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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Street Called Straight, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Street Called Straight
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Release Date: December 20, 2004 [EBook #14394]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Karina Aleksandrova and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT
+
+A NOVEL
+
+BY
+
+BASIL KING
+
+AUTHOR OF
+THE INNER SHRINE, THE WILD OLIVE, ETC.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+ORSON LOWELL
+
+NEW YORK
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+PUBLISHERS
+
+Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
+
+1911, 1912.
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+PUBLISHED MAY, 1912
+
+     "_By the Street Called Straight we come to the House called
+     Beautiful_"
+
+     --New England Saying
+
+
+
+
+THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+As a matter of fact, Davenant was under no illusions concerning the
+quality of the welcome his hostess was according him, though he found a
+certain pleasure in being once more in her company. It was not a keen
+pleasure, but neither was it an embarrassing one; it was exactly what he
+supposed it would be in case they ever met again--a blending on his part
+of curiosity, admiration, and reminiscent suffering out of which time
+and experience had taken the sting. He retained the memory of a minute
+of intense astonishment once upon a time, followed by some weeks, some
+months perhaps, of angry humiliation; but the years between twenty-four
+and thirty-three are long and varied, generating in healthy natures
+plenty of saving common sense. Work, travel, and a widened knowledge of
+men and manners had so ripened Davenant's mind that he was able to see
+his proposal now as Miss Guion must have seen it then, as something so
+incongruous and absurd as not only to need no consideration, but to call
+for no reply. Nevertheless, it was the refusal on her part of a reply,
+of the mere laconic No which was all that, in his heart of hearts, he
+had ever expected, that rankled in him longest; but even that
+mortification had passed, as far as he knew, into the limbo of extinct
+regrets. For her present superb air of having no recollection of his
+blunder he had nothing but commendation. It was as becoming to the
+spirited grace of its wearer as a royal mantle to a queen. Carrying it
+as she did, with an easy, preoccupied affability that enabled her to
+look round him and over him and through him, to greet him and converse
+with him, without seeming positively to take in the fact of his
+existence, he was permitted to suppose the incident of their previous
+acquaintance, once so vital to himself, to have been forgotten. If this
+were so, it would be nothing very strange, since a woman of
+twenty-seven, who has had much social experience, may be permitted to
+lose sight of the more negligible of the conquests she has made as a
+girl of eighteen. She had asked him to dinner, and placed him honorably
+at her right; but words could not have made it plainer than it was that
+he was but an accident to the occasion.
+
+He was there, in short, because he was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Temple.
+After a two years' absence from New England he had arrived in Waverton
+that day, "Oh, bother! bring him along," had been the formula in which
+Miss Guion had conveyed his invitation, the dinner being but an
+informal, neighborly affair. Two or three wedding gifts having arrived
+from various quarters of the world, it was natural that Miss Guion
+should want to show them confidentially to her dear friend and distant
+relative, Drusilla Fane. Mrs. Fane had every right to this privileged
+inspection, since she had not only timed her yearly visit to her
+parents, Mr. and Mrs. Temple, so that it should synchronize with the
+wedding, but had introduced Olivia to Colonel Ashley, in the first
+place. Indeed, there had been a rumor at Southsea, right up to the time
+of Miss Guion's visit to the pretty little house on the Marine Parade,
+that the colonel's calls and attentions there had been not unconnected
+with Mrs. Fane herself; but rumor in British naval and military stations
+is notoriously overactive, especially in matters of the heart. Certain
+it is, however, that when the fashionable London papers announced that a
+marriage had been arranged, and would shortly take place, between
+Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Ashley, of the Sussex Rangers, and of Heneage
+Place, Belvoir, Leicestershire, and Olivia Margaret, only child of Henry
+Guion, Esquire, of Tory Hill, Waverton, near Boston, Massachusetts,
+U.S.A., no one offered warmer congratulations than the lady in whose
+house the interesting pair had met. There were people who ascribed this
+attitude to the fact that, being constitutionally "game," she refused to
+betray her disappointment. She had been "awfully game," they said, when
+poor Gerald Fane, also of the Sussex Rangers, was cut off with enteric
+at Peshawur. But the general opinion was to the effect that, not wanting
+Rupert Ashley (for some obscure, feminine reason) for herself, she had
+magnanimously bestowed him elsewhere. Around tea-tables, and at church
+parade, it was said "Americans do that," with some comment on the
+methods of the transfer.
+
+On every ground, then, Drusilla was entitled to this first look at the
+presents, some of which had come from Ashley's brother officers, who
+were consequently brother officers of the late Captain Fane; so that
+when she telephoned saying she was afraid that they, her parents and
+herself, couldn't come to dinner that evening, because a former ward of
+her father's--Olivia must remember Peter Davenant!--was arriving to stay
+with them for a week or two, Miss Guion had answered, "Oh, bother! bring
+him along," and the matter was arranged. It was doubtful, however, that
+she knew him in advance to be the Peter Davenant who nine years earlier
+had had the presumption to fall in love with her; it was still more
+doubtful, after she had actually shaken hands with him and called him by
+name, whether she paid him the tribute of any kind of recollection. The
+fact that she had seated him at her right, in the place that would
+naturally be accorded to Rodney Temple, the scholarly director of the
+Department of Ceramics in the Harvard Gallery of Fine Arts, made it look
+as if she considered Davenant a total stranger. In the few
+conventionally gracious words she addressed to him, her manner was that
+of the hostess who receives a good many people in the course of a year
+toward the chance guest she had never seen before and expects never to
+see again.
+
+"Twice round the world since you were last in Boston? How interesting!"
+Then, as if she had said enough for courtesy, she continued across the
+lights and flowers to Mrs. Fane: "Drusilla, did you know Colonel Ashley
+had declined that post at Gibraltar? I'm so glad. I should hate the
+Gib."
+
+"The Gib wouldn't hate you," Mrs. Fane assured her. "You'd have a
+heavenly time there. Rupert Ashley is deep in the graces of old
+Bannockburn, who's in command. He's not a bad old sort, old Ban isn't,
+though he's a bit of a martinet. Lady Ban is awful--a bounder in
+petticoats. She looks like that."
+
+Drusilla pulled down the corners of a large, mobile mouth, so as to
+simulate Lady Bannockburn's expression, in a way that drew a laugh from
+every one at the table but the host. Henry Guion remained serious, not
+from natural gravity, but from inattention. He was obviously not in a
+mood for joking, nor apparently for eating, since he had scarcely tasted
+his soup and was now only playing with the fish. As this corroborated
+what Mrs. Temple had more than once asserted to her husband during the
+past few weeks, that "Henry Guion had something on his mind," she
+endeavored to exchange a glance with him, but he was too frankly
+enjoying the exercise of his daughter's mimetic gift to be otherwise
+observant.
+
+"And what does Colonel Ashley look like, Drucie?" he asked, glancing
+slyly at Miss Guion.
+
+"Like that," Mrs. Fane said, instantly. Straightening the corners of
+her mouth and squaring her shoulders, she fixed her eyes into a stare of
+severity, and stroked horizontally an imaginary mustache, keeping the
+play up till her lips quivered.
+
+"It is like him," Miss Guion laughed.
+
+"Is he as stiff as all that?" the professor inquired.
+
+"Not stiff," Miss Guion explained, "only dignified."
+
+"Dignified!" Drusilla cried. "I should think so. He's just like Olivia
+herself. It's perfectly absurd that those two should marry. Apart,
+they're a pair of splendid specimens; united, they'll be too much of a
+good thing. They're both so well supplied with the same set of virtues
+that when they look at each other it'll be like seeing their own faces
+in a convex mirror. It'll be simply awful."
+
+Her voice had the luscious English intonation, in spite of its being
+pitched a little too high. In speaking she displayed the superior,
+initiated manner apt to belong to women who bring the flavor of England
+into colonial and Indian garrison towns--a manner Drusilla had acquired
+notably well, considering that not ten years previous her life had been
+bounded by American college class-days. Something of this latter fact
+persisted, notwithstanding her English articulation and style of doing
+her hair. Her marriage had been the accident of a winter spent with her
+mother in Bermuda, at a time when the Sussex Rangers were stationed
+there. Her engagement to Captain Gerald Fane--son of the Very Reverend
+the Dean of Silchester--was the result of a series of dances given
+chiefly in the Hamilton hotels. Marriage brought the girl born and bred
+in a New England college town into a kind of life for which she had had
+no preparation; but she adapted herself as readily as she would have
+done had she married a Russian prince or a Spanish grandee. In the
+effort she made there was a mingling of the matter-of-fact and the _tour
+de force_. Regimental life is not unlike that of a large family; it has
+the same sort of claims, intimacies, and quarrels, the same sort of
+jealousies within, combined with solidarity against the outsider.
+Perceiving this quickly, Drusilla proceeded to disarm criticism by being
+impeccable in dress and negatively amiable in conduct. "With my
+temperament," she said to herself, "I can afford to wait." Following her
+husband to Barbados, the Cape, and India, she had just succeeded in
+passing all the tests of the troop-ship and the married quarters when he
+died. For a while her parents hoped she would make her widowed home in
+Boston; but her heart had been given irrevocably to the British army--to
+its distinguished correctness, to its sober glories, its world-wide
+roving, and its picturesque personal associations. Though she had seen
+little of England, except for occasional visits on leave, she had become
+English in tastes and at heart. For a year after Gerald's death she
+lived with his family at Silchester, in preference to going to her own.
+After that she settled in the small house at Southsea, where from time
+to time she had her girlhood's companion, Olivia Guion, as a guest.
+
+"Perhaps that'll do us good," Miss Guion ventured, in reply to
+Drusilla's observations at her expense. "To see ourselves as others see
+us must be much like looking at one's face in a spoon."
+
+"That doesn't do us any good," Rodney Temple corrected, "because we
+always blame the spoon."
+
+"Don't you mind them, dear," Mrs. Temple cooed. She was a little,
+apple-faced woman, with a figure suggestive of a tea-cozy, and a voice
+with a gurgle in it, like a dove's. A nervous, convulsive moment of her
+pursed-up little mouth made that organ an uncertain element in her
+physiognomy, shifting as it did from one side of her face to the other
+with the rapidity of an aurora borealis. "Don't mind them, dear. A woman
+can never do more than reflect 'broken lights' of her husband, when she
+has a good one. Don't you love that expression?--'broken lights'? 'We
+are but broken lights of Thee!' Dear Tennyson! And no word yet from
+Madame de Melcourt."
+
+"I don't expect any now," Olivia explained. "If Aunt Vic had meant to
+write she would have done it long ago. I'm afraid I've offended her past
+forgiveness."
+
+She held her head slightly to one side, smiling with an air of mock
+penitence.
+
+"Dear, dear!" Mrs. Temple murmured, sympathetically. "Just because you
+wouldn't marry a Frenchman!"
+
+"And a little because I'm _going_ to marry an Englishman. To Aunt Vic
+all Englishmen are grocers."
+
+"Horrid old thing!" Drusilla said, indignantly.
+
+"It's because she doesn't know them, of course," Olivia went on. "It's
+one of the things I never can understand--how people can generalize
+about a whole nation because they happen to dislike one or two
+individuals. As a matter of fact, Aunt Vic has become so absorbed in her
+little circle of old French royalist noblesse that she can't see
+anything to admire outside the rue de l'Université and château life in
+Normandy. She does admit that there's an element of homespun virtue in
+the old families of Boston and Waverton; but that's only because she
+belongs to them herself."
+
+"The capacity of the American woman for being domesticated in an alien
+environment," observed Rodney Temple, "is only equaled by the dog's."
+
+"We're nomadic, father," Drusilla asserted, "and migratory. We've always
+been so. It's because we're Saxons and Angles and Celts and Normans,
+and--"
+
+"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we," Mrs. Temple quoted, gently.
+
+"They've always been fidgeting about the world, from one country to
+another," Drusilla continued, "and we've inherited the taste. If we
+hadn't, our ancestors would never have crossed the Atlantic, in the
+first place. And now that we've got here, and can't go any farther in
+this direction, we're on the jump to get back again. That's all there is
+to it. It's just in the blood. Isn't it, Peter? Isn't it, Cousin Henry?"
+
+Drusilla had a way of appealing to whatever men were present, as though
+her statements lacked something till they had received masculine
+corroboration.
+
+"All the same, I wish you could have managed the thing without giving
+offence to Aunt Vic."
+
+The words were Henry Guion's first since sitting down to table.
+
+"I couldn't help it, papa. I didn't _give_ Aunt Vic offence; she took
+it."
+
+"She's always been so fond of you--"
+
+"I'm fond of _her_. She's an old darling. And yet I couldn't let her
+marry me off to a Frenchman, in the French way, when I'd made up my mind
+to--to do something else. Could I, Cousin Cherry?"
+
+Mrs. Temple plumed herself, pleased at being appealed to. "I don't see
+how you could, dear. But I suppose your dear aunt--great-aunt, that
+is--has become so foreign that she's forgotten our simple ways. So long
+as you follow your heart, dear--"
+
+"I've done that, Cousin Cherry."
+
+The tone drew Davenant's eyes to her again, not in scrutiny, but for the
+pleasure it gave him to see her delicate features suffused with a glow
+of unexpected softness. It was unexpected, because her bearing had
+always conveyed to him, even in the days when he was in love with her,
+an impression of very refined, very subtle haughtiness. It seemed to
+make her say, like Marie Antoinette to Madame Vigée-Lebrun: "They would
+call me arrogant if I were not a queen." The assumption of privilege and
+prerogative might be only the inborn consciousness of distinction, but
+he fancied it might be more effective for being tempered. Not that it
+was overdone. It was not done at all. If the inner impulse working
+outward poised a neat, classic head too loftily, or shot from gray eyes,
+limpid and lovely in themselves, a regard that was occasionally too
+imperious, Olivia Guion was probably unaware of these effects. With
+beauty by inheritance, refinement by association, and taste and "finish"
+by instinct, it was possible for her to engage with life relatively free
+from the cumbrous impedimenta of self-consciousness. It was because
+Davenant was able to allow for this that his judgment on her pride of
+manner, exquisite though it was, had never been more severe; none the
+less, it threw a new light on his otherwise slight knowledge of her
+character to note the faint blush, the touch of gentleness, with which
+she hinted her love for her future husband. He had scarcely believed her
+capable of this kind of condescension.
+
+He called it condescension because he saw, or thought he saw, in her
+approaching marriage, not so much the capture of her heart as the
+fulfilment of her ambitions. He admitted that, in her case, there was a
+degree to which the latter would imply the former, since she was the
+sort of woman who would give her love in the direction in which her
+nature found its fitting outlet. He judged something from what Drusilla
+Fane had said, as they were driving toward Tory Hill that evening.
+
+"Olivia simply _must_ marry a man who'll give her something to do
+besides sitting round and looking handsome. With Rupert Ashley she'll
+have the duties of a public, or semi-public, position. He'll keep her
+busy, if it's only opening bazars and presenting prizes at Bisley. The
+American men who've tried to marry her have wanted to be her servants,
+when all the while she's been waiting for a master."
+
+Davenant understood that, now that it was pointed out to him, though the
+thought would not have come to him spontaneously. She was the strong
+woman who would yield only to a stronger man. Colonel Ashley might not
+be stronger than she in intellect or character, but he had done some
+large things on a large field, and was counted an active force in a
+country of forceful activities. There might be a question as to whether
+he would prove to be her master, but he would certainly never think of
+being her slave.
+
+"What are _you_ going to do, Henry, when the gallant stranger carries
+off Olivia, a fortnight hence?"
+
+Though she asked the question with the good intention of drawing her
+host into the conversation, Mrs. Temple made it a point to notice the
+effort with which he rallied himself to meet her words.
+
+"What am I going to do?" he repeated, absently. "Oh, my future will
+depend very much on--Hobson's choice."
+
+"That's true," Miss Guion agreed, hurriedly, as though to emphasize a
+point. "It's all the choice I've left to him. I've arranged everything
+for papa--beautifully. He's to take in a partner perhaps two partners.
+You know," she continued in explanation to Mrs. Fane--"you know that poor
+papa has been the whole of Guion, Maxwell & Guion since Mr. Maxwell
+died. Well, then, he's to take in a partner or two, and gradually shift
+his business into their hands. That wouldn't take more than a couple of
+years at longest. Then he's going to retire, and come to live near me in
+England. Rupert says there's a small place close to Heneage that would
+just suit him. Papa has always liked the English hunting country, and
+so--"
+
+"And so everything will be for the best," Rodney Temple finished.
+"There's nothing like a fresh young mind, like a young lady's, for
+settling business affairs. It would have taken you or me a long time to
+work that plan out, wouldn't it, Henry? We should be worried over the
+effect on our trusteeships and the big estates we've had the care of--"
+
+"What about the big estates?"
+
+Davenant noticed the tone in which Guion brought out this question,
+though it was an hour later before he understood its significance. It
+was a sharp tone, the tone of a man who catches an irritating word or
+two among remarks he has scarcely followed. Temple apparently had meant
+to call it forth, since he answered, with the slightest possible air of
+intention:
+
+"Oh, nothing--except what I hear."
+
+While Miss Guion and Mrs. Fane chatted of their own affairs Davenant
+remarked the way in which Henry Guion paused, his knife and fork fixed
+in the chicken wing on his plate, and gazed at his old friend. He bent
+slightly forward, too, looking, with his superb head and bust slightly
+French in style, very handsome and imposing.
+
+"Then you've been--hearing--things?"
+
+Rodney Temple lowered his eyes in a way that confirmed Davenant--who
+knew his former guardian's tricks of manner--in his suppositions. He
+was so open in countenance that anything momentarily veiled on his part,
+either in speech or in address, could reasonably be attributed to stress
+of circumstances. The broad forehead, straight-forward eyes, and large
+mouth imperfectly hidden by a shaggy beard and mustache, were of the
+kind that lend themselves to lucidity and candor. Externally he was the
+scholar, as distinct from the professional man or the "divine." His
+figure--tall, large-boned, and loose-jointed--had the slight stoop
+traditionally associated with study, while the profile was thrust
+forward as though he were peering at something just out of sight. A
+courtly touch in his style was probably a matter of inheritance, as was
+also his capacity for looking suitably attired while obviously
+neglectful of appearances. His thick, lank, sandy hair, fading to white,
+and long, narrow, stringy beard of the same transitional hue were not
+well cared for; and yet they helped to give him a little of the air of a
+Titian or Velasquez nobleman. In answer to Guion now, he spoke without
+lifting his eyes from his plate.
+
+"Have I been hearing things? N-no; only that the care of big estates is
+a matter of great responsibility--and anxiety."
+
+"That's what I tell papa," Miss Guion said, warmly, catching the
+concluding words. "It's a great responsibility and anxiety. He ought to
+be free from it. I tell him my marriage is a providential hint to him to
+give up work."
+
+"Perhaps I sha'n't get the chance. Work may give up--me."
+
+"I wish it would, papa. Then everything would be settled."
+
+"Some things would be settled. Others might be opened--for discussion."
+
+If Rodney Temple had not lifted his eyes in another significant look
+toward Guion, Davenant would have let these sentences pass unheeded. As
+it was, his attention was directed to possible things, or impossible
+things, left unsaid. For a second or two he was aware of an odd
+suspicion, but he brushed it away as absurd, in view of the
+self-assurance with which Guion roused himself at last to enter into the
+conversation, which began immediately to turn on persons of whom
+Davenant had no knowledge.
+
+The inability to follow closely gave him time to make a few superficial
+observations regarding his host. In spite of the fact that Guion had
+been a familiar figure to him ever since his boyhood, he now saw him at
+really close range for the first time in years.
+
+What struck him most was the degree to which Guion conserved his quality
+of Adonis. Long ago renowned, in that section of American society that
+clings to the cities and seaboard between Maine and Maryland, as a fine
+specimen of manhood, he was perhaps handsomer now, with his noble,
+regular features, his well-trimmed, iron-gray beard, and his splendid
+head of iron-gray hair, than he had been in his youth. Reckoning
+roughly, Davenant judged him to be sixty. He had been a personage
+prominently in view in the group of cities formed by Boston, Cambridge,
+and Waverton, ever since Davenant could remember him. Nature having
+created Guion an ornament to his kind, fate had been equally beneficent
+in ordaining that he should have nothing to do, on leaving the
+university, but walk into the excellent legal practice his grandfather
+had founded, and his father had brought to a high degree of honor as
+well as to a reasonable pitch of prosperity. It was, from the younger
+Guion's point of view, an agreeable practice, concerned chiefly with the
+care of trust funds, in which a gentleman could engage without any
+rough-and-tumble loss of gentility. It required little or nothing in the
+way of pleadings in the courts or disputing in the market-place,
+and--especially during the lifetime of the elder partners--left him
+leisure for cultivating that graceful relationship to life for which he
+possessed aptitudes. It was a high form of gracefulness, making it a
+matter of course that he should figure on the Boards of Galleries of
+Fine Arts and Colleges of Music, and other institutions meant to
+minister to his country's good through the elevation of its taste.
+
+"It's the sort of thing he was cut out for," Davenant commented to
+himself, as his eye traveled from the high-bred face, where refinement
+blended with authority, to the essentially gentlemanly figure, on which
+the delicately tied cravat sat with the elegance of an orchid, while the
+white waistcoat, of the latest and most youthful cut, was as neatly
+adjusted to the person as the calyx to a bud. The mere sight of so much
+ease and distinction made Davenant himself feel like a rustic in his
+Sunday clothes, though he seized the opportunity of being in such
+company to enlarge his perception of the fine points of bearing. It was
+an improving experience of a kind which he only occasionally got.
+
+He had an equal sense of the educational value of the conversation, to
+which, as it skipped from country to country and from one important name
+to another, it was a privilege to be a listener. His own career--except
+for his two excursions round the world, conscientiously undertaken in
+pursuit of knowledge--had been so somberly financial that he was
+frankly, and somewhat naïvely, curious concerning the people who "did
+things" bearing little or no relation to business, and who permitted
+themselves sensations merely for the sake of having them. Olivia Guion's
+friends, and Drusilla Fane's--admirals, generals, colonels, ambassadors,
+and secretaries of embassy they apparently were, for the most part--had
+what seemed to him an unwonted freedom of dramatic action. Merely to
+hear them talked about gave him glimpses of a world varied and
+picturesque, from the human point of view, beyond his dreams. In the
+exchange of scraps of gossip and latest London anecdotes between Miss
+Guion and Drusilla Fane, on which Henry Guion commented, Davenant felt
+himself to be looking at a vivid but fitfully working cinematograph, of
+which the scenes were snatched at random from life as lived anywhere
+between Washington and Simla, or Inverness and Rome. The effect was both
+instructive and entertaining. It was also in its way enlightening, since
+it showed him the true standing in the world of this woman whom he had
+once, for a few wild minutes, hoped to make his wife.
+
+The dinner was half over before he began clearly to detach Miss Guion
+from that environment which he would have called "the best Boston
+society." Placing her there, he would have said before this evening that
+he placed her as high as the reasonable human being could aspire to be
+set. For any one whose roots were in Waverton, "the best Boston society"
+would in general be taken as the state of blossoming. It came to him as
+a discovery, made there and then, that Olivia Guion had seized this
+elect state with one of her earliest tendrils, and, climbing on by way
+of New York and Washington, had chosen to do her actual flowering in a
+cosmopolitan air.
+
+He had none of the resentment the home-bred American business man
+habitually feels for this kind of eccentricity. Now that he had caught
+the idea, he could see at a glance, as his mind changed his metaphor,
+how admirably she was suited to the tapestried European setting. He was
+conscious even of something akin to pride in the triumphs she was
+capable of achieving on that richly decorated world-stage, much as
+though she were some compatriot prima-donna. He could see already how
+well, as the wife of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Ashley, she would fill
+the part. It had been written for her. Its strong points and its
+subtleties were alike of the sort wherein she would shine.
+
+This perception of his own inward applause explained something in regard
+to himself about which he had been wondering ever since the beginning
+of dinner--the absence of any pang, of any shade of envy, to see another
+man win where he had been so ignominiously defeated. He saw now that it
+was a field on which he never _could_ have won. Within "the best Boston
+society" he might have had a chance, though even there it must have been
+a poor one; but out here in the open, so to speak, where the prowess and
+chivalry of Christendom furnished his competitors, he had been as little
+in the running as a mortal at a contest of the gods. That he was no
+longer in love with her he had known years ago; but it palliated
+somewhat his old humiliation, it made the word failure easier to swallow
+down, to perceive that his love, when it existed, had been doomed, from
+the nature of things and in advance, to end in nothing, like that of the
+nightingale for the moon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By dwelling too pensively on these thoughts he found he had missed some
+of the turns of the talk, his attention awakening to hear Henry Guion
+say:
+
+"That's all very fine, but a man doesn't risk everything he holds dear
+in the world to go cheating at cards just for the fun of it. You may
+depend upon it he had a reason."
+
+"Oh, he had a reason," Mrs. Fane agreed--"the reason of being hard up.
+The trouble lay in its not being good enough."
+
+"I imagine it was good enough for him, poor devil."
+
+"But not for any one else. He was drummed out. There wasn't a soul in
+the regiment to speak to him. We heard that he took another name and
+went abroad. Anyhow, he disappeared. It was all he could do. He was
+lucky to get off with that; wasn't he, Peter? wasn't he, father?"
+
+"What he got off with," said Guion, "was a quality of tragic interest
+which never pertains to the people who stick to the Street called
+Straight."
+
+"Oh, certainly," Mrs. Fane assented, dryly. "He did acquire that. But
+I'm surprised to hear you commend it; aren't you, father? aren't you,
+Peter?"
+
+"I'm not commending it," Guion asserted; "I only feel its force. I've a
+great deal of sympathy with any poor beggar in his--downfall."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+The look with which Rodney Temple accompanied the question once more
+affected Davenant oddly. It probably made the same impression on Guion,
+since he replied with a calmness that seemed studied: "Since--lately.
+Why do you ask?"
+
+"Oh, for no reason. It only strikes me as curious that your sympathy
+should take that turn."
+
+"Precisely," Miss Guion chimed in. "It's not a bit like you, papa. You
+used to be harder on dishonorable things than any one."
+
+"Well, I'm not now."
+
+It was clear to Davenant by this time that in these words Guion was not
+so much making a statement as flinging a challenge. He made that evident
+by the way in which he sat upright, squared his shoulders, and rested a
+large, white fist clenched upon the table. His eyes, too, shone,
+glittered rather, with a light quite other than that which a host
+usually turns upon his guests. To Davenant, as to Mrs. Temple, it seemed
+as if he had "something on his mind"--something of which he had a
+persistent desire to talk covertly, in the way in which an undetected
+felon will risk discovery to talk about the crime.
+
+No one else apparently at the table shared this impression. Rodney
+Temple, with eyes pensively downcast, toyed with the seeds of a pear,
+while Miss Guion and Mrs. Fane began speaking of some other incident of
+what to them was above everything else, "the Service." A minute or two
+later Olivia rose.
+
+"Come, Cousin Cherry. Come, Drusilla," she said, with her easy,
+authoritative manner. Then, apparently with an attempt to make up for
+her neglect of Davenant, she said, as she held the door open for the
+ladies to pass: "Don't let them keep you here forever. We shall be
+terribly dull till you join us."
+
+He was not too dense to comprehend that the words were conventional, as
+the smile she flung him was perfunctory. Nevertheless, the little
+attention pleased him.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The three men being left together, Davenant's conviction of inner
+excitement on the part of his host was deepened. It was as if, on the
+withdrawal of the ladies, Guion had less intention of concealing it. Not
+that at first he said anything directly or acted otherwise than as a man
+with guests to entertain. It was only that he threw into the task of
+offering liqueurs and passing cigars a something febrile that caused his
+two companions to watch him quietly. Once or twice Davenant caught
+Temple's eye; but with a common impulse each hastily looked elsewhere.
+
+"So, Mr. Davenant, you've come back to us. Got here only this afternoon,
+didn't you? I wonder why you came. Having got out of a dull place like
+Waverton, why should you return to it?"
+
+Looking the more debonair because of the flush in his face and the gleam
+in his eye, Guion seated himself in the place his daughter had left
+vacant between his two guests. Both his movements and his manner of
+speech were marked by a quick jerkiness, which, however, was not without
+a certain masculine grace.
+
+"I don't know that I've any better reason," Davenant laughed, snipping
+off the end of his cigar, "than that which leads the ox to his
+stall--because he knows the way."
+
+"Good!" Guion laughed, rather loudly. Then, stopping abruptly, he
+continued, "I fancy you know your way pretty well in any direction you
+want to go, don't you?"
+
+"I can find it--if I know where I'm going. I came back to Boston chiefly
+because that was just what I didn't know."
+
+"He means," Rodney Temple explained, "that he'd got out of his beat; and
+so, like a wise man, he returns to his starting-point."
+
+"I'd got out of something more than my beat; I'd got out of my element.
+I found that the life of elegant leisure on which I'd embarked wasn't
+what I'd been cut out for."
+
+"That's interesting--very," Guion said. "How did you make the
+discovery?"
+
+"By being bored to death."
+
+"Bored?--with all your money?"
+
+"The money isn't much; but, even if it were, it couldn't go on buying me
+a good time."
+
+"That, of course, depends on what your idea of a good time may be;
+doesn't it, Rodney?"
+
+"It depends somewhat," Rodney replied, "on the purchasing power of
+money. There are things not to be had for cash."
+
+"I'm afraid my conception of a good time," Davenant smiled, "might be
+more feasible without the cash than with it. After all, money would be a
+doubtful blessing to a bee if it took away the task of going out to
+gather honey."
+
+"A bee," Guion observed, "isn't the product of a high and complex
+civilization--"
+
+"Neither am I," Davenant declared, with a big laugh. "I spring from the
+primitive stratum of people born to work, who expect to work, and who,
+when they don't work, have no particular object in living on."
+
+"And so you've come back to Boston to work?"
+
+"To work--or something."
+
+"You leave yourself, I see, the latitude of--something."
+
+"Only because it's better than nothing. It's been nothing for so long
+now that I'm willing to make it anything."
+
+"Make what--anything?"
+
+"My excuse for remaining on earth. If I'm to go on doing that, I've got
+to have something more to justify it than the mere ability to pay my
+hotel bill."
+
+"You're luckier than you know to be able to do that much," Guion said,
+with one of his abrupt, nervous changes of position. "But you've been
+uncommonly lucky, anyhow, haven't you? Made some money out of that mine
+business, didn't you? Or was it in sugar?"
+
+Davenant laughed. "A little," he admitted. "But, to any one like you,
+sir, it would seem a trifle."
+
+"To any one like me! Listen." He leaned forward, with feverish eyes, and
+spoke slowly, tapping on the table-cloth as he did so. "For half a
+million dollars I'd sell my soul."
+
+Davenant resisted the impulse to glance at Temple, who spoke promptly,
+while Guion swallowed thirstily a glass of cognac.
+
+"That's a good deal for a soul, Henry. It's a large amount of the sure
+and tangible for a very uncertain quantity of the impalpable and
+problematical."
+
+Davenant laughed at this more boisterously than the degree of humor
+warranted. He began definitely to feel that sense of discomfort which in
+the last half-hour he had been only afraid of. It was not the
+commonplace fact that Guion might be short of money that he dreaded; it
+was the possibility of getting a glimpse of another man's inner secret
+self. He had been in this position more than once before--when men
+wanted to tell him things he didn't want to know--when, whipped by
+conscience or crazed by misfortune or hysterical from drink, they tried
+to rend with their own hands the veil that only the lost or the
+desperate suffer to be torn. He had noted before that it was generally
+men like Guion of a high strung temperament, perhaps with a feminine
+streak in it, who reached this pass, and because of his own reserve--his
+rather cowardly reserve, he called it--he was always impelled to run
+away from them. As there was no possibility of running away now, he
+could only dodge, by pretending to misunderstand, what he feared Guion
+was trying to say.
+
+"So everything you undertook you pulled off successfully?" his host
+questioned, abruptly.
+
+"Not everything; some things. I lost money--often; but on the whole I
+made it."
+
+"Good! With me it was always the other way."
+
+The pause that followed was an uneasy one, otherwise Temple would not
+have seized on the first topic that came to hand to fill it up.
+
+"You'll miss Olivia when she's gone, Henry."
+
+"Y-yes; if she goes."
+
+The implied doubt startled Davenant, but Temple continued to smoke
+pensively. "I've thought," he said, after a puff or two at his cigar,
+"I've thought you seemed to be anticipating something in the way of
+a--hitch."
+
+Guion held his cigar with some deliberation over an ash-tray, knocking
+off the ash with his little finger as though it were a task demanding
+precision.
+
+"You'll know all about it to-morrow, perhaps--or in a few days at
+latest. It can't be kept quiet much longer. I got the impression at
+dinner that you'd heard something already."
+
+"Nothing but gossip, Henry."
+
+Guion smiled, but with a wince. "I've noticed," he said, "that there's a
+certain kind of gossip that rarely gets about unless there's some cause
+for it--on the principle of no smoke without fire. If you've heard
+anything, it's probably true."
+
+"I was afraid it might be. But in that case I wonder you allowed Olivia
+to go ahead."
+
+"I had to let fate take charge of that. When a man gets himself so
+entangled in a coil of barbed wire that he trips whichever way he turns,
+his only resource is to stand still. That's my case." He poured himself
+out another glass of cognac, and tasted it before continuing. "Olivia
+goes over to England, and gets herself engaged to a man I never heard
+of. Good! She fixes her wedding-day without consulting me and
+irrespective of my affairs. Good again! She's old enough to do it, and
+quite competent. Meanwhile I lose control of the machine, so to speak. I
+see myself racing on to something, and can't stop. I can only lie back
+and watch, to see what happens. I've got to leave that to fate, or God,
+or whatever it is that directs our affairs when we can no longer manage
+them ourselves." He took another sip of cognac, and pulled for a minute
+nervously at his cigar. "I thought at first that Olivia might be married
+and get, off before anything happened. Now, it looks to me as if there
+was going to be a smash. Rupert Ashley arrives in three or four days'
+time, and then--"
+
+"You don't think he'd want to back out, do you?"
+
+"I haven't the remotest idea. From Olivia's description he seems like a
+decent sort; and yet--"
+
+Davenant got to, his feet. "Shouldn't you like me to go back to the
+ladies? You want to talk to the professor--"
+
+"No, no," Guion said, easily, pushing Davenant into his seat again.
+"There's no reason why you shouldn't hear anything I have to say. The
+whole town will know it soon. You can't conceal a burning house; and
+Tory Hill is on fire. I may be spending my last night under its roof."
+
+"They'll not rush things like that," Temple said, tying to speak
+reassuringly.
+
+"They haven't rushed things as it is. I've come to the end of a very
+long tether. I only want you to know that by this time to-morrow night
+I may have taken Kipling's Strange Ride with Morrowby Jukes to the Land
+of the Living Dead. If I do, I sha'n't come back--accept bail, or that
+sort of thing. I can't imagine anything more ghastly than for a man to
+be hanging around among his old friends, waiting for a--for a"--he
+balked at the word--"for a trial," he said at last, "that can have only
+one ending. No! I'm ready to ride away when they call for me--but they
+won't find me pining for freedom."
+
+"Can't anything be done?"
+
+"Not for me, Rodney. If Rupert Ashley will only look after Olivia, I
+shan't mind what happens next. Men have been broken on the wheel before
+now. I think I can go through it as well as another. But if Ashley
+should fail us--and of course that's possible--well, you see why I feel
+as I do about her falling out with the old Marquise. Aunt Vic has always
+made much of her--and she's very well off--"
+
+"Is there nothing to be expected in that quarter for yourself?"
+
+Guion shook his head. "I couldn't ask her--not at the worst. In the
+natural course of things Olivia and I would be her heirs--that is, if
+she didn't do something else with her money--but she's still in the
+early seventies, and may easily go on for a long time yet. Any help
+there is very far in the future, so that--"
+
+"Ashley, I take it, is a man of some means?"
+
+"Of comfortable means--no more. He has an entailed property in the
+Midlands and his pay. As he has a mother and two sisters to pension
+off, Olivia begged to have no settlements made upon herself. He wanted
+to do it, after the English fashion, but I think she showed good feeling
+in declining it. Naturally, I approved of her doing it, knowing how many
+chances there were that I mightn't be able to--to play up--myself."
+
+After this conversation Davenant could not but marvel at the ease with
+which their host passed the cigars again and urged him personally to
+have another glass of Chartreuse. "Then suppose we join the ladies," he
+added, when further hospitality was declined.
+
+Guion took the time to fleck a few specks of cigar-ash from his
+shirt-bosom and waistcoat, thus allowing Rodney Temple to pass out
+first. When alone with Davenant he laid his hand upon the younger man's
+arm, detaining him.
+
+"It was hardly fair to ask you to dinner," he said, still forcing an
+unsteady smile, "and let you in for this. I thought at first of putting
+you off; but in the end I decided to let you come. To me it's been a
+sort of dress-rehearsal--a foretaste of what it'll be in public. The
+truth is, I'm a little jumpy. The rôle's so new to me that it means
+something to get an idea of how to play it on nerve. I recall you as a
+little chap," he added, in another tone, "when Tom Davenant and his wife
+first took you. Got you out of an orphanage, didn't they, or something
+like that? If I remember rightly, your name was Hall or Hale--"
+
+"It was Hallett--Peter Hallett."
+
+"Hallett, was it? Well, it will do no harm for a young Cæsar of finance
+like you to see what you may come to if you're not careful. Morituri te
+salutamus, as the gladiators used to say. Only I wish it was to be the
+arena and the sword instead of the court-room and the Ride with Morrowby
+Jukes."
+
+Davenant said nothing, not because he had nothing to say, but because
+his thoughts were incoherent. Perhaps what was most in the nature of a
+shock to him was the sight of a man whom he both admired for his
+personality and honored as a pillar of Boston life falling so tragically
+into ruin. While it was true that to his financially gifted mind any
+misuse of trust funds had the special heinousness that horse-lifting has
+to a rancher, yet as he stood with Guion's hand on his shoulder he knew
+that something in the depths of his being was stirred, and stirred
+violently, that had rarely been affected before. He had once, as a boy,
+saved a woman from drowning; he had once seen a man at an upper window
+of a burning house turn back into the fire while the bystanders
+restrained him, Davenant, from attempting an impossible rescue.
+Something of the same unreasoning impulse rose up within him now--the
+impulse to save--the kind of impulse that takes no account of the merit
+of the person in peril, seeing only the danger.
+
+But these promptings were dumb in him for the moment from lack of
+co-ordination. The two or three things he might have said seemed to
+strangle each other in the attempt to get right of way. In response to
+Guion's confidences he could only mumble something incoherent and pass
+on to the drawing-room door. It was a wide opening, hung with portieres,
+through which he could see Olivia Guion standing by the crackling wood
+fire, a foot on the low fender. One hand rested lightly on the
+mantelpiece, while the other drew back her skirt of shimmering black
+from the blaze. Drusilla Fane, at the piano, was strumming one of
+Chopin's more familiar nocturnes.
+
+He was still thinking of this glimpse when, a half-hour later, he said
+to Rodney Temple, as they walked homeward in the moonlight: "I haven't
+yet told you what I came back for."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"I thought--that is, I hoped--that if I did the way might open up for me
+to do what might be called--well, a little good."
+
+"What put that into your head?" was the old man's response to this
+stammering confession.
+
+"I suppose the thought occurred to me on general principles. I've always
+understood it was the right thing to attempt."
+
+"Oh, right. That's another matter. Doing right is as easy as drawing
+breath. It's a habit, like any other. To start out to do good is much
+like saying you'll add a cubit to your stature. But you can always do
+right. Do right, and the good'll take care of itself."
+
+Davenant reflected on this in silence as they tramped onward. By this
+time they had descended Tory Hill, and were on the dike that outlines
+the shores of the Charles.
+
+By a common impulse both Temple and Davenant kept silent concerning
+Guion. On leaving Tory Hill they had elected to walk homeward, the
+ladies taking the carriage. The radiant moonlight and the clear, crisp
+October air helped to restore Davenant's faculties to a normal waking
+condition after the nightmare of Guion's hints. Fitting what he supposed
+must be the facts into the perspective of common life, to which the
+wide, out-of-door prospect offered some analogy, they were, if not less
+appalling, at least less overwhelming. Without seeing what was to be
+done much more clearly than he had seen an hour ago, he had a freer
+consciousness of power--something like the matter-of-course assumption
+that any given situation could be met with which he ordinarily faced the
+world. That he lacked authority in the case was a thought that did not
+occur to him--no more than it occurred to him on the day when he rescued
+the woman from drowning, or on the night when he had dashed into the
+fire to save a man.
+
+It was not till they had descended the straggling, tree-shaded
+street--along which the infrequent street-lamps threw little more light
+that that which came from the windows shining placidly out on lawns--and
+had emerged on the embankment bordering the Charles, that the events of
+the evening began for Davenant to weave themselves in with that
+indefinable desire that had led him back to Boston. He could not have
+said in what way they belonged together; and yet he could perceive that
+between them there was some such dim interpenetration as the distant
+lamps of the city made through the silvery mist lying on the river and
+its adjacent marshes like some efflorescence of the moonlight.
+
+"The difficulty is," he said, after a long silence, "that it's often so
+hard to know what _is_ right."
+
+"No, it isn't."
+
+The flat contradiction brought a smile to the young man's lips as they
+trudged onward.
+
+"A good many people say so."
+
+"A good many people say foolish things. It's hard to know what's right
+chiefly when you're not in a hurry to do it."
+
+"Aren't there exceptions to that rule?"
+
+"I allowed for the exceptions. I said _chiefly_."
+
+"But when you _do_ want to do it?"
+
+"You'll know what it is. There'll be something to tell you."
+
+"And this something to tell you? What do you call it?"
+
+"Some call it conscience. Some call it God. Some call it neither."
+
+Davenant reflected again.
+
+"And you? What do you call it?"
+
+"I can't see that anything would be gained by telling you. That sort of
+knowledge isn't of much use till it's worked out for oneself. At least,
+it wouldn't be of much use to you."
+
+"Why not to me?"
+
+"Because you've started out on your own voyage of discovery. You'll
+bring back more treasures from that adventure than any one can give
+you."
+
+These things were said crustily, as though dragged from a man thinking
+of other matters and unwilling to talk. More minutes went by before
+Davenant spoke again.
+
+"But doesn't it happen that what you call the 'something-to-tell-you'
+tells you now and then to do things that most people would call rather
+wild--or crazy?"
+
+"I dare say."
+
+"So what then?"
+
+"Then you do them."
+
+"Oh, but--"
+
+"If there's an 'Oh, but', you don't. That's all. You belong to the many
+called, but not to the few chosen."
+
+"But if things _are_ wild--I'm thinking of something in particular--"
+
+"Then you'd better leave it alone, unless you're prepared to be
+considered a wild man. What Paul did was wild--and Peter--and Joan of
+Arc--and Columbus--and a good many others. True they were well punished
+for their folly. Most of them were put in irons, and some of them got
+death."
+
+"I shouldn't dream of classing myself in their company."
+
+"Every one's in their company who feels a big impulse and has the
+courage of it. The trouble with most of us is that we can do the feeling
+all right; but when it comes to the execution--well, we like to keep on
+the safe side, among the sane."
+
+"So that," Davenant began, stammeringly, "if a fellow got something into
+his head--something that couldn't be wrong, you know--something that
+would be right--awfully right in its way, but in a way that most people
+would consider all wrong--or wild, as I said before--you'd advise
+him--?"
+
+"I shouldn't advise him at all. Some things must be spontaneous, or
+they're of little use. If a good seed in good ground won't germinate of
+its own accord, words of counsel can't help it. But here we are at home.
+You won't come in just yet? Very well; you've got your latch-key."
+
+"Good-night, sir. I hope you're not going to think me--well, altogether
+an idiot."
+
+"Very likely I shall; but it'll be nothing if I do. If you can't stand a
+little thing like that you'd better not have come back with the ideas
+that have brought you."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Davenant turned away into the moonlit mist. Through it the electric
+lamps of Boston, curving in crescent lines by the water's edge, or
+sprinkled at random over the hill which the city climbs, shone for him
+with the steadiness and quiet comfort inherent in the familiar and the
+sure after his long roaming. Lighting a cigarette, he strode along the
+cement pavement beside the iron railing below which the river ran
+swiftly and soundlessly. At this late hour of the evening he had the
+embankment to himself, save for an occasional pair of lovers or a group
+of sauntering students. Lights from the dignified old houses--among
+which was Rodney Temple's--overlooking the embankment and the Charles
+threw out a pleasant glow of friendliness. Beyond the river a giant
+shadow looming through the mist reminded him of the Roman Colisseum seen
+in a like aspect, the resemblance being accentuated in his imagination
+by the Stadium's vast silence, by its rows upon rows of ghostly gray
+sedilia looking down on a haunted, empty ring. His thoughts strayed to
+Rome, to Cairo, to Calcutta, to Singapore, to the stages of those two
+patient journeys round the world, made from a sense of duty, in search
+of a widening of that sheerly human knowledge which life had hitherto
+denied him. Having started from London and got back to London again, he
+saw how imperfectly he had profited by his opportunities, how much he
+had missed. It was characteristic of him to begin all over again, and
+more thoroughly, conscientiously revisiting the Pyramids, the Parthenon,
+and the Taj Mahal, endeavoring to capture some of that true spirit of
+appreciation of which he read in books.
+
+In his way he was not wholly unsuccessful, since by dint of steady
+gazing he heightened his perceptive powers, whether it were for Notre
+Dame, the Sistine Madonna, or the Alps, each of which he took with the
+same seriousness. What eluded him was precisely that human element which
+was the primary object of his quest. He learned to recognize the beauty
+of a picture or a mountain more or less at sight; but the soul of these
+things, of which he thought more than of their outward aspects, the soul
+that looks through the eyes and speaks with the tongues of peoples,
+remained inaccessible to his yearnings. He was always outside--never
+more than a tourist. He made acquaintances by the wayside easily enough,
+but only of the rootless variety, beginning without an introduction and
+ending without a farewell. There was nothing that "belonged" to him,
+nothing to which he himself "belonged."
+
+It was the persistency of the defect that had marked most of his life,
+even that portion of it spent in Boston and Waverton--the places he
+called "home." He was their citizen only by adoption, as only by
+adoption he was the son of Tom and Sarah Davenant. That intimate
+claim--the claim on the family, the claim on the soil--which springs of
+birth and antedates it was not his, and something had always been
+lacking to his life because of the deficiency. Too healthily genial to
+feel this want more than obscurely, he nevertheless had tried to remedy
+it by resorting to the obvious means. He had tried to fall in love, with
+a view to marriage and a family. Once, perhaps twice, he might have been
+successful had it not been for the intrusive recollection of a moment,
+years before, when a girl whom he knew to be proud without suspecting
+how proud she was had in answer to the first passionate words he ever
+uttered started to her feet, and, fanning herself languidly, walked
+away. The memory of that instant froze on his tongue words that might
+have made him happy, sending him back into his solitary ways. They were
+ways, as he saw plainly enough, that led no whither; for which reason he
+had endeavored, as soon as he was financially justified, to get out of
+them by taking a long holiday and traveling round the world.
+
+He was approaching the end of his second journey when the realization
+came to him that as far as his great object was concerned the
+undertaking had been a failure. He was as much outside the broader
+current of human sympathies as ever. Then, all at once, he began to see
+the reason why.
+
+The first promptings to this discovery came to him one spring evening as
+he stood on the deck of the steam-launch he had hired at Shanghai to go
+up and down the Yangste-Kiang. Born in China, the son of a medical
+missionary, he had taken a notion to visit his birthplace at Hankow. It
+was a pilgrimage he had shirked on his first trip to that country, a
+neglect for which he afterward reproached himself. All things
+considered, to make it was as little as he could do in memory of the
+brave man and woman to whom he owed his existence.
+
+Before this visit it must be admitted, Rufus and Corinna Hallett, his
+parents according to the flesh, had been as remote and mythical to the
+mind of Peter Davenant as the Dragon's Teeth to their progeny, the
+Spartans. Merely in the most commonplace kind of data he was but poorly
+supplied concerning them. He knew his father had once been a zealous
+young doctor in Graylands, Illinois, and had later become one of the
+pioneers of medical enterprise in the mission field; he knew, too, that
+he had already worked for some years at Hankow before he met and married
+Miss Corinna Meecham, formerly of Drayton, Georgia, but at that time a
+teacher in a Chinese school supported by one of the great American
+churches. Events after that seemed to have followed rapidly. Within a
+few years the babe who was to become Peter Davenant had seen the light,
+the mother had died, and the father had perished as the victim of a
+rising in the interior of Hupeh. The child, being taken to America, and
+unclaimed by relatives, was brought up in the institution maintained for
+such cases by the Missionary Board of the church to which his father and
+mother had given their services. He had lived there till, when he was
+seven years old, Tom and Sarah Davenant, childless and yet longing for
+a child, had adopted him.
+
+These short and simple annals furnished all that Davenant knew of his
+own origin; but after the visit to Hankow the personality of his parents
+at least became more vivid. He met old people who could vaguely recall
+them. He saw entries in the hospital records made by his father's hand.
+He stood by his mother's grave. As for his father's grave, if he had
+one, it was like that of Moses, on some lonely Nebo in Hupeh known to
+God alone. In the compound Davenant saw the spot on which his father's
+simple house had stood--the house in which he himself was born--though a
+wing of the modern hospital now covered it. It was a relief to him to
+find that, except for the proximity of the lepers' ward and the opium
+refuge, the place, with its trim lawns, its roses, its clematis, its
+azaleas, its wistaria, had the sweetness of an English rectory garden.
+He liked to think that Corinna Meecham had been able to escape from her
+duties in the crowded, fetid, multi-colored city right outside the gates
+to something like peace and decency within these quiet walls.
+
+He was not a born traveler; still less was he an explorer. At the end of
+three days he was glad to take leave of his hosts at the hospital, and
+turn his launch down the river toward the civilization of Shanghai. But
+it was on the very afternoon of his departure that the ideas came to him
+which ultimately took him back to Boston, and of which he was now
+thinking as he strolled through the silvery mist beside the Charles.
+
+He had been standing then on the deck of his steam-launch gazing beyond
+the river, with its crowding, outlandish junks, beyond the towns and
+villages huddled along the banks, beyond walls gay with wistaria, beyond
+green rice-fields stretching into the horizon, to where a flaming sunset
+covered half the sky--a sunset which itself seemed hostile, mysterious,
+alien, Mongolian. He was thinking that it was on just this scene that
+his father and mother had looked year upon year before his birth. He
+wondered how it was that it had had no prenatal influence on himself. He
+wondered how it was that all their devotion had ended with themselves,
+that their altruism had died when Corinna Meecham's soul had passed-away
+and Rufus Hallett, like another Stephen, had fallen on his knees beneath
+the missiles of the villagers to whom he was coming with relief. They
+had spent their lives in the service of others; he had spent his in his
+own. It was curious. If there was anything in heredity, he ought to have
+felt at least some faint impulse from their zeal; but he never had. He
+could not remember that he had ever done anything for any one. He could
+not remember that he had ever seen the need of it. It was curious. He
+mused on it--mused on the odd differences between one generation and
+another, and on the queer way in which what is light to the father will
+sometimes become darkness in the son.
+
+It was then that he found the question raising itself within him, "Is
+that what's wrong with me?"
+
+The query took him by surprise. It was so out of keeping with his
+particular kind of self-respect that he found it almost droll. If he
+had never _given_ himself to others, as his parents had, he had
+certainly paid the world all he owed it. He had nothing wherewith to
+reproach himself on that score. It had been a matter of satisfaction
+amounting to pride that he had made his bit of money without resorting
+in any single instance to methods that could be considered shady. If
+complaint or criticism could not reach him here, it could not reach him
+anywhere. Therefore the question as to whether there was anything wrong
+in his attitude toward others was so patently absurd that it could
+easily be dismissed.
+
+He dismissed it promptly, but it came again. It came repeatedly during
+that spring and summer. It forced itself on his attention. It became, in
+its way, the recurrent companion of his journey. It turned up
+unexpectedly at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places, and on
+each occasion with an increased comprehension on his side of its
+pertinence. He could look back now and trace the stages by which his
+understanding of it had progressed. There was a certain small happening
+in a restaurant at Yokohama; there was an accident on the dock at
+Vancouver; there was a conversation on a moonlight evening up at Banff;
+there was an incident during a drive in the Yosemite; these were
+mile-stones on the road by which his mind had traveled on to seize the
+fact that the want of touch between him and his fellow-men might be due
+to the suppression of some essentially human force within himself. It
+came to him that something might, after all, have been transmitted from
+Hupeh and Hankow of which he had never hitherto suspected the existence.
+
+It cannot be said that his self-questioning had produced any answer more
+definite than that before he found himself journeying back toward
+Boston. The final impulse had been given him while he was still
+loitering aimlessly in Chicago by a letter from Mrs. Temple.
+
+"If you have nothing better to do, dear Peter," she wrote, "we shall be
+delighted if you can come to us for a week or two. Dear Drusilla is with
+us once again, and you can imagine our joy at having her. It would seem
+like old times if you were here to complete the little circle. The room
+you used to have in your college vacations--after dear Tom and Sarah
+were taken from us--is all ready for you; and Drusilla would like to
+know you were here to occupy it just as much as we."
