During the summer that followed these events Derek Pruyn set himself the task of stamping the memory and influence of Diane Eveleth out of his life. His sense of duty combined with his feelings of self-respect in making the attempt. In reflecting on his last interview with her, he saw the weakness of the stand he had taken in it, recoiling from so unworthy a position with natural reaction. To have been in love at all at his age struck him as humiliation enough; but to have been in love with that sort of woman came very near mental malady. He said "that sort of woman," because the vagueness of the term gave scope to the bitterness of resentment with which he tried to overwhelm her. It enabled him to create some such paradise of pain as that into which the souls of Othello and Desdemona might have gone together. Had he been a Moor of Venice he would doubtless have smothered her with a pillow; but being a New York banker he could only try to slay the image, whose eyes and voice had never haunted him so persistently as now. In his rage of suffering he was as little able to take a reasoned view of the situation as the maddened bull in the arena to appraise the skill of his tormentors.
When in the middle of May he had retired to Rhinefields it was with the intention of laying waste all that Diane had left behind in the course of her brief passage through his life. The process being easier in the exterior phases of existence than in those more secret and remote, he determined to work from the outside inward. Wherever anything reminded him of her, he erased, destroyed, or removed it. All that she had changed within the house he put back into the state in which it was before she came. Where he had followed her suggestions about the grounds and gardens he reversed the orders. Taken as outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual change he was trying to create within himself, these childish acts gave him a passionate satisfaction. In a short time, he boasted to himself, he would have obliterated all trace of her presence.
And so he came, in time, to giving his attention to Dorothea. She, too, bore the impress of Diane; and as she bore it more markedly than the inanimate things around, it caused him the greater pain. He could forbid her to hold intercourse with Diane, and to speak of her; but he could not control the blending of French and Irish intonations her voice had caught, or the gestures into which she slipped through youth's mimetic instinct. In happier days he had been amused to note the degree to which Dorothea had become the unconscious copy of Diane; but now this constant reproduction of her ways was torture. Telling himself that it was not the child's fault, he bore it at first with what self-restraint he could; but as solitude encouraged brooding thoughts, he found, as the summer wore on, that his stock of patience was running low. There were times when some chance sentence or imitated bit of mannerism on Dorothea's part almost drew from him that which in tragedy would be a cry, but which in our smaller life becomes the hasty or exasperated word.
In these circumstances the explosion was bound to come; and one day it produced itself unexpectedly, and about nothing. Thinking of it afterward Derek was unable to say why it should have taken place then more than at any other time. He was standing on the lawn, noting with savage complacency that the bit by which he had enlarged it, at Diane's prompting, had grown up again, in luxuriant grass, when Dorothea descended the steps of the Georgian brick house, behind him.
"Would you be afther wantin' me to-day?" she called out, using the Irish expression Diane affected in moments of fun.
"Dorothea," he cried, sharply, wheeling round on her, "drop that idiotic way of speaking. If you think it's amusing, you're mistaken. You can't even do it properly."
The words were no sooner out than he regretted them, but it was too late to take them back. Moreover, when a man, nervously suffering, has once wounded the feelings of one he loves, it is not infrequently his instinct to go on and wound them again.
"We have enough of that sort of language from the servants and the stable-boys. Be good enough in future to use your mother-tongue."
Standing where his words had stopped her, a few yards away, she looked up at him with the clear gaze of astonishment; but the slight shrug of the shoulders before she spoke was also a trick caught from Diane, and not calculated to allay his annoyance.
"Very well, father," she answered, with a quietness indicating judgment held in reserve, "I won't do it again. I only meant to ask you if you want me for anything in particular to-day; otherwise I shall go over and lunch at the Thoroughgoods'."
"The Thoroughgoods' again? Can't you get through a day without going there?"
"I suppose I could if it was necessary; but it isn't."
"I think it is. You'll do well not to wear out your welcome anywhere."
"I'm not afraid of that."
"Then I am; so you'd better stay at home."
He wheeled from her as sharply as he had turned to confront her, striding off toward a wild border, where he tried to conceal the extent to which he was ashamed of his ill temper by pretending to be engrossed in the efforts of a bee to work its way into a blue cowl of monk's-hood. When he looked around again she was still standing where he had left her, her eyes clouded by an expression of wondering pain that smote him to the heart.
