromp, and Derek and Dorothea Pruyn."
"You may accomplish the first and the last. You"ll find it difficult to fill in the middle. To say nothing of the old girl, Derek Pruyn is too busy for teas--_intime_, or otherwise."
"I"m going to have him," she stated, with energy.
"You go round and tell Dorothea she"s got to bring him--she"s just got to, that"s all. He"ll come--I know he will. There are forces at work here that you and I don"t see, and if something doesn"t happen, my name isn"t Clara Wappinger."