+
+In accepting this invitation Davenant knew himself to be drawn by a
+variety of strands of motive, no one of which had much force in itself,
+but which when woven together lent one another strength. Now that he had
+come, he was glad to have done it, since in the combination of
+circumstances he felt there must be an acknowledged need of a young man,
+a strong man, a man capable of shouldering responsibilities. He would
+have been astonished to think that that could be gainsaid.
+
+The feeling was confirmed in him after he had watched the tip of his
+smoked-out cigarette drop, like a tiny star, into the current of the
+Charles, and had re-entered Rodney Temple's house.
+
+"Here's Peter!"
+
+It was Drusilla's voice, with a sob in it. She was sitting on the
+stairs, three steps from the top, huddled into a voluminous
+mauve-and-white dressing-gown. In the one dim light burning in the hall
+her big black eyes gleamed tragically, as those of certain animals gleam
+in dusk.
+
+"Oh, Peter, dear, I'm so glad you've come! The most awful thing has
+happened."
+
+That was Mrs. Temple who, wrapped in something fleecy in texture and
+pink in hue, was crouched on the lowest step, looking more than ever
+like a tea-cozy dropped by accident.
+
+"What's the matter?" Davenant asked, too deeply astonished even to take
+off his hat. "Is it burglars? Where's the professor?"
+
+"He's gone to bed. It isn't burglars. I wish it was. It's something far,
+far worse. Collins told Drusilla. Oh, I know it's true--though Rodney
+wouldn't say so. I simply ... _know_ ... it's ... _true_."
+
+"Oh, it's true," Drusilla corroborated. "I knew that the minute Collins
+began to speak. It explains everything--all the little queernesses I've
+noticed ever since I came home--and everything."
+
+"What is it?" Peter asked again. "Who's Collins? And what has he said?"
+
+"It isn't a he; it's a she," Drusilla explained. "She's my maid. I knew
+the minute I came into the room that she'd got something on her mind--I
+knew it by the way she took my wrapper from the wardrobe and laid it on
+the bed. It was too awful!"
+
+"What was too awful? The way she laid your wrapper on the bed?"
+
+"No; what she told me. And I _know_ it's true."
+
+"Well, for the Lord's sake, Drusilla, what is it?"
+
+Drusilla began to narrate. She had forborne, she said, to put any
+questions till she was being "undone"; but in that attitude, favorable
+for confidence, she had asked Collins over her shoulder if anything
+troubled her, and Collins had told her tale. Briefly, it was to the
+effect that some of the most distinguished kitchens in Boston and
+Waverton had been divided into two factions, one pro and the other
+contra, ever since the day, now three weeks ago, when Miss Maggie
+Murphy, whose position of honorable service at Lawyer Benn's enabled her
+to profit by the hints dropped at that eminent man's table, had
+announced, in the servant's dining-room of Tory Hill itself, that Henry
+Guion was "going to be put in jail." He had stolen Mrs. Clay's money,
+and Mrs. Rodman's money, "and a lot of other payple's money, too," Miss
+Murphy was able to affirm--clients for whom Guion, Maxwell & Guion had
+long acted as trustees--and was now to be tried and sentenced, Lawyer
+Benn himself being put in charge of the affair by the parties wronged.
+Drusilla described the sinking of her own heart as these bits of
+information were given her, though she had not failed to reprimand
+Collins for the repetition of foolish gossip. This, it seemed, had put
+Collins on her mettle in defense of her own order, and she had replied
+that, if it came to that, m'm, the contents of the waste-paper baskets
+at Tory Hill, though slightly damaged, had borne ample testimony to the
+truth of the tale as Miss Maggie Murphy told it. If Mrs. Fane required
+documentary evidence, Collins herself was in a position to supply it,
+through the kindness of her colleagues in Henry Guion's employ.
+
+Davenant listened in silence. "So the thing is out?" was his only
+comment.
+
+"It's out--and all over the place," Drusilla answered, tearfully. "We're
+the only people who haven't known it--but it's always that way with
+those who are most concerned."
+
+"And over three hundred guests invited to Olivia's wedding next Thursday
+fortnight! And the British Military Attaché coming from Washington! And
+Lord Woolwich from Ottawa! What's to happen _I_ don't know."
+
+Mrs. Temple raised her hands and let them drop heavily.
+
+"Oh, Peter, can't you do anything?"
+
+"What can he do, child? If Henry's been making away with all that money
+it would take a fortune to--"
+
+"Oh, men can do things--in business," Drusilla asserted. "I know they
+can. Banks lend them money, _don't_ they, Peter? Banks are always
+lending money to tide people over. I've often heard of it. Oh, Peter,
+_do_ something. I'm so glad you're here. It seems like a providence."
+
+"Colonel Ashley will be here next week, too," Mrs. Temple groaned, as
+though the fact brought comfort.
+
+"Oh, mother dear, don't _speak_ of him!" Drusilla put up her two hands,
+palms outward, before her averted face, as though to banish the
+suggestion. "If you'd ever known him you'd see how impossible--how
+_impossible_--this kind of situation is for a man like him. Poor, poor
+Olivia! It's impossible for her, too, I know; but then we
+Americans--well, we're more used to things. But one thing is certain,
+anyhow," she continued, rising in her place on the stairs and stretching
+out her hand oratorically: "If this happens I shall never go back to
+Southsea--never, never!--no, nor to Silchester. With my temperament I
+couldn't face it. My career will be over. There'll be nothing left for
+_me_, mother dear, but to stay at home with father and you."
+
+Mrs. Temple rose, sighing heavily. "Well, I suppose we must go to bed,
+though I must say it seems harder to do that than almost anything. None
+of us'll sleep."
+
+"Oh, Peter, _won't_ you do something?"
+
+Drusilla's hands were clasped beneath an imploring face, slightly tilted
+to one side. Her black hair had begun to tumble to her shoulders.
+
+"I'll--I'll think it over," was all he could find to answer.
+
+"Oh, _thank_ you, Peter! I must say it seems like a providence--your
+being here. With my temperament I always feel that there's nothing like
+a big strong man to lean on."
+
+The ladies retired, leaving him to put out the light. For a long time he
+stood, as he had entered, just inside the front door leaning on his
+stick and wearing his hat and overcoat. He was musing rather than
+thinking, musing on the odd way in which he seemed almost to have been
+waited for. Then, irrelevantly perhaps, there shot across his memory the
+phrases used by Rodney Temple less than an hour ago:
+
+"Some call it conscience. Some call it God. Some call it neither. But,"
+he added, slowly, "some _do_ call it God."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Closing the door behind his departing guests, Guion stood for a minute,
+with his hand still on the knob, pressing his forehead against the
+woodwork. He listened to the sound of the carriage-wheels die away and
+to the crunching tread of the two men down the avenue.
+
+"The last Guion has received the last guest at Tory Hill," he said to
+himself. "That's all over--all over and done with. Now!"
+
+It was the hour to which he had been looking forward, first as an
+impossibility, then as a danger, and at last as an expectation, ever
+since the day, now some years ago, when he began to fear that he might
+not be able to restore all the money he had "borrowed" from the
+properties in his trust. Having descried it from a long way off, he knew
+that with reasonable luck it could not overtake him soon. There were
+many chances, indeed, that it might never overtake him at all. Times
+might change; business might improve; he might come in for the money he
+expected from his old Aunt de Melcourt; he might die. If none of these
+things happened, there were still ways and means by which he might make
+money in big strokes and "square himself" without any one ever being
+the wiser. He had known of cases, or, at least, he had suspected them,
+in which men in precisely his position had averted by daring play the
+deadliest peril and gone down into honored graves. Fortune had generally
+favored him hitherto, and probably would favor him again.
+
+So after the first dreadful days of seeing his "mistakes," and, in his
+recoil, calling himself by opprobrious names, he began to get used to
+his situation and boldly to meet its requirements. That he would prove
+equal to them he had scarcely any doubt. It was, in fact, next to
+inconceivable that a man of his antecedents and advantages should be
+unable to cope with conditions that, after all, were not wholly
+exceptional in the sordid history of business.
+
+He admitted that the affair was sordid, while finding an excuse for his
+own connection with it in the involuntary defilement that comes from
+touching pitch. It was impossible, he said, for a man of business not to
+touch pitch, and he was not a man of business of his own accord. The
+state of life had been forced on him. He was a trustee of other people's
+property by inheritance, just as a man becomes a tsar. As a career it
+was one of the last he would have chosen. Had he received from his
+father an ample personal fortune instead of a mere lucrative practice he
+would have been a country gentleman, in the English style, with, of
+course, a house in town. Born with a princely aptitude for spending his
+own money, he felt it hard that he should have been compelled to make it
+his life's work to husband that of others. The fact that he had always,
+to some extent been a square man in a round hole seemed to entitle him
+to a large share of moral allowance, especially in his judgment on
+himself. He emphasized the last consideration, since it enabled him, in
+his moments of solitude, to look himself more straightly in the face. It
+helped him to buttress up his sense of honor, and so his sense of
+energy, to be able to say, "I am still a gentleman."
+
+He came in time to express it otherwise, and to say, "I must still play
+the gentleman." He came to define also what he meant by the word
+_still_. The future presented itself as a succession of stages, in which
+this could not happen till that had happened, nor the final disaster
+arrive till all the intervening phases of the situation had been passed.
+He had passed them. Of late he had seen that the flames of hell would
+get hold upon him at that exact instant when, the last defense having
+been broken down and the last shift resorted to, he should turn the key
+on all outside hope, and be alone with himself and the knowledge that he
+could do no more. Till then he could ward them off, and he had been
+fighting them to the latest second. But on coming home from his office
+in Boston that afternoon he had told himself that the game was up.
+Nothing as far as he could see would give him the respite of another
+four and twenty hours. The minutes between him and the final
+preparations could be counted with the finger on the clock.
+
+In the matter of preparation the most important detail would be to tell
+Olivia. Hoping against hope that this would never become necessary, he
+had put off the evil moment till the postponement had become cruel. But
+he had lived through it so often in thought, he had so acutely suffered
+with her in imagination the staggering humiliation of it all, that now,
+when the time had come, his feelings were benumbed. As he turned into
+his own grounds that day it seemed to him that his deadness of emotion
+was such that he could carry the thing through mechanically, as a
+skilled surgeon uses a knife. If he found her at tea in the drawing-room
+he might tell her then.
+
+He found her at tea, but there were people with her. He was almost
+sorry; and yet it keyed him up to see that there was some necessity "to
+still play the gentleman." He played it, and played it well--with much
+of his old-time ease. The feat was so extraordinary as to call out a
+round of mental applause for himself; and, after all, he reflected,
+there would be time enough in the evening.
+
+But tea being over, Miss Guion announced that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and
+Drusilla Fane were coming informally to dinner, bringing with them a
+guest of theirs, "some one of the name of Davenant." For an instant he
+felt that he must ask her to telephone and put them off, but on second
+thoughts it seemed better to let them come. It would be in the nature of
+a reprieve, not so much for himself as for Olivia. It would give her one
+more cheerful evening, the last, perhaps, in her life. Besides--the
+suggestion was a vague one, sprung doubtless of the hysterical element
+in his suppressed excitement--he might test his avowals on Temple and
+Davenant, getting a foretaste of what it would be to face the world. He
+formed no precise intention of doing that; he only allowed his mind to
+linger on the luxury of trying it. He had suspected lately that Rodney
+Temple knew more of his situation than he had ever told him, so that the
+way to speak out would be cleared in advance; and as for the man of the
+name of Davenant--probably Tom Davenant's adopted son, who was said to
+have pulled off some good things a few years ago--there would be, in
+humbling himself before one so successful, a morbid joy of the kind the
+devotee may get in being crushed by an idol.
+
+In this he was not mistaken. While they were there he was able to draw
+from his own speeches, covert or open, the relief that comes to a man in
+pain from moaning. Now that they were gone, however, the last extraneous
+incident that could possibly stand between him and the beginning of the
+end had passed. The moment he had foreseen, as one foresees death, was
+on him; so, raising his head from the woodwork of the doorway, he braced
+himself, and said, "Now!"
+
+At almost the same instant he heard the rustle of his daughter's skirts
+as she came from the drawing-room on her way up-stairs. She advanced
+slowly down the broad hail, the lights striking iridescent rays from the
+trimmings of her dress. The long train, adding to her height, enhanced
+her gracefulness. Only that curious deadness of sensation of which he
+had been aware all day--the inability to feel any more that comes from
+too much suffering--enabled him to keep his ground before her. He did
+keep it, advancing from the doorway two or three steps toward her, till
+they met at the foot of the stairway.
+
+"Have you enjoyed your evening?" were the words he found himself saying,
+though they were far from those he had at heart. He felt that his smile
+was ghastly; but, as she seemed not to perceive it, he drew the
+conclusion that the ghastliness was within.
+
+She answered languidly. "Yes, so so. It might have been pleasanter if it
+hadn't been for that awful man."
+
+"Who? Young Davenant? I don't see anything awful about him."
+
+"I dare say there isn't, really--in his place. He may be only prosy.
+However," she added, more brightly, "it doesn't matter for once. Good
+night, papa dear. You look tired. You ought to go to bed. I've seen to
+the windows in the drawing-room, but I haven't put out the lights."
+
+Having kissed him and patted him on the cheek, she turned to go up the
+stairway. He allowed her to ascend a step or two. It was the minute to
+speak.
+
+"I'm sorry you feel that way about young Davenant. I rather like him."
+
+He had not chosen the words. They came out automatically. To discuss
+Davenant offered an excuse for detaining her, while postponing the blow
+for a few minutes more.
+
+"Oh, men would," she said, indifferently, without turning round. "He's
+their style."
+
+"Which is to his discredit?"
+
+"Not to his discredit, but to his disadvantage. I've noticed that what
+they call a man's man is generally something of a bore."
+
+"Davenant isn't a bore."
+
+"Isn't he? Well, I really didn't notice in particular. I only remember
+that he used to be about here years ago--and I didn't like him. I
+suppose Drusilla has to be civil to him because he was Cousin Rodney's
+ward."
+
+She had paused on the landing at the angle of the staircase.
+
+"He's good-looking," Guion said, in continued effort to interpose the
+trivial between himself and what he had still to tell her.
+
+"Oh, that sort of Saxon giant type is always good-looking. Of course.
+And dull too."
+
+"I dare say he isn't as dull as you think."
+
+"He might be that, and still remain pretty dull, after the allowances
+had been made. I know the type. It's awful--especially in the form of
+the American man of business."
+
+"I'm an American man of business myself."
+
+"Yes; by misadventure. You're the business man made, but not born. By
+nature you're a boulevardier, or what the newspapers call a 'clubman.' I
+admire you more than I can say--everybody admires you--for making such a
+success of a work that must always have been uncongenial at the least."
+
+The opening was obvious. Nothing could have been more opportune. Two or
+three beginnings presented themselves, and as he hesitated, choosing
+between them, he moistened his lips and wiped the cold perspiration
+from his brow. After all, the blessed apathy within him was giving way
+and going to play him false! He had a minute of feeling as the condemned
+man must feel when he catches sight of the guillotine.
+
+Before his parched tongue could formulate syllables she mounted another
+step or two of the staircase, and turned again, leaning on the banister
+and looking over. He noticed--by a common trick of the perceptive powers
+at crises of anguish--how the slender white pilasters, carved and
+twisted in sets of four, in the fashion of Georgian houses like Tory
+Hill, made quaint, graceful lines up and down the front of her black
+gown.
+
+"It's really true--what I say about business, papa," she pursued. "I'm
+very much in earnest, and so is Rupert. I do wish you'd think of that
+place near Heneage. It will be so lovely for me to feel you're there;
+and there can't be any reason for your going on working any longer."
+
+"No; there's no reason for that," he managed to say.
+
+"Well then?" she demanded, with an air of triumph. "It's just as I said.
+You owe it to every one, you owe it to me, you owe it to yourself above
+all, to give up. It might have been better if you'd done it long ago."
+
+"I couldn't," he declared, in a tone that sounded to his own ears as a
+cry. "I tried to, ... but things were so involved ... almost from the
+first...."
+
+"Well, as long as they're not involved now there's no reason why it
+shouldn't be better late than never."
+
+"But they _are_ involved now," he said, with an intensity so poignant
+that he was surprised she didn't notice it.
+
+"Then straighten them out. Isn't that what we've been saying all along,
+Cousin Rodney and I? Take a partner; take two partners. Cousin Rodney
+says you should have done it when Mr. Maxwell died, or before--"
+
+"I couldn't.... Things weren't shipshape enough ... not even then."
+
+"I'm sure it could be managed," she asserted, confidently; "and if you
+don't do it now, papa, when I'm being married and going away for good,
+you'll never do it at all. That's my fear. I don't want to live over
+there without you, papa; and I'm afraid that's what you're going to let
+me in for." She moved from the banister, and continued her way upward,
+speaking over her shoulder as she ascended. "In the mean time, you
+really _must_ go to bed. You look tired and rather pale--just as I do
+after a dull party. Good night; and _don't_ stay up."
+
+She reached the floor above, and went toward her room. He felt
+strangled, speechless. There was a sense of terror too in the thought
+that his nerve, the nerve on which he had counted so much, was going to
+fail him.
+
+"Olivia!"
+
+His voice was so sharp that she hurried back to the top of the stairs.
+
+"What is it, papa? Aren't you well?"
+
+It was the sight of her face, anxious and suddenly white, peering down
+through the half-light of the hall that finally unmanned him. With a
+heart-sick feeling he turned away from the stairway.
+
+"Yes; I'm all right. I only wanted you to know that ... that ... I shall
+be working rather late. You mustn't be disturbed ... if you hear me
+moving about."
+
+He would have upbraided himself more bitterly for his cowardice had he
+not found an excuse in the thought that, after all, there would be time
+in the morning. It was best that she should have the refreshment of the
+night. The one thing important was that she should not have the shock of
+learning from others on the morrow that he was not coming back--that he
+was going to Singville. Should he go there at all, he was determined to
+stay. Since he had no fight to put up, it was better that his going
+should be once for all. The thought of weeks, of months, perhaps, of
+quasi-freedom, during which he should be parading himself "on bail," was
+far more terrible to him than that of prison. He must prepare her for
+the beginning of his doom at all costs to himself; but, he reasoned, she
+would be more capable of taking the information calmly in the daylight
+of the morning than now, at a few minutes of midnight.
+
+It was another short reprieve, enabling him to give all his attention to
+the tasks before him. If he was not to come back to Tory Hill he must
+leave his private papers there, his more intimate treasures, in good
+order. Certain things would have to be put away, others rearranged,
+others destroyed. For the most part they were in the library, the room
+he specially claimed as his own. Before setting himself to the work
+there he walked through some of the other rooms, turning out the lights.
+
+In doing so he was consciously taking a farewell. He had been born in
+this house; in it he had spent his boyhood; to it he had come back as a
+young married man. He had lived in it till his wife and he had set up
+their more ambitious establishment in Boston, an extravagance from
+which, perhaps, all the subsequent misfortunes could be dated. He had
+known at the time that his father, had he lived, would have condemned
+the step; but he himself was a believer in fortunate chances. Besides,
+it was preposterous for a young couple of fashion to continue living in
+a rambling old house that belonged to neither town nor country, at a
+time when the whole trend of life was cityward. They had discussed the
+move, with its large increase of expenditure, from every point of view,
+and found it one from which, in their social position, there was no
+escape. It was a matter about which they had hardly any choice.
+
+So, too, a few years later, with the taking of the cottage at Newport.
+It was forced on them. When all their friends were doing something of
+the sort it seemed absurd to hesitate because of a mere matter of
+means--especially when by hook or by crook the means could be procured.
+Similar reasoning had attended their various residences abroad--in
+London, Paris, Rome. Country-houses in England or villas on the Riviera
+became matters of necessity, according to the demands of Olivia's entry
+into the world of fashion or Mrs. Guion's health.
+
+It was not till the death of the latter, some seven years ago, that
+Guion, obliged to pause, was able to take cognizance of the degree to
+which he had imperiled himself in the years of effort to maintain their
+way of life. It could not be said that at the time he regretted what he
+had done, but he allowed it to frighten him into some ineffectual
+economies. He exchanged the cottage at Newport for one at Lenox, and,
+giving up the house in Boston, withdrew to Tory Hill. Ceasing himself to
+go into society, he sent his daughter abroad for a large portion of her
+time, either in the care of Madame de Melcourt or, in London, under the
+wing of some of the American ladies prominent in English life.
+
+Having taken these steps, with no small pride in his capacity for
+sacrifice, Guion set himself seriously to reconstruct his own fortune
+and to repair the inroads he had made on those in his trust. It was a
+matter in which he had but few misgivings as to his capacity. The making
+of money, he often said, was an easy thing, as could be proved by the
+intellectual grade of the men who made it. One had only to look about
+one to see that they were men in whom the average of ability was by no
+means high, men who achieved their successes largely by a kind of rule
+of thumb. They got the knack of investment--and they invested. He
+preferred the word investment to another which might have challenged
+comment. They bought in a low market and sold in a high one--and the
+trick was done. Some instinct--a _flair_, he called it--was required in
+order to recognize, more or less at sight, those properties which would
+quickly and surely appreciate in value; and he believed he possessed it.
+Given the control of a few thousands as a point of departure, and the
+financial ebb and flow, a man must be a born fool, he said, not to be
+able to make a reasonable fortune with reasonable speed.
+
+Within the office of Guion, Maxwell & Guion circumstances favored the
+accession to power of the younger partner, who had hitherto played an
+acquiescent rather than an active part. Mr. Maxwell was old and ailing,
+though neither so ailing nor so old as to be blind to the need of new
+blood, new money, and new influence in the fine old firm. His weakness
+was that he hated beginning all over again with new men; so that when
+Smith and Jones were proposed as possible partners he easily admitted
+whatever objections Guion raised to them, and the matter was postponed.
+It was postponed again. It slipped into a chronic condition of
+postponement; and Mr. Maxwell died.
+
+The situation calling then for adroitness on Guion's part, the fact that
+he was able to meet it to the satisfaction of all the parties concerned,
+increased his confidence in his own astuteness. True, it required some
+manipulation, some throwing of dust into people's eyes, some making of
+explanations to one person that could not be reconciled with those made
+to another; but here again the circumstances helped him. His clients
+were for the most part widows and old maids, many of them resident
+abroad, for whom Guion, Maxwell & Guion had so long stood, in the matter
+of income, for the embodiment of paternal care that they were ready to
+believe anything and say anything and sign anything they were told to.
+With the legal authorities to whom he owed account he had the advantage
+of the house's high repute, making it possible to cover with formalities
+anything that might, strictly speaking, have called for investigation.
+Whatever had to be considered shifty he excused to himself on the ground
+of its being temporary; while it was clearly, in his opinion, to the
+ultimate advantage of the Clay heirs and the Rodman heirs and the
+Compton heirs and all the other heirs for whom Guion, Maxwell & Guion
+were _in loco parentis_, that he should have a free hand.
+
+The sequel astonished rather than disillusioned him. It wrought in him
+disappointment with the human race, especially as represented by the
+Stock Exchange, without diminishing his confidence in his own judgment.
+Through all his wild efforts not to sink he was upborne by the knowledge
+that it was not his calculations that were wrong, but the workings of a
+system more obscure than that of chance and more capricious than the
+weather. He grew to consider it the fault of the blind forces that make
+up the social, financial, and commercial worlds, and not his own, when
+he was reduced to a frantic flinging of good money after bad as offering
+the sole chance of working out his redemption.
+
+And, now that it was all over, he was glad his wife had not lived to see
+the end. That, at least, had been spared him. He stood before her
+portrait in the drawing-room--the much-admired portrait by Carolus
+Duran--and told her so. She was so living as she looked down on him--a
+suggestion of refined irony about the lips and eyes giving personality
+to the delicate oval of the face--that he felt himself talking to her as
+they had been wont to talk together ever since their youth. In his way
+he had stood in awe of her. The assumption of prerogative--an endowment
+of manner or of temperament, he was never quite sure which--inherited by
+Olivia in turn, had been the dominating influence in their domestic
+life. He had not been ruled by her--the term would have been
+grotesque--he had only made it his pleasure to carry out her wishes.
+That her wishes led him on to spending money not his own was due to the
+fact, ever to be regretted, that his father had not bequeathed him money
+so much as the means of earning it. She could not be held responsible
+for that, while she was the type of woman to whom it was something like
+an outrage not to offer the things befitting to her station. There was
+no reproach in the look he lifted on her now--nothing but a kind of
+dogged, perverse thankfulness that she should have had the way of life
+she craved, without ever knowing the price he was about to pay for it.
+
+In withdrawing his glance from hers he turned it about on the various
+objects in the room. Many of them had stood in their places since before
+he was born; others he had acquired at occasional sales of Guion
+property, so that, as the different branches of the family became
+extinct or disappeared, whatever could be called "ancestral" might have
+a place at Tory Hill; others he had collected abroad. All of them, in
+these moments of anguish--the five K'ang-hsi vases on the mantelpiece,
+brought home by some seafaring Guion of Colonial days, the armorial
+"Lowestoft" in the cabinets, the Copley portraits of remote connections
+on the walls, the bits of Chippendale and Hepplewhite that had belonged
+to the grandfather who built Tory Hill--all of them took on now a kind
+of personality, as with living look and utterance. He had loved them and
+been proud of them; and as he turned out the lights, leaving them to
+darkness, eyes could not have been more appealing nor lips more eloquent
+than they in their mute farewell.
+
+Returning to the library, he busied himself with his main undertaking.
+He was anxious that nothing should be left behind that could give Olivia
+additional pain, while whatever she might care to have, her mother's
+letters to himself or other family documents, might be ready to her
+hand. It was the kind of detail to which he could easily give his
+attention. He worked methodically and phlegmatically, steeling himself
+to a grim suppression of regret. He was almost sorry to finish the task,
+since it forced his mind to come again face to face with facts. The
+clock struck two as he closed the last drawer and knew that that part of
+his preparation was completed.
+
+In reading the old letters with their echoes of old incidents, old joys,
+old jokes, old days in Paris, Rome, or England, he had been so wafted
+back to another time that on pushing in the drawer, which closed with a
+certain click of finality, the realization of the present rolled back
+on his soul with a curious effect of amazement. For a few minutes it was
+as if he had never understood it, never thought of it, before. They were
+going to make him, Henry Guion, a prisoner, a criminal, a convict! They
+were going to clip his hair, and shave his beard, and dress him in a
+hideous garb, and shut him in a cell! They were going to give him
+degrading work to do and degrading rules to keep, and degrading
+associates to live with, as far as such existence could be called living
+with any one at all. They were going to do this for year upon year, all
+the rest of his life, since he never could survive it. He was to have
+nothing any more to come in between him and his own thoughts--his
+thoughts of Olivia brought to disgrace, of the Clay heirs brought to
+want, of the Rodman heirs and the Compton heirs deprived of half their
+livelihood! He had called it that evening the Strange Ride with Morrowby
+Jukes to the Land of the Living Dead, but it was to be worse than that.
+It was to be worse than Macbeth with his visions of remorse; it was to
+be worse than Vathek with the flame burning in his heart; it was to be
+worse than Judas--who at least could hang himself.
+
+He got up and went to a mirror in the corner of the room. The mere sight
+of himself made the impossible seem more impossible. He was so fine a
+specimen--he could not but know it!--so much the free man, the honorable
+man, the man of the world! He tried to see himself with his hair clipped
+and his beard shaven and the white cravat and waistcoat replaced by the
+harlequin costume of the jailbird. He tried to see himself making his
+own bed, and scrubbing his own floor, and standing at his cell door with
+a tin pot in his hand, waiting for his skilly. It was so absurd, so out
+of the question, that he nearly laughed outright. He was in a dream--in
+a nightmare! He shook himself, he pinched himself, in order to wake up.
+He was ready in sudden rage to curse the handsome, familiar room for the
+persistence of its reality, because the rows of books and the Baxter
+prints and the desks and chairs and electric lights refused to melt away
+like things in a troubled sleep.
+
+It was then that for the first time he began to taste the real measure
+of his impotence. He was in the hand of the law. He was in the grip of
+the sternest avenging forces human society could set in motion against
+him; and, quibbles, shifts, and subterfuges swept aside, no one knew
+better than himself that his punishment would be just.
+
+It was a strange feeling, the feeling of having put himself outside the
+scope of mercy. But there he was! There could never be a word spoken in
+his defense, nor in any one's heart a throb of sympathy toward him. He
+had forfeited everything. He could expect nothing from any man, and from
+his daughter least of all. The utmost he could ask for her was that she
+should marry, go away, and school herself as nearly as might be to
+renounce him. That she should do it utterly would not be possible; but
+something would be accomplished if pride or humiliation or resentment
+gave her the spirit to carry her head high and ignore his existence.
+
+It was incredible to think that at that very instant she was sleeping
+quietly, without a suspicion of what was awaiting her. Everything was
+incredible--incredible and impossible. As he looked around the room, in
+which every book, every photograph, every pen and pencil, was a part of
+him, he found himself once more straining for a hope, catching at
+straws. He took a sheet of paper, and sitting down at his desk began
+again, for the ten thousandth time, to balance feverishly his meagre
+assets against his overwhelming liabilities. He added and subtracted and
+multiplied and divided with a sort of frenzy, as though by dint of sheer
+forcing the figures he could make them respond to his will.
+
+Suddenly, with a gesture of mingled anger and hopelessness, he swept the
+scribbled sheets and all the writing paraphernalia with a crash to the
+floor, and, burying his face in his hands, gave utterance to a smothered
+groan. It was a cry, not of surrender, but of protest--of infinite,
+exasperated protest, of protest against fate and law and judgment and
+the eternal principles of right and wrong, and against himself most of
+all. With his head pressed down on the bare polished wood of his desk,
+he hurled himself mentally at an earth of adamant and a heaven of brass,
+hurled himself ferociously, repeatedly, with a kind of doggedness, as
+though he would either break them down or dash his own soul to pieces.
+
+"O God! O God!"
+
+It was an involuntary moan, stifled in his fear of becoming hysterical,
+but its syllables arrested his attention. They were the syllables of
+primal articulation, of primal need, condensing the appeal and the
+aspiration of the world. He repeated them:
+
+"O God! O God!"
+
+He repeated them again. He raised his head, as if listening to a voice.
+
+"O God! O God!"
+
+He continued to sit thus, as if listening.
+
+It was a strange, an astounding thought to him that he might pray.
+Though the earth of adamant were unyielding, the heaven of brass might
+give way!
+
+He dragged himself to his feet.
+
+He believed in God--vaguely. That is, it had always been a matter of
+good form with him to go to church and to call for the offices of
+religion on occasions of death or marriage. He had assisted at the
+saying of prayers and assented to their contents. He had even joined in
+them himself, since a liturgical service was a principle in the church
+to which he "belonged." All this, however, had seemed remote from his
+personal affairs, his life-and-death struggles--till now. Now, all at
+once, queerly, it offered him something--he knew not what. It might be
+nothing better than any of the straws he had been clutching at. It might
+be no more than the effort he had just been making to compel two to
+balance ten.
+
+He stood in the middle of the room under the cluster of electric lights
+and tried to recollect what he knew, what he had heard, of this Power
+that could still act when human strength had reached its limitations.
+It was nothing very definite. It consisted chiefly of great phrases,
+imperfectly understood: "Father Almighty," "Saviour of the World,"
+"Divine Compassion" and such like. He did not reason about them, or try
+to formulate what he actually believed. It was instinctively, almost
+unconsciously, that he began to speak; it was brokenly and with a kind
+of inward, spiritual hoarseness. He scarcely knew what he was doing when
+he found himself saying, mentally:
+
+"Save me!... I'm helpless!... I'm desperate!... Save me!... Work a
+miracle!... Father!... Christ! Christ! Save my daughter!... We have no
+one--but--but You!... Work a miracle! Work a miracle!... I'm a thief and
+a liar and a traitor--but save me! I might do something yet--something
+that might render me--worth salvation--but then--I might not.... Anyhow,
+save me!... O God! Father Almighty!... Almighty! That means that You can
+do anything!... Even now--You can do--anything!... Save us!... Save us
+all!... Christ! Christ! Christ!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He knew neither when nor how he ceased, any more than when or how he
+began. His most clearly defined impression was that of his spirit coming
+back from a long way off to take perception of the fact that he was
+still standing under the cluster of electric lights and the clock was
+striking three. He was breathless, exhausted. His most urgent physic
+need was that of air. He strode to the window-door leading out to the
+terraced lawn, and, throwing it open, passed out into the darkness.
+
+There was no mist at this height above the Charles. The night was still,
+and the moon westering. The light had a glimmering, metallic essence, as
+from a cosmic mirror in the firmament. Long shadows of trees and
+shrubbery lay across the grass. Clear in the moonlit foreground stood an
+elm, the pride of Tory Hill--springing as a single shaft for twice the
+measure of a man--springing and spreading there into four giant
+branches, each of which sprang and spread higher into eight--so
+springing and spreading, springing and spreading still--rounded,
+symmetrical, superb--till the long outermost shoots fell pendulous, like
+spray from a fountain of verdure. The silence held the suggestion of
+mighty spiritual things astir. At least the heaven was not of brass, if
+the earth continued to be of adamant. On the contrary, the sky was high,
+soft, dim, star-bestrewn, ineffable. It was spacious; it was free; it
+was the home of glorious things; it was the medium of the eternal.
+
+He was not reassured; he was not even comforted; what relief he got came
+only from a feeling--a fancy, perhaps--that the weight had been eased,
+that he was freed for a minute from the crushing pressure of the
+inevitable. It would return again and break him down, but for the moment
+it was lifted, giving him room and power to breathe. He did
+breathe--long deep draughts of the cool night air that brought
+refreshment and something like strength to struggle on.
+
+He came back into the room. His pens and papers were scattered on the
+floor, and ink from the overturned inkstand was running out on the
+Oriental rug. It was the kind of detail that before this evening would
+have shocked him; but nothing mattered now. He was too indifferent to
+lift his hand and put the inkstand back into its place. Instead, he
+threw himself on a couch, turning his face to the still open window and
+drinking in with thirsty gasps the blessed, revivifying air.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Guion awoke in a chill, gray light, to find himself covered with a rug,
+and his daughter, wrapped in a white dressing-gown, bending above him.
+Over her shoulder peered the scared face of a maid. His first sensation
+was that he was cold, his first act to pull the rug more closely about
+him. His struggle back to waking consciousness was the more confused
+because of the familiar surroundings of the library.
+
+"Oh, papa, what's the matter?"
+
+He threw the coverlet from him and dragged himself to a sitting posture.
+
+"What time is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. "I must have dropped off
+to sleep. Is dinner ready?"
+
+"It's half-past six in the morning, papa dear. Katie found you here when
+she came in to dust the room. The window was wide open and all these
+things strewn about the floor. She put the rug on you and came to wake
+me. What is it? What's happened? Let me send for the doctor."
+
+With his elbow on his knee, he rested his forehead on his hand. The
+incidents of the night came back to him. Olivia seated herself on the
+couch beside him, an arm across his shoulder.
+
+"I'm cold," was all he said.
+
+"Katie, go and mix something hot--some whisky or brandy and hot
+water--anything! And you, papa dear, go to bed. I'll call Reynolds and
+he'll help you."
+
+"I'm cold," he said again.
+
+Rising, he crawled to the mirror into which he had looked last night,
+shuddering at sight of his own face. The mere fact that he was still in
+his evening clothes, the white waistcoat wrinkled and the cravat awry,
+shocked him inexpressibly.
+
+"I'm cold," he said for the third time.
+
+But when he had bathed, dressed, and begun his breakfast, the chill left
+him. He regained the mastery of his thoughts and the understanding of
+his position. A certain exaltation of suffering which had upheld him
+during the previous night failed him, however, now, leaving nothing but
+a sense of flat, commonplace misery. Thrown into relief by the daylight,
+the facts were more relentless--not easier of acceptance.
+
+As he drank his coffee and tried to eat he could feel his daughter
+watching him from the other end of the table. Now and then he screened
+himself from her gaze by pretending to skim the morning paper. Once he
+was startled. Reflected in the glass of a picture hanging on the
+opposite wall he caught the image of a man in a blue uniform, who
+mounted the steps and rang the door-bell.
+
+"Who's that?" he asked, sharply. He dared not turn round to see.
+
+"It's only the postman, papa darling. Who else should it be?"
+
+"Yes; of course." He breathed again. "You mustn't mind me, dear. I'm
+nervous. I'm--I'm not very well."
+
+"I see you're not, papa. I saw it last night. I knew something was
+wrong."
+
+"There's something--very wrong."
+
+"What is it? Tell me."
+
+Leaning on the table, with clasped hands uplifted, the loose white lace
+sleeves falling away from her slender wrists, she looked at him
+pleadingly.
+
+"We've--that is, I've--lost a great deal of money."
+
+"Oh!" The sound was just above her breath. Then, after long silence, she
+asked: "Is it much?"
+
+He waited before replying, seeking, for the last time, some mitigation
+of what he had to tell her.
+
+"It's all we have."
+
+"Oh!" It was the same sound as before, just audible--a sound with a
+little surprise in it, a hint of something awed, but without dismay.
+
+He forced himself to take a few sips of coffee and crumble a bit of
+toast.
+
+"I don't mind, papa. If that's what's troubling you so much, don't let
+it any longer. Worse things have happened than that." He gulped down
+more coffee, not because he wanted it, but to counteract the rising in
+his throat. "Shall we have to lose Tory Hill?" she asked, after another
+silence.
+
+He nodded an affirmative, with his head down.
+
+"Then you mean me to understand what you said just now--quite literally.
+We've lost all we have."
+
+"When everything is settled," he explained, with an effort, "we shall
+have nothing at all. It will be worse than that, since I sha'n't be
+able to pay all I owe."
+
+"Yes; that _is_ worse," she assented, quietly.
+
+Another silence was broken by his saying, hoarsely:
+
+"You'll get married--"
+
+"That will have to be reconsidered."
+
+"Do you mean--on your part?"
+
+"I suppose I mean--on everybody's part?"
+
+"Do you think he would want to--you must excuse the crudity of the
+question--do you think he would want to back out?"
+
+"I don't know that I could answer that. It isn't quite to the point.
+Backing out, as you call it, wouldn't be the process--whatever
+happened."
+
+He interrupted her nervously. "If this should fall through, dear, you
+must write to your Aunt Vic. You must eat humble pie. You were too
+toplofty with her as it was. She'll take you."
+
+"Take me, papa? Why shouldn't I stay with you? I'd much rather."
+
+He tried to explain. It was clearly the moment at which to do it.
+
+"I don't think you understand, dear, how entirely everything has gone to
+smash. I shall probably--I may say, certainly--I shall have to--to go--"
+
+"I do understand that. But it often happens--especially in this
+country--that things go to smash, and then the people begin again. There
+was Lulu Sentner's father. They lost everything they had--and she and
+her sisters did dressmaking. But he borrowed money, and started in from
+the beginning, and now they're very well off once more. It's the kind
+of thing one hears of constantly--in this country."
+
+"You couldn't hear of it in my case, dear, because--well, because I've
+done all that. I've begun again, and begun again. I've used up all my
+credit--all my chances. The things I counted on didn't come off. You
+know that that happens sometimes, don't you?--without any one being to
+blame at all?"
+
+She nodded. "I think I've heard so."
+
+"And now," he went on, eager that she should begin to see what he was
+leading her up to--"and now I couldn't borrow a thousand dollars in all
+Boston, unless it was from some one who gave it to me as a charity. I've
+borrowed from every one--every penny for which I could offer
+security--and I owe--I owe hundreds of thousands. Do you see now how bad
+it is?"
+
+"I do see how bad it is, papa. I admit it's worse than I thought. But
+all the same I know that when people have high reputations other people
+trust them and help them through. Banks do it, don't they? Isn't that
+partly what they're for? It was Pierpoint & Hargous who helped Lulu
+Sentner's father. They stood behind him. She told me so. I'm positive
+that with your name they'd do as much for you. You take a gloomy outlook
+because you're ill. But there's no one in Boston--no one in New
+England--more esteemed or trusted. When one can say, 'All is lost save
+honor,' then, relatively speaking, there's very little lost at all."
+
+He got up from the table and went to his room. After these words it was
+physically impossible for him to tell her anything more. He had thought
+of a means which might bring the fact home to her through the day by a
+process of suggestion. Packing a small bag with toilet articles and
+other necessaries, he left it in a conspicuous place.
+
+"I want Reynolds to give it to my messenger in case I send for it," he
+explained to her, when he had descended to the dining-room again.
+
+She was still sitting where he left her, at the head of the table, pale,
+pensive, but not otherwise disturbed.
+
+"Does that mean that you're not coming home to-night?"
+
+"I--I don't know. Things may happen to--to prevent me."
+
+"Where should you go?--to New York?"
+
+"No; not to New York."
+
+He half hoped she would press the question, but when she spoke it was
+only to say:
+
+"I hope you'll try to come home, because I'm sure you're not well. Of
+course I understand it, now I know you've had so much to upset you. But
+I wish you'd see Dr. Scott. And, papa," she added, rising, "don't have
+me on your mind--please don't. I'm quite capable of facing the world
+without money. You mayn't believe it, but I am. I could do it--somehow.
+I'm like you. I've a great deal of self-reliance, and a great deal of
+something else--I don't quite know what--that has never been taxed or
+called on. It may be pride, but it isn't only pride. Whatever it is,
+I'm strong enough to bear a lot of trouble. I don't want you to think of
+me at all in any way that will worry you."
+
+She was making it so hard for him that he kissed her hastily and went
+away. Her further enlightenment was one more detail that he must leave,
+as he had left so much else, to fate or God to take care of. For the
+present he himself had all he could attend to.
+
+Half-way to the gate he turned to take what might prove his last look at
+the old house. It stood on the summit of a low, rounded hill, on the
+site made historic as the country residence of Governor Rodney. Governor
+Rodney's "Mansion" having been sacked in the Revolution by his
+fellow-townsmen, the neighborhood fell for a time into disrepute under
+the contemptuous nickname of Tory Hill. On the restoration of order the
+property, passed by purchase to the Guions, in whose hands, with a
+continuity not customary in America, it had remained. The present house,
+built by Andrew Guion, on the foundations of the Rodney Mansion, in the
+early nineteenth century, was old enough according to New England
+standards to be venerable; and, though most of the ground originally
+about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to
+give an impression of ample outdoor space. Against the blue of the
+October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was
+not without a certain stateliness--rectangular, three-storied, mellow,
+with buff walls, buff chimneys, white doorways, white casements, white
+verandas, a white balustrade around the top, and a white urn at each of
+the four corners. Where, as over the verandas, there was a bit of
+inclined roof, russet-red tiles gave a warmer touch of color. From the
+borders of the lawn, edged with a line of shrubs, the town of Waverton,
+merging into Cambridge, just now a stretch of crimson-and-orange
+woodland, where gables, spires, and towers peeped above the trees,
+sloped gently to the ribbon of the Charles. Far away, and dim in the
+morning haze, the roofed and steepled crest of Beacon Hill rose in
+successive ridges, to cast up from its highest point the gilded dome of
+the State House as culmination to the sky-line. Guion looked long and
+hard, first at the house, then at the prospect. He walked on only when
+he remembered that he must reserve his forces for the day's
+possibilities, that he must not drain himself of emotion in advance. If
+what he expected were to come to pass, the first essential to his
+playing the man at all would lie in his keeping cool.
+
+So, on reaching his office, he brought all his knowledge of the world
+into play, to appear without undue self-consciousness before his
+stenographer, his bookkeeper, and his clerks. The ordeal was the more
+severe because of his belief that they were conversant with the state of
+his affairs. At least they knew enough to be sorry for him--of that he
+was sure; though there was nothing on this particular morning to display
+the sympathy, unless it was the stenographer's smile as he passed her in
+the anteroom, and the three small yellow chrysanthemums she had placed
+in a glass on his desk. In the nods of greeting between him and the men
+there was, or there seemed to be, a studied effort to show nothing at
+all.
+
+Once safely in his own office, he shut the door with a sense of relief
+in the seclusion. It crossed his mind that he should feel something of
+the same sort when locked in the privacy of his cell after the hideous
+publicity of the trial. From habit as well as from anxiety he went
+straight to a mirror and surveyed himself again. Decidedly he had
+changed since yesterday. It was not so much that he was older or more
+care-worn--he was different. Perhaps he was ill. He felt well enough,
+except for being tired, desperately tired; but that could be accounted
+for by the way in which he had spent the night. He noticed chiefly the
+ashy tint of his skin, the dullness of his eyes, and--notwithstanding
+the fact that his clothes were of his usual fastidiousness--a curious
+effect of being badly dressed more startling to him than pain. He was
+careful to brush his beard and twist his long mustache into its usual
+upward, French-looking curve, so as to regain as much as possible the
+air of his old self, before seating himself at his desk to look over his
+correspondence. There was a pile of letters, of which he read the
+addresses slowly without opening any of them.
+
+What was the use? He could do nothing. He had come to the end. He had
+exhausted all the possibilities of the situation. Besides, his spirit
+was broken. He could feel it. Something snapped last night within him
+that would never be whole, never even be mended, again. It was not only
+the material resources under his control that he had overtaxed, but the
+spring of energy within himself, leaving him no more power of
+resilience.
+
+An hour may have passed in this condition of dull suspense, when he was
+startled by the tinkle of his desk telephone. It was with some effort
+that he leaned forward to answer the call. Not that he was afraid--now;
+he only shrank from the necessity of doing anything.
+
+"Mr. Davenant would like to see you," came the voice of the stenographer
+from the anteroom.
+
+There was nothing to reply but, "Ask Mr. Davenant to come in." He
+uttered the words mechanically. He had not thought of Davenant since he
+talked with Olivia on the stairs--a conversation that now seemed a
+curiously long time ago.
+
+"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Guion," the visitor said,
+apologetically, with a glance at the letters on the desk.
+
+"Not at all, my dear fellow," Guion said, cordially, from force of
+habit, offering his hand without rising from the revolving chair. "Sit
+down. Have a cigar. It's rather a sharp morning for the time of year."
+
+The use of the conventional phrases of welcome helped him to emerge
+somewhat from his state of apathy. Davenant declined the cigar, but
+seated himself near the desk, in one of the round-backed office chairs.
+Not being a man easily embarrassed by silences, he did not begin to
+speak at once, and during the minute his hesitation lasted Guion
+bethought him of Olivia's remark, "That sort of Saxon-giant type is
+always good-looking." Davenant _was_ good-looking, in a clear-skinned,
+clear-eyed way. Everything about him spoke of straight-forwardness and
+strength, tempered perhaps by the boyish quality inseparable from fair
+hair, a clean, healthily ruddy complexion, and a direct blue glance that
+rested on men and things with a kind of pensive wondering. All the same,
+the heavy-browed face on a big, tense neck had a frowning, perhaps a
+lowering expression that reminded Guion of a young bull before he begins
+to charge. The lips beneath the fair mustache might be too tightly and
+too severely compressed, but the smile into which they broke over
+regular white teeth was the franker and the more engaging because of the
+unexpected light. If there was any physical awkwardness about him, it
+was in the management of his long legs; but that difficulty was overcome
+by his simplicity. It was characteristic of Guion to notice, even at
+such a time as this, that Davenant was carefully and correctly dressed,
+like a man respectful of social usages.
+
+"I came in to see you, Mr. Guion," he began, apparently with some
+hesitation, "about what we were talking of last night."
+
+Guion pulled himself together. His handsome eyebrows arched themselves,
+and he half smiled.
+
+"Last night? What _were_ we talking of?"
+
+"We weren't talking of it, exactly. You only told us."
+
+"Only told you--what?" The necessity to do a little fencing brought
+some of his old powers into play.
+
+"That you wanted to borrow half a million dollars. I've come in to--to
+lend you that sum--if you'll take it."
+
+For a few seconds Guion sat rigidly still, looking at this man. The
+import and bearing of the words were too much for him to grasp at once.
+All his mind was prepared to deal with on the spur of the moment was the
+fact of this offer, ignoring its application and its consequences as
+things which for the moment lay outside his range of thought.
+
+As far as he was able to reflect, it was to assume that there was more
+here than met the eye. Davenant was too practised as a player of "the
+game" to pay a big price for a broken potsherd, unless he was tolerably
+sure in advance that within the potsherd or under it there lay more than
+its value. It was not easy to surmise the form of the treasure nor the
+spot where it was hidden, but that it was there--in kind satisfactory to
+Davenant himself--Guion had no doubt. It was his part, therefore, to be
+astute and wary, not to lose the chance of selling, and yet not to allow
+himself to be overreached. If Davenant was playing a deep game, he must
+play a deeper. He was sorry his head ached and that he felt in such poor
+trim for making the effort. "I must look sharp," he said to himself;
+"and yet I must be square and courteous. That's the line for me to
+take." He tried to get some inspiration for the spurt in telling himself
+that in spite of everything he was still a man of business. When at last
+he began to speak, it was with something of the feeling of the
+broken-down prize-fighter dragging himself bleeding and breathless into
+the ring for the last round with a young and still unspent opponent.
+
+"I didn't suppose you were in--in a position--to do that."
+
+"I am." Davenant nodded with some emphasis.
+
+"Did you think that that was what I meant when I--I opened my heart to
+you last night?"
+
+"No. I know it wasn't. My offer is inspired by nothing but what I feel."
+
+"Good!" It was some minutes before Guion spoke again. "If I remember
+rightly," he observed then, "I said I would sell my soul for half a
+million dollars. I didn't say I wanted to borrow that amount."
+
+"You may put it in any way you like," Davenant smiled. "I've come with
+the offer of the money. I want you to have it. The terms on which you'd
+take it don't matter to me."
+
+"But they do to me. Don't you see? I'd borrow the money if I could. I
+couldn't accept it in any other way. And I can't borrow it. I couldn't
+pay the interest on it if I did. But I've exhausted my credit. I can't
+borrow any more."
+
+"You can borrow what I'm willing to lend, can't you?"
+
+"No; because Tory Hill is mortgaged for all it will stand. I've nothing
+else to offer as collateral--"
+
+"I'm not asking for collateral. I'm ready to hand you over the money on
+any terms you like or on no terms at all."
+
+"Do you mean that you'd be willing to--to--to _give_ it to me?"
+
+"I mean, sir," he explained, reddening a little, "that I want you to
+have the money to _use_--now. We could talk about the conditions
+afterward and call them what you please. If I understood you correctly
+last night, you're in a tight place--a confoundedly tight place--"
+
+"I am; but--don't be offended!--it seems to me you'd put me in a
+tighter."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+[Illustration: "I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE PENALTY"]
+
+"It's a little difficult to explain." He leaned forward, with one of his
+nervous, jerky movements, and fingered the glass containing the three
+chrysanthemums, but without taking his eyes from Davenant. So far he was
+quite satisfied with himself. "You see, it's this way. I've done
+wrong--very wrong. We needn't go into that, because you know it as well
+as I. But I'm willing to pay the penalty. That is, I'm _ready_ to pay
+the penalty. I've made up my mind to it. I've had to--of course. But if
+I accepted your offer, you'd be paying it, not I."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't I? I've paid other people's debts before now--once
+or twice--when I didn't want to. Why shouldn't I pay yours, when I
+should like the job?"
+
+Davenant attempted, by taking something like a jovial tone, to carry the
+thing off lightly.
+
+"There's no reason why you shouldn't do it; there's only a reason why I
+shouldn't let you."
+
+"I don't see why you shouldn't let me. It mayn't be just what you'd
+like, but it's surely better than--than what you wouldn't like at all."
+
+Taking in the significance of these words, Guion colored, not with the
+healthy young flush that came so readily to Davenant's face, but in
+dabbled, hectic spots. His hand trembled, too, so that some of the water
+from the vase he was holding spilled over on the desk. It was probably
+this small accident, making him forget the importance of his rôle, that
+caused him to jump up nervously and begin pacing about the room.
+
+Davenant noticed then what he had not yet had time for--the change that
+had taken place in Guion in less than twenty hours. It could not be
+defined as looking older or haggard or ill. It could hardly be said to
+be a difference in complexion or feature or anything outward. As far as
+Davenant was able to judge, it was probably due, not to the loss of
+self-respect, but to the loss of the pretense at self-respect; it was
+due to that desolation of the personality that comes when the soul has
+no more reason to keep up its defenses against the world outside it,
+when the Beautiful Gate is battered down and the Veil of the Temple
+rent, while the Holy of Holies lies open for any eye to rifle. It was
+probably because this was so that Guion, on coming back to his seat,
+began at once to be more explanatory than there was any need for.
+
+"I haven't tried to thank you for your kind suggestion, but we'll come
+to that when I see more clearly just what you want."
+
+"I've told you that. I'm not asking for anything else."
+
+"So far you haven't asked for anything at all; but I don't imagine
+you'll be content with that. In any case," he hurried on, as Davenant
+seemed about to speak, "I don't want you to be under any misapprehension
+about the affair. There's nothing extenuating in it whatever--that is,
+nothing but the intention to 'put it back' that goes with practically
+every instance of"--he hesitated long--"every instance of embezzlement,"
+he finished, bravely. "It began this way--"
+
+"I don't want to know how it began," Davenant said, hastily. "I'm
+satisfied with knowing the situation as it is."