Had he possessed sufficient mastery of himself he would have gone back and begged her pardon, and sent her away to enjoy herself. It was what he wanted to do; but the tension of his nerves seemed to get relief from the innocent thing's suffering. The very fact that her pretty little face was set with his own obstinacy of self-will, while behind it her spirit was rising against this capricious tyranny, goaded him into persistence. He remembered how often Diane had told him that Dorothea could be neither led nor driven; she could only be "managed"; but he would show Diane, he would show himself, that she could be both driven and led, and that "management" should go the way of the wall-fruit and the roses.
As, recrossing the lawn, he made as though he would pass her without further words, he was an excellent illustration of the degree to which the adult man of the world, capable of taking an important part among his fellow-men, can be, at times, nothing but an overgrown infant. It was not surprising, however, that Dorothea should not see this aspect of his personality, or look upon his commands as other than those of an unreasonable despotism.
"Father," she said, "I can't go on living like this."
"Living like what?"
"Living as we've lived all this summer."
"What's the matter with the summer? It's like any other summer, isn't it?"
"The summer may be like any other summer; but you're not like yourself. I do everything I can to please you, but--"
"You needn't do anything to please me but what you're told."
"I always do what I'm told--when you tell me; but you only tell me by fits and starts."
"Then, I tell you now: you're not to go to the Thoroughgoods'."
"But they expect me. I said I'd go to lunch. They'll think it very strange if I don't."
"They'll think what they please. It's enough for you to know what I think."
"But that's just what I don't know. Ever since Diane went away--"
"Stop that! I've forbidden you to speak--"
"But you can't forbid me to think; and I think till I'm utterly bewildered. You don't explain anything to me. You haven't even told me why she went away. If I ask a question you won't answer it."
"What's necessary for you to know, you can depend on me to tell you. Anything I don't explain to you, you may dismiss from your mind."
"But that's not reasonable, father; it's not possible. If you want me to obey you, I must know what I'm doing. Because I don't know what I'm doing, I haven't--"
"You haven't obeyed me?" he asked, quickly.
"Not entirely. I've meant to tell you when an occasion offered, so I might as well do it now. I've written to Diane."
"You've--!"
He strode up to her and caught her by the arm. It was not strange that she should take the curious light in his face for that of anger; but a more experienced observer would have seen that two distinct emotions crowded on each other.
"I've written to her twice," Dorothea repeated, defiantly, as he held her arm. "She didn't reply to me--but I wrote."
"What for?"
"To tell her that I loved her--that no trouble should keep me from loving her--no matter what it was."
He released her arm, stepping back from her again, surveying her with an admiration he tried to conceal under a scowling brow. The rigidity of her attitude, the lift of her head, the set of her lips, the directness of her glance, suggested not merely rebellion against his will, but the assertion of her own. It occurred to him then that he could break her little body to pieces before he could force her to yield; and in his pride in this temperament, so like his own, he almost uttered the cry of "Brava!" that hung on his lips. He might have done so if Dorothea had not found it a convenient moment at which to make all her confessions at once and have them off her mind. It was best to do it, she thought, now that her courage was up.
"And, father," she went on, "it may be a good opportunity to tell you something else. I've decided to marry Mr. Wappinger."
During the brief silence that followed this announcement he had time to throw the blame for it upon Diane, using the fact as one more argument against her. Had she taken his suggestions at the beginning, and suppressed the Wappinger acquaintance, this distressing folly would have received a definite check: As it was, the odium of putting a stop to it, which must now fall on him, was but an additional part of the penalty he had to pay for ever having known her. So be it! He would make good the uttermost farthing! In doing it he had the same sort of frenzied satisfaction as in defacing Diane's image in his heart.
"You shall not," he said, at last.
"I don't understand how you're going to stop me."
"I must ask you to be patient--and see. You can make a beginning to-day, by staying at home from the Thoroughgoods'. That will be enough for the minute."
Fearing to look any longer into her indignant eyes, he passed on toward the stables. For some minutes she stood still where he left her, while the collie gazed up at her, with twitching tail and questioning regard, as though to ask the meaning of this futile hesitation; but when, at last, she turned slowly and re-entered the house, one would have said that the "dainty rogue in porcelain" had been transformed into an intensely modern little creature made of steel.
She did not go to the Thoroughgoods' that day, nor was any further reference made to the discussion of the morning. Compunction having succeeded irritation, with the rapidity not uncommon to men of his character, Derek was already seeking some way of reaching his end by gentler means, when a new move on Dorothea's part exasperated him still further. As he was about to sit down to his luncheon on the following day, the butler made the announcement that Miss Pruyn had asked him to inform her father that she had driven over in the pony-cart to Mrs. Throughgood's, and would not be home till late in the afternoon.