+
+"But I want to tell you. In proportion as I'm open with you I shall
+expect you to be frank with me."
+
+"I don't promise to be frank with you."
+
+"Anyhow, I mean to set you the example."
+
+He went on to speak rapidly, feverishly, with that half-hysterical
+impulse toward confession from the signs of which Davenant had shrunk on
+the previous evening. As Guion himself had forewarned, there was nothing
+new or unusual in the tale. The situations were entirely the
+conventional ones in the drama of this kind of unfaithfulness. The only
+element to make it appealing, an element forcibly present to Davenant's
+protective instincts, was the contrast between what Guion had been and
+what he was to-day.
+
+"And so," Guion concluded, "I don't see how I could accept this money
+from you. Any honorable man--that is," he corrected, in some confusion,
+"any _sane_ man--would tell you as much."
+
+"I've already considered what the sane man and the honorable man would
+tell me. I guess I can let them stick to their opinion so long as I have
+my own."
+
+"And what _is_ your opinion? Do you mind telling me? You understand that
+what you're proposing is immoral, don't you?"
+
+"Yes--in a way."
+
+Guion frowned. He had hoped for some pretense at contradiction.
+
+"I didn't know whether you'd thought of that."
+
+"Oh yes, I've thought of it. That is, I see what you mean."
+
+"It's compounding a felony and outwitting the ends of justice and--"
+
+"I guess I'll do it just the same. It doesn't seem to be my special job
+to look after the ends of justice; and as for compounding a
+felony--well, it'll be something new."
+
+Guion made a show of looking at him sharply. The effort, or the
+pretended effort, to see through Davenant's game disguised for the
+moment his sense of humiliation at this prompt acceptance of his own
+statement of the case.
+
+"All the same," he observed, trying to take a detached, judicial tone,
+"your offer is so amazing that I presume you wouldn't make it unless you
+had some unusual reason."
+
+"I don't know that I have. In fact, I know I haven't."
+
+"Well, whatever its nature, I should like to know what it is."
+
+"Is that necessary?"
+
+"Doesn't it strike you that it would be--in order? If I were to let you
+do this for me you'd be rendering me an extraordinary service. We're
+both men of business, men of the world; and we know that something for
+nothing is not according to Hoyle."
+
+Davenant looked at him pensively. "That is, you want to know what I
+should be pulling off for myself?"
+
+"That's about it."
+
+"I don't see why that should worry you. If you get the money--"
+
+"If I get the money I put myself in your power."
+
+"What of that? Isn't it just as well to be in my power as in the power
+of other people?"
+
+Again Guion winced inwardly, but kept his self-control. He was not yet
+accustomed to doing without the formulas of respect from those whom he
+considered his inferiors.
+
+"Possibly," he said, not caring to conceal a certain irritation; "but
+even so I should like to know in case I _were_ in your power what you'd
+expect of me."
+
+"I can answer that question right away. I shouldn't expect anything at
+all."
+
+"Then you leave me more in the dark than ever."
+
+Davenant still eyed him pensively. "Do I understand you to be suspicious
+of my motives?"
+
+"Suspicious might not be the right word. Suppose we said curious."
+
+Davenant reflected. Perhaps it was his mastery of the situation that
+gave him unconsciously a rock-like air of nonchalance. When he spoke it
+was with a little smile, which Guion took to be one of condescension.
+Condescension in the circumstances was synonymous with insolence.
+
+"Well, sir, suppose I allowed you to remain curious? What then?"
+
+They were the wrong words. It was the wrong manner. Guion looked up with
+a start. His next words were uttered in the blind instinct of the
+haughty-headed gentleman who thinks highly of himself to save the
+moment's dignity.
+
+"In that case I think we must call the bargain off."
+
+Davenant shot out of his seat. He, too, was not without a current of hot
+blood.
+
+"All right, sir. It's for you to decide. Only, I'm sorry. Good-by!" He
+held out his hand, which Guion, who was now leaning forward, toying with
+the pens and pencils on the desk, affected not to see. A certain lack of
+ease that often came over Davenant at moments of leave-taking or
+greeting kept him on the spot. "I hoped," he stammered, "that I might
+have been of some use to you, and that Miss Guion--"
+
+Guion looked up sharply. "Has _she_ got anything to do with it?"
+
+"Nothing," Davenant said, quickly, "nothing whatever."
+
+"I didn't see how she _could_ have--" Guion was going on, when Davenant
+interrupted.
+
+"She has nothing to do with it whatever," he repeated. "I was only going
+to say that I hoped she might have got through her wedding without
+hearing anything about--all this--all this fuss."
+
+In uttering the last words he had moved toward the door. His hand was on
+the knob and he was about to make some repetition of his farewells when
+Guion spoke again. He was leaning once more over the desk, his fingers
+playing nervously with the pens and pencils. He made no further effort
+to keep up his rôle of keen-sighted man of business. His head was bent,
+so that Davenant could scarcely see his face, and when he spoke his
+words were muffled and sullen.
+
+"Half a million would be too much. Four hundred and fifty thousand would
+cover everything."
+
+"That would be all the same to me," Davenant said, in a matter-of-fact
+tone.
+
+But he went back to the desk and took his seat again.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Having watched through the window her father pass down the avenue on his
+way to town, Miss Guion reseated herself mechanically in her place at
+the breakfast-table in order to think. Not that her thought could be
+active or coherent as yet; but a certain absorption of the facts was
+possible by the simple process of sitting still and letting them sink
+in. As the minutes went by, it became with her a matter of sensation
+rather than of mental effort--of odd, dream-like sensation, in which all
+the protecting walls and clearly defined boundary-lines of life and
+conduct appeared to be melting away, leaving an immeasurable outlook on
+vacancy. To pass abruptly from the command of means, dignity, and
+consideration out into a state in which she could claim nothing at all
+was not unlike what she had often supposed it might be to go from the
+pomp and circumstance of earth as a disembodied spirit into space. The
+analogy was rendered the more exact by her sense, stunned and yet
+conscious, of the survival of her own personality amid what seemed a
+universal wreckage. This persistence of the ego in conditions so vast
+and vague and empty as to be almost no conditions at all was the one
+point on which she could concentrate her faculties.
+
+It was, too, the one point on which she could form an articulated
+thought. She was Olivia Guion still! In this slipping of the world from
+beneath her feet she got a certain assurance from the affirmation of her
+identity. She was still that character, compounded of many elements,
+which recognized as its most active energies insistence of will and
+tenacity of pride. She could still call these resources to her aid to
+render her indestructible. Sitting slightly crouched, her hands clasped
+between her knees, her face drawn and momentarily older, her lips set,
+her eyes tracing absently the arabesques chased on the coffee-urn, she
+was inwardly urging her spirit to the buoyancy that cannot sink, to the
+vitality that rides on chaos. She was not actively or consciously doing
+this; in the strictest sense she was not doing it at all; it was doing
+itself, obscurely and spontaneously, by the operation of subliminal
+forces of which she knew almost nothing, and to which her personality
+bore no more than the relation of a mountain range to unrecordable
+volcanic fusions deep down in the earth.
+
+When, after long withdrawal within herself, she changed her position,
+sighed, and glanced about her, she had a curious feeling of having
+traveled far, of looking back on the old familiar things from a long way
+off. The richly wrought silver, the cheerful Minton, the splendidly
+toned mahogany, the Goya etchings on the walls, things of no great
+value, but long ago acquired, treasured, loved, had suddenly become
+useless and irrelevant. She had not lost Tory Hill so much as passed
+beyond it--out into a condition where nothing that preceded it could
+count, and in which, so far as she was concerned, existence would have
+to be a new creation, called afresh out of that which was without form
+and void.
+
+She experienced the same sensation, if it _was_ a sensation, when, a
+half-hour later, she found herself roaming dreamily rather than
+restlessly about the house. She was not anticipating her farewell of it;
+it had only ceased to be a background, to have a meaning; it was like
+the scenery, painted and set, after the play is done. She herself had
+been removed elsewhere, projected into a sphere where the signs and
+seasons were so different from anything she had ever known as to afford
+no indications--where day did not necessarily induce light, nor night
+darkness, nor past experience knowledge. In the confounding of the
+perceptive powers and the reeling of the judgment which the new
+circumstances produced, she clung to her capacity to survive and
+dominate like a staggered man to a stanchion.
+
+In the mean time she was not positively suffering from either shock or
+sorrow. From her personal point of view the loss of money was not of
+itself an overpowering calamity. It might entail the disruption of
+lifelong habits, but she was young enough not to be afraid of that. In
+spite of a way of living that might be said to have given her the best
+of everything, she had always known that her father's income was a small
+one for his position in the world. As a family they had been in the
+habit of associating on both sides of the Atlantic, with people whose
+revenues were twice and thrice and ten times their own. The obligation
+to keep the pace set by their equals had been recognized as a domestic
+hardship ever since she could remember, though it was a mitigating
+circumstance that in one way or another the money had always been found.
+Guion, Maxwell & Guion was a well which, while often threatening to run
+dry, had never failed to respond to a sufficiently energetic pumping.
+She had known the thought, however--fugitive, speculatory, not dwelt
+upon as a real possibility--that a day might come when it would do so no
+more.
+
+It was a thought that went as quickly as it came, its only importance
+being that it never caused her a shudder. If it sometimes brought matter
+for reflection, it was in showing her to herself in a light in which,
+she was tolerably sure, she never appeared to anybody else--as the true
+child of the line of frugal forebears, of sea-scouring men and
+cheese-paring women, who, during nearly two hundred years of thrift, had
+put penny to penny to save the Guion competence. Standing in the
+cheerful "Colonial" hall which their stinting of themselves had made it
+possible to build, and which was still furnished chiefly with the
+objects--a settle, a pair of cupboards, a Copley portrait, a few chairs,
+some old decorative pottery--they had lived with, it afforded one more
+steadying element for her bewilderment to grasp at, to feel herself
+their daughter.
+
+There was, indeed, in the very type of her beauty a hint of a carefully
+calculated, unwasteful adaptation of means to ends quite in the spirit
+of their sparing ways. It was a beauty achieved by nature apparently
+with the surest, and yet with the slightest, expenditure of energy--a
+beauty of poise, of line, of delicacy, of reserve--with nothing of the
+superfluous, and little even of color, beyond a gleam of chrysoprase in
+fine, gray eyes and a coppery, metallic luster in hair that otherwise
+would have passed as chestnut brown. It was a beauty that came as much
+from repose in inaction as from grace in movement, but of which a
+noticeable trait was that it required no more to produce it in the way
+of effort than in that of artifice. Through the transparent whiteness of
+the skin the blue of each clearly articulated vein and the rose of each
+hurrying flush counted for its utmost in the general economy of values.
+
+It was in keeping with this restraint that in all her ways, her manners,
+her dress, her speech, her pride, there should be a meticulous
+simplicity. It was not the simplicity of the hedge-row any more than of
+the hothouse; it was rather that of some classic flower, lavender or
+crown-imperial, growing from an ancient stock in some dignified,
+long-tended garden. It was thus a simplicity closely allied to
+sturdiness--the inner sturdiness not inconsistent with an outward
+semblance of fragility--the tenacity of strength by which the lavender
+scents the summer and the crown-imperial adorns the spring, after the
+severest snows.
+
+It was doubtless, this vitality, drawn from deep down in her native
+soil, that braced her now, to simply holding fast intuitively and
+almost blindly till the first force of the shock should have so spent
+itself that the normal working of the faculties might begin again. It
+was the something of which she had just spoken to her father--the
+something that might be pride but that was not wholly pride, which had
+never been taxed nor called on. She could not have defined it in a more
+positive degree; but even now, when all was confusion and
+disintegration, she was conscious of its being there, an untouched
+treasure of resources.
+
+In what it supplied her with, however, there was no answer to the
+question that had been silently making itself urgent from the first word
+of her father's revelations: What was to happen with regard to her
+wedding? It took the practical form of dealing with the mere outward
+paraphernalia--the service, the bridesmaids, the guests, the feast.
+Would it be reasonable, would it be decent, to carry out rich and
+elaborate plans in a ruined house? Further than that she dared not
+inquire, though she knew very well there was still a greater question to
+be met. When, during the course of the morning, Drusilla Fane came to
+see her, Olivia broached it timidly, though the conversation brought her
+little in the way of help.
+
+Knowing all she knew through the gossip of servants, Drusilla felt the
+necessity of being on her guard. She accepted Olivia's information that
+her father had met with losses as so much news, and gave utterance to
+sentiments of sympathy and encouragement. Beyond that she could not go.
+She was obliged to cast her condolences in the form of bald
+generalities, since she could make but a limited use of the name of
+Rupert Ashley as a source of comfort. More clearly than any one in their
+little group she could see what marriage with Olivia in her new
+conditions--the horrible, tragic conditions that would arise if Peter
+could do nothing--would mean for him. She weighed her words, therefore,
+with an exactness such as she had not displayed since her early days
+among the Sussex Rangers, measuring the little more and the little less
+as in an apothecary's balances.
+
+"You see," Olivia said, trying to sound her friend's ideas, "from one
+point of view I scarcely know him."
+
+"You know him well enough to be in love with him." Drusilla felt that
+that committed her to nothing.
+
+"That doesn't imply much--not necessarily, that is. You can be in love
+with people and scarcely know them at all. And it often happens that if
+you knew them better you wouldn't be in love with them."
+
+"And you know him well enough to be sure that he'll want to do
+everything right."
+
+"Oh yes; I'm quite sure of that. I'm only uncertain that--everything
+right--would satisfy me."
+
+Drusilla reflected. "I see what you mean. And, of course, you want to
+do--everything right--yourself."
+
+Olivia glanced up obliquely under her lashes.
+
+"I see what _you_ mean, too."
+
+"You mustn't see too much." Drusilla spoke hastily. She waited in some
+anxiety to see just what significance Olivia had taken from her words;
+but when the latter spoke it was to pass on to another point.
+
+"You see, he didn't want to marry an American, in the first place."
+
+"Well, no one forced him into that. That's one thing he did with his
+eyes open, at any rate."
+
+"His doing it was a sort of--concession."
+
+Drusilla looked at her with big, indignant eyes.
+
+"Concession to what, for pity's sake?"
+
+"Concession to his own heart, I suppose." Olivia smiled, faintly. "You
+see, all other things being equal, he would have preferred to marry one
+of his own countrywomen."
+
+"It's six of one and half a dozen of the other. If he'd married one of
+his own countrywomen, the other things wouldn't have been equal. So
+there you are."
+
+"But the other things aren't equal now. Don't you see? They're changed."
+
+"_You're_ not changed." Drusilla felt these words to be dangerous. It
+was a relief to her that Olivia should contradict them promptly.
+
+"Oh yes, I am. I'm changed--in value. With papa's troubles there's a
+depreciation in everything we are."
+
+Drusilla repeated these words to her father and mother at table when she
+went home to luncheon. "If she feels like that now," she commented,
+"what _will_ she say when she knows all?--if she ever has to know it."
+
+"But she hasn't changed," Mrs. Temple argued.
+
+"It doesn't make any difference in _her_."
+
+Drusilla shook her head. "Yes, it does, mother dear. You don't know
+anything about it."
+
+"I know enough about it," Mrs. Temple declared, with some asperity, "to
+see that she will be the same Olivia Guion after her father has gone to
+prison as she was in the days of her happiness. If there's any change,
+it will be to make her a better and nobler character. She's just the
+type to be--to be perfected through suffering."
+
+"Y-y-es," Drusilla admitted, her head inclined to one side. "That might
+be quite true in one way; but it wouldn't help Rupert Ashley to keep his
+place in the Sussex Rangers."
+
+"Do you mean to say they'd make him give it up?"
+
+"They wouldn't make him, mother dear. He'd only have to."
+
+"Well, I never did! If that's the British army--"
+
+"The British army is a very complicated institution. It fills a lot of
+different functions, and it's a lot of different things. It's one thing
+from the point of view of the regiment, and another from that of the War
+Office. It's one thing on the official side, and another on the
+military, and another on the social. You can't decide anything about it
+in an abstract, offhand way. Rupert Ashley might be a capital officer,
+and every one might say he'd done the honorable thing in standing by
+Olivia; and yet he'd find it impossible to go on as colonel of the
+Rangers when his father-in-law was in penal servitude. There it is in a
+nutshell. You can't argue about it, because that's the way it is."
+
+Rodney Temple said nothing; but he probably had these words in his mind
+when he, too, early in the afternoon, made his way to Tory Hill. Olivia
+spoke to him of her father's losses, though her allusions to Colonel
+Ashley were necessarily more veiled than they had been with Mrs. Fane.
+
+"The future may be quite different from what I expected. I can't tell
+yet for sure. I must see how things--work out."
+
+"That's a very good way, my dear," the old man commended. "It's a large
+part of knowledge to know how to leave well enough alone. Nine times out
+of ten life works out better by itself than we can make it."
+
+"I know I've got to feel my way," she said, meaning to agree with him.
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+She raised her eyebrows in some surprise. "You don't see--?"
+
+"No, I don't. Why should you feel your way? You're not blind."
+
+"I feel my way because I don't see it."
+
+"Oh yes, you do--all you need to see."
+
+"But I don't see any. I assure you it's all confusion."
+
+"Not a bit, my dear. It's as plain as a pikestaff--for the next step."
+
+"I don't know what you mean by the next step."
+
+"I suppose the next step would be--well, let us say what you've got to
+do to-day. That's about as much ground as any one can cover with a
+stride. You see that, don't you? You've got to eat your dinner, and go
+to bed. That's all you've got to settle for the moment."
+
+Her lips relaxed in a pale smile. "I'm afraid I must look a little
+farther ahead than that."
+
+"What for? What good will it do? You won't see anything straight. It's
+no use trying to see daylight two hours before dawn. People are foolish
+enough sometimes to make the attempt, but they only strain their
+eyesight. For every step you've got to take there'll be something to
+show you the line to follow."
+
+"What?" She asked the question chiefly for the sake of humoring him. She
+was not susceptible to this kind of comfort, nor did she feel the need
+of it.
+
+"W-well," the old man answered, slowly, "it isn't easy to tell you in
+any language you'd understand."
+
+"I can understand plain English, if that would do."
+
+"You can make it do, but it doesn't do very well. It's really one of
+those things that require what the primitive Christians called an
+unknown tongue. Since we haven't got that as a means of communication--"
+He broke off, stroking his long beard with a big handsome hand, but
+presently began again.
+
+"Some people call it a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
+night. Some people have described it by other figures of speech. The
+description isn't of importance--it's the _Thing_."
+
+She waited a minute, before saying in a tone that had some awe in it, as
+well as some impatience: "Oh, but I've never seen anything like that. I
+never expect to."
+
+"That's a pity; because it's there."
+
+"There? Where?"
+
+"Just where one would look for it--if one looked at all. When it moves,"
+he went on, his hand suiting the action to the word, on a level with his
+eyes, "when it moves, you follow it, and when it rests, you wait. It's
+possible--I don't know--I merely throw out the suggestion--no one can
+really _know_ but yourself, because no one but yourself can see it--but
+it's possible that at this moment--for you--it's standing still."
+
+"I don't know what I gain either by its moving or its standing still, so
+long as I don't see it."
+
+"No, neither do I," he assented, promptly.
+
+"Well, then?" she questioned.
+
+"Shall I tell you a little story?" He smiled at her behind his stringy,
+sandy beard, while his kind old eyes blinked wistfully.
+
+"If you like. I shall be happy to hear it." She was not enthusiastic.
+She was too deeply engrossed with pressing, practical questions to find
+his mysticism greatly to the point.
+
+He took a turn around the drawing-room before beginning, stopping to
+caress the glaze of one of the K'ang-hsi vases on the mantelpiece, while
+he arranged his thoughts.
+
+"There was once a little people," he began, turning round to where she
+sat in the corner of a sofa, her hands clasped in her lap--"there was
+once a little people--a mere handful, who afterward became a race--who
+saw the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and
+followed it. That is to say, some of them certainly saw it, enough of
+them to lead the others on. For a generation or two they were little
+more than a band of nomads; but at last they came to a land where they
+fought and conquered and settled down."
+
+"Yes? I seem to have heard of them. Please go on."
+
+"It was a little land, rather curiously situated between the Orient and
+the West, between the desert and the sea. It had great advantages both
+for seclusion within itself and communication with the world outside. If
+a divine power had wanted to nourish a tender shoot, till it grew strong
+enough to ripen seed that would blow readily into every corner of the
+globe, it probably couldn't have done better than to have planted it
+just there."
+
+She nodded, to show that she followed him.
+
+"But this little land had also the dangers attendant on its advantages.
+To the north of it there developed a great power; to the south of it
+another. Each turned greedy eyes on the little buffer state. And the
+little buffer state began to be very wise and politic and energetic. It
+said, 'If we don't begin to take active measures, the Assyrian, or the
+Egyptian, whoever gets here first, will eat us up. But if we buy off the
+one, he will protect us against the other.'"
+
+"That seems reasonable."
+
+"Yes; quite reasonable: too reasonable. They forgot that a power that
+could lead them by fire and cloud could protect them even against
+conscript troops and modern methods of fighting. They forgot that if so
+much trouble had been taken to put them where they were, it was not
+that--assuming that they behaved themselves--it was not that they might
+be easily rooted out. Instead of having confidence within they looked
+for an ally from without, and chose Egypt. Very clever; very diplomatic.
+There was only one criticism to be made on the course taken--that it was
+all wrong. There was a man on the spot to tell them so--one of those
+fellows whom we should call pessimists if we hadn't been taught to speak
+of them as prophets. 'You are carrying your riches,' he cried to them,
+'on the shoulders of young asses, and your treasures on the bunches of
+camels, to a people that shall not profit you. For the Egyptians shall
+help in vain, and to no purpose. Your strength is--_to sit still_!'" As
+he stood looking down at her his kindly eyes blinked for a minute
+longer, before he added, "Do you see the point?"
+
+She smiled and nodded. "Yes. It isn't very obscure. Otherwise expressed
+it might be, When in doubt, do nothing."
+
+"Exactly; do nothing--till the pillar of cloud begins to move."
+
+Out of the old man's parable she extracted just one hint that she
+considered useful. In the letter which she proceeded to write Rupert
+Ashley as soon as she was alone, a letter that would meet him on his
+arrival in New York, she gave a statement of such facts as had come to
+her knowledge, but abstained from comments of her own, and from
+suggestions. She had intended to make both. She had thought it at first
+her duty to take the initiative in pointing out the gulf of difficulties
+that had suddenly opened up between her lover and herself. It occurred
+to her now that she might possibly discern the leading of the pillar of
+cloud from self-betrayal on his part. She would note carefully his acts,
+his words, the expressions of his face. She had little doubt of being
+able to read in them some indication of her duty. This in itself was a
+relief. It was like being able to learn a language instead of having to
+invent one. Nevertheless, as she finished her letter she was impelled to
+add:
+
+"We have asked some three hundred people to the church for the 28th.
+Many of them will not be in town, as the season is still so early; but I
+think it wisest to withdraw all invitations without consulting you
+further. This will leave us free to do as we think best after you
+arrive. We can then talk over everything from the beginning."
+
+With the hint thus conveyed she felt her letter to be discreetly worded.
+By the time she had slipped down the driveway to the box at the gate and
+posted it with her own hands her father had returned.
+
+She had ordered tea in the little oval sitting-room they used when quite
+alone, and told the maid to say she was not receiving if anybody called.
+She knew her father would be tired, but she hoped that if they were
+undisturbed he would talk to her of his affairs. There was so much in
+them that was mysterious to her. Notwithstanding her partial recovery
+from the shock of the morning, she still felt herself transported to a
+world in which the needs were new to her, and the chain of cause and
+effect had a bewildering inconsequence. For this reason it seemed to her
+quite in the order of things--the curiously inverted order now
+established, in which one thing was as likely as another--that her
+father should stretch himself in a comfortable arm-chair and say nothing
+at all till after he had finished his second cup of tea. Even then he
+might not have spoken if her own patience had held out.
+
+"So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to observe.
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+"Sha'n't you _have_ to go?"
+
+There was an instant's hesitation.
+
+"Perhaps not. In fact--I may almost definitely say--_not_. I should like
+another cup of tea."
+
+"That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake?"
+
+"Nothing will keep me awake to-night."
+
+The tone caused her to look at him more closely as she took the cup he
+handed back to her. She noticed that his eyes glittered and that in
+either cheek, above the line of the beard, there was a hectic spot. She
+adjusted the spirit-lamp, and, lifting the cover of the kettle, looked
+inside.
+
+"Has anything happened?" she asked, doing her best to give the question
+a casual intonation.
+
+"A great deal has happened." He allowed that statement to sink in
+before continuing. "I think"--he paused long--"I think I'm going to get
+the money."
+
+She held herself well in hand, though at the words the old familiar
+landmarks of her former world seemed to rise again, rosily, mistily,
+like the walls of Troy to the sound of Apollo's lute. She looked into
+the kettle again to see if the water was yet boiling, taking longer than
+necessary to peer into the quiet depth.
+
+"I'm so glad." She spoke as if he had told her he had shaken hands with
+an old friend. "I thought you would."
+
+"Ah, but you never thought of anything like this."
+
+"I knew it would be something pretty good. With your name, there wasn't
+the slightest doubt of it."
+
+Had he been a wise man he would have let it go at that. He was not,
+however, a wise man. The shallow, brimming reservoir of his nature was
+of the kind that spills over at a splash.
+
+"The most extraordinary thing has happened," he went on. "A man came to
+my office to-day and offered to lend me--no, not to lend--practically to
+_give_ me--enough money to pull me through."
+
+She held a lump of sugar poised above his cup with the sugar-tongs. Her
+astonishment was so great that she kept it there. The walls of the city
+which just now had seemed to be rising magically faded away again,
+leaving the same unbounded vacancy into which she had been looking out
+all day.
+
+"What do you mean by--practically to give you?"
+
+"The man said lend. But my name is good for even more than you supposed,
+since he knows, and I know, that I can offer him no security."
+
+"How can he tell, then, that you'll ever pay it back?"
+
+"He can't tell. That's just it."
+
+"And can you tell?" She let the lump of sugar fall with a circle of tiny
+eddies into the cup of tea.
+
+"I can tell--up to a point." His tone indicated some abatement of
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Up to what point?"
+
+"Up to the point that I'll pay it back--if I can. That's all he asks. As
+a matter of fact, he doesn't seem to care."
+
+She handed him his cup. "Isn't that a very queer way to lend money?"
+
+"Of course it's queer. That's why I'm telling you. That's what makes it
+so remarkable--such a--tribute--to me, I dare say that sounds fatuous,
+but--"
+
+"It doesn't sound fatuous so much as--"
+
+"So much as what?"
+
+The distress gathering in her eyes prepared him for her next words
+before she uttered them.
+
+"Papa, I shouldn't think you'd take it."
+
+He stared at her dully. Her perspicacity disconcerted him. He had
+expected to bolster up the ruins of his honor by her delighted
+acquiescence. He had not known till now how much he had been counting on
+the justification of her relief. It was a proof, however, of the degree
+to which his own initiative had failed him that he cowered before her
+judgment, with little or no protest.
+
+"I haven't said I'd take it--positively."
+
+"Naturally. Of course you haven't."
+
+He dabbled the spoon uneasily in his tea, looking downcast. "I don't
+quite see that," he objected, trying to rally his pluck, "why it should
+be--naturally."
+
+"Oh, don't you? To me it's self-evident. We may have lost money, but
+we're still not--recipients of alms."
+
+"This wasn't alms. It was four hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
+
+She was plainly awe-struck. "That's a great deal; but I supposed it
+would be something large. And yet the magnitude of the sum only makes it
+the more impossible to accept."
+
+"Y-es; of course--if you look at it in that way." He put back his cup on
+the table untasted.
+
+"Surely it's the only way to look at it? Aren't you going to drink your
+tea?"
+
+"No, I think not. I've had enough. I've--I've had enough--of
+everything."
+
+He sank back wearily into the depths of his arm-chair. The glitter had
+passed from his eyes; he looked ill. He had clearly not enough courage
+to make a stand for what he wanted. She could see how cruelly he was
+disappointed. After all, he might have accepted the money and told her
+nothing about it! He had taken her into his confidence because of that
+need of expansion that had often led him to "give away" what a more
+crafty man would have kept to himself. She was profiting by his
+indiscretion to make what was already so hard for him still harder.
+Sipping her tea slowly, she turned the subject over and over in her
+mind, seeking some ground on which to agree with him.
+
+She did this the more conscientiously, since she had often reproached
+herself with a fixity of principle that might with some show of reason
+be called too inflexible. Between right and wrong other people,
+especially the people of her "world," were able to see an infinitude of
+shadings she had never been able to distinguish. She half accepted the
+criticism often made of her in Paris and London that her Puritan
+inheritance had given an inartistic rigidity to her moral prospect. It
+inclined her to see the paths of life as ruled and numbered like the
+checker-board plan of an American city, instead of twisting and winding,
+quaintly and picturesquely, with round-about evasions and astonishing
+short-cuts, amusing to explore, whether for the finding or the losing of
+the way, as in any of the capitals long trodden by the feet of men.
+Between the straight, broad avenues of conduct, well lighted and well
+defined, there lay apparently whole regions of byways, in which those
+who could not easily do right could wander vaguely, without precisely
+doing wrong, following a line that might be termed permissible. Into
+this tortuous maze her spirit now tried to penetrate, as occasionally,
+to visit some historic monument, she had plunged into the slums of a
+medieval town.
+
+It was an exercise that brought her nothing but a feeling of
+bewilderment. Having no sense of locality for this kind of labyrinth,
+she could only turn round and round confusedly. All she could do, when
+from the drooping of her father's lids she feared he was falling off to
+sleep, leaving the question unsettled, was to say, helplessly:
+
+"I suppose you'll be sorry now for having told me."
+
+He lifted his long lashes, that were like a girl's, and looked at her.
+The minutes that had passed had altered his expression. There was again
+a sparkle of resolve, perhaps of relief, in his glance. Without changing
+his position, he spoke drowsily, and yet reassuringly, like a man with a
+large and easy grasp of the situation. She was not sure whether it was a
+renewal of confidence on his part or a bit of acting.
+
+"No, dear, no. I wanted to get your point of view. It's always
+interesting to me. I see your objections--of course. I may say that I
+even shared some of them--till--"
+
+She allowed him a minute in which to resume, but, as he kept silence,
+she ventured to ask:
+
+"Does that mean that you don't share them now?"
+
+"I see what there is to be said--all round. It isn't to be expected,
+dear, that you, as a woman, not used to business--"
+
+"Oh, but I didn't understand that this _was_ business. That's just the
+point. To borrow money might be business--to borrow it on security, you
+know, or whatever else is the usual way--but not to take it as a
+present."
+
+He jerked himself up into a forward posture. When he replied to her, it
+was with didactic, explanatory irritation.
+
+"When I said that, I was legitimately using language that might be
+called exaggerated. Hyperbole is, I believe, the term grammarians use
+for it. I didn't expect you, dear, to take me up so literally. It isn't
+like you. You generally have more imagination. As a matter of fact,
+Davenant's offer was that of a loan--"
+
+"Oh! So it was--that man?"
+
+"Yes; it was he. He expressly spoke of it as _a loan_. I myself
+interpreted it as a gift simply to emphasize its extraordinary
+generosity. I thought you'd appreciate that. Do you see?"
+
+"Perfectly, papa; and it's the extraordinary generosity that seems to me
+just what makes it impossible. Why should Mr. Davenant be generous to
+us? What does he expect to gain?"
+
+"I had that out with him. He said he didn't expect to gain anything."
+
+"And you believed him?"
+
+"Partly; though I suppose he has something up his sleeve. It wasn't my
+policy to question him too closely about that. It's not altogether my
+first concern. I need the money."
+
+"But you don't need the money--in that way, papa?"
+
+"I need it in any way. If Davenant will let me have it--especially on
+such terms--I've no choice but to take it."
+
+"Oh, don't, papa. I'm sure it isn't right. I--I don't like him."
+
+"Pff! What's that got to do with it? This is business."
+
+"No, papa. It's not business. It's a great deal more--or a great deal
+less--I don't know which."
+
+"You don't know anything about it at all, dear. You may take that from
+me. This is a man's affair. You really _must_ leave it to me to deal
+with it." Once more he fell back into the depth of his arm-chair and
+closed his eyes. "If you don't mind, I think I should like a little nap.
+What have you got so especially against Davenant, anyhow?"
+
+"I've nothing against him--except that I've never liked him."
+
+"What do you know about him? When did you ever see him?"
+
+"I _haven't_ seen him for years--not since Drusilla used to bring him to
+dances, when we were young girls. She didn't like it particularly, but
+she had to do it because he was her father's ward and had gone to live
+with them. He was uncouth--aggressive. Wasn't he a foundling, or a
+street Arab, or something like that? He certainly seemed so. He wasn't a
+bit--civilized. And once he--he said something--he almost insulted me.
+You wouldn't take his money now, papa?"
+
+There was no answer. He breathed gently. She spoke more forcibly.
+
+"Papa, you wouldn't let a stranger pay your debts?"
+
+He continued to breathe gently, his eyes closed, the long black lashes
+curling on his cheek.
+
+"Papa, darling," she cried, "I'll help you. I'll take everything on
+myself. I'll find a way--somehow. Only, _don't_ do this."
+
+He stirred, and murmured sleepily.
+
+"You attend to your wedding, dear. That'll be quite enough for you to
+look after."
+
+"But I can't have a wedding if Mr. Davenant has to pay for it. Don't you
+see? I can't be married at all."
+
+When he made no response to this shot, she understood finally that he
+meant to let the subject drop.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+It was in the nature of a relief to Olivia Guion when, on the following
+day, her father was too ill to go to his office. A cold, caused by the
+exposure of two nights previous, and accompanied by a rising
+temperature, kept him confined to his room, though not to bed. The
+occurrence, by maintaining the situation where it was, rendered it
+impossible to take any irretrievable step that day. This was so much
+gain.
+
+She had slept little; she had passed most of the night in active and, as
+it seemed to her, lucid thinking. Among the points clearest to her was
+the degree to which she herself was involved in the present business. In
+a measure, the transfer of a large sum of money from Peter Davenant to
+her father would be an incident more vital to her than to any one else,
+since she more than any one else must inherit its moral effects. While
+she was at a loss to see what the man could claim from them in return
+for his generosity, she was convinced that his exactions would be not
+unconnected with herself. If, on the other hand, he demanded nothing,
+then the lifelong obligation in the way of gratitude that must thus be
+imposed on her would be the most intolerable thing of all. Better any
+privation than the incurring of such a debt--a debt that would cover
+everything she was or could become. Its magnitude would fill her
+horizon; she must live henceforth in the world it made, her very
+personality would turn into a thing of confused origin, sprung, it was
+true, from Henry and Carlotta Guion in the first place, but taking a
+second lease of life from the man whose beneficence started her afresh.
+She would date back to him, as barbarous women date to their marriage or
+Mohammedans to the Flight. It was a relation she could not have endured
+toward a man even if she loved him; still less was it sufferable with
+one whom she had always regarded with an indefinable disdain, when she
+had not ignored him. The very possibility that he might purchase a hold
+on her inspired a frantic feeling, like that of the ermine at pollution.
+
+Throughout the morning she was obliged to conceal from her father this
+intense opposition--or, at least to refrain from speaking of it. When
+she made the attempt he grew so feverish that the doctor advised the
+postponement of distressing topics till he should be better able to
+discuss them. She could only make him as comfortable as might be,
+pondering while she covered him up in the chaise-longue, putting his
+books and his cigars within easy reach, how she could best convert him
+to her point of view. It was inconceivable to her that he would persist
+in the scheme when he realized how it would affect her.
+
+She had gone down to the small oval sitting-room commanding the
+driveway, thinking it probable that Drusilla Fane might come to see her.
+Watching for her approach, she threw open the French window set in the
+rounded end of the room and leading out to the Corinthian-columned
+portico that adorned what had once been the garden side of the house.
+There was no garden now, only a stretch of elm-shaded lawn, with a few
+dahlias and zinnias making gorgeous clusters against the already
+gorgeous autumn-tinted shrubbery. On the wall of a neighboring brick
+house, Virginia creeper and ampelopsis added fuel to the fire of
+surrounding color, while a maple in the middle distance blazed with all
+the hues that might have flamed in Moses's burning bush. It was one of
+those days of the American autumn when the air is shot with gold, when
+there is gold in the light, gold on the foliage, gold on the grass, gold
+on all surfaces, gold in all shadows, and a gold sheen in the sky
+itself. Red gold like a rich lacquer overlay the trunks of the
+occasional pines, and pale-yellow gold, beaten and thin, shimmered along
+the pendulous garlands of the American elms, where they caught the sun.
+It was a windless morning and a silent one; the sound of a hammer or of
+a motorist's horn, coming up from the slope of splendid woodland that
+was really the town, accentuated rather than disturbed the immediate
+stillness.
+
+To Olivia Guion this quiet ecstasy of nature was uplifting. Its rich,
+rejoicing quality restored as by a tonic her habitual confidence in her
+ability to carry the strongholds of life with a high and graceful hand.
+Difficulties that had been paramount, overpowering, fell all at once
+into perspective, becoming heights to be scaled rather than barriers
+defying passage. For the first time in the twenty-four hours since the
+previous morning's revelations, she thought of her lover as bringing
+comfort rather than as creating complications.
+
+Up to this minute he had seemed to withdraw from her, to elude her. As a
+matter of fact, though she spoke of him rarely and always with a
+purposely prosaic touch, he was so romantic a figure in her dreams that
+the approach of the sordid and the ugly had dispelled his image. It was
+quite true, as she had said to Drusilla Fane, that from one point of
+view she didn't know him very well. She might have said that she didn't
+know him at all on any of those planes where rents and the price of beef
+are factors. He had come into her life with much the same sort of appeal
+as the wandering knight of the days of chivalry made to the damsel in
+the family fortress. Up to his appearing she had thought herself too
+sophisticated and too old to be caught by this kind of fancy, especially
+as it was not the first time she had been exposed to it. In the person
+of Rupert Ashley, however, it presented itself with the requisite
+limitations and accompaniments. He was neither so young nor so rich nor
+of such high rank as to bring a disproportionate element into their
+romance, while at the same time he had all the endowments of looks,
+birth, and legendary courage that the heroine craves in the hero. When
+he was not actually under her eyes, her imagination embodied him most
+easily in the _svelte_ elegance of the King Arthur beside Maximilian's
+tomb at Innspruck.
+
+Their acquaintance had been brief, but illuminating--one of those
+friendships that can afford to transcend the knowledge of mere outward
+personal facts to leap to the things of the heart and the spirit. It was
+one of the commonplaces of their intimate speech together that they
+"seemed to have known each other always"; but now that it was necessary
+for her to possess some practical measure of his character, she saw,
+with a sinking of the heart, that they had never passed beyond the stage
+of the poetic and pictorial.
+
+Speculating as to what he would say when he received her letter telling
+of her father's misfortunes, she was obliged to confess that she "had
+not the remotest idea." Matters of this sort belonged to a world on
+which they had deliberately turned their backs. That is to say, she had
+turned her back on it deliberately, though by training knowing its
+importance, fearing that to him it would seem mundane, inappropriate,
+American. This course had been well enough during the period of a
+high-bred courtship, almost too fastidiously disdainful of the
+commonplace; but now that the Fairy Princess had become a beggar-maid,
+while Prince Charming was Prince Charming still, it was natural that the
+former should recognize its insufficiency. She had recognized it fully
+yesterday; but this morning, in the optimistic brightness of the golden
+atmosphere, romance came suddenly to life again and confidence grew
+strong. Drusilla had said that she, Olivia, knew him well enough to be
+sure that he would want to do--everything right. They would do
+everything right--together. They would save her father whom she loved so
+tenderly, from making rash mistakes, and--who knew?--find a way,
+perhaps, to rescue him in his troubles and shelter his old age.
+
+She was so sure of herself to-day, and so nearly sure of Ashley, that
+even the shock of seeing Peter Davenant coming up the driveway, between
+the clumps of shrubbery, brought her no dismay. She was quick in reading
+the situation. It was after eleven o'clock; he had had time to go to
+Boston, and, learning that her father was not at his office, had come to
+seek him at home.
+
+She made her arrangements promptly. Withdrawing from the window before
+he could see her, she bade the maid say that, Mr. Guion being ill, Miss
+Guion would be glad to see Mr. Davenant, if he would have the kindness
+to come in. To give an air of greater naturalness to the
+_mise-en-scène_, she took a bit of embroidery from her work-basket, and
+began to stitch at it, seating herself near the open window. She was not
+without a slight, half-amused sense of lying in ambush, as if some
+Biblical voice were saying to her, "Up! for the Lord hath delivered
+thine enemy into thine hand."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My father isn't well," she explained to Davenant, when she had shaken
+hands with him and begged him to sit down. "I dare say he may not be
+able to go out for two or three days to come."
+
+"So they told me at his office. I was sorry to hear it."
+
+"You've been to his office, then? He told me you were there yesterday.
+That's partly the reason why I've ventured to ask you to come in."
+
+She went on with her stitching, turning the canvas first on one side and
+then on the other, sticking the needle in with very precise care. He
+fancied she was waiting for him to "give himself away" by saying
+something, no matter what. Having, however, a talent for silence without
+embarrassment, he made use of it, knowing that by means of it he could
+force her to resume.
+
+He was not at ease; he was not without misgiving. It had been far from
+his expectation to see her on this errand, or, for the matter of that,
+on any errand at all. It had never occurred to him that Guion could
+speak to her of a transaction so private, so secret, as that proposed
+between them. Since, then, his partner in the undertaking had been
+foolish, Davenant felt the necessity on his side of being doubly
+discreet. Moreover, he was intuitive enough to feel her antipathy toward
+him on purely general grounds. "I'm not her sort," was the summing-up of
+her sentiments he made for himself. He could not wholly see why he
+excited her dislike since, beyond a moment of idiotic presumption long
+ago, he had never done her any harm.
+
+He fancied that his personal appearance, as much as anything, was
+displeasing to her fastidiousness. He was so big, so awkward; his hands
+and feet were so clumsy. A little more and he would have been ungainly;
+perhaps she considered him ungainly as it was. He had tried to negative
+his defects by spending a great deal of money on his clothes and being
+as particular as a girl about his nails; but he felt that with all his
+efforts he was but a bumpkin compared with certain other men--Rodney
+Temple, for example--who never took any pains at all. Looking at her
+now, her pure, exquisite profile bent over her piece of work, while the
+sun struck coppery gleams from her masses of brown hair, he felt as he
+had often felt in rooms filled with fragile specimens of
+art--flower-like cups of ancient glass, dainty groups in Meissen, mystic
+lovelinesses wrought in amber, ivory, or jade--as if his big, gross
+personality ought to shrink into itself and he should walk on tiptoe.
+
+"I understand from my father," she said, when she found herself obliged
+to break the silence, "that you've offered to help him in his
+difficulties. I couldn't let the occasion pass without telling you how
+much I appreciate your generosity."
+
+She spoke without looking up; words and tone were gently courteous, but
+they affected him like an April zephyr, that ought to bring the balm of
+spring, and yet has the chill of ice in it.
+
+"Haven't you noticed," he said, slowly, choosing his words with care,
+"that generosity consists largely in the point of view of the other
+party? You may give away an old cloak, for the sake of getting rid of
+it; but the person who receives it thinks you kind."
+
+"I see that," she admitted, going on with her work, "and yet there are
+people to whom I shouldn't offer an old cloak, even if I had one to give
+away."
+
+He colored promptly. "You mean that if they needed anything you'd offer
+them the best you had."
+
+"I wonder if you'd understand that I'm not speaking ungraciously if I
+said that--I shouldn't offer them anything at all?"
+
+He put up his hand and stroked his long, fair mustache. It was the sort
+of rebuke to which he was sensitive. It seemed to relegate him to
+another land, another world, another species of being from those to
+which she belonged. It was a second or two before he could decide what
+to say. "No, Miss Guion," he answered then; "I don't understand that
+point of view."
+
+"I'm sorry. I hoped you would."
+
+"Why?"
+
+She lifted her clear gray eyes on him for the briefest possible look.
+"Need I explain?"
+
+The question gave him an advantage he was quick to seize. "Not at all,
+Miss Guion. You've a right to your own judgments. I don't ask to know
+them."
+
+"But I think you ought. When you enter into what is distinctly our
+private family affair, I've a right to give my opinion."
+
+"You don't think I question that?"
+
+"I'm afraid I do. I imagine you're capable of carrying your point,
+regardless of what I feel."
+
+"But I've no point to carry. I find Mr. Guion wanting to borrow a sum of
+money that I'm prepared to lend. It's a common situation in business."
+
+"Ah, but this is not business. It's charity."
+
+"Did Mr. Guion tell you so?"
+
+"He did. He told me all about it. My father has no secrets from me."
+
+"Did he use the word--charity?"
+
+"Almost. He said you offered him a loan, but that it really was a gift."
+
+His first impulse was to repudiate this point of view, but a minute's
+reflection decided him in favor of plain speaking. "Well," he said,
+slowly, "suppose it _was_ a gift. Would there be any harm in it?"
+
+"There wouldn't be any harm, perhaps; there would only be
+an--impossibility." She worked very busily, and spoke in a low voice,
+without looking up. "A gift implies two conditions--on the one side the
+right to offer, and on the other the freedom to take."
+
+"But I should say that those conditions existed--between Mr. Guion and
+me."
+
+"But not between you and me. Don't you see? That's the point. To any
+such transaction as this I have to be, in many ways, the most important
+party."
+
+Again he was tempted to reject this interpretation; but, once more, on
+second thought, he allowed it to go uncontested. When he spoke it was to
+pass to another order of question.
+
+"I wonder how much you know?"
+
+"About my father's affairs? I know everything."
+
+"Everything?"
+
+"Yes; everything. He told me yesterday. I didn't expect him to come home
+last night at all; but he came--and told me what you had proposed."
+
+"You understood, then," Davenant stammered, "that he might have
+to--to--go away?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly."
+
+"And aren't you very much appalled?"
+
+The question was wrung from him by sheer astonishment. That she should
+sit calmly embroidering a sofa-cushion, with this knowledge in her
+heart, with this possibility hanging over her, seemed to him to pass the
+limits of the human. He knew there were heroic women; but he had not
+supposed that with all their heroism they carried themselves with such
+sang-froid. Before replying she took time to search in her work-basket
+for another skein of silk.
+
+"Appalled is scarcely the word. Of course, it was a blow to me; but I
+hope I know how to take a blow without flinching."
+
+"Oh, but one like this--"
+
+"We're able to bear it. What makes you think we can't? If we didn't try,
+we should probably involve ourselves in worse."
+
+"But how could there be worse?"
+
+"That's what I don't know. You see, when my father told me of your kind
+offer, he didn't tell me what you wanted."
+
+"Did he say I wanted anything?"
+
+"He said you hadn't asked for anything. That's what leaves us so much in
+the dark."
+
+"Isn't it conceivable--" he began, with a slightly puzzled air.
+
+"Not that it matters," she interrupted, hurriedly. "Of course, if we had
+anything with which to compensate you--anything adequate, that is--I
+don't say that we shouldn't consider seriously the suggestion you were
+good enough to make. But we haven't. As I understand it, we haven't
+anything at all. That settles the question definitely. I hope you see."
+
+"Isn't it conceivable," he persisted, "that a man might like to do a
+thing, once in a way, without--"
+
+"Without asking for an equivalent in return? Possibly. But in this case
+it would only make it harder for me."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"By putting me under an overwhelming obligation to a total stranger--an
+obligation that I couldn't bear, while still less could I do away with
+it."
+
+"I don't see," he reasoned, "that you'd be under a greater obligation to
+me in that case than you are to others already."
+
+"At present," she corrected, "we're not under an obligation to any one.
+My father and I are contending with circumstances; we're not asking
+favors of individuals. I know we owe money--a great deal of money--to a
+good many people--"
+
+"Who are total strangers, just like me."
+
+"Not total strangers just like you--but total strangers whom I don't
+know, and don't know anything about, and who become impersonal from
+their very numbers."
+
+"But you know Mrs. Rodman and Mrs. Clay. They're not impersonal."
+
+All he saw for the instant was that she arrested her needle half-way
+through the stitch. She sat perfectly still, her head bent, her fingers
+rigid, as she might have sat in trying to catch some sudden, distant
+sound. It was only in thinking it over afterward that he realized what
+she must have lived through in the seconds before she spoke.
+
+"Does my father owe money to _them_?"
+
+The hint of dismay was so faint that it might have eluded any ear but
+one rendered sharp by suspicion. Davenant felt the blood rushing to his
+temples and a singing in his head. "My God, she didn't know!" he cried,
+inwardly. The urgency of retrieving his mistake kept him calm and cool,
+prompting him to reply with assumed indifference.
+
+"I really can't say anything about it. I suppose they would be among the
+creditors--as a matter of course."
+
+For the first time she let her clear, grave eyes rest fully on him. They
+were quiet eyes, with exquisitely finished lids and lashes. In his
+imagination their depth of what seemed like devotional reverie
+contributed more than anything else to her air of separation and
+remoteness.
+
+"Isn't it very serious--when there's anything wrong with estates?"
+
+He answered readily, still forcing a tone of careless matter-of-fact.
+
+"Of course it's serious. Everything is serious in business. Your
+father's affairs are just where they can be settled--now. But if we put
+it off any longer it might not be so easy. Men often have to take charge
+of one another's affairs--and straighten them out--and advance one
+another money--and all that--in business."
+
+She looked away from him again, absently. She appeared not to be
+listening. There was something in her manner that advised him of the
+uselessness of saying anything more in that vein. After a while she
+folded her work, smoothing it carefully across her knee. The only sign
+she gave of being unusually moved was in rising from her chair and going
+to the open window, where she stood with her back to him, apparently
+watching the dartings from point to point of a sharp-eyed gray squirrel.
+
+Rising as she did, he stood waiting for her to turn and say something
+else. Now that the truth was dawning on her, it seemed to him as well to
+allow it to grow clear. It would show her the futility of further
+opposition. He would have been glad to keep her ignorant; he regretted
+the error into which she herself unwittingly had led him; but, since it
+had been committed, it would not be wholly a disaster if it summoned her
+to yield.
+
+Having come to this conclusion, he had time to make another observation
+while she still stood with her back to him. It was to consider himself
+fortunate in having ceased to be in love with her. In view of all the
+circumstances, it was a great thing to have passed through that phase
+and come out of it. He had read somewhere that a man is never twice in
+love with the same person. If that were so, he could fairly believe
+himself immune, as after a certain kind of malady. If it were not for
+this he would have found in her hostility to his efforts and her
+repugnance to his person a temptation--a temptation to which he was
+specially liable in regard to living things--to feel that it was his
+right to curb the spirit and tame the rebellion of whatever was restive
+to his control. There was something in this haughty, high-strung
+creature, poising herself in silence to stand upright in the face of
+fate, that would have called forth his impulse to dominate her will, to
+subdue her lips to his own, if he had really cared. Fortunately, he
+didn't care, and so could seek her welfare with detachment.
+
+Turning slowly, she stood grasping the back of the chair from which she
+had risen. He always remembered afterward that it was a chair of which
+the flowing curves and rich interlacings of design contrasted with her
+subtly emphasized simplicity. He had once had the morbid curiosity to
+watch, in an English law-court, the face and attitude of a woman--a
+surgeon's wife--standing in the dock to be sentenced to death. It seemed
+to him now that Olivia Guion stood like her--with the same resoluteness,
+not so much desperate as slightly dazed.
+
+"Wasn't it for something of that kind--something wrong with
+estates--that Jack Berrington was sent to prison?"
+
+The question took him unawares. "I--I don't remember."
+
+"I do. I should think you would. The trial was in all the papers. It was
+the Gray estate. He was Mrs. Gray's trustee. He ruined the whole Gray
+family."
+
+"Possibly." He did his best to speak airily. "In the matter of estates
+there are all sorts of hitches that can happen. Some are worse than
+others, of course--"
+
+"I've seen his wife, Ada Berrington, once or twice, when I've been in
+Paris. She lives there, waiting for him to come out of Singville. She
+avoids her old friends when she can--but I've seen her."
+
+"I think I remember hearing about them," he said, for the sake of saying
+something; "but--"
+
+"I should like to go and talk with my father. Would you mind waiting?"
+
+She made as though she would pass him, but he managed to bar her way.
+
+"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Miss Guion. If he's not well it'll
+only upset him. Why not let everything be just as it is? You won't
+regret it a year hence--believe me. In nine things out of ten you'd know
+better than I; but this is the tenth thing, in which I know better than
+you. Why not trust me--and let me have a free hand?"
+
+"I'm afraid I must go to my father. If you'll be kind enough to wait,
+I'll come back and tell you what he says. Then we shall know. Will you
+please let me pass?"
+
+He moved to one side. He thought again of the woman in the English
+law-court. It was like this that she walked from the dock--erect,
+unflinching, graceful, with eyes fixed straight before her, as though
+she saw something in the air.
+
+He watched her cross the hall to the foot of the staircase. There she
+paused pensively. In a minute or two she came back to the sitting-room
+door.
+
+"If it should be like--like Jack Berrington," she said, from the
+threshold, with a kind of concentrated quiet in her manner, "then--what
+you suggested--would be more out of the question than ever."
+
+"I don't see that," he returned, adopting her own tone. "I should think
+it would be just the other way."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"There are a lot of points of view that you haven't seen yet," he
+persisted. "I could put some of them before you if you'd give me time."
+
+"It would be no use doing that. I should never believe anything but that
+we, my father and I, should bear the responsibilities of our own acts."
+
+"You'll think differently," he began, "when you've looked at the thing
+all round; and then--"
+
+But before he could complete his sentence she had gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having seen her go up-stairs, he waited in some uncertainty. When
+fifteen or twenty minutes had gone by and she did not return, he decided
+to wait no longer. Picking up his hat and stick from the chair on which
+he had laid them, he went out by the French window, making his way to
+the gate across the lawn.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Finding the door of her father's room ajar, Miss Guion pushed it open
+and went in.
+
+Wearing a richly quilted dressing-gown, with cuffs and rolled collar of
+lavender silk, he lay asleep in the chaise-longue, a tan-colored rug
+across his feet. On a table at his left stood a silver box containing
+cigars, a silver ash-tray, a silver match-box, and a small silver lamp
+burning with a tiny flame. Each piece was engraved with his initials and
+a coat-of-arms. On his right there was an adjustable reading-stand,
+holding an open copy of a recent English review. One hand, adorned with
+an elaborately emblazoned seal-ring, hung heavily toward the floor; a
+cigar that had gone out was still between the fingers. His head, resting
+on a cushion of violet brocade, had fallen slightly to one side.
+
+She sat down beside him, to wait till he woke up. It was a large room,
+with white doors and wainscoting. Above the woodwork it was papered in
+pale yellow. On the walls there were water-colors, prints, photographs,
+and painted porcelain plaques. Over the bed, for decorative rather than
+devotional purposes, hung an old French ivory crucifix, while lower
+down was a silver holy-water stoup of Venetian make, that was oftenest
+used for matches. It had been the late Mrs. Guion's room, and expressed
+her taste. It contained too many ornaments, too many knickknacks, too
+many mirrors, too many wardrobes, too many easy-chairs, too much
+embossed silver on the dressing-table, too much old porcelain, wherever
+there was a place for it. Everything was costly, from the lace coverlet
+on the bed to the Persian rugs on the floor.
+
+Olivia looked vaguely about the room, as on an apartment she had never
+before seen. She found herself speculating as to the amount these
+elaborate furnishings would fetch if sold. She recalled the fact,
+forgotten till now, that when the Berringtons' belongings, purchased
+with reckless extravagance, passed under the hammer, they had gone for a
+song. She made the same forecast regarding the contents of Tory Hill.
+Much money had been spent on them, but, with the exception perhaps of
+some of the old portraits, there was little of real intrinsic value. She
+made the reflection coldly, drearily, as bearing on things that had no
+connection with herself.
+
+Her eyes traveled back to her father. With the muscles of the face
+relaxed in sleep, he looked old and jaded. The mustache, which had not
+been waxed or curled that day, sagged at the corners, the mouth sagging
+under it. Above the line of the beard the skin was mottled and puffy.
+The lashes rested on his cheeks with the luxuriance of a girl's, and the
+splendid eyebrows had all their fullness; but the lids twitched and
+quivered like those of a child that has fallen asleep during a fit of
+weeping.
+
+It was this twitching that softened her, that compelled her to judge him
+from the most merciful point of view. There was something piteous about
+him, something that silenced reproaches, that disarmed severity. She had
+come up-stairs staggered, incredulous--incredulous and yet
+convinced--outraged, terrified; but now the appeal of that fagged face
+and those quivering lids was too strong for her. It wrought in her not
+so much sympathy as comprehension, an understanding of him such as she
+had never before arrived at. In his capacity of father she had loved him
+unrestrainedly, but admired him with reserves. It was impossible not to
+love a parent so handsome, so genial, so kind, so generally admired; it
+was equally impossible not to criticize, however gently, a man with such
+a love of luxury, of unwarranted princeliness, and of florid display.
+She was indulgent to his tastes in the degree to which a new and
+enlightened generation can be tolerant of the errors of that preceding
+it, but she could not ignore the fact that the value he set on
+things--in morals, society, or art--depended on their power to strike
+the eye. She had smiled at that, as at something which, after all, was
+harmless. She had smiled, too, when he offered to himself--and to her
+also, it had to be admitted--the best of whatever could be had, since,
+presumably, he could afford it; though, as far as she was concerned, she
+would have been happier with simpler standards and a less ambitious mode
+of life. In following the path her parents had marked out for her, and
+to some extent beaten in advance, she had acquiesced in their plans
+rather than developed wishes of her own. Having grown tired of her
+annual round of American and English country-houses, with interludes for
+Paris, Biarritz, or Cannes, she had gone on chiefly because, as far as
+she could see, there was nothing else to do.
+
+Looking at him now, it came over her for the first time that she must be
+a disappointment to him. He had never given her reason to suspect it,
+and yet it must be so. First among the aims for which he had been
+striving, and to attain to which he had hazarded so much, there must
+have been the hope that she should make a brilliant match. That, and
+that alone, would have given them as a family the sure international
+position he had coveted, and which plenty of other Americans were
+successful in securing.
+
+It was only of late years, with the growth of her own independent social
+judgment, that she could look back over the past and see the Guions as
+in the van of that movement of the New World back upon the Old of which
+the force was forever augmenting. As Drusilla Fane was fond of saying,
+it was a manifestation of the nomadic, or perhaps the predatory, spirit
+characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. It was part of that impulse
+to expand, annex, appropriate, which had urged the Angles to descend on
+the shores of Kent and the Normans to cross from Dives to Hastings.
+Later, it had driven their descendants over the Atlantic, as
+individuals, as households, or as "churches"; and now, from their rich,
+comfortable, commonplace homes in New England, Illinois, or California,
+it bade later descendants still lift up their eyes and see how much
+there was to be desired in the lands their ancestors had left
+behind--fair parks, stately manors, picturesque châteaux, sonorous
+titles, and varied, dignified ways of living.
+
+To a people with the habit of compassing sea and land to get whatever
+was good to have the voyage back was nothing, especially in the days of
+easy money and steam. The Guions had been among the first to make it.
+They had been among the first Americans to descend on the shores of
+Europe with the intention--more or less obscure, more or less
+acknowledged, as the case might be--of acquiring and enjoying the
+treasures of tradition by association or alliance or any other means
+that might present themselves. Richard Guion, grandfather of Henry
+Guion, found the way to cut a dash in the Paris of the early Second
+Empire and to marry his daughter, Victoria Guion, to the Marquis de
+Melcourt. From the simple American point of view of that day and date it
+was a dazzling match, long talked of by the naïve press of New York,
+Boston, and Philadelphia.
+
+By the more ambitious members of the Guion house it was considered as
+the beginning of a glorious epoch; but, looking back now, Olivia could
+see how meager the results had been. Since those days a brilliant
+American society had sprung up on the English stem, like a mistletoe on
+an oak; but, while Henry and Charlotta Guion would gladly have struck
+their roots into that sturdy trunk, they lacked the money essential to
+parasitic growth. As for Victoria Guion, French life, especially the old
+royalist phase of it, which offers no crevices on its creaseless bark in
+which a foreign seed can germinate, absorbed her within its tough old
+blossom as a pitcher-plant sucks in a fly. Henceforth the utmost she
+could do for her kith and kin was to force open the trap from time to
+time, so that Olivia, if she liked, could be swallowed, too. In that
+task the old lady was not only industrious but generous, offering to
+subscribe handsomely toward the _dot_, as well as giving it to be
+understood that the bride-elect would figure in the end as her residuary
+legatee. Owing to this prospect Olivia had been compelled to decline a
+comte and a vicomte of crusading ancestry, procured at some pains by
+Madame de Melcourt; but when she also refused the eminently eligible Duc
+de Berteuil, whose terms in the way of dowry were reasonable, while he
+offered her a splendidly historic name and background, the Marquise not
+unnaturally lost her temper and declared that she washed her hands of
+her grandniece once for all.
+
+Not till this minute had Olivia ever considered that this reluctance on
+her part to be "well established" must have been something like a grief
+to her father, for he had never betrayed a sign of it. On the contrary,
+he had seemed to approve her decisions, and had even agreed with her in
+preferring the mistletoe to the pitcher-plant. He welcomed her back to
+Tory Hill, where her residences were longer, now that she ceased to be
+much with Madame de Melcourt, and yet was always ready with money and
+his consent when she had invitations from her friends abroad. On her
+engagement to Rupert Ashley he expressed complete satisfaction, and said
+in so many words that it was a more appropriate match for her than any
+French alliance, however distinguished. His tenderness in this respect
+came over her now as peculiarly touching, unsealing the fount of filial
+pity at a moment when other motives might have made for indignation and
+revolt.
+
+He opened his eyes without giving any other sign of waking.
+
+"Hallo! What are you looking at me for?"
+
+The tone was not impatient, but she heard in it an implication of fear.
+
+"Papa, are your troubles anything like Jack Berrington's?"
+
+He gazed at her without moving a muscle or changing a shade. She only
+fancied that in the long look with which he regarded her there was a
+receding, sinking, dying light, as though the soul within him was
+withdrawing.
+
+"What makes you ask that?"
+
+The intonation was expressionless, and yet, it seemed to her, a little
+wary.
+
+"I ask chiefly because--well, because I think they are."
+
+He looked at her for a minute more, perhaps for longer.
+
+"Well, then--you're right."
+
+Again she had the sensation, familiar to her since yesterday, of the
+world reeling to pieces around her while her own personality survived.
+When she spoke, her voice sounded as if it came out of the wildness of
+a surging wreck.
+
+"Then that's what you meant in saying yesterday that when everything was
+settled you still wouldn't be able to pay all you owed."
+
+"That's what I meant--exactly."
+
+He lay perfectly still, except that he raised his hand and puffed at his
+extinct cigar. She looked down at the pattern on the Persian rug beside
+his couch--a symmetrical scroll of old rose, on a black ground sown with
+multicolored flowerets.
+
+"I suppose it's the Clay heirs and the Rodman heirs you owe the money
+to?"
+
+"And the Compton heirs, and old Miss Burnaby, and the two Misses Brown,
+and--"
+
+"Haven't they anything left?"
+
+"Oh yes. It isn't all gone, by any means." Then he added, as if to make
+a clean breast of the affair and be done with it: "The personal
+property--what you may call the cash--is mostly gone! Those that have
+owned real estate--like the Rodmans and Fanny Burnaby--well, they've got
+that still."
+
+"I see." She continued to sit looking meditatively down at the rug. "I
+suppose," she ventured, after long thinking, "that that's the money
+we've been living on all these years?"
+
+"Yes; in the main." He felt it useless to quibble or to try to extenuate
+the facts.
+
+"How many years would that be?"
+
+"I'm not very sure; on and off, it's about ten since I began using some
+of their money to--help out my income. Latterly--you may as well know
+it--I haven't had any real income of my own at all."
+
+"So that their money has been paying for--for all this."
+
+Her hands made a confused little gesture, indicating the luxury of his
+personal appointments and of the room.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and arched his eyebrows in a kind of protest,
+which was nevertheless not denial. "W-well! If you choose to put it so!"
+
+"And for me, too," she went on, looking at him now with a bewildered
+opening of her large gray eyes--"for my visits, my clothes, my
+maid--everything!"
+
+"I don't see any need," he said, with a touch of peevishness, "for going
+so terribly into detail."
+
+"I don't see how it can be helped. It's so queer--and startling--to
+think I've had so much that wasn't mine."
+
+"You mustn't think it was deliberately planned--" he began, weakly.
+
+"And now the suggestion is," she interrupted, "that Mr. Davenant should
+pay for it. That seems to me to make it even worse than--than before."
+
+"I confess I don't follow you there," he complained. "If he
+doesn't--then I go to Singville."
+
+"Wouldn't you rather?"
+
+He raised himself stiffly into a sitting posture. "Would _you_?"
+
+She did not hesitate in her reply. "Yes, papa. I _would_ rather--if I
+were you."
+
+"But since you're not me--since you are yourself--would you still rather
+that I went to Singville?"
+
+There was a little lift to her chin, a faint color in her face as she
+replied: "I'd rather pay--however I did it. I'd rather pay--in any
+way--than ask some one else to do it."
+
+He fell back on the cushion of violet brocade. "So would I--if I had
+only myself to think of. We're alike in that."
+
+"Do you mean that you'd rather do it if it wasn't for me?"
+
+"I've got to take everything into consideration. It's no use for me to
+make bad worse by refusing a good offer. I must try to make the best of
+a bad business for every one's sake. I don't want to take Davenant's
+money. It's about as pleasant for me as swallowing a knife. But I'd
+swallow a knife if we could only hush the thing up long enough for you
+to be married--and for me to settle some other things. I shouldn't care
+what happened after that. They might take me and chuck me into any hole
+they pleased."
+
+"But I couldn't be married in that way, papa dear. I couldn't be married
+at all to--to one man--when another man had a claim on me."
+
+"Had a claim on you? How do you mean?"
+
+"He'll have that--if he pays for everything--pays for everything for
+years and years back. Don't you see?"
+
+"A claim on you for what, pray?"
+
+"That's what I don't know. But whatever it is, I shall feel that I'm in
+his debt."
+
+"Nonsense, dear. I call that morbid. It _is_ morbid."
+
+"But don't you think it's what he's working for? I can't see anything
+else that--that could tempt him; and the minute we make a bargain with
+him we agree to his terms."
+
+There was a long silence before he said, wearily:
+
+"If we call the deal off we must do it with our eyes open to the
+consequences. Ashley would almost certainly throw you over--"
+
+"No; because that possibility couldn't arise."
+
+"And you'll have to be prepared for the disgrace--"
+
+"I shall not look on it as disgrace so much as--paying. It will be
+paying for what we've had--if not in one sort of coin, then in another.
+But whatever it is, we shall be paying the debt ourselves; we sha'n't be
+foisting it off on some one else."
+
+"Why do you say we?"
+
+"Well, won't it be we? I shall have my part in it, sha'n't I? You
+wouldn't shut me out from that? I've had my share of the--of the wrong,
+so I ought to take my share in the reparation. My whole point is that we
+should be acting together."
+
+"They can't put _you_ in Singville."
+
+"No; but they can't keep me from sitting outside the walls. I shall want
+to do that, papa, if you're within. I'm not going to separate myself
+from you--or from anything you're responsible for. I couldn't if I
+wanted to; but as it happens I shouldn't try. I should get a kind of
+satisfaction out of it, shouldn't you?--the satisfaction of knowing that
+every day we suffered, and every night we slept through or wept
+through, and every bit of humiliation and dishonor, was so much
+contributed to the great work of--paying up. Isn't that the way you'd
+take it?"
+
+"That's all very fine now, dear, when you're--what shall I say?--a
+little bit _exaltée_; but how do you think you'll feel when they've--when
+they've"--he continued to speak with his eyes shut convulsively--"when
+they've arrested me and tried me and sentenced me and locked me up for
+ten or fifteen years?"
+
+"I shall feel as if the bitterness of death were past. But I should feel
+worse than that--I should feel as if the bitterness of both death and
+hell were still to come if we didn't make an effort to shoulder our own
+responsibilities."
+
+There was more in the same vein. He listened for the greater part of the
+time with his eyes closed. He was too unutterably tired to argue or to
+contest her point of view. Beyond suggesting that there were sides to
+the question she hadn't yet considered, he felt helpless. He was
+restrained, too, from setting them forth by a certain hesitation in
+demanding from her anything she did not concede of her own accord. That
+she would ultimately see for herself he had little doubt. In any case he
+was more or less indifferent from sheer spiritual exhaustion. He had
+ceased to direct, or try to direct, his own affairs or those of any one
+else. In his present condition he could only lie still and let come what
+might. Fate or God would arrange things either in the way of adjustment
+or of fatal ruin without interference on his part.
+
+So as he lay and listened to his daughter he uttered some bit of reason
+or some feeble protest only now and then. When, occasionally, he looked
+at her, it was to see her--somewhat deliriously--white, slim, ethereal,
+inexorable, like the law of right. He was feverish; his head throbbed;
+whenever he opened his eyes the objects in the room seemed to whirl
+about, while she sat tense, low-voiced, gentle, a spirit of expiation.
+
+Among the various ways in which he had thought she might take his dread
+announcement this one had never occurred to him; and yet, now that he
+saw it, he recognized it as just what he might have expected from the
+almost too rigid rectitude and decidedly too uncompromising pride that
+made up her character. It was the way, too, he admitted, most worthy of
+a Guion. It was the way he would have chosen for himself if he had
+nothing to consider but his own tastes. He himself was as eager in his
+way to make satisfaction as she; he was only deterred by considerations
+of common sense. From the point of view of a man of business it was more
+than a little mad to refuse the money that would pay his creditors, hush
+up a scandal, and keep the course of daily life running in something
+like its accustomed channel, merely because for the rest of his days he
+must be placed in a humiliating moral situation. He wouldn't like that,
+of course; and yet everything else was so much worse for his clients,
+even more than for himself. This was something she did not see. In spite
+of the measure in which he had agreed with her heroic views of
+"paying," he returned to that thought after she had kissed him and gone
+away.
+
+During the conversation with him Olivia had so completely forgotten
+Davenant that when she descended to the oval sitting-room she was
+scarcely surprised to find that he had left and that Drusilla Fane was
+waiting in his place.
+
+"You see, Olivia," Mrs. Fane reasoned, in her sympathetic, practical
+way, "that if you're not going to have your wedding on the 28th, you've
+got to do something about it now."
+
+"What would you do?"
+
+Olivia brought her mind back with some effort from the consideration of
+the greater issues to fix it on the smaller ones. In its way Drusilla's
+interference was a welcome diversion, since the point she raised was
+important enough to distract Olivia's attention from decisions too
+poignant to dwell on long.
+
+"I've thought that over," Drusilla explained--"mother and I together. If
+we were you we'd simply scribble a few lines on your card and send it
+round by post."
+
+"Yes? And what would you scribble?"
+
+"We'd say--you see, it wouldn't commit you to anything too pointed--we'd
+say, simply, 'Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take
+place on October 28th.' There you'd have nothing but the statement, and
+they could make of it what they liked."
+
+"Which would be a good deal, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Human nature being human nature, Olivia, you can hardly expect people
+not to talk. But you're in for that, you know, whatever happens now."
+
+"Oh, of course."
+
+"So that the thing to do is to keep them from going to the church next
+Thursday fortnight, and from pestering you with presents in the mean
+while. When you've headed them off on that you'll feel more free to--to
+give your mind to other things."
+
+The suggestion was so sensible that Olivia fell in with it at once. She
+accepted, too, Drusilla's friendly offer to help in the writing of the
+cards, of which it would be necessary to send out some two hundred.
+There being no time to lose, they set themselves immediately to the
+task, Drusilla at the desk, and Olivia writing on a blotting-pad at a
+table. They worked for twenty minutes or half an hour in silence.
+
+"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October
+28th."
+
+"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October
+28th."
+
+"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October
+28th."
+
+The words, which to Olivia had at first sounded something like a knell,
+presently became, from the monotony of repetition, nothing but a
+sing-song. She went on writing them mechanically, but her thoughts began
+to busy themselves otherwise.
+
+"Drusilla, do you remember Jack Berrington?"
+
+The question slipped out before she saw its significance. She might not
+have perceived it so quickly even then had it not been for the second
+of hesitation before Drusilla answered and the quaver in her voice when
+she did.
+
+"Y-es."
+
+The amount of information contained in the embarrassment with which this
+monosyllable was uttered caused Olivia to feel faint. It implied that
+Drusilla had been better posted than herself; and if Drusilla, why not
+others?
+
+"Do you know what makes me think of him?"
+
+Again there was a second of hesitation. Without relaxing the speed with
+which she went on scribbling the same oft-repeated sentence, Olivia knew
+that her companion stayed her pen and half turned round.
+
+"I can guess."
+
+Olivia kept on writing. "How long have you known?"
+
+Drusilla threw back the answer while blotting with unnecessary force the
+card she had just written: "A couple of days."
+
+"Has it got about--generally?"
+
+"Generally might be too much to say. Some people have got wind of it;
+and, of course, a thing of that kind spreads."
+
+"Of course."
+
+After all, she reflected, perhaps it was just as well that the story
+should have come out. It was no more possible to keep it quiet than to
+calm an earthquake. She had said just now to her father that she would
+regard publicity less as disgrace than as part of the process of paying
+up. Very well! If they were a mark for idle tongues, then so much the
+better, since in that way they were already contributing some few pence
+toward quenching the debt.
+
+"I should feel worse about it," Drusilla explained, after a silence of
+some minutes, "if I didn't think that Peter Davenant was trying to do
+something to--to help Cousin Henry out."
+
+Olivia wrote energetically. "What's he doing?"
+
+"Oh, the kind of thing men do. They seem to have wonderful ways of
+raising money."
+
+"How do you know he's trying it?"
+
+"I don't know for certain; I've only an idea. I rather gather it by the
+queer way he comes and goes. The minute a thing is in Peter's hands--"
+
+"Have you such a lot of confidence in him?"
+
+"For this sort of thing--yes. He's terribly able, so they say,
+financially. For the matter of that, you can see it by the way he's made
+all that money. Bought mines, or something, and sold them again. Bought
+'em for nothing, and sold 'em for thousands and thousands."
+
+"Did I ever tell you that he once asked me to marry him?"
+
+Drusilla wheeled round in her chair and stared, open-mouthed, at her
+friend's back.
+
+"_No_!"
+
+"Oh, it was years ago. I dare say he's forgotten it."
+
+"I'll bet you ten to one he hasn't."
+
+Olivia took another card and wrote rapidly. "Do you suppose," she said,
+trying to speak casually, "that his wanting to help papa out has
+anything to do with that?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder. I shouldn't wonder at all."
+
+"What _could_ it have?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask me! How should I know? Men are so queer. He's getting
+some sort of satisfaction out of it, you may depend."
+
+Drusilla answered as she would have liked to be answered were she in a
+similar position. That an old admirer should come to her aid like a god
+from the machine would have struck her as the most touching thing in the
+world. As she wheeled round again to her task it was not without a pang
+of wholly impersonal envy at so beautiful a tribute. She had written two
+or three cards before she let fall the remark:
+
+"And now poor, dear old mother is manoeuvering to have _me_ marry
+him."
+
+The idea was not new to Olivia, so she said, simply, "And are you going
+to?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know." Drusilla sighed wearily, then added: "I sha'n't if I
+can help it."
+
+"Does that mean that you'll take him if you can't do better?"
+
+"It means that I don't know what I shall do at all. I'm rather sick of
+everything--and so I might do anything. I don't want to come back to
+live in America, and yet I feel an alien over there, now that I haven't
+Gerald to give me a _raison d'être_. They're awfully nice to me--at
+Southsea--at Silchester--everywhere--and yet they really don't want me.
+I can see that as plainly as I can see your name on this card. But I
+can't keep away from them. I've no pride. At least, I've got the pride,
+but there's something in me stronger than pride that makes me a kind of
+craven. I'm like a dog that doesn't mind being kicked so long as he can
+hang about under the dining-room table to sniff up crumbs. With my
+temperament it's perfectly humiliating, but I can't help it. I've got
+the taste for that English life as a Frenchman gets a taste for
+absinthe--knows that it'll be the ruin of him, and yet goes on
+drinking."
+
+"I suppose you're not in love with any one over there?"
+
+There was no curiosity in this question. Olivia asked it--she could
+scarcely tell why. She noticed that Drusilla stopped writing again and
+once more half turned round, though it was not till long afterward that
+she attached significance to the fact.
+
+"Who on earth should I be in love with? What put that into your head?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Stranger things have happened. You see a great many
+men--"
+
+So they went skimming over the surface of confidence, knowing that
+beneath what they said there were depths below depths that they dared
+not disturb. All the same, it was some relief to both when the maid came
+to the door to summon them to luncheon.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+During the next day and the next Guion continued ill, so ill that his
+daughter had all she could attend to in the small tasks of nursing. The
+lull in events, however, gave her the more time for thinking, and in her
+thoughts two things struck her as specially strange. Of these, the first
+and more remarkable was the degree to which she identified herself with
+her father's wrong-doing. The knowledge that she had for so many years
+been profiting by his misdeeds produced in her a curious sense of having
+shared them. Though she took pains to remind herself that she was
+morally guiltless, there was something within her--an imaginative
+quality perhaps that rejected the acquittal. Pity, too, counted in her
+mental condition, as did also that yearning instinct called maternal,
+which keeps women faithful to the weak and the fallen among those they
+love. To have washed her own hands and said, "See here! I am innocent!"
+would have seemed to her much like desertion of a broken old man who had
+no one but her to stand by him. Even while she made attempts to reason
+herself out of it, the promptings to the vicarious acceptance of guilt,
+more or less native to the exceptionally strong and loyal, was so
+potent in her that she found herself saying, in substance if not in
+words, "Inasmuch as he did it, I did it, too." It was not a purposely
+adopted stand on her part; it was not even clear to her why she was
+impelled to take it; she took it only because, obeying the dictates of
+her nature; she could do nothing else.
+
+Nevertheless, it occasioned her some surprise, whenever she had time to
+think of it, to note the speed with which she had adapted herself to the
+facts. Once revealed, she seemed to have always known them--to have
+shared that first embarrassment for ready money that had induced her
+father to borrow from funds so temptingly under his control, and to have
+gone on with him, step by step, through the subsequent years of struggle
+and disaster. They were years over which the sun was already darkened
+and the moon turned into blood, so that, looking back on them, it was
+almost impossible to recapture the memory of the light-heartedness with
+which she had lived through them. It was incredible to her now that they
+had been years of traveling and visiting and dancing and hunting and
+motoring and yachting, of following fashion and seeking pleasure in
+whatever might have been the vogue of the minute. Some other self, some
+pale, secondary, astral self, must have crossed and recrossed the
+Atlantic and been a guest in great houses and become a favorite in
+London, Paris, Biarritz, Florida, Scotland, Rome! Some other self must
+have been sought out for her society, admired for her style, and
+privileged to refuse eligible suitors! Some other self must have met
+Rupert Ashley in the little house at Southsea and promised to become his
+wife! From the standpoint of the present it seemed to her as if an
+unreal life had ended in an unreal romance that was bringing to her,
+within a day or two, an unreal hero. She was forced again face to face
+with that fact that the man who was coming to marry her was, for all
+practical knowledge that she had of him, a stranger. In proportion as
+calamity encompassed her he receded, taking his place once more in that
+dim world she should never have frequented and in which she had no
+longer lot nor part.
+
+She should never have frequented it for the simple reason that for all
+she had brought to it or got from it some one else had to pay. The
+knowledge induced a sense of shame which no consciousness of committed
+crime could have exceeded. She would have been less humiliated had she
+plotted and schemed to win flattery and homage for herself than she was
+in discovering that people had been tricked into giving them
+spontaneously. To drop the mask, to tear asunder the robe of pretense,
+to cry the truth from the housetops, and, like some Scriptural woman
+taken in adultery, lie down, groaning and stunned, under the pelting of
+the stones of those who had not sinned, became to her, as the hours
+dragged on, an atonement more and more imperative.
+
+But the second odd fact she had to contemplate was the difficulty of
+getting a new mode of life into operation. Notwithstanding all her
+eagerness to pay, the days were still passing in gentle routine
+somewhat quietly because of her father's indisposition, but with the
+usual household dignity. There was a clock-work smoothness about life at
+Tory Hill, due to the most competent service secured at the greatest
+expense. Old servants, and plenty of them, kept the wheels going
+noiselessly even while they followed with passionate interest the drama
+being played in the other part of the house. To break in on the course
+of their duties, to disturb them, or put a stop to them, was to Olivia
+like an attempt to counteract the laws that regulate the sunrise. She
+knew neither how to set about it nor where to begin. There was something
+poignant in the irony of these unobtrusive services from the minute when
+her maid woke her in the morning till she helped her to change her dress
+for dinner, and yet there was nothing for it but to go through the
+customary daily round. When it became necessary to tell the women that
+the preparations for the wedding must be stopped and that the
+invitations to the two big dinners that were to be given in honor of
+Colonel Ashley had been withdrawn she gathered from small signs--the
+feigned stolidity of some of them and the overacted astonishment of
+others--that they had probably been even better informed than Drusilla
+Fane. After that the food they brought her choked her and the maid's
+touch on her person was like fire, while she still found herself obliged
+to submit to these long-established attentions.
+
+She was reduced to drawing patience from what Guion told her as to his
+illness checking temporarily the course of legal action. Most of the
+men with whom it lay to set the law in motion, notably Dixon, the
+District-Attorney, were old friends of his, who would hesitate to drag
+him from a sick-room to face indictment. He had had long interviews with
+Dixon about the case already, and knew how reluctant that official was
+to move in the matter, anyhow; but as soon as he, Guion, was out and
+about again, all kindly scruples would have to yield. "You'll find," he
+explained to her, "that the question as to breaking-camp will settle
+itself then. And besides," he added, "it'll be better to wait till
+Ashley comes and you know what he's likely to do for you."
+
+With the last consideration she could not but agree, though she shrank
+from his way of putting it. It was some satisfaction at least to know
+that, since the two hundred cards she had sent out had reached their
+recipients, the process of public penance must in some measure have been
+started. She had seen no one who could tell her what the effect had
+been; her bridesmaids evidently knew enough to consider silence the
+better part of sympathy; not even Drusilla Fane had looked in or called
+her on the telephone during the last day or two; but she could imagine
+pretty well the course that comment and speculation must be taking
+through the town. There would be plenty of blame, some jubilation, and,
+she felt sure, not a little sympathy withal. There was among her
+acquaintance a local American pride that had always been jealous of her
+European preferences and which would take the opportunity to get in its
+bit of revenge, but in general opinion would be kindly. There came an
+afternoon when she felt the desire to go forth to face it, to take her
+first impressions of the world in her new relationship toward it. She
+had not been beyond their own gate since the altered conditions had
+begun to obtain. She had need of the fresh air; she had need to find her
+bearings; she had need of a few minutes' intercourse with some one
+besides her father, so as not to imperil her judgment by dwelling too
+incessantly on an _idée fixe_. Rupert Ashley would land that night or
+the next morning. In forty-eight hours he would probably be in Boston.
+It was prudent, she reflected, to be as well poised and as sure of
+herself as possible before his arrival on the scene.
+
+Her father was slightly better. He could leave his bed, and, wrapped in
+his violet dressing-gown, could lie on the chaise-longue, surrounded by
+the luxurious comforts that were a matter of course to him. As she made
+him snug he observed with a grim smile that his recovery was a pity. He
+could almost hear, so he said, Dixon and Johnstone and Hecksher and
+others of his cronies making the remark that his death would be a lucky
+way out of the scrape.
+
+She had come, dressed for the street, to tell him she was walking down
+to the Temples', to see what had become of Drusilla Fane. She thought it
+needless to add that she was inventing the errand in order to go out and
+take notes on the new aspect the world must henceforth present to her.
+
+He looked at her with an approval that gradually merged into a sense of
+comfort. She had chosen the simplest dress and hat in her wardrobe, as
+significant of a chastened soul; but simplicity more than anything else
+emphasized her distinction. "She'll be all right," he said, consolingly,
+to himself. "Whatever happens she's the kind to come out on top. Rupert
+Ashley would be a fool to throw over a superb, high-spirited creature
+like that. He'll not do it. Of that I feel sure."
+
+The conviction helped him to settle more luxuriously into the depths of
+his couch and to relish the flavor of his cigar. He was quite sincere in
+the feeling that if she were but safe he should be more or less
+indifferent to the deluge overwhelming himself.
+
+"Papa," she ventured at last, watching carefully the action of the
+little silver button-hook, as she buttoned her gloves, "if that Mr.
+Davenant came while I'm gone, you wouldn't change your mind, would you?"
+
+"I don't think he's in the least likely to turn up."
+
+"But if he did?"
+
+"Well, I suppose you'll be back before long. We couldn't settle anything
+without talking it over, in any case."
+
+Forced to be content with that, she kissed him and turned away.
+
+[Illustration: SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN AIR]
+
+She found a comfort in getting into the open air, into the friendly
+streets, under the shade of the familiar trees, that surprised her. The
+absence of pose characteristic of the average American town struck her
+for the first time as soothing. With none of the effort to make life
+conform to a rigid standard of propriety, which in an English community
+would be the first thing to notice, there was an implied invitation to
+the spirit to relax. In the slap-dash, go-as-you-please methods of
+building, paving, and cleaning she saw a tacit assumption that,
+perfection being not of this world, one is permitted to rub along
+without it. Rodney Lane, which in Colonial days had led to Governor
+Rodney's "Mansion," had long ago been baptized Algonquin Avenue by civic
+authorities with a love of the sonorous, but it still retained the
+characteristics of a New England village street. Elms arched over it
+with the regularity of a Gothic vaulting, and it straggled at its will.
+Its houses, set in open lawns, illustrated all the phases of the
+national taste in architecture as manifested throughout the nineteenth
+century, from the wooden Greek temple with a pillared façade of the
+early decades to the bizarre compositions, painted generally in dark red
+and yellow, with many gables and long sweeps of slanting roof, which
+marked that era's close. In most cases additions had been thrown out
+from time to time, ells trailing at the back, or excrescences bulging at
+the sides, that were not grotesque only because there had been little in
+the first effect to spoil. In more than one instance the original fabric
+was altered beyond recognition; here and there a house she could
+remember had altogether disappeared; a new one had replaced it that
+before long might be replaced by a newer still. To Olivia the consoling
+thought was precisely in this state of transition, to which rapid
+vicissitude, for better or for worse, was something like a law. It made
+the downfall of her own family less exceptional, less bitter, when
+viewed as part of a huge impermanency, shifting from phase to phase,
+with no rule to govern it but the necessities of its own development.
+
+Until this minute it was the very element in American life she had found
+most distasteful. Her inclinations, carefully fostered by her parents,
+had always been for the solid, the well-ordered, the assured, evolved
+from precedent to precedent till its conventions were fixed and its
+doings regulated as by a code of etiquette. Now, all of a sudden, she
+perceived that life in shirt-sleeves possessed certain advantages over a
+well-bred existence in full dress. It allowed the strictly human
+qualities an easier sort of play. Where there was no pretense at turning
+to the world a smooth, impeccable social front, toil and suffering,
+misfortune and disgrace, became things to be less ashamed of.
+Practically every one in these unpretentious, tree-shaded houses knew
+what it was to struggle upward, with many a slip backward in the process
+and sometimes a crashing fall from the top. These accidents were
+understood. The result was the creation of a living atmosphere, not
+perhaps highly civilized, but highly sympathetic, charged with the
+comprehension of human frailty, into which one could carry one's
+dishonor, not wholly with equanimity, but at least with the knowledge
+that such burdens were not objects for astonishment. As she descended
+the hill, therefore, she felt, as she had never felt before, the
+comforting assurance of being among brethren, before whom she should not
+have the wearisome task of "keeping up appearances," and by whom she
+would be supported, even at the worst, through a fellow-feeling with her
+cares.
+
+This consciousness helped her to be firm when, a few minutes later,
+having reached the dike by the border of the Charles, she came face to
+face with Peter Davenant. She saw him from a long way off, but without
+recognition. She noticed him only as an unusually tall figure, in a
+summery gray suit and a gray felt hat. He was sauntering in a leisurely
+way toward her, stopping now and then to admire some beautiful dog
+sniffing the scent of water-rats in the weeds, or a group of babies
+tumbling on the sand, or a half-naked undergraduate sculling along the
+serpentine reaches of the river, or a college crew cleaving the waters
+with the precision of an arrow, to a long, rhythmic swing of eight slim
+bodies and a low, brief grunt of command. The rich October light
+striking silvery gleams from the walls of the Stadium and burnished gold
+from the far-off dome of the State House brought all the hues of fire
+from the rim of autumnal hills on the western horizon. It touched up
+with soft dove-gray, in which were shades of green and purple, the row
+of unpainted, ramshackle wooden cabins--hovels of a colony of
+"squatters" that no zeal for civic improvement had ever been able to
+dislodge--lined along a part of the embankment, and wrought indefinable
+glories in the unkempt marshes, stretching away into shimmering
+distances, where factory windows blazed as if from inner conflagration
+and steam and smoke became roseate or iridescent.
+
+The tall stranger, so much better dressed than the men who usually
+strolled on the embankment at this hour of a week-day afternoon, fixed
+her attention to such a degree as to make her forget that she herself
+was probably a subject of curiosity and speculation among the
+passers-by. It was with a little disappointment that as she came nearer
+she said to herself, "It's only--that man." Common fairness, however,
+obliged her to add that he seemed "more like a gentleman" than she had
+supposed. That he was good-looking, in a big, blond, Scotch or
+Scandinavian way, she had acknowledged from the first. On recognizing
+Davenant her impulse was to pass him with the slightest recognition, but
+on second thoughts it seemed best to her to end the affair impending
+between them once for all.
+
+"I'm sorry you didn't wait for me to come downstairs the other day," she
+said, after they had exchanged greetings, "because I could have told you
+that my father agreed with me--that it wouldn't be possible for us to
+accept your kind help."
+
+"I hope he's better," was Davenant's only answer.
+
+"Much better, thank you. When he's able to see you, I know he will want
+to express his gratitude more fully than I can."
+
+"I hoped he'd be able to see me to-day. I was on my way to Tory Hill."
+
+She was annoyed both by his persistency and by the coolness of his
+manner, as, leaning on his stick, he stood looking down at her. He
+looked down in a way that obliged her to look up. She had not realized
+till now how big and tall he was. She noticed, too, the squareness of
+his jaw, the force of his chin, and the compression of his straight,
+thin lips beneath the long curve of his mustache. In spite of his air of
+granite imperturbability, she saw that his fair skin was subject to
+little flushes of embarrassment or shyness, like a girl's. As she was in
+a mood to criticize, she called this absurd and said of his blue eyes,
+resting on her with a pensive directness, as though he were studying her
+from a long way off, that they were hard. Deep-set and caverned under
+heavy, overhanging brows, they more than any other feature imparted to
+his face the frowning and _farouche_ effect by which she judged him. Had
+it not been for that, her hostility to everything he said and did might
+not have been so prompt. That he was working to get her into his power
+became more than ever a conviction the minute she looked into what she
+called that lowering gaze.
+
+All the same, the moment was one for diplomatic action rather than for
+force. She allowed a half-smile to come to her lips, and her voice to
+take a tone in which there was frank request, as she said: "I wish you
+wouldn't go."
+
+"I shouldn't if it wasn't important. I don't want to annoy you more than
+I can help."
+
+"I don't see how anything can be important when--when there's nothing to
+be done."
+
+"There's a good deal to be done if we choose to do it; but we must
+choose at once. The Benn crowd is getting restive."
+
+"That doesn't make any difference to us. My father has decided to take
+the consequences of his acts."
+
+"You say that so serenely that I guess you don't understand yet just
+what they'd be."
+
+"I do--I do, perfectly. My father and I have talked it all over. We know
+it will be terrible; and yet it would be more terrible still to let some
+one else pay our debts. I dare say you think me monstrous, but--"
+
+"I think you mistaken. I don't want to say more than that. If I find Mr.
+Guion of the same opinion--"
+
+"I see. You don't consider my word sufficient."
+
+"Your word is all right, Miss Guion," he tried to laugh. "What you lack
+is authority. My dealings are with your father. I can't settle anything
+with--a substitute."
+
+She colored swiftly. "I don't presume to settle anything. I only thought
+I might give you some necessary information. I hoped, too, to save you a
+little trouble in sparing you the walk to Tory Hill."
+
+He looked away from her, his eyes wandering up the reach of the river,
+over which the long, thin, many-oared college craft shot like insects
+across a pool.
+
+"Why should you be so bent on seeing your father follow Jack Berrington,
+when it could be avoided?"
+
+"Why should you care? What difference does it make to you? If you'd only
+explain that--"
+
+"It explains itself. If I saw a woman leap into the river there I should
+pull her out. The more she insisted on being drowned, the more I should
+try to save her."
+
+"But, you see, I'm not leaping into a river. On the contrary, I'm
+getting out of one. It seems to me that you'd be only forcing me back
+and making my last state worse than the first."
+
+It took him a minute to grasp the force of this. "That would depend, of
+course, on the point of view. As a matter of fact, it's something with
+which I've nothing to do. It concerns you, and it concerns Mr. Guion,
+but it doesn't concern me. For me the whole thing is very simple. I've
+offered to lend Mr. Guion a sum of money. It's for him to take or to
+leave. If he refuses it, I sha'n't be offended; and if he doesn't refuse
+it--"
+
+"You'd let him have it, just the same?"
+
+"Of course. Why not?"
+
+"In spite of all I've said as to what I should feel?"
+
+"But I'm not supposed to know anything about that, you know. I repeat
+that it isn't my affair. If Mr. Guion should accept my loan against your
+wishes--well, that's something you'd have to fix up with him."
+
+She was some minutes silent, her eyes ranging over the river and the
+marshes, like his own.
+
+"If you urged it on him," she said at last, "I think he'd take it."
+
+"Then so much the better, from my point of view."
+
+"Precisely; but then your point of view is a mystery. Not that it makes
+any difference," she hastened to add. "If my father accepts your loan,
+it will be for me to pay it back, in one way or another--if I ever can."
+
+"We could talk of that," he smiled, trying to be reassuring, "after more
+important things had been settled."
+
+"There wouldn't be anything more important--for me."
+
+"Oh, you wouldn't find me an importunate creditor."
+
+"That wouldn't help matters--so long as I owed the debt. After all, we
+belong to that old-fashioned, rather narrow-minded class of New England
+people to whom debt of any kind is the source of something like anguish.
+At least," she corrected herself, "I belong to that class."
+
+It was on his lips to remind her that in her case there could be no
+present release from indebtedness, there could only be a change of
+creditors; but he decided to express himself more gracefully.
+
+"Wouldn't it be possible," he asked, "to put the boot on the other foot,
+and to consider me as the person to whom the favor is shown in being
+allowed to do something useful?"
+
+She lifted her chin scornfully. "That would be childish. It would be a
+mere quibbling with words."
+
+"But it would be true. It's the way I should take it."
+
+She confronted him with one of her imperious looks. "Why?"
+
+In the monosyllable there was a demand for complete explanation, but he
+met it with one of his frank smiles.
+
+"Couldn't you let me keep that as my secret?"
+
+"So that you would be acting in the daylight and we in the dark."
+
+"You might be in the dark, and still have nothing to be afraid of."
+
+She shook her head. "I _should_ be afraid. It was in the dark, according
+to the old story, that the antelope escaped a lion by falling into a
+hunter's trap."
+
+"Do I look like that kind of a hunter?" He smiled again at the absurdity
+of her comparison.
+
+"You can't tell anything from looks--with men. With men a woman has only
+one principle to guide her--to keep on the safe side."
+
+"I hope you won't think me uncivil, Miss Guion, if I point out that, at
+present, you haven't got a safe side to keep on. That's what I want to
+offer you."
+
+"I might ask you why again, only that we should be going round in a
+circle. Since you don't mean to tell me, I must go without knowing; but
+I'm sure you can understand that to some natures the lion is less to be
+feared than the hunter."
+
+"_He_ doesn't feel so." He nodded his head in the direction of Tory
+Hill.
+
+"_He_ feels so. He's only a little--wavering."
+
+"And I guess you're a little wavering, too, Miss Guion, if you'd only
+own up to it."
+
+He watched her straighten her slight figure while her delicate features
+hardened to an expression of severity. "I'm not wavering on the
+principle, nor because of anything I should have to face myself. If I
+have any hesitation, it's only because of what it would mean for papa."
+
+He allowed an instant to pass while he looked down at her gravely. "And
+he's not the only one, you know," he said, with all the significance he
+could put into his tone.
+
+His hint, however, was thrown away, since she was intent on her own line
+of thought. With a slight nod of the head, dignified rather than
+discourteous, she departed, leaving him, to the great interest of the
+passers-by, leaning on his stick and staring after her.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+As Olivia continued on her way toward Rodney Temple's she was able to
+make it clear to herself that a chief reason for her dislike of Davenant
+sprang from his immovability. There was something about him like a giant
+rock. She got the impression that one might dash against him forever and
+hurt no one but oneself. It was a trait new to her among American men,
+whom she generally found too yielding where women were concerned. This
+man had an aloofness, too, that was curiously disconcerting. He made no
+approaches; he took no liberties. If he showed anything that resembled a
+personal sentiment toward her, it was dislike. Making that reflection
+and using that word, she was almost startled. A woman had sometimes
+disliked her; she knew that; but a man--never! And yet it was difficult
+to interpret Davenant's bearing toward her in any other way. It was a
+bearing in which there were no concessions to her whatever, while there
+was in it--it was only too plain!--a distinct intention to ignore her.
+For the time being this personal element in the situation loomed larger
+than any other. It challenged her; it even annoyed her. At the same time
+it gave Davenant an importance in her eyes which she was far from
+willing to concede.
+
+Rodney Temple's house, which was really within the borders of Cambridge,
+built about 1840 by some Harvard professor in easy circumstances, had
+originally resembled a square brick box. In the course of seventy years
+it had passed through the hands of several owners, each of whom had
+built on an additional box according to his needs. To the north a
+rectangular wing of one story had been thrown out as a drawing-room; to
+the south a similar projection formed the library and study. A smaller
+square crowned the edifice as a cupola, while cubes of varying
+dimensions were half visible at the back. Against the warm, red brick a
+Wren portico in white-painted wood, together with the white facings of
+the windows, produced an effect of vivid spotlessness, tempered by the
+variegated foliage of climbing vines. The limitations of the open lawn
+were marked by nothing but a line of shrubs.
+
+Having arrived at the door, it was a relief to Olivia, rather than the
+contrary, to learn that the ladies were not at home, but that Mr. Temple
+himself would be glad to see her if she would come in. He had, in fact,
+espied her approach from his study window and had come out into the hall
+to insist on her staying. Within a minute or two she found herself
+sitting in one of his big, shabby arm-chairs saying things preliminary
+to confidence.
+
+It was a large room, with windows on three sides, through which the
+light poured in to find itself refracted by a hundred lustrous surfaces.
+The first impression received on entering what Rodney Temple called his
+work-room was that of color--color unlike that of pictures, flowers,
+gems, or sunsets, and yet of extraordinary richness and variety. Low
+bookcases, running round the room, offered on the broad shelf forming
+the top space for many specimens of that potter's art on which the old
+man had made himself an authority. Jars and vases stood on tables,
+plaques and platters hung on the walls, each notable for some excellence
+in shape, glaze, or decoration. Of Americans of his generation Rodney
+Temple had been among the first to respond to an appeal that came from
+ages immeasurably far back in the history of man. His imagination had
+been stirred in boyhood by watching a common country potter turn off
+bowls and flowerpots that sprang from the wheel in exquisite, concentric
+forms or like opening lilies of red earth. Here, he had said to himself,
+is the beginning of everything we call art--here must have been the
+first intimation to man that beauty could be an element in the work of
+his own fingers.
+
+In a handicraft that took the dust of the earth to minister to man's
+humblest needs, and yet contrived thereby to enrich his aesthetic life,
+young Rodney Temple, as he was then, found much that was congenial to
+his own mystical aspirations. During his early travels abroad the
+factories of Meissen and Sèvres interested him more than the Zwinger and
+the Louvre.
+
+He frequented the booths and quays and dingy streets of the older
+European cities, bringing out from some lost hiding-place now an Arabic
+tile in which the green of the oasis intensified the blue of the desert
+sky; now a Persian bowl of hues that changed with a turn of the head or
+a quiver of the lids; now a Spanish plaque gleaming with metallic,
+opalescent colors, too indefinable to name, too fugitive for the eye to
+transmit to memory. Later he picked up strange examples which, like
+meteoric stones from another sphere, had found their mysterious way from
+Chinese palaces to his grimy haunts in London, Amsterdam, or Florence,
+as the case might be--a blue-and-white jar of Chia-ching, or a Han
+ceremonial vessel in emerald green, incrusted from long burial, or a
+celadon bowl that resembled a cup of jade, or some gorgeously decorated
+bit of Famille Verte. He knew at first little or nothing of the nature
+and history of these precious "finds." He saw only that they were rare
+and lovely and that through beauty as a means of grace he entered into
+communion with men who had neither epoch nor ideals in common with
+himself.
+
+In the end he became an authority on ceramic art by the simple process
+of knowing more about it than anybody else. When the trustees of the
+Harvard Gallery of Fine Arts awoke to that fact, he was an assistant
+professor of Greek in the University. Under his care, in the new
+position they offered him, a collection was formed of great celebrity
+and value; but nothing in it was ever quite so dear to him as the modest
+treasures he had acquired for himself in the days of his young
+enthusiasm, when his fellow-countrymen as yet cared for none of these
+things. As Olivia sat and talked her eye traveled absently from barbaric
+Rouen cornucopias and cockatoos to the incrusted snails and serpents of
+Bernard Palissy, resting long on a flowered jardinière by Veuve Perrin,
+of Marseilles. She had little technical knowledge of the objects
+surrounding her, but she submitted to the strange and soothing charm
+they never failed to work on her--the charm of stillness, of peace, as
+of things which, made for common homely uses, had passed beyond that
+stage into an existence of serenity and loveliness.
+
+"When you spoke the other day," she said, after the conversation had
+turned directly on her father's affairs--"when you spoke the other day
+about a pillar of cloud, I suppose you meant what one might call--an
+overruling sense of right."
+
+"That might do as one definition."
+
+"Because in that case you may like to know that I think I've seen it."
+
+"I thought you would if you looked for it."
+
+"I didn't look for it. It was just--there!"
+
+"It's always there; only, as in the case of the two disciples on the
+Emmaus road, our eyes are holden so that we don't see it."
+
+"I should have seen it easily enough; but if you hadn't told me, I
+shouldn't have known what it was. I didn't suppose that we got that kind
+of guidance nowadays."
+
+"The light is always shining in darkness, dearie; only the darkness
+comprehendeth it not. That's all there is to it."
+
+He sat at his desk, overlooking the embankment and the curves of the
+Charles. It was a wide desk littered with papers, but with space, too,
+for some of the favorite small possessions that served him as
+paper-weights--a Chinese dragon in blue-green enamel, a quaintly
+decorated cow in polychrome Delft, a dancing satyr in biscuit de Sèvres.
+On the side remote from where he sat was a life-size bust of Christ in
+fifteenth-century Italian terra-cotta--the face noble, dignified,
+strongly sympathetic--once painted, but now worn to its natural tint,
+except where gleams of scarlet or azure showed in the folds of the
+vesture. While the old man talked, and chiefly while he listened, the
+fingers of his large, delicately articulated hand stroked mechanically
+the surfaces of a grotesque Chinese figure carved in apple-green jade.
+It was some minutes before Olivia made any response to his last words.
+"Things _are_ very dark to me," she confessed, "and yet this light seems
+to me absolutely positive. I've had to make a decision that would be too
+frightful if something didn't seem to be leading me into the Street
+called Straight, as papa says. Did you know Mr. Davenant had offered to
+pay our debts?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Of course I couldn't let him do it."
+
+"Couldn't you?"
+
+"Do you think I could?"
+
+"Not if you think differently. You're the only judge."
+
+"But if I don't, you know, papa will have to go--" She hesitated. "You
+know what would happen, don't you?"
+
+"I suppose I do."
+
+"And I could prevent it, you see, if I let papa take this money. I have
+to assume the responsibility of its refusal. It puts me in a position
+that I'm beginning to feel--well, rather terrible."
+
+"Does it?"
+
+"You don't seem very much interested, Cousin Rodney. I hoped you'd give
+me some advice."
+
+"Oh, I never give advice. Besides, if you've got into the Street called
+Straight, I don't see why you need advice from any one."
+
+"I do. The Street called Straight is all very well, but--"
+
+"Then you're not so sure, after all."
+
+"I'm sure in a way. If it weren't for papa I shouldn't have any doubt
+whatever. But it seems so awful for me to drive him into what I don't
+think he'd do of his own accord." She went on to explain Davenant's
+offer in detail. "So you see," she concluded, "that papa's state of mind
+is peculiar. He agrees with me that the higher thing would be not to
+take the money; and yet if I gave him the slightest encouragement he
+would."
+
+"And you're not going to?"
+
+"How could I, Cousin Rodney? How could I put myself under such an
+obligation to a man I hardly know?"
+
+"He could probably afford it."
+
+"Is he so very rich?" There was a hint of curiosity in the tone.
+
+Rodney Temple shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, rich enough. It would pretty
+well clean him out; but, then, that would do him good."
+
+"Do him good--how?"
+
+"He's spoiling for work, that fellow is. Since he's had all that money
+he's been of no use to himself or to anybody else. He's like good
+capital tied up in a stocking instead of being profitably invested."
+
+"And yet we could hardly put ourselves in a humiliating situation just
+to furnish Mr. Davenant with an incentive for occupation, could we,
+Cousin Rodney?"
+
+"I dare say not."
+
+"And he isn't offering us the money merely for the sake of getting rid
+of it, do you think?"
+
+"Then what _is_ he offering it to you for?"
+
+"That's exactly what I want to know. Haven't you any idea?"
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+She waited a minute before deciding to speak openly. "I suppose you
+never heard that he once asked me to marry him?"