He was not in the house when she returned, and at dinner he refrained from conversation till the servants had left the room.
"So it's--war," he said, then, speaking in a casual tone, and toying with his wine-glass.
"I hope not, father," she answered, promptly, making no pretence not to understand him. "It takes two to make a quarrel, and--"
"And you wouldn't be one?"
"I was going to say that I hoped you wouldn't be."
"But you yourself would fight?"
"I should have to. I'm fighting for liberty, which is always an honorable motive. You're fighting to take it away from me--"
"Which is a dishonorable motive. Very well; I must accept that imputation as best I may, and still go on."
"Oh, then, it is war. You mean to make it so."
"I mean to do my duty. You may call your rebellion against it what you like."
"I'm not accustomed to rebel," she said, with significant quietness. "Only people who feel themselves weak do that."
"And are you so strong?"
"I'm very strong. I don't want to measure my strength against yours, father; but if you insist on measuring yours against mine, I ought to warn you."
"Thank you. It's in the light of a warning that I view your action to-day. You probably went to meet Mr. Wappinger."
In saying this his bow was drawn so entirely at a venture that he was astonished at the skill with which he hit the mark.
"I did."
He pushed back his chair; half rose; sat down again; poured out a glass of Marsala; drank it thirstily; and looked at her a second or two in helpless distress before finding words.
"And you talk of honorable motives!"
"My motive was entirely honorable. I went to explain to him that I couldn't see him any more--just now."
"While you were about it you might as well have said neither just now--nor at any other time."
She was silent.
"Do you hear?"
"Yes; I bear, father."
"And you understand?"
"I understand what you mean."
"And you promise me that it shall be so?"
"No, father."
"You say that deliberately? Remember, I'm asking you an important question, and you're giving me an equally important reply."
"I recognize that; but I can't give you any other answer."
"We'll see." He pushed back his chair again, and rose. He had already crossed the room, when, a new thought occurring to him, he turned at the door. "At least I presume I may count on you not to see this young man again without telling me?"
"Not without telling you--afterward. I couldn't undertake more than that."
"H'm!" he ejaculated, before passing out. "Then I must take active measures."
It was easier, however, to talk about active measures than to devise them. While Dorothea was sobbing, with her elbows on the dining-room table, and her face buried in her hands, he was pacing his room in search of desperate remedies. It was a case in which his mind turned instinctively to Diane for help; but in the very act of doing so he was confronted by her theories as to Dorothea's need of diplomatic guidance. For that, he told himself, the time was past. The event had proved how impotent mere "management" was to control her, and justified his own preference for force.
Before she went to bed that night Dorothea was summoned to her father's presence, to receive the commands which should regulate her conduct toward "the young man Wappinger." They could have been summed up in the statement that she must know him no more. She was not only never to see him, or write to him, or communicate with him, by direct or indirect means; as far as he could command it, she was not to think of him, or remember his name. His measures grew more drastic in proportion as he gave them utterance, until he himself become aware that they would be difficult to fulfil.
"I will not attempt to extract a promise from you," he was prudent enough to say, in conclusion, "that you will carry out my wishes, because I know you would never bring on me the unhappiness that would spring from disobedience."
"It's hardly fair, father, to say that," she replied, firmly. "In war, no one should shrink from--the misfortunes of war."
"That means, then, that you defy me?"
She was calmer than he as she made her reply.
"It doesn't mean that I defy you. I love you too much to put either you or myself in such an odious position as that. But it does mean that one day, sooner or later, I shall marry--Mr. Wappinger."
He looked at her with a bitter smile.
"I admire your frankness, Dorothea," he said, after a brief pause, "and I shall do my best to imitate it. If it's to be war, we shall at least fight in the open. I know what you intend to do, and you know that I mean to circumvent you. The position on both sides being so pleasantly clear, you may come and kiss me good-night."
During the process of the stiff little embrace that followed it was as difficult for her not to fling herself sobbing on his breast as for him not to seize her in his arms; but each maintained the restraint inspired by the justice of their respective causes. When she had closed the door behind her, he stood for a long time, musing. That his thoughts were not altogether tragic became manifest as his brow cleared, and the ghost of a smile, this time without bitterness, hovered about his lips. Suddenly he slapped his leg, like a man who has made a discovery.
"By Gad!" he whispered, half aloud, "when all is said and done, she knows how to play the game!"