+
+He betrayed his surprise by the way in which he put down the little
+Chinese figure and wheeled round more directly toward her.
+
+"Who? Peter?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"What the dickens made him do that?"
+
+She opened her eyes innocently. "I'm sure I can't imagine."
+
+"It isn't a bit like him. You must have led him on."
+
+"I didn't," she declared, indignantly. "I never took any notice of him
+at all. Nothing could have astonished me more than his--his
+presumption."
+
+"And what did you say to him? Did you box his ears?"
+
+"I was very rude, and that's partly the trouble now. I feel as if he'd
+been nursing a grudge against me all these years--and was paying it."
+
+"In that case he's got you on the hip, hasn't he? It's a lovely turning
+of the tables."
+
+"You see that, Cousin Rodney, don't you? I _couldn't_ let a man like
+that get the upper hand of me."
+
+"Of course you couldn't, dear. I'd sit on him if I were you, and sit on
+him hard. I'd knock him flat--and let Delia Rodman and Clorinda Clay go
+to the deuce."
+
+She looked at him wonderingly. "Let--who--go to the deuce?"
+
+"I said Delia Rodman and Clorinda Clay. I might have included Fanny
+Burnaby and the Brown girls. I meant them, of course. I suppose you've
+been doing a lot of worrying on their account."
+
+"I--I haven't," she stammered. "I haven't thought of them at all."
+
+"Then I wouldn't. They've got no legal claim on you whatever. When they
+put their money into your father's hands--or when other people put it
+there for them--they took their chances. Life is full of risks like
+that. You're not responsible for them, not any more than you are for the
+fortunes of war. If they've had bad luck, then that's their own lookout.
+Oh, I shouldn't have them on my mind for a minute."
+
+She was too startled to suspect him of ruse or strategy.
+
+"I haven't had them on my mind. It seems queer--and yet I haven't. Now
+that you speak of them, of course I see--" She passed her hand across her
+brow. There was a long, meditative silence before she resumed. "I don't
+know what I've been dreaming of that it didn't occur to me before. Papa
+and Mr. Davenant both said that I hadn't considered all the sides to the
+question; and I suppose that's what they were thinking of. It seems so
+obvious--now."
+
+She adjusted her veil and picked up her parasol as though about to take
+leave; but when she rose it was only to examine, without seeing it, a
+plaque hanging on the wall.
+
+"If papa were to take Mr. Davenant's money," she said, after long
+silence, without turning round, "then his clients would be as well off
+as before, wouldn't they?"
+
+"I presume they would."
+
+"And now, I suppose, they're very poor."
+
+"I don't know much about that. None of them were great heiresses, as it
+was. Miss Prince, who keeps the school, told your cousin Cherry
+yesterday that the Rodman girls had written her from Florence, asking if
+she could give them a job to teach Italian. They'll have to teach away
+like blazes now--anything and everything they know."
+
+She turned round toward him, her eyes misty with distress.
+
+"See this bit of jade?" he continued, getting up from his chair. "Real
+jade that is. Cosway, of the Gallery, brought it to me when he came home
+from Peking. That's not real jade you've got at Tory Hill. It's
+jadeite."
+
+"Is it?" She took the little mandarin in her hand, but without examining
+him. "I've no doubt you've been dreadfully worried about them--papa's
+clients, I mean."
+
+"W-well--a little--or, rather, not at all. That is, I should have been
+worried if it hadn't been for the conviction that something would look
+out for them. Something always does, you know."
+
+The faint smile that seemed to have got frozen on her lips quivered
+piteously. "I wish you could have that comfortable feeling about me."
+
+"Oh, I have. That'll be all right. You'll be taken care of from start to
+finish. Don't have a qualm of doubt about it. There's a whole host of
+ministering spirits--angels some people call them--I don't say I should
+myself--but there are legions of mighty influences appointed to wait on
+just such brave steps as you're about to take."
+
+"That is, if I take them!"
+
+"Oh, you'll take 'em all right, dearie. You'll not be able to help it
+when you see just what they ought to be. In a certain sense they'll take
+you. You'll be passed along from point to point as safely as that bit of
+jade"--he took the carving from between her fingers and held it up--"as
+safely as that bit of jade has been transmitted from the quarries of
+Tibet to brighten my old eyes. It's run no end of risks, but the Angel
+of Beauty has watched over all its journeys. It's been in every sort of
+queer, mysterious place; it's passed through the hands of mandarins,
+merchants, and slaves; it's probably stood in palaces and been exposed
+in shops; it's certainly come over mountains and down rivers and across
+seas; and yet here it is, as perfect as when some sallow-faced dwarf of
+a craftsman gave it the last touch of the tool a hundred years ago. And
+that's the way it'll be with you, dearie. You may go through some
+difficult places, but you'll come out as unscathed as my little
+Chinaman. The Street called Straight is often a crooked one; and yet
+it's the surest and safest route we can take from point to point."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As, a few minutes later, she hurried homeward, this mystical optimism
+was to her something like a rose to a sick man--beautiful to
+contemplate, but of little practical application in alleviating pain.
+Her mind turned away from it. It turned away, too, from the pillar of
+cloud, of which the symbolism began to seem deceptive. Under the stress
+of the moment the only vision to which she could attain was that of the
+Misses Rodman begging for the pitiful job of teaching Italian in a young
+ladies' school. She remembered them vaguely--tall, scraggy, permanently
+girlish in dress and manner, and looking their true fifty only about the
+neck and eyes. With their mother they lived in a pretty villa on the
+Poggio Imperiale, and had called on her occasionally when she passed
+through Florence. The knowledge of being indebted to them, of having
+lived on their modest substance and reduced them to poverty, brought her
+to the point of shame in which it would have been a comfort to have the
+mountains fall on her and the rocks cover her from the gaze of men. She
+upbraided herself for her blindness to the most obviously important
+aspect of the situation. Now that she saw it, her zeal to "pay," by
+doing penance in public, became tragic and farcical at once. The
+absurdity of making satisfaction to Mrs. Rodman and Mrs. Clay, to Fanny
+Burnaby and the Brown girls, by calling in the law, when less
+suffering--to her father at least--would give them actual cash, was not
+the least element in her humiliation.
+
+She walked swiftly, seeing nothing of the cheerful stir around her,
+lashed along by the fear that Peter Davenant might have left Tory Hill.
+She was too intent on her purpose to perceive any change in her mental
+attitude toward him. She was aware of saying to herself that everything
+concerning him must be postponed; but beyond that she scarcely thought
+of him at all. Once the interests of the poor women who had trusted to
+her father had been secured, she would have time to face the claims of
+this new creditor; but nothing could be attempted till the one
+imperative duty was performed.
+
+Going up the stairs toward her father's room, the sound of voices
+reassured her. Davenant was there still. That was so much relief. She
+was able to collect herself, to put on something like her habitual air
+of quiet dignity, before she pushed open the door and entered.
+
+Guion was lying on the couch with the rug thrown over him. Davenant
+stood by the fireplace, endangering with his elbow a dainty Chelsea
+shepherdess on the mantelpiece. He was smoking one of Guion's cigars,
+which he threw into an ash-tray as Olivia came in.
+
+Conversation stopped abruptly on her appearance. She herself walked
+straight to the round table in the middle of the room, and for a second
+or two, which seemed much longer in space of time, stood silent, the
+tips of her fingers just touching a packet of papers strapped with
+rubber bands, which she guessed that Davenant must have brought. Through
+her downcast lashes she could see, thrown carelessly on the table, three
+or four strips, tinted blue or green or yellow, which she recognized as
+checks.
+
+"I only want to say," she began, with a kind of panting in her
+breath--"I only want to say, papa, that if ... Mr. Davenant will ...
+lend you the money ... I shall be ... I shall be ... very glad."
+
+Guion said nothing. His eyes, regarding her aslant, had in them the
+curious receding light she had noticed once before. With a convulsive
+clutching of the fingers he pulled the rug up about his chin. Davenant
+stood as he had been standing when she came in, his arm resting on the
+mantelpiece. When she looked at him with one hasty glance, she noticed
+that he reddened hotly.
+
+"I've changed my mind," she went on, impelled by the silence of the
+other two to say something more. "I've changed my mind. It's because of
+papa's clients--the Miss Rodmans and the others--that I've done it. I
+couldn't help it. I never thought of them till this afternoon. I don't
+know why. I've been very dense. I've been cruel. I've considered only
+how we--papa and I--could exonerate ourselves, if you can call it
+exoneration. I'm sorry."
+
+"You couldn't be expected to think of everything at once, Miss Guion,"
+Davenant said, clumsily.
+
+"I might have been expected to think of this; but I didn't. I suppose
+it's what you meant when you said that there were sides to the question
+that I didn't see. You said it, too, papa. I wish you had spoken more
+plainly."
+
+"We talked it over, Miss Guion. We didn't want to seem to force you.
+It's the kind of thing that's better done when it's done of one's own
+impulse. We were sure you'd come to it. All the same, if you hadn't done
+it to-day, we'd made up our minds to--to suggest it. That's why I took
+the liberty of bringing these things. Those are bonds that you've got
+your hand on--and the checks make up the sum total."
+
+By an instinctive movement she snatched her fingers away; but,
+recovering herself, she took the package deliberately into her hands and
+stood holding it.
+
+"I've been explaining to Davenant," Guion said, in a muffled voice,
+"that things aren't quite so hopeless as they seem. If we ever come into
+Aunt Vic's money--"
+
+"But there's no certainty of that, papa."
+
+"No certainty, but a good deal of probability. She's always given us to
+understand that the money wouldn't go out of her own family; and there's
+practically no one left now but you and me. And if it _should_ come to
+us, there'd be more than enough to--to square everything. You'd do it,
+dear, wouldn't you, if Aunt Vic were to leave the whole thing to you? I
+think she's as likely to do that as not."
+
+"Mr. Davenant must know already that I shall give my whole life to
+trying to pay our debt. If there's anything I could sign at once--"
+
+Davenant moved from the fireside. "There's nothing to sign, Miss Guion,"
+he said, briefly. "The matter is ended as far as I'm concerned. Mr.
+Guion has got the money, and is relieved from his most pressing
+embarrassments. That's all I care about. There's no reason why we should
+ever speak of it again. If you'll excuse me now--"
+
+He turned toward the couch with his hand outstretched, but during the
+minute or two in which Olivia and he had been facing each other Guion
+had drawn the rug over his face. Beneath it there was a convulsive
+shaking, from which the younger man turned away. With a nod of
+comprehension to Olivia he tiptoed softly from the room. As he did so he
+could see her kneel beside the couch and kiss the hand that lay outside
+the coverlet.
+
+She overtook him, however, when he was downstairs picking up his hat and
+stick from the hall table.
+
+She stood on the lowest step of the stairs, leaning on the low, white
+pillar that finished the balustrade. He was obliged to pass her on his
+way to the door. The minute was the more awkward for him owing to the
+fact that she did not take the initiative in carrying it off. On the
+contrary, she made it harder by looking at him gravely without speaking.
+
+"It's relief," he said, nodding with understanding toward the room
+up-stairs. "I've seen men do that before--after they'd been facing some
+danger or other with tremendous pluck."
+
+He spoke for the sake of saying something, standing before her with his
+hat and stick in his hand, not seeing precisely how he was to get away.
+
+"It's a relief to me, too," she said, simply. "You can't imagine what
+it's been the last few days--seeing things go to pieces like that. Now,
+I suppose, they'll hold together somehow, though it can't be very well.
+I dare say you think me all wrong--"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I couldn't see any other way. When you've done wrong as we've done it,
+you'd rather be punished. You don't want to go scot-free. It's something
+like the kind of impulse that made the hermits and ascetics submit to
+scourging. But it's quite possible that I shouldn't have had the courage
+to go through with it--especially if papa had broken down. As you said
+from the first, I didn't see what was truly vital."
+
+"I shouldn't blame myself too much for that, Miss Guion. It often
+happens that one only finds the right way by making two or three plunges
+into wrong ones."
+
+"Do you think I've found it now?"
+
+There was something wistful in the question, and not a little humble,
+that induced him to say with fervor, "I'm very sure of it."
+
+"And you?" she asked. "Is it the right way for you?"
+
+"Yes; and it's the first time I've ever struck it."
+
+She shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I'm a little bewildered. This
+morning everything seemed so clear, and now--I understand," she went on,
+"that we shall be taking all you have."
+
+"Who told you that?" he asked, sharply.
+
+"It doesn't matter who told me; but it's very important if we are. _Are_
+we?"
+
+He threw his head back in a way that, notwithstanding her preoccupation,
+she could not but admire. "No; because I've still got my credit. When a
+man has that--"
+
+"But you'll have to begin all over again, sha'n't you?"
+
+"Only as a man who has won one battle begins all over again when he
+fights another. It's nothing but fun when you're fond of war."
+
+"Didn't I do something very rude to you--once--a long time ago?"
+
+The question took him so entirely unawares that, in the slight,
+involuntary movement he made, he seemed to himself to stagger backward.
+He was aware of looking blank, while unable to control his features to a
+non-committal expression. He had the feeling that minutes had gone by
+before he was able to say:
+
+"It was really of no consequence--"
+
+"Don't say that. It was of great consequence. Any one can see that--now.
+I was insolent. I knew I _had_ been. You must have been perfectly aware
+of it all these years; and--I _will_ say it!--I _must_ say it!--you're
+taking your revenge--very nobly."
+
+He was about to utter something in protest, but she turned away abruptly
+and sped up the stairs. On the first landing she paused for the briefest
+instant and looked down.
+
+"Good-by," she faltered. "I must go back to papa. He'll need me. I can't
+talk any more just now. I'm too bewildered--about everything. Colonel
+Ashley will arrive in a day or two, and after I've seen him I shall be a
+little clearer as to what I think; and--and then--I shall see you
+again."
+
+He continued to stand gazing up the stairway long after he had heard her
+close the door of Guion's room behind her.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+It was not difficult for Davenant to ascribe his lightness of heart, on
+leaving Tory Hill, to satisfaction in getting rid of his superfluous
+money, since he had some reason to fear that the possession of it was no
+great blessing. To a man with little instinct for luxury and no spending
+tastes, twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year was an income far
+outstripping his needs. It was not, however, in excess of his desires,
+for he would gladly have set up an establishment and cut a dash if he
+had known how. He admired the grand style in living, not so much as a
+matter of display, because presumably it stood for all sorts of
+mysterious refinements for which he possessed the yearning without the
+initiation. The highest flight he could take by his own unaided efforts
+was in engaging the best suite of rooms in the best hotel, when he was
+quite content with his dingy old lodgings; in driving in taxicabs, when
+the tram-car would have suited him just as well, and ordering champagne,
+when he would have preferred some commoner beverage. Fully aware of the
+insufficiency of this method of reaching a higher standard, he practised
+it only because it offered the readiest means he could find of
+straining upward. He was sure that with a wife who knew the arts of
+elegance to lead the way his scent for following would be keen enough;
+but between him and the acquisition of this treasure there lay the
+memory of the haughty young creature who had, in the metaphor with which
+he was most familiar, "turned him down."
+
+But it was not the fact that he had more money than he needed of which
+he was afraid; it was rather the perception that the possibility of
+indulging himself--coupled with what he conceived to be a kind of duty
+in doing it--was sapping his vigor. All through the second year of his
+holiday he had noticed in himself the tendency of the big,
+strong-fibered animal to be indolent and overfed. On the principle laid
+down by Emerson that every man is as lazy as he dares to be he got into
+the way of sleeping late, of lounging in the public places of hotels,
+and smoking too many cigars. With a little encouragement he could have
+contracted the incessant cocktail and Scotch-and-soda habits of some of
+his traveling compatriots.
+
+He excused these weaknesses on the ground that when he had returned to
+Boston, and got back to his ordinary round of work and exercise, they
+would vanish, without having to be overcome; and yet the nearer he drew
+to his old home, the less impulse he felt for exertion. He found himself
+asking the question, "Why should I try to make more money when I've got
+enough already?" to which the only reply was in that vague hope of
+"doing a little good," inspired by his visit to the scene of his
+parents' work at Hankow. In this direction, however, his aptitudes were
+no more spontaneous than they were for the life of cultivated taste.
+Henry Guion's need struck him, therefore, as an opportunity. If he took
+other views of it besides, if it made to him an appeal totally different
+from the altruistic, he was able to conceal the fact--from himself, at
+any rate--in the depths of a soul where much that was vital to the man
+was always held in subliminal darkness. It disturbed him, then, to have
+Drusilla Fane rifle this sanctuary with irreverent persistency, dragging
+to light what he had kept scrupulously hidden away.
+
+Having found her alone in the drawing-room drinking her tea, he told her
+at once what he had accomplished in the way of averting the worst phase
+of the danger hanging over the master of Tory Hill. He told her, too,
+with some amount of elation, which he explained as his glee in getting
+himself down to "hard-pan." Drusilla allowed the explanation to pass
+till she had thanked him ecstatically for what he had done.
+
+"Really, Peter, men are fine! The minute I heard Cousin Henry's wretched
+story I knew the worst couldn't come to the worst, with you here. I only
+wish you could realize what it means to have a big, strong man like you
+to lean on."
+
+Davenant looked pleased; he was in the mood to be pleased with anything.
+He had had so little of women's appreciation in his life that Drusilla's
+enthusiasm was not only agreeable but new. He noticed, too, that in
+speaking Drusilla herself was at her best. She had never been pretty.
+Her mouth was too large, her cheek-bones too high, and her skin too
+sallow for that; but she had the charm of frankness and intelligence.
+
+Davenant said what was necessary in depreciation of his act, going on to
+explain the benefit he would reap by being obliged to go to work again.
+He enlarged on his plans for taking his old rooms and his old office,
+and informed her that he knew a fellow, an old pal, who had already let
+him into a good thing in the way of a copper-mine in the region of Lake
+Superior. Drusilla listened with interest till she found an opportunity
+to say:
+
+"I'm so glad that _is_ your reason for helping Cousin Henry, Peter;
+because I was afraid there might be--another."
+
+He stopped abruptly, looking dashed. Unaccustomed to light methods of
+attack and defense, it took him a few seconds to see Drusilla's move.
+
+"You thought I might be--in love?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"That's queer," he went on, "because I'd got the same impression about
+you."
+
+It was Drusilla's turn to be aghast. She was a little surprised at not
+being offended, too.
+
+"What made you think that?" she managed to ask, after getting command of
+herself.
+
+"What makes one think anything? However," he conceded, "I dare say I'm
+wrong."
+
+"That's a very good conclusion to come to. I advise you to keep to it."
+
+"I will if you'll do the same about me."
+
+She seized the opening to carry the attack back in his direction.
+
+"I can't make a bargain of that kind, Peter. The scientific mind bases
+its conclusions on--observed phenomena."
+
+"Which I guess is the reason why the scientific mind is so often wrong.
+I've had a good deal to do with it in the copper-mine business. It's
+always barking up the wrong tree. I've often heard it said that the
+clever scientist is generally a poor reasoner."
+
+"Well, perhaps he is. But I wasn't reasoning. I was merely going by
+instinct when I thought you might have a special motive for helping
+Cousin Henry. If you had, you know, it wouldn't be any harm."
+
+"It mightn't be any harm; but would it be any good?"
+
+"Well, that might depend a good deal--on you."
+
+"On me? How so? I don't know what you're driving at."
+
+"I'm not driving at anything. I'm only speculating. I'm wondering what I
+should do if I were in your place--with all your advantages."
+
+"Rot, Drusilla!"
+
+"If I were a man and had a rival," Drusilla persisted, "I should be
+awfully honorable in the stand I'd take toward him--just like you. But
+if anything miscarried--"
+
+"You don't _expect_ anything to miscarry?"
+
+She shook her head. "No; I don't expect it. But it might be a fortunate
+thing if it did."
+
+"You don't mean to infer that this man Ashley mightn't come up to the
+scratch?"
+
+"Colonel Ashley has come up to a good many scratches in his time. He's
+not likely to fail in this one."
+
+"Well, then, what more is there to it?"
+
+"There's a good deal more. There are things I can't explain, and which
+you wouldn't understand if I did. Coming up to the scratch isn't
+everything. Charles the First came up to the scratch when he walked up
+and had his head cut off; but there was more to be said."
+
+"And you mean that your Colonel Ashley would be brave enough to walk up
+and have _his_ head cut off?"
+
+"I know he'd be brave enough. It's no question of courage. He had the
+Victoria Cross before he was thirty. But it's a noble head; and it might
+be a pity it should have to fall."
+
+"But I don't understand why it should."
+
+"No, you wouldn't unless you'd lived among them. They'd all admit he had
+done the right thing. They'd say that, having come out here to marry
+her, he could do no less than go through with it. That part of it would
+be all right. Even in the Rangers it might make comparatively little
+difference--except that now and then Olivia would feel uncomfortable.
+Only when he was mentioned at the Horse Guards for some important
+command they'd remember that there was something queer--something
+shady--about his wife's family, and his name would be passed over."
+
+He nodded thoughtfully. "I see."
+
+"Oh no, you don't. It's much too intricate for you to see. You couldn't
+begin to understand how poignant it might become, especially for her,
+without knowing their ways and traditions--"
+
+He jumped to his feet. "Their ways and traditions be--!"
+
+"Yes; that's all very fine. But they're very good ways, Peter. They've
+got to keep the honor of the Service up to a very high standard. Their
+ways are all right. But that doesn't keep them from being terrible
+forces to come up against, especially for a proud thing like her. And
+now that the postponing of the wedding has got into the papers--"
+
+"Yes; I've seen 'em. Got it pretty straight, too, all things
+considered."
+
+"And that sort of thing simply flies. It will be in the New York papers
+to-morrow, and in the London ones the day after. We always get those
+things cabled over there. We know about the elopements and the queer
+things that happen in America when we don't hear of anything else.
+Within forty-eight hours they'll be talking of it at the Rangers' dépôt
+in Sussex--and at Heneage--and all through his county--and at the Horse
+Guards. You see if they aren't! You've no idea how people have their eye
+on him. And when they hear the wedding has been put off for a scandal
+they'll have at their heels all the men who've hated him--and all the
+women who've envied her--"
+
+He leaned his shoulders against the mantelpiece, his hands behind his
+back. "Pooh! That sort of dog can only bark."
+
+"No; that's where you're wrong, Peter. In England it can bite. It can
+raise a to-do around their name that will put a dead stop to his
+promotion--that is, the best kind of promotion, such as he's on the way
+to."
+
+"The deuce take his promotion! Let's think of--_her_."
+
+"That's just what I thought you'd do, Peter; and with all your
+advantages--"
+
+"Drop that, Drusilla," he commanded. "You know you don't mean it. You
+know as well as I do that I haven't a chance--even if I wanted
+one--which I don't. You're not thinking of me--or of her. You're
+thinking of him--and how to get him out of a match that won't tend to
+his advancement."
+
+"I'm thinking of every one, Peter--of every one but myself, that is. I'm
+thinking of him, and her, and you--"
+
+"Then you'll do me a favor if you leave me out."
+
+She sprang to her feet, her little figure looking slim and girlish.
+
+"I can't leave you out, Peter, when you're the Hamlet of the piece.
+That's nonsense. I'm not plotting or planning on any one's behalf. It
+isn't my temperament. I only say that if this--this affair--didn't come
+off--though I suppose it will--I feel sure it will--yet if it
+didn't--then, with all your advantages--and after what you've done for
+her--"
+
+He strode forward, almost upsetting the tea-table beside which she
+stood. "Look here, Drusilla. You may as well understand me once for all.
+I wouldn't marry a girl who took me because of what I'd done for her,
+not if she was the last woman in the world."
+
+"But you would if she was the first, Peter. And I'm convinced that for
+you she _is_ the first--"
+
+"Now, now!" he warned her, "that'll do! I've been generous enough not
+to say anything as to who's first with you, though you don't take much
+pains to hide it. Why not--?"
+
+"You're all first with me," she protested. "I don't know which of you
+I'm the most sorry for."
+
+"Don't waste your pity on me. I'm perfectly happy. There's only one of
+the lot who needs any consideration whatever. And, by God! if he's not
+true to her, I'll--"
+
+"Your intervention won't be called for, Peter," she assured him, making
+her way toward the door. "You're greatly mistaken if you think I've
+asked for it."
+
+"Then for Heaven's sake what _have_ you asked for? _I_ don't see."
+
+She was in the hall, but she turned and spoke through the doorway. "I've
+only asked you not to be an idiot. I merely beg, for all our sakes, that
+if something precious is flung down at your feet you'll have the common
+sense to stoop and pick it up."
+
+"I'll consider that," he called after her, as she sped up the stairs,
+"when I see it lying there."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+It may be admitted at once that, on arriving at Tory Hill and hearing
+from Olivia's lips the tale of her father's downfall, Colonel Rupert
+Ashley received the first perceptible check in a very distinguished
+career. Up to this point the sobriquet of "Lucky Ashley," by which he
+was often spoken of in the Rangers, had been justified by more than one
+spectacular success. He had fulfilled so many special missions to
+uncivilized and half-civilized and queerly civilized tribes that he had
+come to feel as if he habitually went on his way with the might of the
+British Empire to back him. It was he who in South Africa brought the
+M'popos to order without shedding a drop of blood; it was he who in the
+eastern Soudan induced the followers of the Black Prophet to throw in
+their lot with the English, securing by this move the safety of Upper
+Egypt; it was he who in the Malay Peninsula intimidated the Sultan of
+Surak into accepting the British protectorate, thus removing a menace to
+the peace of the Straits Settlements. Even if he had had no other
+exploits to his credit, these alone would have assured his favor with
+the home authorities. It had become something like a habit, at the
+Colonial Office or the War Officer or the Foreign Office, as the case
+might be, whenever there was trouble on one of the Empire's vague outer
+frontiers, to ask, "Where's Ashley?" Wherever he was, at Gibraltar or
+Simla or Cairo or at the Rangers' dépôt in Sussex, he was sent for and
+consulted. Once having gained a reputation for skill in handling
+barbaric potentates, he knew how to make the most of it, both abroad and
+in Whitehall. On rejoining his regiment, too, after some of his
+triumphant expeditions, he was careful to bear himself with a modesty
+that took the point from detraction, assuring, as it did, his
+brother-officers that they would have done as well as he, had they
+enjoyed the same chances.
+
+He was not without a policy in this, since from the day of receiving his
+commission he had combined a genuine love of his profession with a quite
+laudable intention to "get on." He cherished this ambition more
+naturally, perhaps, than most of his comrades, who took the profession
+of arms lightly, for the reason that the instinct for it might be said
+to be in his blood. The Ashleys were not an old county family. Indeed,
+it was only a generation or so since they had achieved county rank. It
+was a fact not generally remembered at the present day that the
+grandfather of the colonel of the Sussex Rangers had been a successful
+and estimable manufacturer of brushes. In the early days of Queen
+Victoria he owned a much-frequented emporium in Regent Street, at which
+you could get anything in the line from a tooth-brush to a currycomb.
+Retiring from business in the fifties, with a considerable fortune for
+the time, this Mr. Ashley had purchased Heneage from the impoverished
+representatives of the Umfravilles. As luck would have it, the new
+owners found a not unattractive Miss Umfraville almost going with the
+place, since she lived in select but inexpensive lodgings in the
+village. Her manners being as gentle as her blood, and her face even
+gentler than either, if such a thing could be, it was in keeping with
+the spirit that had borne the Ashleys along to look upon her as an
+opportunity. Young Mr. Ashley, to whom his father had been able to give
+the advantages of Oxford, knew at a glance that with this lady at his
+side recognition by the county would be assured. Being indifferent to
+recognition by the county except in so far as it expressed a phase of
+advancement, and superior to calculation as a motive for the matrimonial
+state, young Ashley proceeded with all due formality to fall in love;
+and it was from the passion incidental to this episode that Lucky Ashley
+was born.
+
+All this had happened so long ago, according to modern methods of
+reckoning, that the county had already forgotten what it was the
+original Ashley had manufactured, or that he had manufactured anything
+at all. By the younger generation it was assumed that Heneage had passed
+to the Ashley family through intermarriage with the Umfravilles. Certain
+it was that the Ashleys maintained the Umfraville tradition and used the
+Umfraville arms. What chiefly survived of the spirit that had made the
+manufacture of brushes so lucrative a trade was the intention young
+Rupert Ashley took with him into the army--to get on.
+
+He had got on. Every one spoke of him nowadays as a coming man. It was
+conceded that when generals like Lord Englemere or Lord Bannockburn
+passed away, it would be to such men as Rupert Ashley--the number of
+them could be counted on the fingers of your two hands!--that the
+country would look for its defenders. They were young men,
+comparatively, as yet; but they were waiting and in training. It was a
+national asset to know that they were there.
+
+It was natural, then, that Ashley's eyes should be turning in the
+direction of the great appointments. He had won so much distinction in
+the Jakh War and the Dargal War that there was nothing to which, with
+time, he could not aspire. True, he had rivals; true, there were men who
+could supplant him without putting any great strain upon their powers;
+true, there were others with more family influence, especially of that
+petticoat influence which had been known to carry so much weight in high
+and authoritative quarters; but he had confidence in himself, in his
+ability, his star--the last named of which had the merit of always
+seeming to move forward.
+
+Everything began to point, therefore, to his marrying. In a measure it
+was part of his qualification for high command. He had reached that
+stage in his development, both private and professional, at which the
+co-operation of a good and graceful wife would double his capacity for
+public service, besides giving him that domestic consolation of which
+he began to feel the need. There were posts he could think of--posts
+that would naturally be vacant before many years were past--in which the
+fact of his being unmarried would be a serious drawback if his name were
+to come up. Better to be unmarried than to be saddled with a wife who
+from any deficiency of birth or manner was below the level of her
+station! Of course! He had seen more than one man, splendidly qualified
+otherwise, passed over because of that mischance. But with a wife who in
+her way was equal to him in his they would both go far. Who could
+venture to say how far?
+
+In this respect he was fortunate in knowing exactly what he wanted. That
+is, he had seen enough of the duties of high position to be critical of
+the ladies who performed them. Experience enabled him to create his
+ideal by a process of elimination. Many a time, as he watched some great
+general's wife--Lady Englemere, let us say, or Lady Bannockburn--receive
+her guests, he said to himself, "That is exactly what my wife shall not
+be." She should not be a military intrigante like the one, nor a female
+martinet like the other, nor a gambler like a third, nor a snob like a
+fourth, nor a fool about young men like several he could think of. By
+dint of fastidious observation and careful rejection of the qualities of
+which he disapproved, a vision rose before him of the woman who would be
+the complement of himself. He saw her clever, spirited, high-bred--a
+woman of the world, familiar with literature and arts, and speaking at
+least one language besides her mother-tongue. In dress she should be
+exquisite, in conversation tactful, in manner sympathetic. As mistress
+of the house she should be thorough; as a hostess, full of charm; as a
+mother--but his imagination hardly went into that. That she should be a
+perfect mother he took for granted, just as he took it for granted that
+she should be beautiful. A woman who had the qualifications he desired
+could not be less than beautiful from the sheer operation of the soul.
+
+Considering how definite his ideas were--and moderate, on the whole--it
+surprised him to find no one to embody them. It sometimes seemed to him
+that the traditional race of Englishwomen had become extinct. Those he
+met were either brilliant and hard, or handsome and horsey, or athletic
+and weedy, or smart and selfish, or pretty and silly, or sweet and
+provincial, or good and grotesque. With the best will in the world to
+fall in love, he found little or no temptation. Indeed, he had begun to
+think that the type of woman on whom he had set his heart was, like some
+article of an antiquated fashion, no longer produced when unexpectedly
+he saw her.
+
+He saw her unexpectedly, because it was at church; and whatever his
+motives on that bright Sunday morning in May in attending the old
+garrison chapel in Southsea, the hope of seeing his vision realized was
+not one. If, apart from the reasons for which people are supposed to go
+to church, he had any special thought, it was that of meeting Mrs. Fane.
+It had happened two or three times already that, having perceived her at
+the service, he had joined her on the Common afterward, and she had
+asked him home to lunch. They had been pleasant little luncheons--so
+pleasant that he almost regretted the fact that she was an American. He
+had nothing against Americans in themselves. He knew a number of their
+women who had married into one arm or another of the Service with
+conspicuous advantage to their husbands. That, in fact, was part of the
+trouble. There were so many of them nowadays that he had begun to feel
+vaguely that where there was question of high position--and he hoped
+modestly that in his case there was distinctly question of that--it was
+time the principle was being established of England for the English.
+Nevertheless, he had got so far in his consideration of Drusilla Fane as
+to ask himself whether she was not, as the widow of a British officer,
+an Englishwoman to all intents and purposes as well as in the strict
+letter of the law. He could not say that he was in love with her; but
+neither could he say that one of these days he might not be. If he ever
+were it would certainly be on the principle of _faute de mieux_; but
+many a man has chosen his wife on no better ground than that.
+
+Such criticism as he had to make to her disadvantage he could form there
+and then in the chapel while they were reading the lessons or chanting
+the psalms. She sat two or three rows in front of him, on the other side
+of the aisle. There was something about Drusilla in church that
+suggested a fish out of water. He had noticed it before. She was
+restless, inattentive; she kept turning her head to see who was behind
+her or at the other end of the pew; she rarely found the places in the
+prayer-book or knew just when to kneel down; when she did kneel down she
+sank into an awkward little bunch; every now and then she stifled, or
+did not stifle, a yawn.
+
+Ashley had a theory that manner in church is the supreme test of the
+proprieties. He knew plenty of women who could charm at a dinner or
+dazzle at a dance, but who displayed their weaknesses at prayer. All
+unwitting to herself, poor Drusilla was inviting his final--or almost
+final--judgment on her future, so far at least as he was concerned, for
+the simple reason that she twitched and sighed and forgot to say the
+Amens.
+
+And just then his eyes traveled to her neighbor--a tall young lady,
+dressed in white, with no color in her costume but a sash of hues
+trembling between sea-green and lilac. She was slender and graceful,
+with that air at once exquisite and unassuming that he had seen in the
+Englishwoman of his dreams. Though he could get no more than a side
+glimpse of her face, he divined that it was pure and that it must be
+thrown into relief by the heavy coil of coppery-brown hair. But what he
+noticed in her first was that which he thought of concerning other women
+last--a something holy and withdrawn, a quality of devotion without
+which he had no conception of real womanhood. It seemed to be a matter
+of high courtesy with her not to perceive that the choir-boys sang out
+of tune or that the sermon was prosy. In the matter of kneeling he had
+seen only one woman in his life--and she the highest in the land--who
+did it with this marvelous grace at once dignified and humble. "It takes
+old England," he said to himself, gloatingly, "to make 'em like
+that--simple and--_stunning_."
+
+But on the Common after service, and at luncheon after that, and during
+the three or four weeks that ensued, he had much to do in reforming his
+opinions. There were several facts about Olivia Guion that disorientated
+his points of view and set him looking for new ones. Though he was not
+wholly successful in finding them, he managed, nevertheless, to justify
+himself for falling in love in violation of his principles. He admitted
+that he would have preferred to marry a compatriot of his own, and some
+one above the rank of a solicitor's daughter; but, since he had
+discovered the loveliest and noblest creature in the world, it was idle
+to cavil because one land or one situation in life rather than another
+had produced her. As well complain of the rubies and pearls that deck
+the English crown because some were found in Tibetan mountains and
+others in Indian seas. There are treasures, he argued, so precious as to
+transcend all merely national limitations, making them petty and
+irrelevant. The one thing to the point was that in Olivia Guion he had
+won the human counterpart of himself, who could reflect his qualities
+and complete them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had been so proud that the blow on receiving Olivia's letter in New
+York was a cruel one. Though it told him nothing but that her father had
+lost all his money and that the invitations to the wedding had been
+withdrawn, this in itself was immeasurably distressing to a man with a
+taste for calling public attention to his movements and who liked to see
+what concerned him march with a certain pomp. His marriage being an
+event worthy to take place in sight of the world, he had not only found
+ways of making it a topic of interest before leaving England, but he had
+summoned to it such friends of distinction as he possessed on the
+American side of the water. Though he had not succeeded in getting the
+British Ambassador, Benyon, the military attaché at Washington, was to
+come with his wife, and Lord Woolwich, who was aide-de-camp at Ottawa,
+had promised to act as best man. His humiliation on speculating as to
+what they must have said when they received Olivia's card announcing
+that the marriage was not to take place on the 28th was such that he
+fell to wondering whether it wouldn't have been better to bluff the loss
+of money. They might have carried out their plans in spite of it. Indeed
+he felt the feasibility of this course the more strongly after he had
+actually seen Olivia and she had given him the outlines of her tale.
+
+Watching his countenance closely, she saw that he blanched. Otherwise he
+betrayed no sign of flinching. His manner of sitting rigid and upright
+in his corner of the rustic seat was a perfectly natural way of
+listening to a story that affected him so closely. What distressed her
+chiefly was the incongruity between his personality and the sordid drama
+in which she was inviting him to take part. He was even more
+distinguished-looking than he appeared in the photographs she cherished
+or in the vision she had retained in her memory. Without being above the
+medium male height, he was admirably shaped by war, sport, and exercise.
+His neat head, with its thick, crispy hair, in which there was already a
+streak of gray, was set on his shoulders at just the right poise for
+command. The high-bridged nose, inherited from the Umfravilles, was of
+the kind commonly considered to show "race." The eyes had the sharpness,
+and the thin-lipped mouth the inflexibility, that go with a capacity for
+quick decisions. While he was not so imposing in mufti as in his
+uniform, the trim traveling-suit of russet brown went well with the
+bronze tint of the complexion. It was so healthy a bronze, as a usual
+thing, that his present pallor was the more ashen from contrast.
+
+Knowing from his telegram the hour at which to expect him, she had gone
+down the driveway to meet him when she saw him dismiss his taxicab at
+the gate. She chose to do this in order that their first encounter might
+take place out-of-doors. With the windows of the neighboring houses open
+and people sitting on verandas or passing up and down the road, they
+could exchange no more than some conventional greeting. She would assume
+nothing on the ground of their past standing toward each other. He
+seemed to acquiesce in this, since he showed no impatience at being
+restricted to the formality of shaking hands.
+
+Happily for both, commonplace words were given them--questions and
+answers as to his voyage, his landing, his hotel. He came to her relief,
+too, as they sauntered toward the house, by commenting on its dignity
+and Georgian air, as well as by turning once or twice to look at the
+view. Nearing the steps she swerved from the graveled driveway and began
+to cross the lawn.
+
+"We won't go in just yet," she explained. "Papa is there. He felt he
+ought to dress and come downstairs to receive you. He's very far from
+well. I hope you'll do your best not to--to think of him too harshly."
+
+"I shouldn't think harshly of any one simply because he'd had business
+bad luck."
+
+"He _has_ had business bad luck--but that isn't all. We'll sit here."
+
+Taking one corner of a long garden-seat that stood in the shade of an
+elm, she signed to him to take the other. On the left they had the
+Corinthian-columned portico of the garden front of the house; in the
+distance, the multicolored slopes of the town. Olivia, at least, felt
+the stimulating effect of the, golden forenoon sunshine.
+
+As for Ashley, in spite of his outward self-possession, he was too
+bewildered to feel anything at all. Having rushed on from New York by
+night, he was now getting his first daylight glimpse of America; and,
+though, owing to more urgent subjects for, thought, he was not
+consciously giving his attention to things outward, he had an oppressive
+sense of immensity and strangeness. The arch of the sky was so sweeping,
+the prospect before them so gorgeous, the sunlight so hard, and the
+distances so clear! For the first time in his life a new continent
+aroused in him an odd sense of antagonism. He had never had it in Africa
+or Asia or in the isles of the Southern Sea. There he had always gone
+with a sense of power, with the instinct of the conqueror; while
+here.... But Olivia was speaking, saying things too appalling for
+immediate comprehension.
+
+Her voice was gentle and even; she spoke with a certain kind of ease.
+She appeared to rehearse something already learned by heart.
+
+"So, you see, he didn't merely lose his own money; he lost theirs--the
+money of his clients--which was in his trust. I hadn't heard of it when
+I wrote you in New York, otherwise I should have told you. But now that
+you know it--"
+
+He looked mystified. "He's jolly lucky not to be in England," he said,
+trying not to seem as stunned as he felt. "There that sort of thing is a
+very serious--"
+
+"Offence," she hastened to say. "Oh, so it is here. I must tell you
+quite plainly that if the money hadn't come papa would have had to go
+to--"
+
+"But the money did come?"
+
+She made a point of finishing her sentence. "If the money hadn't come
+papa would have had to go to prison. Yes, the money did come. A friend
+of--of papa's--and Drusilla's--advanced it. It's been paid over to the
+people who were going to law."
+
+"So that part of it is settled?"
+
+"That part of it is settled to the extent that no action will be taken
+against papa."
+
+She continued to talk on gently, evenly, giving him the facts
+unsparingly. It was the only way. Her very statements, so it seemed to
+her, implied that as marriage between them was no longer possible their
+engagement was at an end.
+
+She was not surprised that he scarcely noticed when, having said all she
+had to say, she ceased speaking. Taking it for granted that he was
+thinking out the most merciful way of putting his verdict into words,
+she, too, remained silent. She was not impatient, nor uneasy, nor
+alarmed. The fact that the business of telling him was no longer ahead
+of her, that she had got it over, brought so much relief that she felt
+able to await his pleasure.
+
+She mistook, however, the nature of his thoughts. Once he had grasped
+the gist of her information, he paid little attention to its details.
+The important thing was his own conduct. Amid circumstances
+overwhelmingly difficult he must act so that every one, friend or rival,
+relative, county magnate or brother officer, the man in his regiment or
+the member of his club, the critic in England or the onlooker in
+America, should say he had done precisely the right thing.
+
+He used the words "precisely the right thing" because they formed a
+ruling phrase in his career. For twenty-odd years they had been written
+on the tablets of his heart and worn as frontlets between his brows.
+They had first been used in connection with him by a great dowager
+countess now deceased. She had said to his mother, apropos of some
+forgotten bit of courtliness on his part, "You can always be sure that
+Rupert will do precisely the right thing." Though he was but a lad at
+Eton at the time, he had been so proud of this opinion, expressed with
+all a dowager countess's authority, that from the moment it was repeated
+to him by his mother he made it a device. It had kept him out of more
+scrapes than he could reckon up, and had even inspired the act that
+would make his name glorious as long as there were annals of the
+Victoria Cross.
+
+He had long been persuaded that had the dowager countess not thus given
+the note to his character his record would never have been written on
+that roll of heroes. "I should have funked it," was his way of putting
+it, by which he meant that he would have funked it through sheer
+ignorance of himself and of his aptitude for the high and noble. It was
+an aptitude that flourished best under an appreciative eye--of the
+dowager countess looking down from heaven--or of the discerning here on
+earth--as an actor is encouraged by a sympathetic public to his highest
+histrionic efforts. If there was anything histrionic in Ashley himself,
+it was only in the sense that he was at his finest when, actually or
+potentially, there was some one there to see. He had powers then of
+doing precisely the right thing which in solitude might have been
+dormant from lack of motive.
+
+It was undoubtedly because he felt the long-sighted eyes of England on
+him that he had done precisely the right thing in winning the Victoria
+Cross. He confessed this--to himself. He confessed it often--every time,
+in fact, when he came to a difficult passage in his life. It was his
+strength, his inspiration. He confessed it now. If he sat silent while
+Olivia Guion waited till it seemed good to him to speak, it was only
+that he might remind himself of the advantages of doing the right thing,
+however hard. He had tested those advantages time and time again. The
+very memories they raised were a rebuke to weakness and hesitation. If
+he ever had duties he was inclined to shirk, he thought of that
+half-hour which had forever set the seal upon his reputation as a
+British soldier.
+
+He thought of it now. He saw himself again looking up at the bristling
+cliffs that were to be rushed, whence the Afridis were pouring their
+deadly fire. He saw himself measuring with his eye the saddle of
+precipitous slope that had to be crossed, devoid of cover and strewn
+with the bodies of dead Ghurkas. Of the actual crossing, with sixty
+Rangers behind him, he had little or no recollection. He had passed
+under the hail of bullets as through perils in a dream. As in a dream,
+too, he remembered seeing his men, when he turned to cheer them on, go
+down like nine-pins--throwing up their arms and staggering, or twisting
+themselves up like convulsive cats. It was grotesque rather than
+horrible; he felt himself grinning inwardly, as at something hellishly
+comic, when he reached the group of Ghurkas huddled under the cavernous
+shelter of the cliff. Then, just as he threw himself on the ground,
+panting like a spent dog and feeling his body all over to know whether
+or not he had been wounded, he saw poor Private Vickerson out in the
+open, thirty yards from the protection of the wall of rock. While the
+other Rangers to a man were lying still, on the back with the knees
+drawn up, or face downward, with the arms outstretched, or rolled on the
+side as though they were in bed, Vickerson was rising on his hands and
+dragging himself forward. It was one of Ashley's most vivid
+recollections that Vickerson's movements were like a seal's. They had
+the drollery of a bit of infernal mimicry. It was also a vivid
+recollection that when he ran out to the soldier's aid he had his first
+sensation of fear. The bullets whizzed so thick about him that he ran
+back again. It was an involuntary running back, as involuntary as
+snatching his fingers out of a fire. He could remember standing under
+the rock, and, as Vickerson did not move, half hoping he were dead. That
+would put an end to any further attempts to save him. But the soldier
+stirred again, propping himself with both hands and pulling his body
+onward for a few inches more. Again Ashley ran out into a tempest of
+iron and fire and over ground slippery with blood. He could still feel
+himself hopping back, as a barefooted boy who has ventured into a
+snow-storm hops back into the house. A third time he ran out, and a
+fourth. At the fourth he distinctly worded the thought which had been at
+the back of his mind from the beginning, "I shall get the V.C. for
+this." He tried to banish the unworthy suggestion, but it was too strong
+for him. Over the cliffs, and out of the clouds, and from beyond the
+horizon, he felt the unseen eyes of England upon him, inciting him to
+such a valor that at the fifth attempt he dragged in his man.
+
+He came out of this reverie, which, after all, was brief, to find the
+gentle tones in which Olivia had made her astounding revelations still
+in his ears; while she herself sat expectant, and resigned. He knew she
+was expectant and resigned and that she had braced her courage for the
+worst. With many men, with most men, to do so would have been needful.
+In the confusion of his rapid summaries and calculations it was a
+pleasurable thought that she should learn from him, and through him and
+in him, that it was not so with all. The silence which at first was
+inadvertent now became deliberate as--while he noted with satisfaction
+that he had not overstated to himself the exquisite, restrained beauty
+of her features, her eyes, her hair, her hands, and of the very texture
+and fashion of her clothing--he prolonged the suspense which was to be
+the prelude to his justifying once again the dowager countess's good
+opinion. It was to his credit as a brave man that he could nerve himself
+for this with his eyes wide open--wider open than even Mrs. Fane's--to
+to the consequences that might be in store for him.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Ashley had the tact, sprung of his English instinct for moderation, not
+to express his good intentions too directly. He preferred to let them
+filter out through a seemingly casual manner of taking them for granted.
+Neither did he attempt to disguise the fact that the strangeness
+incidental to meeting again, in trying conditions and under another sky,
+created between himself and Olivia a kind of moral distance across which
+they could draw together only by degrees. It was a comfort to her that
+he did not try to bridge it by anything in the way of forced tenderness.
+He was willing to talk over the situation simply and quietly until, in
+the course of an hour or two, the sense of separation began to wear
+away.
+
+The necessity on her part of presenting Ashley to her father and
+offering him lunch brought into play those social resources that were as
+second nature to all three. It was difficult to think the bottom could
+be out of life while going through a carefully chosen menu and drinking
+an excellent vin de Graves at a table meticulously well appointed. To
+escape the irony of this situation they took refuge in the topics that
+came readiest, the novelty to Ashley of the outward aspect of American
+things keeping them on safe ground till the meal was done. It was a
+relief to both men that Guion could make his indisposition an excuse for
+retiring again to his room.
+
+It was a relief to Olivia, too. For the first time in her life she had
+to recognize her father as insupportable to any one but herself and
+Peter Davenant. Ashley did his best to conceal his repulsion; she was
+sure of that; he only betrayed it negatively in a tendency to ignore
+him. He neither spoke nor listened to him any more than he could help.
+By keeping his eyes on Olivia he avoided looking toward him. The fact
+that Guion took this aversion humbly, his head hanging and his attention
+given to his plate, did not make it the less poignant.
+
+All the same, as soon as they were alone in the dining-room the old
+sense of intimacy, of belonging to each other, suddenly returned. It
+returned apropos of nothing and with the exchange of a glance. There was
+a flash in his eyes, a look of wonder in hers--and he had taken her, or
+she had slipped, into his arms.
+
+And yet when a little later he reverted to the topic of the morning and
+said, "As things are now, I really don't see why we shouldn't be married
+on the 28th--privately, you know," her answer was, "What did you think
+of papa?"
+
+Though he raised his eyebrows in surprise that she should introduce the
+subject, he managed to say, "He seems pretty game."
+
+"He does; but I dare say he isn't as game as he looks. There's a good
+deal before him still."
+
+"If we're married on the 28th he'd have one care the less."
+
+"Because I should be taken off his hands. I'm afraid that's not the way
+to look at it. The real fact is that he'd have nobody to help him."
+
+"I've two months' leave. You could do a lot for him in that time."
+
+She bent over her piece of work. It was the sofa-cushion she had laid
+aside on the day when she learned from Davenant that her father's
+troubles were like Jack Berrington's. They had come back for coffee to
+the rustic seat on the lawn. For the cups and coffee service a small
+table had been brought out beside which she sat. Ashley had so far
+recovered his sang-froid as to be able to enjoy a cigar.
+
+"Would you be very much hurt," she asked, without raising her head, "if
+I begged you to go back to England without our being married at all?"
+
+"Oh, but I say!"
+
+The protest was not over-strong. He was neither shocked nor surprised. A
+well-bred woman, finding herself in such trouble as hers, would
+naturally offer him some way of escape from it.
+
+"You see," she went on, "things are so complicated already that if we
+got married we should complicate them more. There's so much to be
+done--as to papa--and this house--and the future--of the kind of thing
+you don't know anything about. They're sordid things, too, that you'd be
+wasted on if you tried to learn them."
+
+He smiled indulgently. "And so you're asking me--a soldier!--to run
+away."
+
+"No, to let me do it. It's so--so impossible that I can't face it."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" He spoke with kindly impatience. "Don't you love me? You
+said just now--in the dining-room--when--"
+
+"Yes, I know; I did say that. But, you see--we _must_ consider it--love
+can't be the most important thing in the world for either you or me."
+
+"I understand. You mean to say it's duty. Very good. In that case, my
+duty is as plain as a pikestaff."
+
+"Your duty to stand by me?"
+
+"I should be a hound if I didn't do it."
+
+"And I should feel myself a common adventuress if I were to let you."
+
+"Oh--I say!"
+
+His protest this time was more emphatic. There was even a pleading note
+in it. In the course of two or three hours he had got back much of the
+feeling he had had in England that she was more than an exquisite lady,
+that she was the other part of himself. It seemed superfluous on her
+part to fling open the way of retreat for him too wide.
+
+She smiled at his exclamation. "Yes, I dare say that's how it strikes
+you. But it's very serious to me. Isn't it serious to you, too, to feel
+that you must be true to me--and marry me--after all that's come to
+pass?"
+
+"One doesn't think that way--or speak that way--of marrying the woman
+one--adores."
+
+"Men have been known to marry the women they adored, and still regret
+the consequences they had to meet."
+
+"She's right," he said to himself. "It _is_ serious."
+
+There could be no question as to her wisdom in asking him to pause. At
+his age and in his position, and with his merely normal capacity for
+passion, it would be absurd to call the world well lost for love.
+Notwithstanding his zeal to do the right thing, there was something due
+to himself, and it was imperative that he should consider it. Dropping
+the stump of his cigar into his empty coffee-cup, he got up and strode
+away. The emotion of the minute, far in excess of the restrained phrases
+convention taught them to use, offered an excuse for his
+unceremoniousness.
+
+He walked to the other side of the lawn, then down to the gate, then
+round to the front of the house. To a chance passer-by he was merely
+inspecting the premises. What he saw, however, was not the spectacular
+foliage, nor the mellow Georgian dwelling, but himself going on his
+familiar victorious way, freed from a clogging scandal that would make
+the wheels of his triumphal car drive heavily. He saw himself advancing,
+as he had advanced hitherto, from promotion to promotion, from command
+to command. He saw himself first alone, and then with a wife--a wife who
+was not Olivia Guion. Then suddenly the vision changed into something
+misty and undefined; the road became dark, the triumphal car jolted and
+fell to pieces; there was reproach in the air and discomfort in his
+sensations. He recognized the familiar warnings that he was not doing
+precisely the right thing. He saw Olivia Guion sitting as he had left
+her four or five minutes before, her head bent over her stitching. He
+saw her there, deserted, alone. He saw the eyes of England on him, as he
+drove away in his triumphal car, leaving her to her fate. His
+compunction was intense, his pity overwhelming. Merely at turning his
+back on her to stroll around the lawn he felt guilty of a cowardly
+abandonment. And he felt something else--he felt the clinging of her
+arms around his neck; he felt the throb of her bosom against his own as
+she let herself break down just for a second--just for a sob. It seemed
+to him that he should feel that throb forever.
+
+He hurried back to where he had left her. "It's no use," he said to
+himself; "I'm in for it, by Jove. I simply can't leave her in the
+lurch."
+
+There was no formal correctness about Ashley's habitual speech. He kept,
+as a rule, to the idiom of the mess, giving it distinction by his crisp,
+agreeable enunciation.
+
+Olivia had let the bit of embroidery rest idly in her lap. She looked up
+at his approach. He stood before her.
+
+"Do I understand," he asked, with a roughness assumed to conceal his
+agitation, "that you're offering me my liberty?"
+
+"No; that I'm asking you for mine."
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+She arched her eyebrows, looking round about her comprehensively. "I
+should think that was clear. On the grounds of--of everything."
+
+"That's not enough. So long as you can't say that you don't--don't care
+about me any more--"
+
+There was that possibility. It was very faint, but if she made use of it
+he should consider it decisive. Doing precisely the right thing would
+become quite another course of action if her heart rejected him. But she
+spoke promptly.
+
+"I can't say that; but I can say something more important."
+
+He nodded firmly. "That settles it, by Jove. I sha'n't give you up.
+There's no reason for it. So long as we love each other--"
+
+"Our loving each other wouldn't make your refusal any the less hard for
+me. As your wife I should be trying to fill a position for which I'm no
+longer qualified and in which I should be a failure."
+
+"As my wife," he said, slowly, with significant deliberation, "we could
+make the position anything you felt able to fill."
+
+She considered this. "That is, you could send in your papers and retire
+into private life."
+
+"If we liked."
+
+"So that you'd be choosing between your career--and me."
+
+"I object to the way of putting it. If my career, as you call it, didn't
+make you happy, you should have whatever would do the trick."
+
+"I'm afraid you'll think me captious if I say that nothing _could do_
+it. If you weren't happy, I couldn't be; and you'd never be happy except
+as a soldier."
+
+"That trade would be open to me whatever happened."
+
+"In theory, yes; but in practice, if you had a wife who was under a
+cloud you'd have to go under it, too. That's what it would come to in
+the working-out."
+
+She stood up from sheer inability to continue sitting still. The piece
+of embroidery fell on the grass. Ashley smiled at her--a smile that was
+not wholly forced, because of the thoughts with which she inspired him.
+Her poise, her courage, the something in her that would have been pride
+if it had not been nearer to meekness and which he had scarcely called
+meekness before he felt it to be fortitude, gave him confidence in the
+future. "She's stunning--by Jove!" It seemed to him that he saw her for
+the first time. For the first time since he had known her he was less
+the ambitious military officer seeking a wife who would grace a high
+position than he was a man in love with a woman. Separating these two
+elements within himself, he was able to value her qualities, not as
+adornments to some Home or Colonial Headquarters House, but as of
+supreme worth for their own sake. "People have only got to see her," he
+said, inwardly, to which he added aloud:
+
+"I dare say the cloud may not be so threatening, after all; and even if
+it is, I should go under it with the pluckiest woman in the world."
+
+She acknowledged this with a scarcely visible smile and a slight
+inclination of the head. "Thank you; I'm foolish enough to like to hear
+you say it. I think I _am_ plucky--alone. But I shouldn't be if I
+involved anybody else."
+
+"But if it was some one who could help you?"
+
+"That might be different, but I don't know of any one who could. _You_
+couldn't. If you tried you'd only injure yourself without doing me any
+good."
+
+"At the least, I could take you away from--from all this."
+
+"No, because it's the sort of thing one can never leave behind. It's
+gone ahead of us. It will meet us at every turn. You and I--and
+papa--are probably by to-day a subject for gossip in half the clubs in
+New York. To-morrow it will be the same thing in London--at the club you
+call the Rag--and the Naval and Military--and your different Service
+clubs--"
+
+To hide the renewal of his dismay he pooh-poohed this possibility. "As a
+mere nine days' wonder."
+
+"Which isn't forgotten when the nine days are past. Long after they've
+ceased speaking of it they'll remember--"
+
+"They'll remember," he interrupted, fiercely, "that I jilted you."
+
+She colored hotly. "That you--what?"
+
+He colored, too. The words were as much a surprise to him as to her. He
+had never thought of this view of the case till she herself summoned up
+the vision of his friends and enemies discussing the affair in big
+leather arm-chairs in big, ponderous rooms in Piccadilly or St. James's
+Square. It was what they would say, of course. It was what he himself
+would have said of any one else. He had a renewed feeling that retreat
+was cut off.
+
+"If we're not married--if I go home without you--it's what'll be on
+everybody's lips."
+
+"But it won't be true," she said, with a little gasp.
+
+He laughed. "That won't matter. It's how it'll look."
+
+"Oh, looks!"
+
+"It's what we're talking about, isn't it? It's what makes the
+difference. I shall figure as a cad."
+
+He spoke as one who makes an astounding discovery. She was inexpressibly
+shocked.
+
+"Oh, but you couldn't," was all she could find to say, but she said it
+with conviction.
+
+[Illustration: "THERE'S NO ONE WHO WON'T BELIEVE BUT THAT I--THREW YOU
+OVER."]
+
+He laughed again. "You'll see. There's no one--not my best friends--not
+my mother--not my sisters--who won't believe--whatever you and I may say
+to the contrary--who won't believe but that I--threw you over."
+
+A toss of his hand, a snap of his fingers, suited the action to the
+word.
+
+Her color came and went in little shifting flashes. She moved a pace or
+two aimlessly, restively. Her head went high, her chin tilted. When she
+spoke her voice trembled with indignation, but she only said:
+
+"They couldn't believe it long."
+
+"Oh, couldn't they! The story would follow me to my grave. Things like
+that are never forgotten among fellows so intimate as soldiers. There
+was a chap in our regiment who jilted a nice girl at the Cape--sailed
+for home secretly only a week before the wedding." He paused to let her
+take in the dastardly nature of the flight. "Well, he rejoined at the
+dépôt. He stayed--but he didn't stay long. The Rangers got too hot for
+him--or too cold. The last I ever heard of him he was giving English
+lessons at Boulogne."
+
+The flagrancy of the case gave her an advantage. "It's idle to think
+that that kind of fate could overtake you."
+
+"The fate that can overtake me easily enough is that as long as I live
+they'll say I chucked a girl because she'd had bad luck."
+
+She was about to reply when the click of the latch of the gate diverted
+her attention. Drusilla Fane, attended by Davenant, was coming up the
+hill. Seeing Olivia and Ashley at the end of the lawn, Drusilla
+deflected her course across the grass, Davenant in her wake. Her wide,
+frank smile was visible from a long way off.
+
+"This is not indiscretion," she laughed, as she advanced; "neither is it
+vulgar curiosity to see the lion. I shouldn't have come at all if mother
+hadn't sent me with a message."
+
+Wearing a large hat _à la_ Princesse de Lamballe and carrying a
+long-handled sunshade which she held daintily, like a Watteau
+shepherdess holding a crook, Drusilla had an air of refined,
+eighteenth-century dash. Knowing the probability that she disturbed some
+poignant bit of conversation, she proceeded to take command, stepping up
+to Olivia with a hasty kiss. "Hello, you dear thing!" Turning to Ashley,
+she surveyed him an instant before offering her hand. "So you've got
+here! How fit you look! What sort of trip did you have, and how did you
+leave your people? And, oh, by the way, this is Mr. Davenant."
+
+Davenant, who had been paying his respects to Miss Guion, charged
+forward, with hand outstretched and hearty: "Happy to meet you, Colonel.
+Glad to welcome you to our country."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Ashley snapped out the monosyllable in a dry, metallic voice pitched
+higher than his usual key. The English softening of the vowel sound, so
+droll to the American ear, was also more pronounced than was customary
+in his speech, so that the exclamation became a sharp "A-ow!"
+
+Feeling his greeting to have been insufficient, Davenant continued,
+pumping up a forced rough-and-ready cordiality. "Heard so much about
+you, Colonel, that you seem like an old friend. Hope you'll like us.
+Hope you'll enjoy your stay."
+
+"Oh, indeed? I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+Ashley's glance shifted from Drusilla to Olivia as though asking in some
+alarm who was this exuberant bumpkin in his Sunday clothes who had
+dropped from nowhere. Davenant drew back; his face fell. He looked like
+a big, sensitive dog hurt by a rebuff. It was Mrs. Fane who came to the
+rescue.
+
+"Peter's come to see Cousin Henry. They've got business to talk over.
+And mother wants to know if you and Colonel Ashley won't come to dinner
+to-morrow evening. That's my errand. Just ourselves, you know. It'll be
+very quiet."
+
+Olivia recovered somewhat from the agitation of the previous half-hour
+as well as from the movement of sudden, inexplicable anger which
+Ashley's reception of Davenant had produced in her. Even so she could
+speak but coldly, and, as it were, from a long way off.
+
+"You'll go," she said, turning to Ashley, "and I'll come if I can leave
+papa. I'll run up flow and see how he is and take Mr. Davenant with me."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+There was dignity in the way in which Davenant both withdrew and stood
+his ground. He was near the Corinthian portico of the house as Olivia
+approached him. Leaning on his stick, he looked loweringly back at
+Ashley, who talked to Drusilla without noticing him further. Olivia
+guessed that in Davenant's heart there was envy tinged with resentment,
+antipathy, not tempered by a certain unwilling admiration. She wondered
+what it was that made the difference between the two men, that gave
+Ashley his very patent air of superiority. It was a superiority not in
+looks, since Davenant was the taller and the handsomer; nor in clothes,
+since Davenant was the better dressed; nor in the moral make-up, since
+Davenant had given proofs of unlimited generosity. But there it was, a
+tradition of self-assurance, a habit of command which in any company
+that knew nothing about either would have made the Englishman easily
+stand first.
+
+Her flash of anger against the one in defense of the other passed away,
+its place being taken by a feeling that astonished her quite as much.
+She tried to think it no more than a pang of jealousy at seeing her own
+countryman snubbed by a foreigner. She was familiar with the sensation
+from her European, and especially her English, experiences. At an
+unfriendly criticism it could be roused on behalf of a chance stranger
+from Colorado or California, and was generally quite impersonal. She
+told herself that it was impersonal now, that she would have had the
+same impulse of protection, of championship, for any one.
+
+Nevertheless, there was a tone in her voice as she joined him that
+struck a new note in their acquaintanceship.
+
+"I'm glad you came when you did. I wanted you to meet Colonel Ashley.
+You'll like him when you know him better. Just at first he was a little
+embarrassed. We'd been talking of things--"
+
+"I didn't notice anything--that is, anything different from any other
+Englishman."
+
+"Yes; that's it, isn't it? Meeting an Englishman is often like the first
+plunge into a cold bath--chilling at first, but delightful afterward."
+
+He stopped under the portico, to say with a laugh that was not quite
+spontaneous: "Yes; I dare say. But my experience is limited. I've never
+got to the--afterward."
+
+"Oh, well, you will," she said, encouragingly, "now that you know
+Colonel Ashley."
+
+"I've heard of men plunging into a cold bath and finding it so icy that
+they've popped out again."
+
+"Yes; thin-blooded men, who are sensitive to chills. Not men like you."
+
+They entered the house, lingering in the oval sitting-room through
+which they had to pass.
+
+"Fortunately," he tried to say, lightly, "it doesn't matter in this case
+whether I'm sensitive to chills or not."
+
+"Oh, but it does. I want you two to be friends."
+
+"What for?" The question was so point-blank as to be a little scornful,
+but she ignored that.
+
+"On Colonel Ashley's side, for what he'll gain in knowing you; on
+yours--for something more."
+
+He stopped again, at the foot of the staircase in the hall. "May I
+ask--just what you mean by that?"
+
+She hesitated. "It's something that a tactful person wouldn't tell. If I
+do, it's only because I want you to consider me as--your friend. I know
+you haven't hitherto," she hurried on, as he flushed and tried to speak.
+"I haven't deserved it. But after what's happened--and after all you've
+done for us--"
+
+"I could consider you my friend without asking Colonel Ashley to think
+of me as his."
+
+"Hardly--if I marry him; and besides--when you know him--You see," she
+began again, "what I have in mind depends upon your knowing him--rather
+well."
+
+"Then, Miss Guion," he laughed, "you can drop it. I've sized him up with
+a look. I've seen others like him--at Gibraltar and Malta and Aden and
+Hongkong and Cairo, and wherever their old flag floats. They're a fine
+lot. He's all right for you--all right in his place. Only, the place
+isn't--mine."
+
+"Still," she persisted, "if I marry him you'd be sometimes in England;
+and you'd come to visit us, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Come and--what?" His astonishment made him speak slowly.
+
+She took a step or two up the stairway, leaning on the banister in a way
+to prevent his advancing. She was now looking down at him, instead of
+looking up.
+
+"Isn't it true--?" she said, with hesitation--"at least I've rather
+guessed it--and I've gathered it from things Drusilla has said about
+you--You see," she began once more, "if we're to be friends you mustn't
+mind my speaking frankly and saying things that other people couldn't
+say. You've intervened so much in my life that I feel you've given me a
+right to--intervene--in yours."
+
+"Oh, intervene as much as you like, Miss Guion," he said, honestly.
+
+"Well, then, isn't it true that there are things you've wanted--wanted
+very much--and never had? If so--and I marry Colonel Ashley--"
+
+"Hold on! Let's see what you mean by--things. If it's visiting round in
+high society--"
+
+He tried to render as scorn his dismay at this touching on his weakness.
+
+"I don't mean anything so crude. Visiting round in high society, as you
+call it, would at best be only the outward and visible sign of an
+inward--and, perhaps, spiritual--experience of the world. Isn't that
+what you've wanted? You see, if I do marry Colonel Ashley, I
+could--don't be offended!--I could open a door to you that you've never
+been able to force for yourself."
+
+"You mean get me into society."
+
+"You needn't be so disdainful. I didn't mean that--exactly. But there
+are people in the world different from those you meet in business--and
+in their way more interesting--certainly more picturesque. They'd like
+you if they knew you--and I had an idea that you--rather craved--After
+all, it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's only making the world bigger
+for oneself, and--"
+
+Backing away from the stairway, he stood on a rug in the middle of the
+hall, his head hung like a young bull about to charge.
+
+"What made you think of it?"
+
+"Isn't that obvious? After you've done so much for me--"
+
+"I haven't done anything for you, Miss Guion. I've said so a good many
+times. It wouldn't be right for me to take payment for what you don't
+owe me. Besides, there's nothing I want."
+
+"That is to say," she returned, coldly, "you prefer the rôle of
+benefactor. You refuse to accept the little I might be able to do. I
+admit that it isn't much--but it's _something_--something within my
+power, and which I thought you might like. But since you don't--"
+
+"It's no question of liking; it's one of admitting a principle. If you
+offer me a penny it's in part payment for a pound, while I say, and say
+again, that you don't owe me anything. If there's a debt at all it's
+your father's--and it's not transferable."
+
+"Whether it's transferable or not is a matter that rests between my
+father and me--and, of course, Colonel Ashley, if I marry him."
+
+He looked at her with sudden curiosity. "Why do you always say that
+with--an 'if'?"
+
+She reflected an instant. "Because," she said, slowly, "I can't say it
+in any other way."
+
+He straightened himself; he advanced again to the foot of the stairway.
+
+"Is that because of any reason of--_his?_"
+
+"It's because of a number of reasons, one of which is mine. It's
+this--that I find it difficult to go away with one man--when I have to
+turn my back upon the overwhelming debt I owe another. I do owe it--I
+_do_. The more I try to ignore it, the more it comes in between me
+and--"
+
+He pressed forward, raising himself on the first step of the stairs,
+till his face was on a level with hers. He grew red and stammered:
+
+"But, Miss Guion, you're--you're--in love with him?--the man you'd be
+going away with?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes; but that wouldn't help me to feel justified with
+regard to the--the duty--I was leaving behind."
+
+He dropped again to the level of the hall. "I don't understand. Do you
+mean to say that what I've done for Mr. Guion would keep you from
+getting married?"
+
+"I'm not prepared to say that. Colonel Ashley is so--so splendid in the
+way he takes everything that--But I'll say this much," she began again,
+"that you've made it _hard_ for me to be married."
+
+"How so? I thought it would be all the other way."
+
+"If you'll put yourself in my place--or in Colonel Ashley's
+place--you'll see. Try to think what it means for two people like us to
+go away--and be happy--and live in a great, fashionable world--and be
+people of some importance--knowing that some one else--who was nothing
+to us, as we were nothing to him--had to deprive himself of practically
+everything he had in the world to enable us to do it."
+
+"But if it was a satisfaction to him--"
+
+"That wouldn't make any difference to us. The facts would be the same."
+
+"Then, as far as I see, I've done more harm than good."
+
+"You've helped papa."
+
+"But I haven't helped you."
+
+"As I understand it, you didn't want to."
+
+"I didn't want to--to do the reverse."
+
+"Perhaps it wouldn't be the reverse if you could condescend to let me do
+something for you. It would be the fair exchange which is no robbery.
+That's why I suggest that if I'm to have that--that life over there--you
+should profit by its advantages."
+
+He shook his head violently. "No, Miss Guion. Please don't think of it.
+It's out of the question. I wish you'd let me say once for all that you
+owe me nothing. I shall never accept anything from you--never!"
+
+"Oh!" It was the protest of one who has been hurt.
+
+"I'll take that back," he said, instantly. "There _is_ something you
+can do for me and that I should like. Marry your Englishman, Miss Guion,
+and do what you said just now--go away and be happy. If you want to give
+me a reward, I'll take that."
+
+She surveyed him a minute in astonishment. "You're perfectly
+extraordinary," she said at last, in a tone of exasperation, "and"--she
+threw at him a second later--"and impossible!"
+
+Before he could reply she went grandly up the stairway, so that he was
+obliged to follow her. In the hall above she turned on him again. Had he
+not known that he had given her no cause for offence he would have said
+that her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Things are very hard as it is," she said, reproachfully. "You needn't
+go out of your way to make them gratuitously cruel."
+
+"But, Miss Guion--" he began to protest.
+
+"Please go in," she commanded, throwing open, as she spoke, the door of
+her father's room.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Meanwhile, down on the lawn, Drusilla and Ashley were talking things
+over from their own points of view. There had been a second of
+embarrassment when they were first left alone, which Drusilla got over
+by pointing with her parasol to an indistinguishable spot in the stretch
+of tree-tops, spires, and gables sloping from the gate, saying:
+
+"That's our house--the one with the little white cupola."
+
+He made no pretense to listen or to look. "She says she doesn't want to
+marry me."
+
+He made the statement dispassionately, as though laying down a subject
+for academic discussion.
+
+It was some little time before she could think what to say.
+
+"Well, that doesn't surprise me," she risked at last.
+
+"Doesn't surprise you?"
+
+She shook her head. "On the contrary, I should be very much astonished
+if she did--now. I should be astonished at any woman in her position
+wanting to marry a man in yours."
+
+"I don't care a hang for my position."
+
+"Oh yes, you do. And even if you didn't, it wouldn't matter. It's
+naturally a case in which you and she have to see from different angles.
+With you it's a point of honor to stand by her; with her it's the same
+thing not to let you."
+
+"In honor it's the positive, not the negative, that takes precedence,
+and the positive happens to be mine."
+
+"I don't think you can argue that way, you know. What takes precedence
+of everything else is--common sense."
+
+"And do you mean to say that common sense requires that she shall give
+me up?"
+
+"I shouldn't go so far as to assert that. But I shouldn't mind saying
+that if she did give you up there'd be a lot of common sense in her
+doing it."
+
+"On whose account? Mine?"
+
+"Yes; and hers. Perhaps chiefly on hers. You can hardly realize the
+number of things she has to take care of--and you'd be one more."
+
+"I confess I don't seize your drift."
+
+"It's not very abstruse, however. Just think. It isn't as if Cousin
+Henry had fallen ill, or had died, or had gone to pieces in any of the
+ordinary ways. Except for his own discomfort, he might just as well have
+been tried and sentenced and sent to prison. He's been as good as there.
+Every one knows it's only a special providence that he didn't go. But if
+he's escaped that by the skin of his teeth, he hasn't escaped a lot of
+other things. He hasn't escaped being without a penny in the world. He
+hasn't escaped having his house sold over his head and being turned out
+into the streets. He hasn't escaped reaching a perfectly impotent old
+age, with not a soul on this earth to turn to but Olivia."
+
+"What about me?"
+
+"Would _you_ take him?"
+
+"I shouldn't _take_ him exactly. If he was my father-in-law"--he made a
+little grimace--"I suppose I could pension him off somewhere, or board
+him out, like an old horse. One couldn't have him round."
+
+"H'm! I dare say that would do--but I doubt it. If you'd ever been a
+daughter you might feel that you couldn't dispose of a poor, old,
+broken-down father quite so easily. After all, he's not a horse. You
+might more or less forsake him when all was going well, and yet want to
+stick to him through thick and thin if he came a cropper. Look at me! I
+go off and leave my poor old dad for a year and more at a time--because
+he's a saint; but if he wasn't--especially if he'd got into any such
+scrape as Cousin Henry's--which isn't thinkable--but if he did--I'd
+never leave him again. That's my temperament. It's every girl's
+temperament. It's Olivia's. But all that is neither here nor there. If
+she married you, her whole life would be given up to trying to make you
+blend with a set of circumstances you couldn't possibly blend with. It
+would be worse than singing one tune to an orchestra playing another.
+She'd go mad with the attempt."
+
+"Possibly; except for one factor which you've overlooked."
+
+"Oh, love! Yes, yes. I thought you'd say that." Drusilla tossed her
+hands impatiently. "Love will do a lot, but it won't do everything. You
+can't count on it to work miracles in a sophisticated company like the
+Sussex Rangers. They've passed the age of faith for that sort of thing."
+
+"I don't see," he said, speaking very slowly, "that the Rangers need be
+altogether taken into consideration."
+
+She looked at him fixedly. "Do you mean that you'd--send in your
+papers?"
+
+"Only in the sense that if my wife wasn't happy in the Service we could
+get out of it."
+
+"Then you're really so much in love that you'd be willing to throw up
+everything on account of it?" There was some incredulity in her tone, to
+which, however, he offered no objection.
+
+"Willing or unwilling isn't to the point. Surely you see that as far as
+public opinion goes I'm dished either way. The more I think of it the
+plainer it becomes. If I marry Olivia I let myself in for connection
+with a low-down scandal; if I don't, then they'll say I left her in the
+lurch. As for the effect on any possible promotion there might be in
+store for me, it would be six of one and half a dozen of the other. If I
+married her, and there was something good to be had, and old
+Bannockburn, let us say, was at the Horse Guards, then Lady Ban wouldn't
+have Olivia; and if I didn't marry her, and there was the same situation
+with old Englemere in command, then he wouldn't have me. There it is in
+a nutshell--simply nothing to choose."
+
+They proceeded to stroll aimlessly up and down the lawn.
+
+"I can quite see how it looks from your point of view--" she began.
+
+"No, you can't," he interrupted, sharply, "because you leave out the
+fact that I am--I don't mind saying it--that is, to you--you've been
+such a good pal to me!--I shall never forget it!--but I _am_--head over
+heels--desperately--in love."
+
+Having already heard this confession in what now seemed the far-off days
+in Southsea, she could hear it again with no more than a sense of
+oppression about the heart.
+
+"Yes," she smiled, bravely. "I know you are. And between two ills you
+choose the one that has some compensation attached to it."
+
+"Between two ills," he corrected, "I'm choosing the only course open to
+a man of honor. Isn't that it?"
+
+There was a wistful inflection on the query. It put forth at one and the
+same time a request for corroboration and a challenge to a contrary
+opinion. If there could be no contrary opinion, he would have been glad
+of some sign of approval or applause. He wanted to be modest; and yet it
+was a stimulus to doing precisely the right thing to get a little praise
+for it, especially from a woman like Drusilla.
+
+In this for once she disappointed him. "Of course you are," she
+assented, even too promptly.
+
+"And yet you're advising me," he said, returning to the charge, "to make
+a bolt for it--and leave Olivia to shift for herself."
+
+"If I remember rightly, the question you raised was not about you, but
+about her. It wasn't as to whether you should marry her, but as to
+whether she should marry you. I'm not disputing your point of view; I'm
+only defending Olivia's. I can see three good reasons why you should
+keep your word to her--"
+
+"Indeed? And what are they?"
+
+She told them off on her fingers. "First, as you can't do anything else.
+Second--"
+
+"Your first reason," he interrupted, hastily, as though he feared she
+suspected him of not being convinced of it, "covers the whole ground. We
+don't need the rest."
+
+"Still," she insisted, "we might as well have them. Second, it's the
+more prudent of two rather disadvantageous courses. Third--to quote your
+own words--you're head over heels in love with her. It's easy to see
+that now, and now another of these reasons is uppermost in your mind;
+but it's also easy to see that none of them makes a conclusive appeal to
+Olivia Guion. That's the point."
+
+"The point is that I'm in love with her, and--if it's not claiming too
+much--she with me. We've nothing else to consider."
+
+"You haven't. She has. She has all the things I've just hinted at--and
+ever so many more; besides which," she added, taking a detached, casual
+tone, "I suppose she has to make up her mind one way or another as to
+what she's going to do about Peter Davenant."
+
+The crow's-foot wrinkles about his eyes deepened to a frown of inquiry.
+"About Peter--who?"
+
+Drusilla still affected a casual tone. "Oh? Hasn't she told you about
+_him?_"
+
+"Not a word. Who is he?"
+
+She nodded in the direction of the house. "He's up-stairs with Cousin
+Henry."
+
+"The big fellow who was here just now? That--lumpkin?"
+
+"Yes," she said, dryly, "that--lumpkin. It was he who gave Cousin Henry
+the money to meet his liabilities."
+
+"So he's the Fairy Prince? He certainly doesn't look it."
+
+"No; he doesn't look it; but he's as much of a problem to Olivia as if
+he did."
+
+"Why? What has he to do with her?"
+
+"Nothing, except that I suppose she must feel very grateful."
+
+They reached the edge of the lawn where a hedge of dahlias separated
+them from the neighboring garden.
+
+"When you say that," he asked, "do you mean anything in particular?"
+
+"I suppose I mean everything in particular. The situation is one in
+which all the details count."
+
+"And the bearing of this special detail--"
+
+"Oh, don't try to make me explain that. In the first place, I don't
+know; and in the second, I shouldn't tell you if I did. I'm merely
+giving you the facts. I think you're entitled to know _them_."
+
+"So I should have said. Are there many more? I've had a lot since I
+landed. I thought I must have heard pretty well all there was--"
+
+"Probably you had, except just that. I imagine Olivia found it
+difficult to speak of, and so I'm doing it for her."
+
+"Why should she find it difficult to speak of? It's a mere matter of
+business, I suppose."
+
+"If it's business to give Cousin Henry what would be nearly a hundred
+thousand pounds in English money, with no prospect that any one can see
+of his ever getting it back--that is, not unless old Madame de
+Melcourt--"
+
+"Oh, I say! Then he's one of your beastly millionaires, by Jove!--grind
+the noses off the poor, and that sort of thing, to play
+Haroun-al-Raschid with the cash."
+
+"Not in the least. He never ground the nose off any one; and as for
+being a millionaire, father says that what he's done for Cousin Henry
+will pretty well clean him out."
+
+"All the same, he's probably done it with a jolly sharp eye to the main
+chance."
+
+"Oh, I dare say his motives weren't altogether altruistic. Only it's a
+little difficult to see where the main chance comes in."
+
+"Then what the deuce is he up to?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't tell you that. I repeat that I'm only giving you the
+facts. You must interpret them for yourself."
+
+He looked thoughtful. Drusilla plucked a scarlet dahlia and fastened it
+in her dress, after which they strolled back slowly to the middle of the
+lawn. Here Ashley said:
+
+"Has all this got anything to do with Olivia? I wish you wouldn't make
+mysteries."
+
+"I'm not making mysteries. I'm telling you what's happened just as it
+occurred. He advanced the money to Cousin Henry, and that's all I know
+about it. If I draw any inferences--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I'm just as likely to be wrong as right."
+
+"Then you _have_ drawn inferences?"
+
+"Who wouldn't? I should think you'd be drawing them yourself."
+
+They wandered on a few yards, when he stopped again. "Look here," he
+said, with a sort of appealing roughness, "you're quite straight with
+me, aren't you?"
+
+The rich, surging color came swiftly into her face, as wine seen through
+something dark and transparent. Her black eyes shone like jet. She would
+have looked tragic had it not been for her fixed, steady smile.
+
+"Have I ever been anything else with you?"
+
+"No. You've been straight as a die. I'll say that for you. You've been a
+good pal--a devilish good pal! But over here--in America--everything
+seems to go by enigmas--and puzzles--and surprises--"
+
+"I'll explain what I can to you," she said, with a heightened color,
+"but it won't be so very easy. There are lots of people who, feeling as
+I do--toward Olivia--and--and toward you--would want to beat about the
+bush. But when all these things began to happen--and you were already on
+the way--I turned everything over in my mind and decided to speak
+exactly as I think."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"But it isn't so very easy," she repeated, pretending to rearrange the
+dahlia in her laces, so as to find a pretext for not looking him in the
+eyes. "It isn't so very easy; and if--later on--in after years
+perhaps--when everything is long over--it ever strikes you that I didn't
+play fair--it'll be because I played _so_ fair that I laid myself open
+to that imputation. One can, you know. I only ask you to remember it.
+That's all."
+
+Ashley was bewildered. He could follow little more than half of what she
+said. "More mysteries," he was sighing to himself as she spoke. "And
+such a color! That's her strong point. Pity it only comes by fits and
+flashes. But, good Lord, what a country! Always something queer and
+new."
+
+"Good-by," she said, offering her hand before he had time to emerge from
+his meditations. "We shall see you to-morrow evening. And, by the way,
+we dine at half-past seven. We're country people here, and primitive.
+No; don't come to the gate. Olivia must be wondering where you are."
+
+He looked after her as she tripped over the lawn toward the roadway,
+still holding her long-handled, beribboned, eighteenth-century sunshade
+with the daintiness of a Watteau shepherdess holding a crook.
+
+"She's a good 'un," he said to himself. "Straight as a die, she is--and
+true as steel."
+
+None the less he was glad when she left him.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Ashley wanted to be alone. He needed solitude in order to face the
+stupendous bit of information Mrs. Fane had given him. Everything else
+he had heard during the past twenty-four hours he had felt himself more
+or less competent to meet. True, his meeting it would be at a sacrifice
+and the probable loss of some of the best things he had hoped and worked
+for; but he should have the satisfaction that comes to every man of
+honor when he has done a brave thing well. There would be something,
+too, in giving the lie to people who accused him of having no thought
+but for his own advancement. He had been sensitive to that charge,
+because of the strain of truth in it, and yet had seen no means of
+counteracting it. Very well; he should counteract it now.
+
+Since there was no way out of the situation he had found in
+America--that is, no way consistent with self-respect--it was
+characteristic of him, both as diplomatist and master of tactics, to
+review what was still in his favor. He called himself to witness that he
+had wasted no time in repining. He had risen to the circumstances as
+fast as nature would permit, and adapted himself right on the spur of
+the moment to an entirely new outlook on the future. Moreover, he had
+been able to detach Olivia herself from the degrading facts surrounding
+her, seeing her, as he had seen her from the first, holy and stainless,
+untouched by conditions through which few women could pass without some
+personal deterioration. In his admiration and loyalty he had not wavered
+for a second. On the contrary, he was sure that he should love her the
+more intensely, in spite of, and perhaps because of, her misfortunes.
+
+He felt free, therefore, to resent this new revelation so fantastically
+out of proportion to the harmony of life. It was the most staggering
+thing he had ever heard of. An act such as that with which Drusilla
+credited Davenant brought into daily existence a feature too prodigious
+to find room there. Or, rather, having found the room through sheer
+force of its own bulk, it dwarfed everything else into insignificance.
+It hid all objects and blocked all ways. You could get neither round it
+nor over it nor through it. You could not even turn back and ignore it.
+You could only stand and stare at it helplessly, giving it the full
+tribute of awe.
+
+Ashley gave it. He gave it while lighting mechanically a cigar which he
+did not smoke and standing motionless in the middle of the lawn,
+heedless of the glances--furtive, discreet, sympathetic, admiring--cast
+at him from the windows and balconies of the surrounding houses. His
+quick eye, trained to notice everything within its ken, saw them plainly
+enough. The houses were not so distant nor the foliage so dense but that
+kindly, neighborly interest could follow the whole drama taking place
+at Tory Hill. Ashley could guess with tolerable accuracy that the ladies
+whom he saw ostensibly reading or sewing on verandas had been invited to
+the wedding, and were consequently now in the position of spectators at
+a play. The mere detail of this American way of living, with unwalled
+properties merging into one another, and doors and windows flung wide to
+every passing glance, gave him an odd sense of conducting his affairs in
+the market-place or on the stage. If he did not object to it, it was
+because of the incitement to keep up to the level of his best which he
+always drew from the knowledge that other people's eyes were upon him.
+
+He felt this stimulus when Olivia came out to the Corinthian portico,
+seating herself in a wicker chair, with an obvious invitation to him to
+join her. "Drusilla Fane has been telling me about your--your friend."
+
+She knew he meant the last two words to be provocative. She knew it by
+slight signs of nervousness in his way of standing before her, one foot
+on the grass and the other on the first step of the portico. He betrayed
+himself, too, in an unsuccessful attempt to make his intonation casual,
+as well as by puffing at his cigar without noticing that it had gone
+out. An instant's reflection decided her to accept his challenge. As the
+subject had to be met, the sooner it came up the better.
+
+She looked at him mildly. "What did she say about him?"
+
+"Only that he was the man who put up the money."
+
+"Yes; he was."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me that this morning?"
+
+"I suppose because there was so much else to say. We should have come
+round to it in time. I did tell you everything but his name."
+
+"And the circumstances."
+
+"How do you mean--the circumstances?"
+
+"I got the impression from you this morning that it was some millionaire
+Johnny who'd come to your father's aid by advancing the sum in the
+ordinary way of business. I didn't understand that it was a
+comparatively poor chap who was cleaning himself out to come to yours."
+
+In wording his phrase he purposely went beyond the warrant, in order to
+rouse her to denial, or perhaps to indignation. But she said only:
+
+"Did Drusilla say it was to come to my aid?"
+
+"She didn't say it--exactly. I gathered that it was what she thought."
+
+She astonished him by saying, simply: "I think so, too."
+
+"Extraordinary! Do you mean to say he dropped out of a clear sky?"
+
+"I must answer that by both a yes and a no. He did drop out of a clear
+sky just lately; but I'd known him before."
+
+"Ah!" His tone was that of a cross-examiner dragging the truth from an
+unwilling witness. He put his questions rapidly and sharply, as though
+at a Court-martial. "So you'd known him before! Did you know him
+_well?_"
+
+"_I_ didn't think it was well; but apparently he did, because he asked
+me to marry him."
+
+Ashley bounded. "Who? That--that cowboy!"
+
+"Yes; if he _is_ a cowboy."
+
+"And you took money from him?"
+
+Her elbows rested on the arm of her chair; the tip of her chin on the
+back of her bent fingers. Without taking her eyes from his she inclined
+her head slowly in assent.
+
+"That is," he hastened to say, in some compunction, "your father took
+it. We must keep the distinction--"
+
+"No; I took it. Papa was all ready to decline it. He had made up his
+mind--"
+
+"Do you mean that the decision to accept it rested with you?"
+
+"Practically."
+
+"You didn't--" He hesitated, stammered, and grew red. "You didn't--" he
+began again. "You'll have to excuse the question.... I simply _must_
+know, by Jove!... You didn't _ask_ him for it?"
+
+She rose with dignity. "If you'll come in I'll tell you about it. We
+can't talk out here."
+
+He came up the portico steps to the level on which she was standing.
+"Tell me that first," he begged.
+
+"You _didn't_ ask him for it? Did you?"
+
+In the French window, as she was about to enter the room, she half
+turned round. "I don't think it would bear that construction; but it
+might. I'd rather you judged for yourself. I declined it at first--and
+then I said I'd take it. I don't know whether you'd call that asking.
+But please come in."
+
+He followed her into the oval room, where they were screened from
+neighborly observation, while, with the French window open, they had the
+advantage of the air and the rich, westering sunshine. Birds hopped
+about in the trees, and now and then a gray squirrel darted across the
+grass.
+
+"I should think," he said, nervously, before she had time to begin her
+explanation, "that a fellow who had done that for you would occupy your
+mind to the exclusion of everybody else."
+
+Guessing that he hoped for a disclaimer on her part, she was sorry to be
+unable to make it.
+
+"Not to their exclusion--but perhaps--a little to their subordination."
+
+He pretended to laugh. "What a pretty distinction!"
+
+"You see, I haven't been able to help it. He's loomed up so tremendously
+above everything--"
+
+"And every one."
+
+"Yes," she admitted, with apologetic frankness, "and every one--that is,
+in the past few days--that it's as if I couldn't see anything but him."
+
+"Oh, I'm not jealous," he exclaimed, pacing up and down the length of
+the room.
+
+"Of course not," she agreed, seating herself in one of the
+straight-backed chairs. Her clasped hands rested on the small round
+table in the center of the room, while she looked out across the lawn to
+the dahlias and zinnias on its farther edge.
+
+Ashley, who had flung his panama on a sofa, continued to pace up and
+down the room, his head bent and his fingers clasped tightly under his
+jacket behind his back. He moved jerkily, like a man preserving outward
+self-control in spite of extreme nervous tension.
+
+He listened almost without interruption while she gave him a precise
+account of Davenant's intervention in her father's troubles. She spared
+no detail of her own opposition and eventual capitulation. She spoke
+simply and easily, as though repeating something learned by heart, just
+as she had narrated the story of Guion's defaulting in the morning.
+Apart from the fact that she toyed with a paper-knife lying on the
+table, she sat rigidly still, her eyes never wandering from the line of
+autumn flowers on the far side of the lawn.
+
+"So you see," she concluded, in her quiet voice, "I came to understand
+that it was a choice between taking it from him and taking it from the
+poor women papa had ruined; and I thought that as he was young--and
+strong--and a man--he'd be better able to bear it. That was the reason."
+
+He came to a standstill on the other side of the table, where he could
+see her in profile.
+
+"You're extraordinary, by Jove!" he muttered. "You're not a bit like
+what you look. You look so fragile and tender; and yet you could have
+let that old man--"
+
+"I could only have done it if it was right. Nothing that's right is very
+hard, you know."
+
+"And what about the suffering?"
+
+She half smiled, faintly shrugging her shoulders. "Don't you think we
+make more of suffering than there's any need for? Suffering is nothing
+much--except, I suppose, the suffering that comes from want. That's
+tragic. But physical pain--and the things we call trials--are nothing so
+terrible if you know the right way to bear them."
+
+The abstract question didn't interest him. He resumed his restless
+pacing.
+
+"So," he began again, in his tone of conducting a court-martial--"so you
+refused the money in the first place, because you thought the fellow was
+trying to get you into his power. Have you had any reason to change your
+opinion since?"
+
+"None, except that he makes no effort to do it."
+
+He stopped again beside the table. "And do you suppose he would? When
+you've prepared your ambush cleverly enough you don't have to go out and
+drag your victim into it. You've only to lie still and he'll walk in of
+his own accord."
+
+"Of course I see that."
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+She threw him a glance over her shoulder. To do so it was necessary for
+her to turn her head both sidewise and upward, so that he got the
+exquisite lines of the neck and profile, the mysterious gray-green tint
+of the eyes, and the coppery gleam of her hair. The appeal to his senses
+and to something beyond his senses made him gasp. It made him tremble.
+"My God, what a wife for _me_!" he was saying to himself. "She's got the
+pluck of a Jeanne d'Arc and the nerve of a Christian martyr."
+
+"Well, then," she said, in answer to his words--"then I don't have to
+walk into the ambush--unless I want to."
+
+"Does that mean that there are conceivable conditions in which you might
+want to?"
+
+She turned completely round in her chair. Both hands, with fingers
+interlaced, rested on the table as she looked up at him.
+
+"I shall have to let you find your own reply to that."
+
+"But you know he's in love with you."
+
+"I know he was in love with me once. I've no absolute reason to think
+that he is so still."
+
+"But supposing he was? Would it make any difference to you?"
+
+"Would it make any difference to _you?_"
+
+"It would make the difference--"
+
+He stopped in confusion. While he was not clear as to what he was going
+to say, he was startled by the possibilities before him. The one thing
+plain was that her question, simple as it seemed, gave an entirely new
+turn to the conversation. It called on him to take the lead, and put
+him, neatly and skilfully, in the one place of all others which--had he
+descried it in advance--he would have been eager to avoid. Would it make
+any difference to him? What difference _could_ it make? What difference
+_must_ it make?
+
+It was one of those moments which occur from time to time when a man of
+honor must speak first and reflect afterward--just as at the heights of
+Dargal he had had to risk his life for Private Vickerson's, without
+debating as to which of them, in the general economy of lives, could the
+more easily be spared.
+
+"It would make the difference--"
+
+He stopped again. It was a great deal to say. Once he had said it there
+could be no reconsideration. Reconsideration would be worse than not
+saying it at all, on the principle that not to stand by one's guns might
+be a greater cowardice than not to mount them. Fear, destruction, and
+the pit might come upon him; the service, the country, Heneage, home,
+honors, ambitions, promotions, high posts of command, all might be swept
+into the abyss, and yet one imperative duty would survive the wreck, the
+duty to be Rupert Ashley at his finest. The eyes of England were on him.
+There was always that conviction, that incentive. Let his heroism be
+never so secret, sooner or later those eyes would find him out.
+
+He was silent so long that she asked, not impatiently: "It would make
+what difference, Rupert?"
+
+It was clear that she had no idea as to what was passing in his mind.
+There had been an instant--just an instant--no more--when he had almost
+doubted her, when her strategy in putting him where he was had seemed
+too deft to be the result of chance. But, with her pure face turned
+upward and her honest eyes on his, that suspicion couldn't last.
+
+"It would make the difference--"
+
+If he paused again, it was only because his throat swelled with a
+choking sensation that made it difficult to speak; he felt, too, that
+his face was congested. Nevertheless the space, which was not longer
+than a few seconds by the clock, gave him time to remember that as his
+mother's and his sisters' incomes were inalienable he was by so much
+the more free. He was by so much the more free to do the mad, romantic,
+quixotic thing, which might seem to be a contradiction of his past, but
+was not so much a contradiction of _himself_ as people who knew him
+imperfectly might suppose. He was taken to be ambitious, calculating,
+shrewd; when all the while he knew himself to be--as most Englishmen are
+at heart--quixotic, romantic, and even a little mad, when madness can be
+sublime.
+
+He was able at last to get his sentence out.
+
+"It would make the difference that ... before we are married ... or
+after ... probably after ... I should have to square him."
+
+"Square him?" She echoed the words as though she had no idea what they
+meant.
+
+"I'm worth ... I _must_ be worth ... a hundred thousand pounds ...
+perhaps more."
+
+"Oh, you mean, square him in that way."
+
+"I must be a man of honor before everything, by Jove!"
+
+"You couldn't be anything else. You don't need to go to extremes like
+that to prove it."
+
+Her lack of emotion, of glad enthusiasm, chilled him. She even ceased to
+look at him, turning her profile toward him and gazing again
+abstractedly across the lawn. A sudden fear took hold of him, the fear
+that his hesitations, his evident difficulty in getting the thing out,
+had enabled her to follow the processes by which he whipped himself up
+to an act that should have been spontaneous. He had a suspicion, too,
+that in this respect he had fallen short of the American--the cowboy,
+as he had called him. "I must do better than him," he said, in his
+English idiom. The thought that he might not have done as well was
+rather sickening. If he had so failed it was through inadvertence, but
+the effect on Olivia would be as great as if it was from fear. To
+counteract it he felt the need of being more emphatic. His emphasis took
+the form of simple common sense.
+
+"It isn't going to extremes to take up one's own responsibilities. I
+can't let a fellow like that do things for your father any more than for
+mine, by Jove! It's not only doing things for my father, but for--my
+wife."
+
+Drawing up a small chair, he sat down on the other side of the table. He
+sat down with the air of a man who means to stay and take possession.
+
+"Oh, but I'm not your wife, Rupert."
+
+"You're my wife already," he declared, "to all intents and purposes.
+We've published our intention to become man and wife to the world.
+Neither of us can go back on that. The mere fact that certain words
+haven't been mumbled over us is secondary. For everything that
+constitutes duty I'm your husband now."
+
+"Oh no, you're not. You're the noblest man in the world, Rupert. I never
+dreamed that there could be any one like you. But I couldn't let you--I
+couldn't--"
+
+He crushed her hands in both of his own, leaning toward her across the
+table. "Oh, my darling, if you only knew how easy it is--"
+
+"No, it isn't easy. It can't be easy. I couldn't let you do it for me--"
+
+"But what about _him?_ You let--_him!_"
+
+"Oh, but that's different."
+
+"How is it different?"
+
+"I don't know, Rupert; but it is. Or rather," she went on, rapidly, "I
+do know, but I can't explain. If you were an American you'd understand
+it."
+
+"Oh, American--be blowed!" The accent was all tenderness, the protest
+all beseeching.
+
+"I can't explain it," she hurried on, "because you don't understand us.
+It's one of the ways in which an Englishman never _can_ understand us.
+But the truth is that money doesn't mean as much to us as it does to
+you. I know you think the contrary, but that's where you make your
+primary mistake. It's light come and light go with most of us, for the
+simple reason that money is outside our real life; whereas with you
+English it's the warp and woof of it."
+
+"Oh, bosh, darling!"
+
+"No, it isn't bosh. In your civilization it's as the blood; in ours it's
+only as the clothing. That's something like the difference. In accepting
+it from Peter Davenant--which is hard enough!--I take only what he can
+do without; whereas--"
+
+"I can do without it, too."
+
+"Whereas," she persisted, "if I were to let you do this I should be
+robbing you of the essence of what you are."
+
+He drew back slightly. "You mean that your Yankee is a strong man, while
+I'm--"
+
+"I don't mean anything invidious or unkind. But isn't it self-evident,
+or nearly, that we're individuals, while you're parts of an intricate
+social system? The minute you fall out of your place in the system you
+come to grief; but vicissitudes don't affect us much more than a change
+of coats."
+
+"I don't care a button for my place in the system."
+
+"But I do. I care for it _for_ you. I should have married you and shared
+it if I could. But I'd rather not marry you than that you should lose
+it."
+
+"That is," he said, coldly, "you'd rather use _his_ money than--"
+
+She withdrew her hands, her brows contracting and her eyes clouding in
+her effort to make him understand the position from her point of view.
+"You see, it's this way. For one thing, we've taken the money already.
+That's past. We may have taken it temporarily, or for good and all, as
+things turn out; but in any case it's done. And yet even if it weren't
+done it would be easier for us to draw on him rather than on you,
+because he's one of ourselves."
+
+"One of yourselves? I thought that's just what he wasn't. I thought he
+was a jolly outsider."
+
+"You mean socially. But that again hasn't much significance in a country
+where socially we're all of one class. Where there's only one class
+there can't be any outsiders."
+
+"Oh, that's all very fine. But look at you with your extremes of rich
+and poor!"
+
+"That's the most superficial difference among us. It's the easiest
+possible thing to transcend. I'm transcending it now in feeling that
+I've a right--yes, a kind of right--to take Peter Davenant's money,
+because as Americans we've a claim on each other."
+
+He threw himself against the straight back of the chair, his arms flung
+out with a gesture that brought his hands nearly to the floor. "You're
+the last people in the world to feel anything of the kind. Every one
+knows that you're a set of ruthless, predatory--"
+
+"I know that's the way it seems; and I'm not defending anything that may
+be wrong. And yet, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, we
+_have_ a sense of brotherhood--I don't know any other name for it--among
+ourselves which isn't to be found anywhere else in the world. You
+English haven't got it. That's why the thing I'm saying seems mere
+sentiment to you, and even mawkish. You're so afraid of sentiment. But
+it's true. It may be only a rudimentary sense of brotherhood; and it's
+certainly not universal, as it ought to be, because we feel it only
+among ourselves. We don't really include the foreigner--not at least
+till he becomes one of us. I'm an instance of that limitation myself,
+because I can't feel it toward you, and I do--"
+
+"You do feel it toward the big chap," he said, scornfully.
+
+She made a renewed effort to explain herself. "You see, it's something
+like this. If my aunt de Melcourt, who's very well off, were to come
+forward and help us, I'd let her do it without scruple. Not that there's
+any particular reason why she should! But if she did--well, you can see
+for yourself that it wouldn't be as if she were a stranger."
+
+"Of course! She's one of your own people--and all that."
+
+"Well, he's one of our own people--Mr. Davenant. Not to the degree that
+she is--but the same sort of thing--even if more distant. It's very
+distant, I admit--"
+
+His lip curled. "So distant as to be out of sight."
+
+"No; not for him--or for me."
+
+He sprang to his feet. "Look here, Olivia," he cried, nervously, holding
+his chair by the back, "what does it all mean? What are you leading up
+to?"
+
+"I'm telling you as plainly as I can."
+
+"What you aren't telling me as plainly as you can is which of us you're
+in love with."
+
+She colored. It was one of those blushes that spread up the temples and
+over the brows and along the line of the hair with the splendor of a
+stormy dawn.
+
+"I didn't know the question had been raised," she said, "but since
+apparently it has--"
+
+It might have been contrition for a foolish speech, or fear of what she
+was going to say, that prompted him to interrupt her hurriedly:
+
+"I beg your pardon. It was idiotic of me to say that. I didn't mean it.
+As a matter of fact, I'm jumpy. I'm not master of myself. So much has
+been happening--"
+
+He came round the table, and, snatching one of her hands, he kissed it
+again and again. He even sank on one knee beside her, holding her close
+to him. With the hand that remained free she stroked his crisp, wavy,
+iron-gray hair as a sign of pardon.
+
+"You're quite wrong about me," he persisted.
+
+"Even if you're right about other Englishmen--which I don't
+admit--you're wrong about me, by Jove! If I had to give up everything I
+had in the world I should have all the compensation a man could desire
+if I got you."
+
+She leaned over him, pressing his head against her breast, as she
+whispered:
+
+"You couldn't get me that way. You must understand--I must make it as
+plain to you as I can--that I couldn't go to you except as an equal. I
+couldn't go to any man--"
+
+He sprang to his feet. "But you _came_ to me as an equal," he cried, in
+tones of exasperation. "That's all over and done with. It's too late to
+reconsider the step we've taken--too late for me--much too late!--and
+equally too late for you."
+
+"I can't admit that, Rupert. I've still the right to draw back."
+
+"The legal right--yes; whether or not you've the moral right would
+depend on your sense of honor."
+
+"Of honor?"
+
+"Certainly. There's an honor for you as well as for me. When I'm so true
+to you it wouldn't be the square thing to play me false."
+
+She rose without haste. "Do you call that a fair way of putting it--to
+say that I play you false because I refuse to involve you in our family
+disasters? I don't think any one could blame me for that."
+
+"What they could blame you for is this--for backing out of what is
+practically a marriage, and for deserting me in a way that will make it
+seem as if I had deserted you. Quite apart from the fact that life won't
+be worth anything to me without you, it will mean ruin as a man of honor
+if I go home alone. Every one will say--_every one_--that I funked the
+thing because your father--"
+
+She hastened to speak. "That's a very urgent reason. I admit its
+force--"
+
+She paused because there was a sound of voices overhead. Footsteps came
+along the upper hall and began to descend the stairs. Presently Davenant
+could be heard saying:
+
+"Then I shall tell Harrington that they may as well foreclose at one
+time as another."
+
+"Just as well." Guion's reply came from the direction of his bedroom
+door. "I see nothing to be gained by waiting. The sooner it's over the
+sooner to sleep, what?"
+
+"They're talking about the mortgage on the property," she explained, as
+Davenant continued to descend. "This house is to be sold--and everything
+in it--"
+
+"Which is one more reason why we should be married without delay. I
+say," he added, in another tone, "let's have him in."
+
+"Oh no! What for?"
+
+Before she could object further, Ashley had slipped out into the hall.
+
+"I say! Come along in."
+
+His attitude as he stood with hands thrust into his jacket pockets and
+shoulders squared bespoke conscious superiority to the man whom he was
+addressing. Though Davenant was not in her line of vision she could
+divine his astonishment at this easy, English unceremoniousness, as well
+as his resentment to the tone of command. She heard him muttering an
+excuse which Ashley interrupted with his offhand "Oh, come in. Miss
+Guion would like to see you."
+
+She felt it her duty to go forward and second this invitation. Davenant,
+who was standing at the foot of the staircase, murmured something about
+town and business.
+
+"It's too late for town and business at this hour," Ashley objected.
+"Come in."
+
+He withdrew toward the room where Olivia was standing between the
+portières of the doorway. Davenant yielded, partly because of his
+ignorance of the small arts of graceful refusal, but more because of his
+curiosity concerning the man Olivia Guion was to marry. He had some
+interest, too, in observing one who was chosen where he himself had been
+rejected. It would afford an answer to the question, "What lack I yet?"
+with which he was tormented at all times. That it could not be a
+flattering answer was plain to him from the careless, indefinable graces
+of Ashley's style. It was a style that Davenant would have scorned to
+imitate, but which nevertheless he envied. In contrast with its
+unstudied ease he could feel his own social methods to be labored and
+apologetic. Where he was watchful to do the right thing, what Ashley
+said or did became the right thing because he said or did it. With the
+echo of soft English vowels and clear, crisp consonants in his ears, his
+own pronunciations, too, were rough with the harshness transmitted from
+an ancestry to whom the melody of speech had been of no more practical
+concern than the music of the spheres.
+
+Something of all this Olivia guessed. She guessed it with a feeling of
+being on his side--on the American side--which a month ago would have
+astonished her. She guessed, too, on Davenant's part, that feeling of
+irritation which the calm assumptions of the Old World are likely to
+create when in contact with the aggressive unpretentiousness of the New,
+and if need were she was ready to stand by him. All she could say,
+however, for the moment was:
+
+"Won't you sit down? Perhaps I ought to ring for tea."
+
+She made the latter remark from habit. It was what she was accustomed to
+think of when on an autumn day the sun went behind the distant rim of
+Brookline hills and dusk began to gather in the oval room, as it was
+gathering now. If she did not ring, it was because of her sense of the
+irony of offering hospitality in a house where not even a cup of tea was
+paid for.
+
+She seated herself beside the round table in the chair she had occupied
+a half-hour earlier, facing inward to the room instead of outward to the
+portico. Ashley backed to the curving wall of the room, while Davenant
+scarcely advanced beyond the doorway. In his slow, careful approach the
+latter reminded her somewhat of a big St. Bernard dog responding to the
+summons of a leopard.
+
+"Been up to see--?" Ashley nodded in the direction of what he took to be
+Guion's room.
+
+Davenant, too, nodded, but said nothing.
+
+"How did you find papa to-day?"
+
+"Pretty fair, Miss Guion; only, perhaps, a little more down on his luck
+than usual."
+
+"The excitement kept him up at first. Now that that's over--"
+
+Ashley interrupted her, addressing himself to Davenant. "I understand
+that it's to you we owe Mr. Guion's relief from the most pressing part
+of his cares."
+
+Davenant's face clouded. It was the thing he was afraid of--Ashley's
+intrusion into the little domain of helpfulness which for a few days he
+had made his own. He answered warily:
+
+"My business with Mr. Guion, Colonel, has been private. I hope you won't
+mind if we leave it so."
+
+Ashley's manner took on the diplomatic persuasiveness he used toward
+restive barbaric potentates.
+
+"Not a bit, my dear fellow. Of course it's private--only not as regards
+Miss Guion and me. You simply _must_ allow us to say how grateful we are
+for your help, even though it need be no more than temporary."
+
+The word produced its effect. Davenant looked from Ashley to Olivia
+while he echoed it. "Temporary?"
+
+Ashley nodded again. "You have no objection, I presume, to that?"
+
+"If Mr. Guion is ever in a position to pay me back," Davenant said,
+slowly, in some bewilderment, "of course I'll take it."
+
+"Quite so; and I think I may say that with a little time--let us say a
+year--we shall be able to meet--"
+
+"It's a good bit of money," Davenant warned him.
+
+"I know that; but if you'll give us a little leeway--as I know you
+will--"
+
+"He means," Olivia spoke up, "that he'll sell his property--and whatever
+else he has--and pay you."
+
+"I don't want that," Davenant said, hastily.
+
+"But I do. It's a point of honor with me not to let another man
+shoulder--"
+
+"And it's a point of honor with me, Rupert--"
+
+"To stand by me," he broke in, quickly.
+
+"I can't see it that way. What you propose is entirely against my
+judgment. It's fantastic; it's unreal. I want you to understand that if
+you attempted to carry it out I shouldn't marry you. Whatever the
+consequences either to you or to me--_I shouldn't marry you_."
+
+"And if I didn't attempt it? Would you marry me then?"
+
+She looked up, then down, then at Davenant, then away from him. Finally
+she fixed her gaze on Ashley.
+
+"Yes," she said at last. "If you'll promise to let this wild project
+drop, I'll marry you whenever you like. I'll waive all the other
+difficulties--"
+
+Davenant came forward, his hand outstretched. "I think I must say
+good-by now, Miss Guion--"
+
+"No; wait," Ashley commanded. "This matter concerns you, by Jove!"
+
+Olivia sprang to her feet. "No; it doesn't, Rupert," she said, hastily.
+
+"No; it doesn't," Davenant repeated after her. "It's not my affair. I
+decline to be brought into it. I think I must say good-by now, Miss
+Guion--"
+
+"Listen, will you!" Ashley said, impatiently. "I'm not going to say
+anything either of you need be afraid of. I'm only asking you to do me
+the justice of trying to see things from my point of view. You may think
+it forced or artificial or anything you please; but unfortunately, as an
+officer and a gentleman, I've got to take it. The position you'd put me
+in would be this--of playing a game--and a jolly important game at
+that--in which the loser loses to me on purpose."
+
+Ashley found much satisfaction in this way of putting it. Without
+exposing him to the necessity of giving details, it made clear his
+perception of what was going on. Moreover, it secured him _le beau
+rôle_, which for a few minutes he feared he might have compromised. In
+the look he caught, as it flashed between Olivia and Davenant, he saw
+the signs of that appreciation he found it so hard to do without--the
+appreciation of Rupert Ashley as the chivalrous Christian gentleman, at
+once punctilious and daring, who would count all things as loss in order
+to achieve the highest type of manhood. If in the back of his mind he
+had the conviction, hardly venturing to make itself a thought, "In the
+long run it pays," it was but little to his discredit, since he could
+scarcely have descended from a line of shrewd, far-sighted Anglo-Saxon
+forefathers without making some such computation.
+
+"If we're going to play a game," he continued, addressing Davenant,
+before the latter had time to speak, "for Heaven's sake let us play it
+straight--like men. Let the winner win and the loser lose--"
+
+"I've no objection to that, Colonel, when I _do_ play--but at present--"
+
+"Look here," Ashley said, with a new inspiration; "I put it to you--I
+put it to you as a man--simply as a _man_--without any highfalutin
+principles whatever. Suppose I'd done what you've done--and given my
+bottom dollar--"
+
+"But I haven't."
+
+"Well, no matter! Suppose I had done what you've done--and you were in
+my place--would you, as a man--simply as a _man_, mind you--be willing
+to go off with the lady whom I had freed from great anxiety--to say the
+least--and be happy forever after--and so forth--with nothing but a
+Thank-you-sir? Come now! Would you?"
+
+It was evident that Davenant was shy of accepting this challenge. He
+colored and looked uneasy--all the more so because Olivia lifted her
+eyes to him appealingly, as though begging him to come to her support.
+It was perhaps in the belief that he would do so that she said,
+earnestly, leaning forward a little:
+
+"Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him."
+
+"I don't see what it's got to do with me--" Davenant began to protest.
+
+"It's got everything to do with you," Ashley broke in. "Since you've
+created the situation you can't shirk its responsibilities."
+
+"Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him," Olivia repeated. "Would you, or
+would you not?"
+
+He looked helplessly from one to the other. "Well, then--I wouldn't," he
+said, simply.
+
+"There you are!" Ashley cried, triumphantly, moving away from the wall
+and turning toward Olivia.
+
+She was plainly disappointed. Davenant could so easily have said, "I
+would." Nevertheless, she answered quietly, picking up the paper-knife
+that lay on the table and turning it this way and that as though
+studying the tints of the mother-of-pearl in the dying light:
+
+"It doesn't matter to me, Rupert, what other people would do or would
+not do. If you persist in this attempt--this mad attempt--I shall not
+marry you."
+
+He strode to the table, looking down at her averted face and bent head.
+
+"Then we're at a deadlock."
+
+She gave him a quick glance. "No; it isn't a deadlock, because--because
+there's still a way out."
+
+He leaned above her, supporting himself with his hand on the table. "And
+it's a way I shall never take so long as you can't say--what you
+admitted a little while ago that you couldn't say--"
+
+"I can't say it," she murmured, her face still further averted; "but all
+the same it's cruel of you to make it a condition."
+
+He bent lower till his lips almost touched her hair. "It's cruel of
+you," he whispered, "to put me in the position where I must."
+
+The room and the hall behind it were now so dim that Davenant had no
+difficulty in slipping between the portières and getting away.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+"He's going to squeeze me out."
+
+This was Davenant's reflection as he walked back, along the Embankment,
+to Rodney Temple's house. He made it bitterly, in the light of clarified
+views, as to the ethics of giving and taking benefits. Up to within the
+last few days the subject had seemed to him a relatively simple one. If
+you had money, and wished to give it away, you gave it. If you needed
+it, and were so lucky as to have it offered you, you took it. That was
+all. That such natural proceedings should create complicated relations
+and searchings of heart never entered his mind.
+
+He could see that they might, however, now that the knowledge was forced
+upon him. Enlightenment came by the easy process of putting himself in
+Ashley's place. "I wouldn't take my wife as a kind of free gift from
+another fellow--I'll be hanged if I would! I'd marry her on my own or
+not at all."
+
+And unless Ashley assumed the responsibilities of his future wife's
+position, he couldn't marry her "on his own." That much was clear. It
+was also the most proper thing in the world. It was a right--a
+privilege. He looked upon it chiefly as a privilege. Ashley would sell
+his estate, and, having paid him, Davenant, the money he had advanced,
+would send him about his business. There would be nothing left for him
+but to disappear. The minute there was no need for him there would be no
+place for him. He had been no more than the man who holds a horse till
+the owner comes and rides away.
+
+Worse than that reflection was the fear that his intervention had been
+uncalled for in the first place. The belief that it was imperative had
+been his sole excuse for forcing himself on people who fought against
+his aid and professed themselves able to get along without it. But the
+event seemed to show that if he had let things alone, Rupert Ashley
+would have come and taken the burden on himself. As he was apparently
+able to shoulder it, it would have been better to let him do it. In that
+case he, Peter Davenant, would not have found himself in a position from
+which he could not withdraw, while it was a humiliation to be dislodged
+from it.
+
+But, on the other hand, he would have missed his most wonderful
+experience. There was that side to it, too. He would not have had these
+moments face to face with Olivia Guion which were to be as food for his
+sustenance all the rest of his life. During these days of discussion, of
+argument, of conflict between his will and hers, he had the entirely
+conscious sense that he was laying up the treasure on which his heart
+would live as long as it continued to beat. The fact that she found
+intercourse with him more or less distasteful became a secondary matter.
+To be in her presence was the thing essential, whatever the grounds on
+which he was admitted there. In this way he could store up her looks,
+her words, her gestures, against the time when the memory of them would
+be all he should have. As for her proposals of friendship made to him
+that day--her suggestions of visits to be paid to Ashley and herself,
+with introductions to a greater world--he swept them aside. He quite
+understood that she was offering him the two mites that make a farthing
+out of the penury of her resources, and, while he was touched by the
+attempt to pay him, he didn't want them.
+
+He had said, and said again, that he didn't want anything at all.
+Neither did he. It would have been enough for him to go on as he was
+going now--to fetch and carry, to meet lawyers and pacify creditors, to
+protect her father because he _was_ her father, and get a glimpse of her
+or a word from her when he came on his errands to Tory Hill. There were
+analogies between his devotion and the adoration of a mortal for a
+goddess beyond the stars. Like Hippolytus, he would have been content
+that his Artemis should never step down from her shrine so long as he
+was permitted to lay his gifts on her altar.
+
+At least, he had felt so till to-day. He had begun the adventure in the
+strength of the desire born of his visit to the scene of his father's
+work at Hankow to do a little good. True, it was an impulse of which he
+was more than half ashamed. Its mere formulation in words rendered it
+bumptious and presumptuous. Beyond the confession made to Rodney Temple
+on the night of his arrival no force could have induced him to avow it.
+Better any imputation of craft than the suspicion of wanting to confer
+benefits on his fellow-men. It was a satisfaction to him to be able to
+say, even in his own inner consciousness, that the desperate state of
+Guion's affairs forced his hand and compelled him to a quixotic course
+which he would not otherwise have taken.
+
+The first glimpse of Ashley brought this verbal shelter to the dust. So
+long as the accepted lover had been but an abstract conception Davenant
+had been able to think of him with toleration. But in presence of the
+actual man the feeling of antagonism was instinctive, animal,
+instantaneous. Though he pumped up his phrases of welcome to a
+heartiness he did not feel, he was already saying to himself that his
+brief day of romance was done. "He's going to squeeze me out." With this
+alert and capable soldier on the spot, there would be no need for a
+clumsy interloper any longer. They could do without him, and would be
+glad to see him go.
+
+The upshot of it all was that he must retire. It was not only the part
+of tact, but a gentleman could do no less. Ashley had all the rights and
+powers. The effort to withstand him would be worse than ineffectual, it
+would be graceless. In Miss Guion's eyes it would be a blunder even more
+unpardonable than that for which her punishment had been in some ways
+the ruling factor in his life. He was sure she would not so punish him
+again, but her disdain would not be needed. Merely to be _de trop_ in
+her sight, merely to be troublesome, would be a chastisement from which
+he should suffer all the stings of shame. If he was to go on serving her
+with the disinterestedness of which, to himself at any rate, he had made
+a boast, if he was to keep the kindly feeling she had perhaps begun to
+entertain for him, he must resign his provisional authority into
+Ashley's hands and efface himself.
+
+To do that would be easy. He had only to advance by a few weeks his
+departure for Stoughton, Michigan, where he meant to return in any case.
+It was the familiar field of those opportunities in copper which he
+hoped to profit by again. Once he was on that ground, Olivia Guion and
+her concerns would be as much a part of a magic past as the woods and
+mountains of a holiday are to a man nailed down at an office desk. With
+a very little explanation to Ashley he could turn his back on the whole
+business and give himself up to his own affairs.
+
+He made an effort to recapture his zest in the old game, but after the
+passionate interest he had put into the past week the fun was out of it.
+Stoughton, Michigan, presented itself as a ramshackled, filthy wooden
+town of bar-rooms, eating-rooms, pool-rooms, and unspeakable hotels. The
+joys and excitements he had known over such deals as the buying and
+selling of the Catapult, the Peppermint, and the Etna mines were as flat
+now as the lees of yesternight's feast. "I'm not in love with her," he
+kept saying, doggedly, to himself; and yet the thought of leaving Olivia
+Guion and her interests to this intrusive stranger, merely because he
+was supposed to have a prior claim, was sickening. It was more
+sickening still that the Englishman should not only be disposed to take
+up all the responsibilities Davenant would be laying down, but seemed
+competent to do it.
+
+On the embankment he met Rodney Temple, taking the air after his day in
+the Gallery of Fine Arts. He walked slowly, with a stoop, his hands
+behind him. Now and then he paused to enjoy the last tints of pink and
+purple and dusky saffron mirrored in the reaches of the river or to
+watch the swing of some college crew and the swan-like movement of their
+long, frail shell.
+
+"Hello! Where are you off to? Home?"
+
+Davenant had not yet raised this question with himself, but now that it
+was before him he saw it was worth considering. Home, for the present,
+meant Drusilla and Mrs. Temple, with their intuitions and speculations,
+their hints and sympathies. He scarcely knew which he dreaded most, the
+old lady's inquisitive tenderness or Drusilla's unsparing perspicacity.
+
+"Not home just yet, sir," he had the wit to say. "In fact, I'm walking
+in to Boston, and may not be home to dinner. Perhaps you'll tell Mrs.
+Temple so when you go in. Then I sha'n't have to 'phone her."
+
+Temple let that pass. "Been up to look at the great man?"
+
+Peter nodded. "Just come from there."
+
+"And what do you make of him?"
+
+"Oh, he's a decent sort."
+
+"Not going to back out, eh?"
+
+"Not at all; just the other way: he wants to step in and take everything
+off--off our hands."
+
+"You don't say so. Then he's what you say--a decent sort."
+
+"He's more than that," Davenant heard himself saying, to his own
+surprise. "He's a fine specimen of his type, and the type itself--"
+
+"Is superb," the old man concluded. "That's about what I supposed he'd
+be. You could hardly imagine Olivia Guion picking out any other
+kind--especially as it's a kind that's as thick as blackberries in their
+army."
+
+Davenant corroborated this by a brief account of what Ashley proposed to
+do. Light gleamed in the old man's eyes and a smile broke the shaggy
+crevice between his beard and mustache as he listened.
+
+"Splendid! Splendid!" he commented, now at one point and now at another
+of the information Peter was imparting. "Sell his estate and pay up?
+That's downright sporting, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, he's sporting enough."
+
+"And what a grand thing for you to get your money back. I thought you
+would some day--if Vic de Melcourt ever came to hear of what you'd done;
+but I didn't expect it so soon."
+
+Davenant turned away. "I wasn't in a hurry."
+
+"No; but he is. That's the point. That's where the beauty of it comes in
+for Olivia and you."
+
+Peter looked blank. "Olivia and--_me_?"
+
+"He's doing right," the old man explained, taking hold of the lapel of
+Davenant's coat, "or what he conceives to be right; and no one man can
+do that without putting us into a better position all round. Doing
+right," he continued, emphasizing his words by shaking the lapel and
+hammering on Peter's breast--"doing right is the solution of all the
+difficulties into which we get ourselves tied up by shilly-shallying and
+doing wrong. If Ashley were to hang fire you wouldn't know where the
+devil you were. But now that he's going straight, it leaves you free to
+do the same."
+
+"It leaves me free to cut and run." He made little effort to conceal his
+bitterness.
+
+"Then cut and run, if that's what you feel impelled to do. You won't run
+far before you see you're running to a purpose. I'll cut and run, too,"
+he added, cheerfully. "I'll be off to see Olivia, and tell her she's
+made a catch."
+
+Davenant was glad to be able to resume his tramp. "Poor old chap," he
+said to himself; "a lot he knows about it! It's damned easy to do right
+when you've got everything your own way."
+
+Having everything his own way was the happy position in which he placed
+Rupert Ashley, seeing he was able to marry Olivia Guion by the simple
+process of selling an estate. There was no more to that in Davenant's
+estimation than to his own light parting with his stocks and bonds.
+Whatever sacrifice the act might entail would have ample compensation,
+since the giving up of the temporal and non-essential would secure
+supreme and everlasting bliss. He would gladly have spared a hand or an
+eye for a mere chance at the same reward.
+
+Arrived in Boston there was nothing for him to do but to eat an
+expensive dinner at a restaurant and go back again. He did not return on
+foot. He had had enough of his own thoughts. They led him round and
+round in a circle without end. He was ashamed, too, to perceive that
+they concerned themselves chiefly, not with his love for Olivia Guion,
+but with his enmity to Rupert Ashley. It was the first time in his life
+that he was ever possessed by the fury to kill a man. He wouldn't have
+been satisfied to be rid of Ashley; he wanted to leap on him, to strike
+him, to choke him, to beat him to death. Sitting with his eyes fixed on
+the table-cloth, from which the waiter had removed everything but the
+finger-bowl and the bill, and allowing the cigar that protruded between
+his knuckles to burn uselessly, he had already indulged in these
+imaginary exercises, not a little to his relief, before he shook himself
+and muttered: "I'm a damned fool."
+
+The repetition of this statement, together with the dull belief that
+repetition engenders, braced him at last to paying his bill and taking
+the tram-car to Waverton. He had formed a resolution. It was still
+early, scarcely later than the hour at which he usually dined. He had a
+long evening before him. He would put it to use by packing his
+belongings. Then he would disappear. He might go at once to Stoughton,
+or he might travel no farther than the rooms he had engaged, and which
+he had occupied in former years, on the less attractive slope of Beacon
+Hill. It would be all the same. He would be out of the circle of
+interests that centered round Olivia Guion, and so free to come back to
+his senses.
+
+He got so much elation out of this resolve that from the electric car to
+Rodney Temple's house he walked with a swinging stride, whistling
+tunelessly beneath his breath. He tried to think he was delivered from
+an extraordinary obsession and restored to health and sanity. He planned
+to initiate Ashley as the new _chargé d'affaires_ without the necessity
+on his part of seeing Miss Guion again.
+
+And yet, when he opened the door with his latch-key and saw a note lying
+on the table in the hail, his heart bounded as though it meant to stop
+beating. It was sheer premonition that made him think the letter was for
+him. He stooped and read the address before he had taken off his hat and
+while he was still tugging at his gloves:
+
+Peter Davenant, Esq.,
+31 Charlesbank.
+
+It was premonition again that told him the contents before he had read a
+line:
+
+     DEAR MR. DAVENANT,--If you are quite free this evening, could you
+     look in on me again? Don't come unless you have really nothing else
+     to do. Yours sincerely,
+
+     OLIVIA GUION.
+
+He looked at his watch. It was only half-past eight. "I've no excuse for
+not going," he said to himself. He made it clear to his heart that he
+regretted the necessity. After the brave decisions to which he had
+come, decisions which he might have put into execution, it was a call
+backward, a retrogression. He began already to be afraid that he might
+not be so resolute a second time. But he had no excuse for not going.
+That fact took the matter out of his hands. There was nothing to do but
+to crumple the letter into his pocket, take down his evening overcoat
+from its peg, and leave the house before any one knew he had entered.
+
+The night was mild. It was so soft and scented that it might have been
+in June. From the stars and the street-lamps and the line of electrics
+along the water's edge there was just light enough to show the surface
+of the river, dim and metallic, and the wisps of vapor hovering above
+the marshes. In the east, toward Cambridge and beyond Boston, the sky
+was bright with the simulation of the dawn that precedes the moonrise.
+
+His heart was curiously heavy. If he walked rapidly it was none the less
+reluctantly. For the first time since he had taken part and lot in the
+matter in hand he had no confidence in himself. He had ceased to be able
+to say, "I'm not in love with her," while he had no other strengthening
+formula to put in its place.
+
+Algonquin Avenue, which older residents still called Rodney Lane, was as
+still and deserted as a country road. The entry gate to Tory Hill
+clicked behind him with curious, lonely loudness. The gravel crunched in
+the same way beneath his tread. Looking up at the house, he saw neither
+light nor sign of living. There was something stricken and sinister
+about the place.
+
+He was half-way toward the front door when a white figure came forward
+beneath the Corinthian portico. If it had not been so white he couldn't
+have seen it.
+
+"I'm here, Mr. Davenant."
+
+The voice, too, sounded lonely, like a voice in a vast, empty house. He
+crossed the lawn to the portico. Olivia had already reseated herself in
+the wicker chair from which she had risen at his approach.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of taking cold?" She had not offered him her hand;
+both hands were hidden in the folds of her voluminous wrap. He said the
+simplest thing he could think of.
+
+"No. I'm wearing a very warm fur-lined cloak. It's very long, too. I
+couldn't stay indoors. The house seemed so--so dead."
+
+"Is there nobody with you?"
+
+"Colonel Ashley went back to town before dinner. Papa wasn't quite so
+well. He's trying to sleep. Will you sit down on the step, or go in and
+bring out a chair? But perhaps you'll find it chilly. If so, we'll go
+in."
+
+She half rose, but he checked her. "Not at all. I like it here. It's one
+of our wonderful, old-fashioned Octobers, isn't it? Besides, I've got an
+overcoat."
+
+He threw the coat over his shoulders, seating himself on the floor, with
+his feet on the steps below him and his back to one of the fluted
+Corinthian pilasters. The shadow was so deep on this side of the
+house--the side remote from the approaching moonrise--that they could
+see each other but dimly. Of the two she was the more visible, not only
+because she was in white, but because of the light coming through the
+open sitting-room behind her from the hail in the middle of the house.
+In this faint glimmer he could see the pose of her figure in the deep
+wicker arm-chair and the set of her neat head with its heavy coil of
+hair.
+
+"I asked you to come," she said, simply, "because I feel so helpless."
+
+"That's a very good reason," he responded, guardedly. "I'm glad you
+thought of me, rather than of any one else."
+
+He was pleased to note that even to his own ears his accent was polite,
+but no more. At the same minute he found the useful formula he had been
+in search of--"I mustn't let her know I'm in love with her."
+
+"There's no one else for me to think of," she explained, in self-excuse.
+"If there were, I shouldn't bother you."
+
+"That's not so kind," he said, keeping to the tone of conventional
+gallantry.
+
+"I don't mean that I haven't plenty of friends. I know lots of
+people--naturally; but I don't know them in a way to appeal to them like
+this."
+
+"Then so much the better for me."
+
+"That's not a reason for my imposing on your kindness; and yet I'm
+afraid I must go on doing it. I feel like a person in such desperate
+straits for ready money that he's reckless of the rate of interest. Not
+that it's a question of money now--exactly."
+
+"It doesn't matter what it's a case of. I'm at your service, Miss
+Guion--"
+
+"I know. That's why I asked you to come. I want you to keep Colonel
+Ashley from doing what he proposed this afternoon."
+
+She spoke more abruptly, more nervously, than was her habit.
+
+"I would if I could; but I don't know that I've any way of dissuading
+him."
+
+"You needn't dissuade him. You've simply to refuse to take his money."
+
+"It's not quite so easy as that, because there's no direct business
+between him and me. If Mr. Guion wanted to pay me what I've lent him, I
+couldn't decline to accept it. Do you see?"
+
+In the dim light he noticed her head nodding slowly. "Oh, so that's the
+way it is? It would have to be done through papa?"
+
+"It would have to be done through him. And if he preferred to use
+Colonel Ashley's money rather than mine, I should have nothing at all to
+say."
+
+"I see; I see," she commented, thoughtfully. "And I don't know how papa
+would feel about it, or how far I could count on him."
+
+For a few minutes Davenant said nothing. When he spoke it was with some
+amazement at his own temerity. "I thought you didn't want my help, if
+you could possibly get any other?"
+
+The words took her by surprise. He could see her draw her cloak more
+tightly about her, her hands still within its folds.
+
+"I felt that way at first. I don't now. Perhaps I understand you a
+little better. But, in any case, I couldn't take his."
+
+He pushed the liberty a little further. "But if you're going to marry
+him--"
+
+"That's just it. I wonder if you've the faintest idea of what it means
+to a woman to marry a man by making herself a burden to him in
+advance--and such a burden!"
+
+"It wouldn't be a burden to any one who--who--"
+
+"I know what you're going to say. Love does make a difference. Of
+course. But it acts one way on the man and another way on the woman. In
+proportion as it urges him to make the sacrifice, it impels her to
+prevent it."
+
+He grew still bolder. The cover of the night and the intimacy of the
+situation made him venturesome. "Then why don't you break off your
+engagement?"
+
+It was a long while before she answered. "He won't let me," she said
+then. "And, besides," she added, after slight hesitation, "it's
+difficult not to be true to a man who's showing himself so noble."
+
+"Is that your only reason?"
+
+She raised her head slightly and turned toward him. He expected
+something cutting, but she only said: "What makes you ask that?"
+
+He was a little frightened. He backed down, and yet not altogether. "Oh,
+nothing. I only--wondered."
+
+"If you think I don't care for him--"
+
+"Oh no. Not that--not that at all."
+
+"Well, if you _were_ to think it, it would probably be because I've been
+through so much--I'm _going_ through so much--that that sort of thing
+has become secondary."
+
+"I didn't know that--that sort of thing--was ever secondary."
+
+"Because you've never had the experience. If you had--"
+
+The freedom of speech she seemed to be according him led him on to say:
+
+"I've had experience enough--as you may know--to be sure it wouldn't be
+secondary with me."
+
+She seemed willing to discuss the point. "When I say secondary I mean
+that I'm in a position in which I find it isn't the most important thing
+in the world to me to marry the man I--I care for."
+
+"Then, what _is_ the most important thing?"
+
+She stirred impatiently. "Oh, it's no use going into that; I suppose it
+would be--to be free--not to owe you anything--or anybody anything--to
+be out of this big, useless house--away from these unpaid
+servants--and--and free! I'm not a dependent person. I dare say you've
+noticed that. I shouldn't mind having no money. I know a way by which I
+could support myself--and papa. I've thought that out. I shouldn't mind
+being alone in the world, either--if I could only burst the coil that's
+been wound about me."
+
+"But since you can't," he said, rather cruelly, "wouldn't the next best
+thing be--to marry the man you care for?"
+
+Her response was to say, irrelevantly, somewhat quaveringly, in a voice
+as near to tears as he could fancy her coming: "I wish I hadn't fallen
+out with Aunt Vic."
+
+"Why? Would she help you?"
+
+"She's very good and kind--in her way."
+
+"Why don't you write to her?"
+
+"Writing wouldn't be any good now. It's too late."
+
+Another long silence fell between them. The darkened windows of the
+house on the other side of the lawn began to reflect a pallid gleam as
+the moon rose. Shadows of trees and of clumps of shrubbery became
+faintly visible on the grass. The great rounded elm in the foreground
+detached itself against the shimmering, illuminated sky like an open
+fan. Davenant found something ecstatic in the half-light, the peace, and
+the extraordinary privilege of being alone with her. It would be one
+more memory to treasure up. Silence, too, was a form of communion more
+satisfactory to him than speech. It was so full of unutterable things
+that he wondered at her allowing it to last.
+
+Nevertheless, it was he who broke it. The evening grew chilly at last.
+Somewhere in the town a clock struck ten. He felt it would be indiscreet
+to stay longer.
+
+"I'll make a try for it, Miss Guion," he said, when he had got on his
+feet to go away. "Since you want me to see Colonel Ashley, I will."
+
+"They always say that one man has such influence on another," she said,
+rising, too--"and you see things so clearly and have such a lot of
+common sense.... I'll walk down to the gate with you.... I'm tired with
+sitting still."
+
+He offered his hand to help her in descending the portico steps. Though
+there was no need for her to take it, she did so. The white cloak,
+loosely gathered in one hand in front, trailed behind her. He thought
+her very spirit-like and ethereal.
+
+At the foot of the steps his heart gave a great bound; he went hot and
+cold. It seemed to him--he was sure--he could have sworn--that her hand
+rested in his a perceptible instant longer than there was any need for.
+
+A moment later he was scoffing at the miracle. It was a mistake on his
+part, or an accident on hers. It was the mocking of his own desire, the
+illusion of his feverish, overstrained senses. It was a restorative to
+say to himself: "Don't be a damned fool."
+
+And yet they walked to the gate almost in silence. It was a silence
+without embarrassment, like that which had preceded it. It had some of
+the qualities of the silence which goes with long-established
+companionships. He spoke but once, to remind her, protectingly, that the
+grass was damp, and to draw her--almost tactually--to the graveled path.
+
+They came to the gate, but he did not immediately say good night.
+
+"I wish you could throw the burden of the whole thing on me, Miss
+Guion," he ventured, wistfully, "and just take it easy."
+
+She looked away from him, over the sprinkling of lights that showed the
+town. "If I could do it with any one, it would be with you--now."
+
+There was an inflection on the _now_ which again gave him strange and
+sudden thrills, as though some extraordinary chemical agent had been
+infused into his blood. All kinds of capitulations were implied in
+it--changes of heart and mind and attitude--changes that had come about
+imperceptibly, and for reasons which he, and perhaps she, could not have
+followed. He felt the upleaping of great joy. It was joy so intense that
+it made him tactful, temperate. It also made him want to rush away and
+be alone.
+
+"I'll make that do for the present," he said, smiling down at her
+through the darkness. "Thank you for letting me come. Good night."
+
+"Good night."
+
+There was again that barely noticeable lingering of her hand in his. The
+repetition rather disappointed him. "It's just her way of shaking
+hands," was the explanation he gave of it.
+
+When he had passed out of the gate he pretended to take his way down
+Algonquin Avenue, but he only crossed the Street to the shelter of a
+friendly elm. There he could watch her tall, white figure as it went
+slowly up the driveway. Except for a dim light in the fan-shaped window
+over the front door the house was dark. The white figure moved with an
+air of dragging itself along.
+
+"It isn't the most important thing in the world for her," he whispered
+to himself, "to marry--_the man she cares for_."
+
+There was a renewal of his blind fury against Ashley, while at the same
+time he found himself groaning, inwardly: "I wish to God the man she
+cares for wasn't such a--such a--trump!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+When the colonel of the Sussex Rangers woke on the following morning the
+Umfraville element in him, fatigued doubtless with the demands of the
+previous day, still slept on. That strain in him which had made his
+maternal ancestors gentlemen-adventurers in Tudor times, and cavaliers
+in the days of Charles the First, and Jacobites with James the Second,
+and roysterers with George the Fourth--loyal, swashbuckling, and
+impractical, daring, dashing, lovable, absurd, bound to come to grief
+one day or another, as they had come--that strain lying dormant, Ashley
+was free to wake in the spirit of the manufacturer of brushes. In other
+words he woke in alarm. It was very real alarm. It was alarm not unlike
+that of the gambler who realizes in the cold stare of morning that for a
+night's excitement he has thrown away a fortune.
+
+The feeling was so dreadful that, as he lay for a few minutes with his
+eyes closed, he could say without exaggeration that he had never felt
+anything so sickening in his life. It was worse than the blue funk that
+attended the reveille for his first battle--worse than the bluer remorse
+that had come with the dawn after some of his more youthful sprees. The
+only parallel to it he could find was in the desolation of poor
+creatures he had seen, chiefly in India, reduced suddenly by fire,
+flood, or earthquake to the skin they stood in and a lodging on the
+ground. His swaggering promises of yesterday had brought him as near as
+possible to that.
+
+Fortunately, when he had sprung out of bed the feeling became less
+poignant. By the time he had had his bath and his breakfast it had got
+itself within the limits of what could be expressed in the statement:
+"I've been a jolly ass."
+
+Though there was no denying this fact, he could nevertheless use the
+reproach in its precise signification. He was not a jolly ass because he
+had remained true to Olivia Guion, but because of the extravagant
+methods of his faithfulness. No one but an Umfraville, he declared,
+would have hesitated to accept the _status quo_. Considering that in
+spite of everything he was still eager to give Olivia the shelter of his
+name and the advantages of his position, his insistence on doing more
+fell short of the grotesque.
+
+Nevertheless he had insisted on it, and it was too late to shrink from
+making good his offer. No doubt, if he did so shrink, Olivia would
+commend him; but it would be a commendation not inconsistent with a fall
+in her esteem. His nerves still tingled with the joy of hearing her say,
+as she had said yesterday: "You're the noblest man in the world; I never
+dreamed there could be any one like you." She was so sparing with her
+words that these meant more from her than from another. If she used
+them, it was because she thought he _was_ the noblest man in the world
+and because he _did_ surpass her dreams. This was setting up the
+standard in a way that permitted no falling short of it. He must be
+Rupert Ashley at his best even if the world went to pieces while he made
+the attempt. Moreover, if he failed, there was always Peter Davenant
+ready to loom up above him. "I must keep higher than him," he said to
+himself, "whatever it costs me." So, little by little, the Umfraville in
+him also woke, with its daredevil chivalry. It might be said to have
+urged him on, while the Ashley prudence held him back, when from his
+room in the hotel he communicated by telephone with Olivia, begging her
+to arrange an interview between Guion and himself about eleven o'clock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On taking the message to her father Olivia found him awake, but still in
+bed. Since his downfall had become generally known, she had noticed a
+reluctance on his part to get up. It was true he was not well; but his
+shrinking from activity was beyond what his degree of illness warranted.
+It was a day or two before she learned to view this seeming indolence as
+nothing but the desire to creep, for as many hours as possible out of
+the twenty-four, into the only refuge left to him. In his bed he was
+comparatively safe, not from the law, which he no longer had to fear,
+but from intrusion and inspection, and, above all, from sympathy.
+
+It was between nine and ten o'clock. The blinds were up, the windows
+open, and the sunshine was streaming in. A tray with his scarcely
+tasted breakfast on it stood beside the bed. Guion lay on his back, his
+head sunk deep into the pillows. Though his face was turned from the
+door and his eyes closed, Olivia knew he was not sleeping. After
+performing small tasks in the room, carrying the breakfast tray into the
+hall, and lowering the blinds, she sat down at the bedside.
+
+"Papa, darling."
+
+As he turned his head slowly she thought his eyes had the look of mortal
+ennui that Rembrandt depicts in those of Lazarus rising from the tomb
+and coming back to life.
+
+She delivered her message, to which he replied, "He can come."
+
+"I think I ought to tell you," she continued, "what he's coming for."
+
+She gave him the gist of her conversation with Ashley on the previous
+day and the one great decision to which they had led him up. It would
+have gratified Ashley, could he have overheard, to note the skill with
+which she conveyed precisely that quality of noble precipitancy in his
+words and resolutions which he himself feared they had lacked. If a
+slight suspicion could have risen in his mind, it would have been that
+of a certain haste on her part to forestall any possible questioning of
+his eagerness such as he had occasion to observe in himself. That might
+have wounded him.
+
+"So he wants to go ahead," Guion said, when she had finished.
+
+"Apparently."
+
+"Can't he do that and still leave things as they are?"
+
+"He seems to think he can't."
+
+"I don't see why. If I have to owe the money to any one, I'd rather owe
+it to Davenant."
+
+"So should I."
+
+"Do you really want to marry him?"
+
+The question startled her. "Marry him? Who?"
+
+There was a look almost of humor in Guion's forlorn eyes. "Well, I
+didn't mean Davenant. I didn't suppose there was any--"
+
+"Papa, darling," she hastened to say, "as things are at present I'd
+rather not marry any one at all. There's so much for me to do in getting
+life on another footing for us both that marriage seems to belong to
+another kind of world."
+
+He raised himself on his elbow, turning toward her. "Then why don't you
+tell him so?"
+
+"I have; but he won't take that as a reason. And, besides, I've said I
+_would_ marry him if he'd give up this wild project--"
+
+"But you're in love with him, aren't you? You may as well tell me," he
+continued, as she colored. "I must have _some_ data to go on."
+
+"I--I _was_ in love with him," she faltered. "I suppose I am still. But
+while everything is as it is, I--I--can't tell; I--I don't know.
+I'm--I'm feeling so many other things that I don't know whether I
+feel--feel love--or not. I dare say I do. But it's like asking a man if
+he's fond of playing a certain game when he thinks he's going to die."
+
+He slipped down into bed again, pulling the coverlet about his chin and
+turning his face away. As he said nothing more, she rose to go. "About
+eleven, then, papa dear."
+
+She could hear a muffled assent as she left the room. She was afraid he
+was crying.
+
+Nevertheless, when she had gone Guion rang for Reynolds and made his
+usual careful toilet with uncommon elaboration. By the time his guest
+arrived he was brushed and curled and stretched on the couch. If he had
+in the back of his mind a hope of impressing Ashley and showing him that
+if he, Guion, had fallen, it was from a height, he couldn't help it. To
+be impressive was the habit of his life--a habit it was too late now to
+overcome. Had he taken the Strange Ride with Morrowby Jukes, he would
+have been impressive among the living dead. Curiously enough, too, now
+that that possibility was past, he wondered if he didn't regret it. He
+confessed as much to Ashley.
+
+"I know what you've come for," he said, when Ashley, who had declined a
+cigar, seated himself beside the couch.
+
+"That means, I suppose, that Olivia has got ahead of me."
+
+"She told me what you've proposed. It's very fine--very sporting."
+
+"I haven't proposed it because it's either sporting or fine. It seems to
+me the only thing to do."
+
+"Y-es; I can understand that you should feel so about it. I should
+myself if I were in your place and had a right to be generous. The
+trouble is--that it wouldn't work."
+
+Ashley would have given much not to feel this sudden exhilaration of
+relief. It was so glowing that, in spite of his repugnance, he could
+have leaned forward and wrung Guion's hand. He contrived, however, to
+throw a tone of objection into his voice as he said: "Wouldn't work? Why
+not?"
+
+Guion raised himself on his elbow. "It's no use going over the arguments
+as to the effect on your position. You've considered all that, no doubt,
+and feel that you can meet it. Whether you could or not when it came to
+the point is another question. But no matter. There are one or two
+things you haven't considered. I hate to put them before you,
+because--well, because you're a fine fellow--and it's too bad that you
+should be in this fix. It's part of my--my--my chastisement--to have put
+you there; but it'll be something to me--some alleviation; if you can
+understand--to help to get you out."
+
+Ashley was dumb. He was also uncomfortable. He hated this sort of thing.
+
+Guion continued. "Suppose I were to let you go ahead on this--let you
+raise the money--and take it from you--and pay Davenant--and all
+that--then you might marry my daughter, and get life on some sort of
+tolerable working basis. I dare say." He pulled himself forward on the
+couch. Ashley noticed the blazing of his eyes and hectic color in his
+cheeks. "You might even be happy, in a way," he went on, "if you didn't
+have--_me_."
+
+"Didn't have--you? I don't understand--"
+
+"And you'd _have_ me. You couldn't get out of it. I'm done for--I'm no
+good to any one any more--but I'm not going to die. That's my point.
+That's my punishment, too. Can't you imagine what it means to a man like
+me--who used to think well of himself--who's been well thought of--can't
+you imagine what it is to have to inspire every one who belongs to him
+with loathing? That's what I've got to do for the rest of my life--and
+I'm going to _live_."
+
+"Oh, I say!"
+
+"You mayn't believe it, Ashley, but I'd rather have been--shut up--put
+away--where people couldn't see me--where I didn't have to see them. You
+know Olivia and I were facing that. I expect she's told you. And 'pon my
+soul there are many ways in which it would have been easier than--than
+this. But that's not what I'm coming to. The great fact is that after
+you'd counted your cost and done your utmost you still have _me_--like a
+dead rat strung round your neck--"
+
+"Oh, I say, by Jove!"
+
+"Olivia, poor child, has to bear it. She can, too. That's a remarkable
+thing about us New England people--our grit in the face of disgrace. I
+fancy there are many of our women who'd be as plucky as she--and I know
+one man. I don't know any others."
+
+Ashley felt sick. He had never in his life felt such repulsion as toward
+what seemed to him this facile, theatrical remorse. If Guion was really
+contrite, if he really wanted to relieve the world of his presence, he
+could blow his brains out. Ashley had known, or known of, so many who
+had resorted to this ready remedy for a desperate plight that it seemed
+simple. His thoughts were too complex, however, for immediate
+expression, and, before he could decide what to respond, Guion said:
+
+"Why don't you give him a chance?"
+
+Ashley was startled. "Chance? What chance? Who?"
+
+"Davenant."
+
+Ashley grasped the back of his chair as though about to spring up.
+"What's he want a chance for? Chance for what?"
+
+"I might have said: 'Why don't you give _her_ a chance?' She's half in
+love with him--as it is."
+
+"That's a lie. That's an infernal lie."
+
+Ashley was on his feet. He pushed the chair from him, though he still
+grasped it. He seemed to need it for support. Guion showed no
+resentment, continuing to speak with feverish quiet.
+
+"I think you'll find that the whole thing is predestined, Ashley.
+Davenant's coming to my aid is what you might call a miracle. I don't
+like to use the expression--it sounds idiotic--and canting--and all
+that--but, as a matter of fact, he came--as an answer to prayer."
+
+Ashley gave a snort of impatience. Guion warmed to his subject, dragging
+himself farther up on the couch and throwing the coverlet from his
+knees.
+
+"Yes, of course; you'd feel that way about it--naturally. So should I if
+anybody else were to tell me. But this is how it happened. One night,
+not long ago, while you were on the water, I was so hard hit that
+I--well, I actually--_prayed_. I don't know that I ever did before--that
+is, not really--_pray_. But I did then; and I didn't beat about the
+bush, either. I didn't stop at half measures; I asked for a miracle
+right out and out--and I got it. The next morning Davenant came with his
+offer of the money. You may make what you like out of that; but I
+make--"
+
+"I make this, by Jove; that you and he entered into a bargain that he
+should supply the cash, and you should--"
+
+"Wrong!" With his arm stretched to its full length he pointed his
+forefinger up into Ashley's face. "Wrong!" he cried, again. "I asked him
+if she had anything to do with it, and he said she hadn't."
+
+"Pff! Would you expect him to acknowledge it? He might deny it till he
+damned his soul with lies; but that wouldn't keep you and him from--"
+
+"Before God, Ashley, I never thought of it till later. I know it looks
+that way--the way you put it--but I never thought of it till later. I
+dragged it out of him that he'd once been in love with her and had asked
+her to marry him. That was a regular knock-down surprise to me. I'd had
+no idea of anything of the kind. But he said he wasn't in love with her
+any longer. I dare say he thinks he isn't; but--"
+
+"Suppose he is; that needn't affect _her_--except as an impertinence. A
+woman can defend herself against that sort of thing, by Jove!"
+
+"It needn't affect her--only--only as a matter of fact--it does. It
+appeals to her imagination. The big scale of the thing would impress
+almost any woman. Look here, Ashley," he cried, with a touch of
+hysteria; "it'll be better for us all in the long run if you'll give him
+a chance. It'll be better for you than for any one else. You'll be well
+out of it--any impartial person would tell you that. You must see it
+yourself. You _do_ see it yourself. We're not your sort--"
+
+But Ashley could stand it no longer. With a smothered, inarticulate
+oath, he turned abruptly, and marched out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Fortunately there was no one in the upper hall, nor on the stairs, nor
+in the lower hall, nor in the oval room into which Ashley stumbled his
+way. The house was all sunshine and silence. He dropped into the nearest
+arm-chair. "It's a lie," he kept repeating to himself. "It's a lie. It's
+a damned, infernal lie. It's a put-up job between them--between the old
+scoundrel and that--that oaf."
+
+The reflection brought him comfort. By degrees it brought him a great
+deal of comfort. That was the explanation, of course! There was no need
+of his being panic-stricken. To frighten him off was part of their plan.
+Had he not challenged her two or three times to say she didn't care for
+him? If she had any doubt on the subject he had given her ample
+opportunity to declare it. But she had not done so. On the contrary, she
+had made him both positive and negative statements of her love. What
+more could he ask?
+
+He breathed again. The longer he thought of it the better his situation
+seemed to grow. He had done all that an honorable man could think of. He
+had been chivalrous to a quixotic degree. If they had not accepted his
+generous proposals, then so much the worse for them. They--Guion and
+Davenant--were pursuing obstructionist tactics, so as to put him in a
+place where he could do nothing but retreat. Very well; he would show
+them! There were points beyond which even chivalry could not go; and if
+they found themselves tangled in their own barbed wire they themselves
+would be to blame.
+
+So, as the minute of foolish, jealous terror passed away, he began to
+enjoy the mellow peace of the old house. It was the first thing he had
+enjoyed since landing in America. His pleasure was largely in the
+anticipation of soon leaving that country with all the honors and Olivia
+Guion besides.
+
+It was a gratification to the Ashley spirit, too, to note how promptly
+the right thing had paid. It was really something to take to heart. The
+moral to be drawn from his experiences at the heights of Dargal had been
+illustrated over and over again in his career; and this was once more.
+If he had funked the sacrifice it would have been on his conscience all
+the rest of his life. As it was, he had made it, or practically made it,
+and so could take his reward without scruple.
+
+He put this plainly before Olivia when at last she appeared. She came
+slowly through the hail from the direction of the dining-room, a
+blank-book and a pencil in her hand.
+
+"I'm making an inventory," she explained. "You know that everything will
+have to be sold?"
+
+He ignored this to hurry to his account of the interview with Guion. It
+had been brief, he said, and in a certain sense unsatisfactory. He laid
+stress on his regret that her father should have seen fit to decline his
+offer--that's what it amounted to--but he pointed out to her that that
+bounder Davenant, who had doubtless counseled this refusal, would now be
+the victim of his own wiles. He had overreached himself. He had taken
+one of those desperate risks to which the American speculative spirit is
+so often tempted--and he had pushed it too far. He would lose everything
+now, and serve him right!
+
+"I've made my offer," he went on, in an injured tone, "and they've
+thrown it out. I really can't do more, now, can I?"
+
+"You know already how I feel about that."
+
+They were still standing. He had been too eager to begin his report to
+offer her a chair or to take one himself.
+
+"They can't expect me to repeat it, now, can they?" he hurried on.
+"There are limits, by Jove! I can't go begging to them--"
+
+"I don't think they expect it."
+
+"And yet, if I don't, you know--he's dished. He loses his money--and
+everything else."
+
+In putting a slight emphasis on the concluding words he watched her
+closely. She betrayed herself to the extent of throwing back her head
+with a little tilt to the chin.
+
+"I don't believe he'd consider that being dished. He's the sort of man
+who loses only when he--flings away."
+
+"He's the sort of man who's a beastly cad."
+
+He regretted these words as soon as they were uttered, but she had stung
+him to the quick. Her next words did so again.
+
+"Then, if so, I hope you won't find it necessary to repeat the
+information. I mistook him for something very high--very high and noble;
+and, if you don't mind, I'd rather go on doing it."
+
+She swept him with a look such as he knew she must be capable of giving,
+though he had never before seen it. The next second she had slipped
+between the portières into the hail. He heard her pause there.
+
+It was inevitable that Guion's words should return to him: "Half in love
+with him--as it is."
+
+"That's rot," he assured himself. He had only to call up the image of
+Davenant's hulking figure and heavy ways to see what rot it was. He
+himself was not vain of his appearance; he had too much to his credit to
+be obliged to descend to that; but he knew he was a distinguished man,
+and that he looked it. The woman who could choose between him and
+Davenant would practically have no choice at all. That seemed to him
+conclusive.
+
+Nevertheless, it was with a view to settling this question beyond
+resurrection that he followed her into the hall. He found her standing
+with the note-book still in her hand.
+
+He came softly behind her and looked over her shoulder, his face close
+to hers. She could feel his breath on her cheek, but she tried to write.
+
+"I'm sorry I said what I did," he whispered.
+
+She stayed her pencil long enough to say: "I hope you're still sorrier
+for having thought it."
+
+"I'm sorry you _know_ I think it. Since it affects you so deeply--"
+
+"It affects me deeply to see you can be unjust."
+
+"I'm more than unjust. I'm--well you can fancy what I am, when I say
+that I know some one who thinks you're more than half in love with this
+fellow--as it is."
+
+"Is that papa?"
+
+"I don't see that it matters who it is. The only thing of importance is
+whether you are or not."
+
+"If you mean that as a question, I shall have to let you answer it
+yourself."
+
+"Would you tell me if--if you were?"
+
+"What would be the use of telling you a thing that would make you
+unhappy and that I couldn't help?"
+
+"Am I to understand, then, that you _are_ half in love with him?"
+
+She continued the effort to write.
+
+"I think I've a right to press that question," he resumed. "Am I, or am
+I not, to understand--"
+
+She turned slowly. Her face was flushed, her eyes were misty.
+
+"You may understand this," she said, keeping her voice as much under
+control as possible, "you may understand this, that I don't know whom
+I'm in love with, or whether or not I'm in love with any one. That's the
+best I can say. I'm sorry, Rupert--but I don't think it's altogether my
+fault. Papa's troubles seem to have transported me into a world where
+they neither marry nor are given in marriage--where the whole subject is
+alien to--"
+
+"But you said," he protested, bitterly, "no longer ago than yesterday
+that you--_loved_ me."
+
+"And I suppose I do. I did in Southsea. I did--right up to the minute
+when I learned what papa--and I--had been doing all these years--and
+that if the law had been put in force--You see, that's made me feel as
+if I were benumbed--as if I were frozen--or dead. You mustn't blame me
+too much--"
+
+"My darling, I'm not blaming you. I'm not such a duffer but that I can
+understand how you feel. It'll be all right. You'll come round. This is
+like an illness, by Jove!--that's what it's like. But you'll get better,
+dear. After we're married--if you'll _only_ marry me--"
+
+"I said I'd do that, Rupert--I said it yesterday--if you'd give up--what
+I understand you _have_ given up--"
+
+He was on his guard against admitting this. "I haven't given it up.
+They've made it impossible for me to do it; that's all. It's their
+action, not mine."
+
+"It comes to the same thing. I'm ready to keep my promise."
+
+"You don't say it with much enthusiasm."
+
+"Perhaps I say it with something better. I think I do. At the same time
+I wish--"
+
+"You wish what?"
+
+"I wish I had attached another condition to it."
+
+"It mayn't be too late for that even now. Let's have it."
+
+"If I had thought of it," she said, with a faint, uncertain smile, "I
+should have exacted a promise that you and he should be--friends."
+
+He spoke sharply. "Who? Me? That's a good 'un, by Jove! You may as well
+understand me, dear, once and for all. I don't make friends of
+cow-punchers of that sort."
+
+"I do," she said, coldly, turning again to her note-book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not strange that Ashley should pass the remainder of the day in a
+state of irritation against what he called "this American way of doing
+things." Neither was it strange that when, after dinner in the evening,
+Davenant kept close to him as they were leaving Rodney Temple's house,
+the act should have struck the Englishman as a bit of odious
+presumption. Having tried vainly to shake his companion off, he was
+obliged to submit to walking along the Embankment with him, side by
+side.
+
+He had not found the dinner an entertaining event. Drusilla talked a
+great deal, but was uneasy and distraite. Rodney Temple seemed to him "a
+queer old cove," while Mrs. Temple made no impression on him at all.
+Olivia had urged her inability to leave her father as an excuse for not
+coming. Davenant said little beyond giving the information that he was
+taking leave of his host and hostess to sleep that night in his old
+quarters in Boston and proceed next day to Stoughton, Michigan. This
+fact gave him a pretext for saying good night when Ashley did and
+leaving the house in his company.
+
+"We're going the same way, aren't we?" he asked, as soon as they were
+outside.
+
+"No," Ashley said, promptly; "you're taking the tram, and I shall walk."
+
+"I should like to walk, too, Colonel, if you don't mind."
+
+Since silence raised the most telling objection, Ashley made no reply.
+Taking out his cigarette-case, he lit a cigarette, without offering one
+to his companion. The discourtesy was significant, but Davenant ignored
+it, commenting on the extraordinary mildness of the October night and
+giving items of information as to the normal behavior of American autumn
+weather. As Ashley expressed no appreciation of these data, the subject
+was dropped. There was a long silence before Davenant nerved himself to
+begin on the topic he had sought this opportunity to broach.
+
+"You said yesterday, Colonel, that you'd like to pay me back the money
+I've advanced to Mr. Guion. I'd just as soon you wouldn't, you know."
+
+Ashley deigned no answer. The tramp went on in silence broken only by
+distant voices or a snatch of song from a students' club-house near the
+river. Somewhere in the direction of Brookline a locomotive kept up a
+puffing like the beating of a pulse.
+
+"I don't need that money," Davenant began again. "There's more where it
+came from. I shall be out after it--from to-morrow on."
+
+Ashley's silence was less from rudeness than from self-restraint. All
+his nerves were taut with the need to visit his troubles on some one's
+head. A soldiering life had not accustomed him to indefinite repression
+of his irritable impulses, and now after two or three days of it he was
+at the limit of his powers. It was partly because he knew his patience
+to be nearly at an end that he wanted to be alone. It was also because
+he was afraid of the blind fury with which Davenant's mere presence
+inspired him. While he expressed this fury to himself in epithets of
+scorn, he was aware, too, that there were shades of animosity in it for
+which he had no ready supply of terms. Such exclamatory fragments as
+forced themselves up through the troubled incoherence of his thoughts
+were of the nature of "damned American," "vulgar Yankee," "insolent
+bounder," rendering but inadequately the sentiments of a certain kind of
+Englishman toward his fancied typical American, a crafty Colossus who
+accomplishes everything by money and brutal strength. Had there been
+nothing whatever to create a special antagonism between them, Ashley's
+feeling toward Davenant would still have been that of a civilized
+Jack-the-Giant-Killer toward a stupendous, uncouth foe. It would have
+had elements in it of fear, jealousy, even of admiration, making at its
+best for suspicion and neutrality, and at its worst for.... But Davenant
+spoke again.
+
+"I'd a great deal rather, Colonel, that--"
+
+The very sound of his voice, with its harsh consonants and its absurd
+repetitions of the military title, grated insufferably on Ashley's ear.
+He was beyond himself although he seemed cool.
+
+"My good fellow, I don't care a hang what you'd a great deal rather."
+
+Ashley lit a fresh cigarette with the end of the old one, throwing the
+stump into the river almost across Davenant's face, as the latter walked
+the nearer to the railing.
+
+The American turned slightly and looked down. The action, taken in
+conjunction with his height and size and his refusal to be moved,
+intensified Ashley's rage, which began now to round on himself. Even the
+monotonous tramp-tramp of their footsteps, as the Embankment became more
+deserted, got on his nerves. It was long before Davenant made a new
+attempt to fulfil his mission.
+
+"In saying what I said just now," he began, in what he tried to make a
+reasonable tone, "I've no ax to grind for myself. If Miss Guion--"
+
+"We'll leave that name out," Ashley cried, sharply. "Only a damned cad
+would introduce it."
+
+Though the movement with which Davenant swung his left arm through the
+darkness and with the back of his left hand struck Ashley on the mouth
+was so sudden as to surprise no one more than himself, it came with all
+the cumulative effect of twenty-four hours' brooding. The same might be
+said of the spring with which Ashley bounded on his adversary. It had
+the agility and strength of a leopard's. Before Davenant had time to
+realize what he had done he found himself staggering--hurled against the
+iron railing, which threatened to give way beneath his weight. He had
+not taken breath when he was flung again. In the dim light of the
+electrics he could see the glare in Ashley's eyes and hear him panting.
+Davenant, too, panted, but his wrath that had flared up like a rocket
+had already come down like a stick.
+
+"Look here," he stammered; "we--we--c-can't do this sort of thing."
+
+Ashley fell back. He, too, seemed to realize quickly the folly of the
+situation. When he spoke it was less in anger than in protest.
+
+"By God, you struck me!"
+
+"I didn't know it, Colonel. If I did, we're quits on
+it--because--because you insulted me. Perhaps you didn't know _that_.
+I'm willing to think you didn't--if you'll only believe that the whole
+thing has been a mistake--a damned, idiotic, tom-fool mistake."
+
+The words had their effect. Ashley fell back still farther. There was a
+sinking of his head and a shrinking of his figure that told of reaction
+from the moment of physical excess.
+
+A roadside bench was visible beneath an arc-lamp but a few yards away.
+"Come and sit down," Davenant said, hoarsely. He found it difficult to
+speak.
+
+Ashley stumbled along. He sat down heavily, like a man spent with
+fatigue or drink. With his elbows on his knees, he hid his face in his
+hands, while his body rocked.
+
+Davenant turned away, walking down the Embankment. He walked on for
+fifty or sixty yards. He himself felt a curious sense of being battered
+and used up. His heart pounded and the perspiration stood on his brow.
+Putting his hand to his collar, he found his evening cravat awry and
+his waistcoat pulled out of shape.
+
+He grasped the rail, as if for support, looking off with unseeing eyes
+into the night. Lights along the river-side were reflected in the water;
+here and there a bridge made a long low arch of lamps; more lights
+sprinkled the suburban hills, making a fringe to the pall of stars. They
+grew pale, even while he looked at them, as before a brighter radiance,
+and he knew that behind him the moon was coming up. He thought of the
+moonrise of the previous evening, when Olivia Guion had walked with him
+to the gate and let her hand rest in his. He recalled her words, as he
+had recalled them a hundred times that day, "_The man I care for_." He
+went back over each phase of their conversation, as though it was
+something he was trying to learn by heart. He remembered her longing for
+her aunt de Melcourt.
+
+All at once he struck the railing with the energy of a man who has a new
+inspiration. "By George!" he said, half aloud, "that's an idea--that's
+certainly an idea! I wonder if.... The _Indiana_ sailed last week ... it
+ought to be the turn of the _Louisiana_ the day after to-morrow. By
+George, I believe I could make it if ..."
+
+He hurried back to the bench where Ashley was still sitting. The latter
+was upright now, his arm stretched along the back. He had lit a
+cigarette.
+
+Davenant approached to within a few feet. "Look here, Colonel," he said,
+gently, "we've got to forget this evening."
+
+It was a minute or two before Ashley said: "What's the good of
+forgetting one thing when there are so many others to remember?"
+
+"Perhaps we can forget them, too--one by one. I guess you haven't
+understood me. I dare say I haven't understood you, either, though I
+think I could if you'd give me a chance. But all I want to say is this,
+that I'm--off--"
+
+Ashley turned quickly. "Off? Where?"
+
+"Where we're not likely to meet--for some little time--again."
+
+"Oh, but I say! You can't--"
+
+"Can't what, Colonel?"
+
+"Can't drop--drop out of the running--damn it all, man! you can't--you
+can't--let it be a walk-over for _me_--after all that's--"
+
+"That's where you've made your mistake, Colonel, I guess. You thought
+there was--was a--a race, so to speak--and that I was in it. Well, I
+wasn't?"
+
+"But what the deuce--?"
+
+"I not only wasn't in it--but there was no race. There never was. It was
+a walk-over for--for some one--from the start. Now I guess I'll say good
+night."
+
+He turned away abruptly, but, having taken a few steps, came back again.
+
+"Look here! Let's have a cigarette."
+
+Ashley fumbled for his case, opened it, and held it up. "I say, take two
+or three."
+
+As Ashley lifted the one he was smoking to serve as a light Davenant
+noticed that the hand trembled, and steadied it in the grasp of his own.
+
+"Thanks; and good night again," he said, briefly, as he strode finally
+away into the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+It was not till the motor had actually got out of Havre and was well
+along the dusty white road to the château that Davenant began to have
+misgivings. Up to that point the landmarks--and and the sea-marks--had
+been familiar. On board the _Louisiana_, in London, in Paris, even in
+Havre, he had felt himself on his accustomed beat. On steamers or trains
+and in hotels he had that kind of confidence in himself which, failing
+him somewhat whenever he entered the precincts of domestic life, was
+sure to desert him altogether now, as he approached the strange and
+imposing.
+
+"Madame est à la campagne."
+
+A black-eyed old woman had told him so on the previous day. For the
+instant he was relieved, since it put off the moment of confronting the
+great lady a little longer.
+
+He had, in fact, rung the bell at the frowning portal in the rue de
+l'Université with some trepidation. Suggestions of grandeur and mystery
+beyond anything he was prepared to meet lay within these seemingly
+fortified walls. At the same time it gave glory to the glamour in which
+the image of Olivia Guion always appeared to him to think she had
+passed and repassed these solemn gates at will, and that the stately
+Louis Quinze _hôtel_, of which the concierge allowed him a glimpse
+across the courtyard, had, on and off, been her home for years. It was
+one more detail that removed her beyond his sphere and made her
+inaccessible to his yearnings.
+
+From the obliging post-office clerk at the bank on which he drew--a
+gentleman posted in the movements of all distinguished Americans on the
+continent of Europe--he learned that "la campagne" for the Marquise de
+Melcourt meant the château of Melcourt-le-Danois in the neighborhood of
+Harfleur. He was informed, moreover, that by taking the two-o'clock
+train to Havre he could sleep that night at the Hôtel Frascati, and
+motor out to Melcourt easily within an hour in the morning. It began
+then to occur to him that what had presented itself at first as a
+prosaic journey from Boston to Paris and back was becoming an adventure,
+with a background of castles and noble dames.
+
+Nevertheless, he took heart for the run to Havre, and except for feeling
+at twilight the wistfulness that comes out of the Norman landscape--the
+melancholy of things forgotten but not gone, dead but still brooding
+wraith-like over the valley of the Seine, haunting the hoary churches,
+and the turreted châteaux, and the windings of the river, and the long
+lines of poplar, and the villages and forests and orchards and
+corn-fields--except for this, his spirits were good. If now and then he
+was appalled at what he, a shy fellow with no antecedents to recommend
+him and no persuasive powers, had undertaken, he thought of Olivia
+Guion. The thing he was attempting became trivial when compared with the
+possible benefits to her.
+
+That reflections too, enabled him to come victoriously out of three long
+hours of inward wrestling--three long hours spent on the jetty which
+thrust itself into the sea just outside his hotel at Havre. He supposed
+he had already fought the battle with himself and won it. Its renewal on
+the part of powers within his soul took him by surprise.
+
+He had strolled out after dinner to the Chaussée des États-Unis to while
+away the time before going to bed. Ships and sailors, with the lights
+and sights and sounds of a busy port, had for him the fascination they
+exert over most men who lead rather sedentary lives. At that time in the
+evening the Chaussée des États-Unis was naturally gay with the
+landsman's welcome to the sailor on shore. The cafés were crowded both
+inside and out. Singing came from one and the twang of an instrument
+from another, all along the quay. Soldiers mingled fraternally with
+sailors, and pretty young women, mostly bareheaded and neatly dressed in
+black, mingled with both. It was what a fastidious observer of life
+might call "low," but Davenant's judgments had no severity of that kind.
+He looked at the merry groups, composed for the most part of chance
+acquaintances, here to-day and gone to-morrow, swift and light of love,
+with a curious craving for fellowship. From the gatherings of friends he
+felt himself invariably the one shut out.
+
+It was this sense of exclusion that finally sent him away from the
+cheerful quay to wander down the jetty which marks the line where the
+Harbor of Grace, with its intricate series of basins and docks, becomes
+the sea. It was a mild night, though the waves beat noisily enough
+against the bastions of the pier. At intervals he was swept by a scud of
+spray. All sorts of acrid odors were in the wind--smells of tar and salt
+and hemp and smoke and oil--the perfumes of sea-hazard and romance.
+
+Pulling his cap over his brows and the collar of his ulster about his
+ears, he sat down on the stone coping. His shoulders were hunched; his
+hands hung between his knees. He did not care to smoke. For a few
+minutes he was sufficiently occupied in tracing the lines and the
+groupings of lights. He had been in Havre more than once before, and
+knew the quai de Londres from the quai de New York, and both from the
+quai du Chili. Across the mouth of the Seine he could distinguish the
+misty radiance which must be Trouville from that which must be Honfleur.
+Directly under his eyes in the Avant Port the dim hulls of steamers and
+war-ships, fishing-boats and tugs, lay like monsters asleep.
+
+There was no reason why all this should make him feel outside
+[Transcriber's Note: Original reads 'outide'] the warm glow and life of
+things; but it did. It did worse in that it inspired a longing for what
+he knew positively to be unattainable. It stirred a new impulse to fight
+for what he had definitely given up. It raised again questions he thought
+he had answered and revived hopes he had never had to quench, since from
+the beginning they were vain.
+
+_Were_ they vain? In taking this form the query became more
+insidious--more difficult to debate and settle once for all. To every
+argument there was a perpetually recurring, "Yes, but--" with the memory
+of the instants when her hand rested in his longer than there was any
+need for, of certain looks and lights in her eyes, of certain tones and
+half-tones in her voice. Other men would have made these things a
+beginning, whereas he had taken them as the end. He had taken them as
+the end by a foregone conclusion. They had meant so much to him that he
+couldn't conceive of asking more, when perhaps they were nothing but the
+first fruits.
+
+The wind increased in violence; the spray was salt on his mustache, and
+clung to the nap of his clothing. The radiance that marked Trouville and
+Honfleur grew dim almost to extinction. Along the quay the cafés began
+to diminish the number of their lights. The cheerful groups broke up,
+strolling home to the mansard or to the fo'castle, with bursts of
+drunken or drowsy song. Davenant continued to sit crouched, huddled,
+bowed. He ceased to argue, or to follow the conflict between
+self-interest and duty, or to put up a fight of any kind. He was content
+to sit still and suffer. In its own way suffering was a relief. It was
+the first time he had given it a chance since he had brought himself to
+facing squarely the fact of his useless, pointless love. He had always
+dodged it by finding something to be done, or choked it down by sheer
+force of will. Now he let it rush in on him, all through him, all over
+him, flooding his mind and spirit, making his heart swell and his blood
+surge and his nerves ache and his limbs throb and quiver. If he could
+have formed a thought it would have been that of the Hebrew Psalmist
+when he felt himself poured out like water. He had neither shame for his
+manhood nor alarm for his pride till he heard himself panting, panting
+raucously, with a sound that was neither a moan nor a sob, but which
+racked him convulsively, while there was a hot smarting in his eyes.
+
+But in the end he found relief and worked his way out to a sort of
+victory. That is to say, he came back to see, as he had seen all along,
+that there was one clear duty to be done. If he loved Olivia Guion with
+a love that was worthy to win, it must also be with a love that could
+lose courageously. This was no new discovery. It was only a fact which
+loneliness and the craving to be something to her, as she was everything
+to him, had caused him for the moment to lose sight of. But he came back
+to it with conviction. It was conviction that gave him confidence, that
+calmed him, enabling him, as a clock somewhere struck eleven, to get up,
+shake the sea-spray from his person, and return to his hotel.
+
+It was while he was going to bed that Rodney Temple's words came back to
+him, as they did from time to time: "Some call it God."
+
+"I wonder if it is--God," he questioned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the misgiving that beset him, as he motored out of Havre in the
+morning, was of another kind. It was that which attaches to the unlikely
+and the queer. Once having plunged into a country road, away from
+railways and hotels, he felt himself starting on a wild-goose chase. His
+assurance waned in proportion as conditions grew stranger. In vain an
+obliging chauffeur, accustomed to enlighten tourists as to the merits of
+this highway, pointed out the fact that the dusty road along which they
+sped had once--and not so many years ago--been the border of the bed of
+the Seine, that the white cliffs towering above them on the left, and
+edged along the top with verdure, marked the natural brink of the river,
+and that the church so admirably placed on a hillside was the shrine of
+a martyred maiden saint, whose body had come ashore here at Graville,
+having been flung into the water at Harfleur. Davenant was deaf to these
+interesting bits of information. He was blind, too. He was blind to the
+noble sweep of the Seine between soft green hills. He was blind to the
+craft on its bosom--steamers laden with the produce of orchard and the
+farm for England; Norwegian brigantines, weird as _The Flying Dutchman_
+in their black and white paint, carrying ice or lumber to Rouen;
+fishing-boats with red or umber sails. He was blind to the villages,
+clambering over cliffs to a casino, a _plage_, and a Hôtel des Bains, or
+nestling on the uplands round a spire. He was blind to the picturesque
+wooded gorges, through which little tributaries of the great river had
+once run violently down from the table-land of the Pays de Caux. He was
+blind to the charms of Harfleur, famous and somnolent, on the banks of a
+still more somnolent stream. He resumed the working of his faculties
+only when the chauffeur turned and said:
+
+"Voilà, monsieur--voilà le château de madame la marquise."
+
+If it was possible for Davenant's heart to leap and sink in the same
+instant, it did it then. It leaped at the sight of this white and rose
+castle, with its towers and donjon and keep; it sank at the thought that
+he, poor old unpretentious Peter Davenant, with no social or personal
+passports of any kind, must force his way over drawbridge and beneath
+portcullis--or whatever else might be the method of entering a feudal
+pile--into the presence of the châtelaine whose abode here must be that
+of some legendary princess, and bend her to his will. Stray memories
+came to him of Siegfrieds and Prince Charmings, with a natural gift for
+this sort of thing, but only to make his own appearance in the rôle the
+more absurd.
+
+Melcourt-le-Danois had that characteristic which goes with all fine and
+fitting architecture of springing naturally out of the soil. It seemed
+as if it must always have been there. It was as difficult to imagine the
+plateau on which it stood without it as to see Mont Saint Michel merely
+as a rocky islet. The plateau crowned a white bluff running out like the
+prow of a Viking ship into a bend of the Seine, commanding the river in
+both directions. It was clear at a glance that when Roger the Dane laid
+here the first stone of his pirates' stronghold, to protect his port of
+Harfleur, the salt water must have dashed right up against the chalky
+cliff; but the centuries during which the silt of the Vosges had been
+carried down the river and piled up against the rocks at its mouth, had
+driven the castle inland for an eighth of a mile. Melcourt-le-Danois
+which had once looked down into the very waves now dominated in the
+first place a strip of gardens, and orchards of small fruit, through
+which the, road from Harfleur to the village of Melcourt, half a mile
+farther up the Seine, ran like a bit of white braid.
+
+Viewed from the summit of the cliff on which Davenant's motor had
+stopped, the château was composed of two ancient towers guarding the
+long, and relatively low, relatively modern, brick mansion of the epoch
+of Louis Treize. The brick, once red, had toned down now to a soft old
+rose; the towers, once white, were splashed above the line to which the
+ivy climbed with rose and orange. Over the tip of the bluff and down its
+side of southern exposure, toward the village of Melcourt, ran a park of
+oak and chestnut, in all the October hues of yellow and olive-brown.
+
+But ten minutes later, when the motor had made a detour round cliffs and
+little inlets and arrived at the main entrance to the château, Davenant
+found the aspect of things less intimidating. Through a high
+wrought-iron grille, surmounted by the head of an armorial beast, he had
+the view of a Lenôtre garden, all scrolls and arabesques. The towers,
+which at a distance had seemed part of a continuous whole, now detached
+themselves. The actual residence was no more imposing than any
+good-sized house in America. Davenant understood the chauffeur to say
+that "Madame la marquise l'avait modernisé jusqu'au bout des ongles."
+
+Having summoned up courage to ring the bell, he found it answered by a
+middle-aged woman with a face worn by time and weather to the polished
+grooves and creases to which water wears a rock.
+
+"On ne visite pas le château."
+
+She made the statement with the stony, impersonal air of one who has to
+say the same thing a good many times a year. Davenant pressed close to
+the grille, murmuring something of which she caught the word "Madame."
+
+"Madame la marquise n'est pas visible."
+
+The quick Norman eye had, however, noticed the movement of Davenant's
+hand, detecting there something more than a card. In speaking she edged
+nearer the grille. Thrusting his fingers between the curves of the iron
+arabesques, he said, in his best French: "_Prenez_."
+
+Measuring time by the pounding of his heart rather than the ticking of
+his watch, it seemed to him he had a long time to wait before the woman
+reappeared, handing him back his card through the openwork of the
+grille, saying briefly: "Madame la marquise ne reçoit pas." Perhaps it
+was the crestfallen look in the blond giant's face that tempted her to
+add: "Je le regrette, monsieur."
+
+In the compassionate tone he read a hint that all was not lost.
+Scribbling under his name the words: "Boston, Mass. Very urgent," he
+once more passed the card through the grille, accompanied by the manual
+act that had won the woman's sympathy in the first place.
+
+"_Allez_, please," he said, earnestly, "and--_vite_."
+
+He found his penciled words effective, for presently the woman came
+back. "Venez, monsieur," she said, as she unlocked the grille with a
+large key carried beneath her apron. Her stony official manner had
+returned.
+
+As he drew near the house a young man sketching or writing under a
+yew-tree looked up curiously. A few steps farther on a pretty girl, in a
+Leghorn hat, clipping roses into a basket, glanced at him with shy,
+startled eyes. In the hall, where he was left standing, a young officer
+in sky-blue tunic and red breeches, who had been strumming at a piano in
+an adjoining room, strolled to the door and stared at him. A thin,
+black-eyed, sharp-visaged, middle-aged lady, dressed in black and
+wearing a knitted shawl--perhaps the mother of the three young people he
+had just seen--came half-way down the strip of red carpet on the stairs,
+inspected him, and went up again. It was all more disconcerting than he
+had expected.
+
+The great hall, of which the chief beauty was in the magnificent sweep
+of the monumental stairway, with its elaborate wrought-iron balustrade,
+struck him as a forbidding entry to a home. A man-servant came at last
+to deliver him from the soft, wondering eyes of the young officer, and
+lead him into a room which he had already recognized as a library
+through the half-open door.
+
+Here he had just time to get a blurred impression of portraits, busts,
+Bull surfaces, and rich or ancient bindings--with views through the long
+windows of the traffic on the Seine--when a little old lady appeared in
+a doorway at the farther end of the room. He knew she was a little old
+lady from all sorts of indefinable evidence, in spite of her own efforts
+to be young. He knew it in spite of fluffy golden hair and a filmy,
+youthful morning robe that displayed the daintiness of her figure as
+well as the expensiveness of her taste.
+
+She tripped rapidly down the long room, with quick little steps and a
+quick little swinging of the arms that made the loose gossamer sleeves
+blow outward from the wrists. He recognized her instantly as the
+Marquise de Melcourt from her resemblance, in all those outlines which
+poudre de riz and cherry paste could not destroy, to the Guion type. The
+face would have still possessed the Guion beauty, had she given it a
+chance. Looking at it as she came nearer, Davenant was reminded of
+things he had read of those Mongolian tribes who are said to put on
+masks to hide their fear and go resolutely forth to battle. Having
+always considered this a lofty form of courage, he was inconsistent in
+finding its reflection here--the fear of time beneath these painted
+cheeks and fluffy locks, and the fight against it carried on by the
+Marquise's whole brave bearing--rather pitifully comic.
+
+Madame herself had no such feeling. She wore her mask with absolute
+nonchalance, beginning to speak while still some yards away.
+
+"Eh, bien, monsieur?"
+
+Davenant doubled himself up into a deep bow, but before he had time to
+stammer out some apologetic self-introduction, she continued:
+
+"You've come from Davis and Stern, I suppose, on business. I always tell
+them not to send me people, but to cable. Why didn't they cable? They
+know I don't like Americans coming here. I'm pestered to death with
+them--that is, I used to be--and I should be still, if I didn't put 'em
+down."
+
+The voice was high and chattering, with a tendency to crack. It had the
+American quality with a French intonation. In speaking, the Marquise
+made little nervous dashes, now to the right, now to the left, as though
+endeavoring to get by some one who blocked her way.
+
+"I haven't come on business, my--my lady."
+
+He used this term of respect partly from a frightened desire to
+propitiate a great personage and partly because he couldn't think of any
+other.
+
+"Then what _have_ you come on? If it's to see the château you may as
+well go away. It's never shown. Those are positive orders. I make no
+exceptions. They must have told you so at the gate. But you Americans
+will dare anything. Mon Dieu, quel tas de barbares!"
+
+The gesture of her hands in uttering the exclamation was altogether
+French, but she betrayed her oneness with the people she reviled by
+saying: "Quel tah de bah-bah!"
+
+"I haven't come to see the château either, my lady--"
+
+"You can call me madame," she interrupted, not without a kindlier
+inflection on the hint.
+
+He began again. "I haven't come to see the château, either--madame. I've
+come to see _you_."
+
+She made one of her little plunges. "Oh, indeed! _Have_ you? I thought
+you'd learned better than that--over there. You used to come in
+ship-loads, but--"
+
+He began to feel more sure of himself. "When I say I came to see you,
+madame, I mean, I came to--to tell you something."
+
+"Then, so long as it's not on business, I don't want to hear it. I
+suppose you're one of Walter Davenant's boys? I don't consider him any
+relation to me at all. It's too distant. If I acknowledged all the
+cousins forced on me from over there I might as well include Abraham and
+Adam. Are you the first or the second wife's son?"
+
+He explained his connection with the Davenant name. "But that isn't what
+I came to talk about, madame--not about myself. I wanted to tell you
+of--of your nephew--Mr. Henry Guion."
+
+She turned with a movement like that of a fleeing nymph, her hand
+stretched behind her. "Don't. I don't want to hear about him. Nor about
+my niece. They're strangers to me. I don't know them."
+
+"You'd like to know them now, madame--because they're in great trouble."
+
+She took refuge behind a big English arm-chair, leaning on the back.
+
+"I dare say. It's what they were likely to come to. I told my niece so,
+the last time she allowed me the privilege of her conversation. But I
+told her, too, that in the day of her calamity she wasn't to look to
+me."
+
+"She isn't looking to you, madame. _I_ am. I'm looking to you because I
+imagine you can help her. There's no one else--"
+
+"And has she sent you as her messenger? Why can't she come herself, if
+it's so bad as all that--or write? I thought she was married--to some
+Englishman."
+
+"They're not married yet, madame; and unless you help her I don't see
+how they're going to be--the way things stand."
+
+"Unless I help her! My good fellow, you don't know what you're saying.
+Do you know that she refused--refused violently--to help _me_?"
+
+He shook his head, his blue eyes betraying some incredulity.
+
+"Well, then, I'll tell you. It'll show you. You'll be able to go away
+again with a clear conscience, knowing you've done your best and failed.
+Sit down."
+
+As she showed no intention of taking a seat herself, he remained
+standing.
+
+"She refused the Duc de Berteuil." She made the statement with head
+erect and hands flung apart. "I suppose you have no idea of what that
+meant to me?"
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't."
+
+"Of course you haven't. I don't know an American who _would_ have.
+You're so engrossed in your own small concerns. None of you have any
+conception of the things that really matter--the higher things. Well,
+then, let me tell you. The Duc de Berteuil is--or rather _was_--the
+greatest parti in France. He isn't any more, because they've married him
+to a rich girl from South America or one of those places--brown as a
+berry--with a bust--" She rounded her arms to give an idea of the bust.
+"Mais, n'importe. My niece refused him. That meant--I've never confessed
+it to any one before--I've been too proud--but I want you to
+understand--it meant my defeat--my final defeat. I hadn't the courage to
+begin again. C'était le désastre. C'était Sedan."
+
+"Oh, madame!"
+
+It seemed to him that her mouth worked with an odd piteousness; and
+before going on she put up a crooked little jeweled hand and dashed away
+a tear.
+
+"It would have been everything to me. It would have put me where I
+belong, in the place I've been trying to reach all these years. The life
+of an American woman in Europe, monsieur, can be very cruel. We've
+nothing to back us up, and everything to fight against in front. It's
+all push, and little headway. They don't want us. That's the plain
+English of it. They can't imagine why we leave our own country and come
+over here. They're so narrow. They're selfish, too. Everything they've
+got they want to keep for themselves. They marry us--the Lord only knows
+why!--and nine times out of ten all we get for it is the knowledge that
+we've been bamboozled out of our own _dots_. There was René de
+Lonchartres who married that goose Annie Armstrong. They ridiculed her
+when she came over here, and at the same time clapped him on the back
+for having got her. That's as true as you live. It's their way. They
+would have ridiculed me, too, if I hadn't been determined years ago to
+beat them on their own ground. I could have done it, too, if--"
+
+"If it had been worth while," he ventured.
+
+"You know nothing about it. I could have done it if my niece had put out
+just one little finger--when I'd got everything ready for her to do it.
+Yes, I'd got everything ready--and yet she refused him. She refused him
+after I'd seen them all--his mother, his sisters, his two uncles--one of
+them in waiting on the Duc d'Orléans--Philippe V., as we call him--all
+of them the purest old noblesse d'epée in Normandy."
+
+Her agitation expressed itself again in little dartings to and fro. "I
+went begging to them, as you might say. I took all their snubs--and oh!
+so fine some of them were!--more delicate than the point of a needle! I
+took them because I could see just how I should pay them back. I needn't
+explain to you how that would be, because you couldn't understand. It
+would be out of the question for an American."
+
+"I don't think we _are_ good at returning snubs, madame. That's a fact."
+
+"You're not good at anything but making money; and you make that
+blatantly, as if you were the first people in the world to do it. Why,
+France and England could buy and sell you, and most of you don't know
+it. Mais, n'importe. I went begging to them, as I've told you. At first
+they wouldn't hear of her at any price--didn't want an American. That
+was bluff, to get a bigger _dot_. I had counted on it in advance. I knew
+well enough that they'd take a Hottentot if there was money enough. For
+the matter of that, Hottentot and American are much the same to them.
+But I made it bluff for bluff. Oh, I'm sharp. I manage all my own
+affairs in America--with advice. I've speculated a little in your
+markets quite successfully. I know how I stand to within a few thousand
+dollars of your money. I offered half a million of francs. They laughed
+at it. I knew they would, but it's as much as they'd get with a French
+girl. I went to a million--to a million and a half--to two millions. At
+two millions--that would be--let me see--five into twenty makes
+four--about four hundred thousand dollars of your money--they gave in.
+Yes, they gave in. I expected them to hold out for it, and they did. But
+at that figure they made all the concessions and gave in."
+
+"And did he give in?" Davenant asked, with naïve curiosity.
+
+"Oh, I'd made sure of him beforehand. He and I understood each other
+perfectly. He would have let it go at a million and a half. He was next
+door to being in love with her besides. All he wanted was to be well
+established, poor boy! But I meant to go up to two millions, anyhow. I
+could afford it."
+
+"Four hundred thousand dollars," Davenant said, with an idea that he
+might convey a hint to her, "would be practically the sum--"
+
+"I could afford it," she went on, "because of those ridiculous
+copper-mines--the Hamlet and Tecla. I wasn't rich before that. My _dot_
+was small. No Guion I ever heard of was able to save money. My father
+was no exception."
+
+"You are in the Hamlet and Tecla!" Davenant's blue eyes were wide open.
+He was on his own ground. The history of the Hamlet and Tecla Mines had
+been in his own lifetime a fairy-tale come true.
+
+Madame de Melcourt nodded proudly. "My father had bought nearly two
+thousand shares when they were down to next to nothing. They came to me
+when he died. It was mere waste paper for years and years. Then all of a
+sudden--pouff!--they began to go up and up--and I sold them when they
+were near a thousand. I could have afforded the two millions of
+francs--and I promised to settle Melcourt-le-Danois on them into the
+bargain, when I--if I ever should--But my niece wouldn't take
+him--simply--would--not. Ah," she cried, in a strangled voice, "c'était
+trop fort!"
+
+"But did she know you were--what shall I say?--negotiating?"
+
+"She was in that stupid England. It wasn't a thing I could write to her
+about. I meant it as a surprise. When all was settled I sent for
+her--and told her. Oh, monsieur, vous n'avez pas d'idée! Queue scène!
+Queue scène! J'ai failli en mourir." She wrung her clasped hands at the
+recollection.
+
+"That girl has an anger like a storm. Avec tous ses airs de reine et de
+sainte--she was terrible. Never shall I forget it--jamais! jam-ais! au
+grand jamais! Et puis," she added, with a fatalistic toss of her hands,
+"c'était fini. It was all over. Since then--nothing!"
+
+She made a little dash as if to leave him, returning to utter what
+seemed like an afterthought. "It would have made her. It would have made
+_me_. We could have dictated to the Faubourg. We could have humiliated
+them--like that." She stamped her foot. "It would have been a great
+alliance--what I've been so much in need of. The Melcourt--well, they're
+all very well--old noblesse de la Normandie, and all that--but
+poor!--mais pauvres!--and as provincial as a curé de campagne. When I
+married my poor husband--but we won't go into that--I've been a widow
+since I was so high--ever since 1870--with my own way to make. If my
+niece hadn't deserted me I could have made it. Now all that is
+past--fini-ni-ni! The clan Berteuil has set the Faubourg against me.
+They've the power, too. It's all so intricate, so silent, such wheels
+within wheels--but it's done. They've never wanted me. They don't want
+any of us--not for ourselves. It's the sou!--the sou!--the everlasting
+sou! Noble or peasant--it makes no difference. But if my niece hadn't
+abandoned me--"
+
+"Why shouldn't you come home, madame?" Davenant suggested, touched by so
+much that was tragic. "You wouldn't find any one after the sou there."
+
+"They're all about me," she whispered--"the Melcourt. They're all over
+the house. They come and settle on me, and I can't shake them off. They
+suffocate me--waiting for the moment when--But I've made my will, and
+some'll be disappointed. Oh, I shall leave them Melcourt-le-Danois. It's
+mine. I bought it with my own money, after my husband's death, and
+restored it when the Hamlet and Tecla paid so well. It shall not go out
+of their family--for my husband's sake. But," she added, fiercely,
+"neither shall the money go out of mine. They shall know I have a
+family. It's the only way by which I can force the knowledge on them.
+They think I sprang out of the earth like a mushroom. You may tell my
+niece as much as that--and let her get all the comfort from it she can.
+That's all I have to say, monsieur. Good morning."
+
+The dash she made from him seeming no more final than those which had
+preceded it, he went on speaking.
+
+"I'm afraid, madame, that help is too far in the future to be of much
+assistance now. Besides, I'm not sure it's what they want. We've managed
+to keep Mr. Henry Guion out of prison. That danger is over. Our present
+concern is for Miss Olivia Guion's happiness."
+
+As he expected, the shock calmed her. Notwithstanding her mask, she grew
+suddenly haggard, though her eyes, which--since she had never been able
+to put poudre de riz or cherry paste in them--were almost as fine as
+ever, instantly flashed out the signal of the Guion pride. Her fluffy
+head went up, and her little figure stiffened as she entrenched herself
+again behind the arm-chair. Her only hint of flinching came from a
+slackening in the flow of speech and a higher, thinner quality in the
+voice.
+
+"Has my nephew, Henry Guion, been doing things--that--that would send
+him--to prison?"
+
+In spite of herself the final words came out with a gasp.
+
+"It's a long story, madame--or, at least, a complicated one. I could
+explain it, if you'd give me the time."
+
+"Sit down."
+
+They took seats at last. Owing to the old lady's possession of what she
+herself called a business mind he found the tale easy in the telling.
+Her wits being quick and her questions pertinent, she was soon in
+command of the facts. She was soon, too, in command of herself. The
+first shock having passed, she was able to go into complete explanations
+with courage.
+
+"So that," he concluded, "now that Mr. Guion is safe, if Miss Guion
+could only marry--the man--the man she cares for--everything would be
+put as nearly right as we can make it."
+
+"And at present they are at a deadlock. She won't marry him if he has to
+sell his property, and so forth; and he can't marry her, and live in
+debt to you. Is that it?"
+
+"That's it, madame, exactly. You've put it in a nutshell."
+
+She looked at him hardly. "And what has it all got to do with me?"
+
+He looked at her steadily in his turn. "I thought perhaps you wouldn't
+care to live in debt to me, either."
+
+She was startled. "Who? I? En voilà une idée!"
+
+"I thought," he went on, "that possibly the Guion sense of family
+honor--"
+
+"Fiddle-faddle! There's no sense of family honor among Americans. There
+can't be. You can only have family honor where, as with us, the family
+is the unit; whereas, with you, the unit is the individual. The American
+individual may have a sense of honor; but the American family is only a
+disintegrated mush. What you really thought was that you might get your
+money back."
+
+"If you like, madame. That's another way of putting it. If the family
+paid me, Miss Guion would feel quite differently--and so would Colonel
+Ashley."
+
+"When you say the family," she sniffed, "you mean me."
+
+"In the sense that I naturally think first of its most distinguished
+member. And, of course, the greater the distinction the greater must
+be--shall I call it the indignity?--of living under an obligation--"
+
+"Am I to understand that you put up this money--that's your American
+term, isn't it?--that you put up this money in the expectation that I
+would pay you back?"
+
+"Not exactly. I put up the money, in the first place, to save the credit
+of the Guion name, and with the intention, if you didn't pay me back, to
+do without it."
+
+"And you risked being considered over-officious."
+
+"There wasn't much risk about that," he smiled. "They did think me
+so--and do."
+
+"And you got every one into a fix."
+
+"Into a fix, but out of prison."
+
+"Hm!"
+
+She grew restless, uncomfortable, fidgeting with her rings and
+bracelets.
+
+"And pray, what sort of a person is this Englishman to whom my niece has
+got herself engaged?"
+
+"One of their very finest," he said, promptly. "As a soldier, so they
+say, he'll catch up one day with men like Roberts and Kitchener; and as
+for his private character--well, you can judge of it from the fact that
+he wants to strip himself of all he has so that the Guion name shall owe
+nothing to any one outside--"
+
+"Then he's a fool."
+
+"From that point of view--yes. There _are_ fools of that sort, madame.
+But there's something more to him."
+
+He found himself reciting glibly Ashley's claims as a suitor in the way
+of family, position, and fortune.
+
+"So that it would be what some people might call a good match."
+
+"The best sort of match. It's the kind of thing she's made for--that
+she'd be happy in--regiments, and uniforms, and glory, and presenting
+prizes, and all that."
+
+"Hm. I shall have nothing to do with it." She rose with dignity. "If my
+niece had only held out a little finger--"
+
+"It was a case, madame," he argued, rising, too--"it was a case in which
+she couldn't hold out a little finger without offering her whole hand."
+
+"You know nothing about it. I'm wrong to discuss it with you at all. I'm
+sure I don't know why I do, except that--"
+
+"Except that I'm an American," he suggested--"one of your own."
+
+"One of my own! Quelle idée! Do you like him--this Englishman?"
+
+He hedged. "Miss Guion likes him."
+
+"But you don't."
+
+"I haven't said so. I might like him well enough if--"
+
+"If you got your money back."
+
+He smiled and nodded.
+
+"Is she in love with him?"
+
+"Oh--deep!"
+
+"How do _you_ know? Has she told you so?"
+
+"Y-es; I think I may say--she has."
+
+"Did you ask her?"
+
+He colored. "I had to--about something."
+
+"You weren't proposing to her yourself, were you?"
+
+He tried to take this humorously. "Oh no, madame--"
+
+"You can't be in love with her, or you wouldn't be trying so hard to
+marry her to some one else--not unless you're a bigger fool than you
+look."
+
+"I hope I'm not that," he laughed.
+
+"Well, I shall have nothing to do with it--nothing. Between my niece and
+me--tout est fini." She darted from him, swerving again like a bird on
+the wing. "I don't know you. You come here with what may be no more than
+a cock-and-bull story, to get inside the château."
+
+"I shouldn't expect you to do anything, madame, without verifying all
+I've told you. For the matter of that, it'll be easy enough. You've only
+to write to your men of business, or--which would be better still--take
+a trip to America for yourself."
+
+She threw out her arms with a tragic gesture. "My good man, I haven't
+been in America for forty years. I nearly died of it then. What it must
+be like now--"
+
+"It wouldn't be so fine as this, madame, nor so picturesque. But it
+would be full of people who'd be fond of you, not for the sou--but for
+yourself."
+
+She did her best to be offended. "You're taking liberties, monsieur.
+C'est bien américan, céla."
+
+"Excuse me, madame," he said, humbly. "I only mean that they _are_ fond
+of you--at least, I I know Miss Guion is. Two nights before I sailed I
+heard her almost crying for you--yes, almost crying. That's why I came.
+I thought I'd come and tell you. I should think it might mean something
+to you--over here so long--all alone--to have some one like that--such
+a--such a--such a wonderful young lady wanting you--in her trouble--"
+
+"And such a wonderful young man wanting his money back. Oh, I'm not
+blind, monsieur. I see a great deal more than you think. I see through
+and through you. You fancy you're throwing dust in my eyes, and you
+haven't thrown a grain. Pouff! Oh, la, la! Mais, c'est fini. As for my
+niece--le bon Dieu l' a bien punie. For me to step in now would be to
+interfere with the chastisement of Providence. Le bon Dieu is always
+right. I'll say that for Him. Good morning." She touched a bell. "The
+man will show you to the door. If you like to stroll about the
+grounds--now that you've got in--well, you can."
+
+With sleeves blowing she sped down the room as if on pinions. The
+man-servant waited respectfully. Davenant stood his ground, hoping for
+some sign of her relenting. It was almost over her shoulder that she
+called back:
+
+"Where are you staying?"
+
+He told her.
+
+"Stupid place. You'll find the Chariot d'Or at Melcourt a great deal
+nicer. Simple, but clean. An old chef of mine keeps it. Tell him I sent
+you. And ask for his poularde au riz."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+"What do you think of him?"
+
+Ashley's tone indicated some uncertainty as to what he thought himself.
+Indeed, uncertainty was indicated elsewhere than in his tone. It seemed
+to hang about him, to look from his eyes, to take form in his person.
+Perhaps this was the one change wrought in him by a month's residence in
+America. When he arrived everything had bespoken him a man aggressively
+positive with the habit of being sure. His very attitude, now, as he sat
+in Rodney Temple's office in the Harvard Gallery of Fine Arts, his hands
+thrust into his pockets, his legs stretched apart, his hat on the back
+of his head, suggested one who feels the foundations of the earth to
+have shifted.
+
+Rodney Temple, making his arrangements for leaving for the day, met one
+question with another. "What do _you?_"
+
+"You know him," Ashley urged, "and I don't."
+
+"I thought you did. I thought you'd read him right off--as a
+cow-puncher."
+
+"He looks like one, by Jove! and he speaks like one, too. You wouldn't
+call him a gentleman? What?"
+
+"If you mean by a gentleman one who's always been able to take the best
+in the world for granted, perhaps he isn't. But that isn't our
+test--over here."
+
+"Then, what is?"
+
+"I'm not sure that I could tell you so that you'd understand--at any
+rate, not unless you start out with the fact that the English gentleman
+and the American differ not only in species, but in genus. I'd go so far
+as to say that they've got to be recognized by different sets of
+faculties. You get at your man by the eye and the ear; we have to use a
+subtler apparatus. If we didn't we should let a good many go uncounted.
+Some of our finest are even more uncouth with their consonants than good
+friend Davenant. They'd drop right out of your list, but they take a
+high place in ours. To try to discern one by the methods created for the
+other is like what George Eliot says of putting on spectacles to detect
+odors. Ignorance of this basic social fact on both sides has given rise
+to much international misjudgment. See?"
+
+"Can't say that I do."
+
+"No, you wouldn't. But until you do you won't understand a big simple
+type--"
+
+"I don't care a hang about his big simple type. What I want to know is
+how to take him. Is he a confounded sentimentalist?--or is he still
+putting up a bluff?"
+
+"What difference does it make to you?"
+
+"If he's putting up a bluff, he's waiting out there at Michigan for me
+to call it. If he's working the sentimental racket, then I've got to be
+the beneficiary of his beastly good-will."
+
+"If he's putting up a bluff, you can fix him by not calling it at all;
+and as for his beastly good-will, well, he's a beneficiary of it, too."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Because beastly good-will is a thing that cuts both ways. He'll get as
+much out of it as you."
+
+"That's all very fine--"
+
+"It's very fine, indeed, for him. We've an old saying in these parts: By
+the Street called Straight we come to the House called Beautiful. It's
+one of those fanciful saws of which the only justification is that it
+works. Any one can test the truth of it by taking the highway. Well,
+friend Davenant is taking it. He'll reach the House called Beautiful as
+straight as a die. Don't you fret about that. You'll owe him nothing in
+the long run, because he'll get all the reward he's entitled to. When's
+the wedding? Fixed the date yet?"
+
+"Not going to fix one," Ashley explained, moodily. "One of these days,
+when everything is settled at Tory Hill and the sale is over, we shall
+walk off to the church and get married. That seems to be the best way,
+as matters stand."
+
+"It's a very sensible way at all times. And I hear you're carrying Henry
+off with you to England."
+
+Ashley shrugged his shoulders. "Going the whole hog. What? Had to make
+the offer. Olivia couldn't leave him behind. Anything that will make her
+happy--"
+
+"Will make you happy."
+
+"That's about the size of it."
+
+Having locked the last drawer and put out the desk light, Temple led his
+guest down the long gallery and across the Yard to the house on
+Charlesbank. Here Ashley pursued kindred themes in the company of Mrs.
+Fane, finding himself alone with her at tea. He was often alone with her
+at tea, her father having no taste for this form of refreshment, while
+her mother found reasons for being absent.
+
+"Queer old cove, your governor," Ashley observed, stretching himself
+comfortably before the fire. The blaze of logs alone lit up the room.
+
+"Is that why you seem to have taken a fancy to him?"
+
+"I like to hear him gassing. Little bit like the Bible, don't you know."
+
+"He's very fond of the Bible."
+
+"Seems to think a lot of that chap--your governor."
+
+A nod supposed to indicate the direction of the State of Michigan
+enabled her to follow his line of thought.
+
+"He does. There's something rather colossal about the way he's dropped
+out--"
+
+"A jolly sight too colossal. Makes him more important than if he'd
+stayed on the spot and fought the thing to a finish."
+
+"Fought what thing to a finish?"
+
+He was sorry to have used the expression. "Oh, there's still a jolly lot
+to settle up, you know."
+
+"But I thought everything was arranged--that you'd accepted the
+situation."
+
+He stretched himself more comfortably before the fire. "We'd a row," he
+said, suddenly.
+
+"A row? What kind of a row?"
+
+"A street row--just like two hooligans. He struck me."
+
+"Rupert!" She half sprang up. "He--"
+
+Ashley swung round in his chair. He was smiling.
+
+"Oh, I _beg_ your pardon," she cried, in confusion. "I can't think what
+made me call you that. I never _do_--never. It was the surprise--and the
+shock--"
+
+"That's all right," he assured her. "I often call you Drusilla when I'm
+talking to Olivia. I don't see why we shouldn't--we've always been such
+pals--and we're going to be a kind of cousins--"
+
+"Tell me about Peter."
+
+"Oh, there's nothing much that stands telling. We were two idiots--two
+silly asses. I insulted him--and he struck out. I called him a cad--I
+believe I called him a damned cad."
+
+"To his _face_?"
+
+"To his _nose_."
+
+"Oh, you shouldn't have done that."
+
+"And he got mad, by Jove! Oh, it didn't last. We pulled off in a second
+or two. We saw we were two idiots--two kids. It wasn't worth getting on
+one's high horse about--or attempting to follow it up--it was too
+beastly silly for heroics--except that--that he--"
+
+"Except that he--what?"
+
+"Except that he--got the better of me. He has the better of me still.
+And I can't allow that, by Jove! Do you see?"
+
+"I don't see very clearly. In what way did he get the better of you?"
+
+"In the whole thing--the way he carried it off--the whole silly
+business."
+
+"Then I don't see what's to be done about it _now_."
+
+"Something's got to be done, by Jove! I can't let it go at that."
+
+"Well, what do you propose?"
+
+"I don't propose anything. But I can't go through life letting that
+fellow stay on top. Why, considering everything--all he's done for
+Olivia and her father--and now this other thing--and his beastly
+magnanimity besides--he's frightfully on top. It won't do, you know. But
+I say, you'll not tell Olivia, will you? She'd hate it--about the row, I
+mean. I don't mind your knowing. You're always such a good pal to me--"
+
+It was impossible to go on, because Mrs. Temple bustled in from the task
+of helping Olivia with the packing and sacking at Tory Hill. Having
+greeted Ashley with the unceremoniousness permissible with one who was
+becoming an intimate figure at the fireside, she settled to her tea.
+
+"Oh, so sad!" she reflected, her little pursed-up mouth twitching
+nervously. "The dear old house all dismantled! Everything to go! I've
+asked Henry to come and stay here. It's too uncomfortable for him, with
+all the moving and packing going on around him. It'll be easier for dear
+Olivia, too. So hard for her to take care of him, with all the other
+things she has on her hands. There's Peter's room. Henry may as well
+have it. I don't suppose we shall see anything more of Peter for ages to
+come. But I do wish he'd write. Don't you, Colonel Ashley? I've written
+to him three times now--and not a line from him! I suppose they must be
+able to get letters out there, at Stoughton, Michigan. It can't be so
+far beyond civilization as all that. And Olivia would like it. She's
+worried about him--about his not writing--and everything. Don't you
+think, Colonel Ashley?"
+
+Ashley looked blank. "I haven't noticed it--"
+
+"Oh, I have. A woman's eye sees those little things, don't you think?
+Men have so much on their hands--the great things of the world--but the
+little things, they often count, don't you think? But I tell dear Olivia
+not to worry. Everything will come right. Things do come right--very
+often. I'm more pessimistic than Rodney--that I must say. But still I
+think things have a way of coming right when we least expect it. I tell
+dear Olivia that Peter will send a line just when we're not looking for
+it. It's the watched pot that never boils, you know, and so I tell her
+to stop watching for the postman. That's fatal to getting a
+letter--watching for the postman. How snug you two look here together!
+Well, I'll run up and take off my things. No; no more tea, dear. I won't
+say good-by, Colonel Ashley, because you'll be here when I come down."
+
+Mrs. Temple was a good woman who would have been astonished to hear
+herself accused of falsehood but, as a matter of fact, her account of
+the conversation with Olivia bore little relation to the conversation
+itself. What she had actually said was:
+
+"Poor Peter! I suppose he doesn't write because he's trying to forget."
+
+The challenge here being so direct, Olivia felt it her duty to take it
+up. The ladies were engaged in sorting the linen in preparation for the
+sale.
+
+"Forget what?"
+
+"Forget Drusilla, I suppose. Hasn't it struck you--how much he was in
+love with her?"
+
+Olivia held a table-cloth carefully to the light. "Is this Irish linen
+or German? I know mamma did get some at Dresden--"
+
+Mrs. Temple pointed out the characteristic of the Belfast weave and
+pressed her question. "Haven't you noticed it--about Peter?"
+
+Olivia tried to keep her voice steady as she said: "I've no doubt I
+should have seen it if I hadn't been so preoccupied."
+
+"Some people think--Rodney, for instance--that he'd lost his head about
+you, dear; but we mothers have an insight--"
+
+"Of course! There seems to be one missing from the dozen of this
+pattern."
+
+"Oh, it'll turn up. It's probably in the pile over there. I thought I'd
+speak about it, dear," she went on, "because it must be a relief to you
+not to have that complication. Things are so complicated already, don't
+you think? But if you haven't Peter on your mind, why, that's one thing
+the less to worry about. If you thought he was in love with you,
+dear--in your situation--going to be married to some one else--But you
+needn't be afraid of that at all. I never saw a young man more in love
+with any one than he is with Drusilla--and I think she must have refused
+him. If she hadn't he would never have shot off in that way, like a bolt
+from the blue--But what's the matter, dear? You look white. You're not
+ill?"
+
+"It's the smell of lavender," Olivia gasped, weakly. "I never could
+endure it. I'll just run into the air a minute--"
+
+This was all that passed between Olivia and Mrs. Temple on the subject.
+If the latter reported it with suppressions and amplifications it was
+doubtless due to her knowledge of what could be omitted as well as of
+what would have been said had the topic been pursued. In any case it
+caused her to sigh and mumble as she went on with her task of folding
+and unfolding and of examining textures and designs:
+
+"Oh, how mixy! Such sixes and sevens! Everything the wrong way round! My
+poor Drusilla!--my poor little girlie! And such a good position! Just
+what she's capable of filling!--as well as Olivia--better, with all her
+experience of their army. ''Tis better to have loved and lost,' dear
+Tennyson says; but I don't know. Besides, she's done that already--with
+poor Gerald--and now, to have to face it all a second time--my poor
+little girlie!"
+
+As for Olivia, she felt an overpowering desire to flee away. Speeding
+through the house, where workmen were nailing up cases or sacking rugs,
+she felt that she was fleeing--fleeing anywhere--anywhere--to hide
+herself. As a matter of fact, the flight was inward, for there was
+nowhere to go but to her room. Her way was down the short staircase from
+the attic and along a hall; but it seemed to her that she lived through
+a succession of emotional stages in the two or three minutes it took to
+cover it. Her first wild cry "It isn't true! It isn't true!" was
+followed by the question "Why shouldn't it be true?" to end with her
+asking herself: "What difference does it make to me?"
+
+"What difference _can_ it make to me?"
+
+She had reached that form of the query by the time she took up her
+station at the window of her room, to stare blankly at the November
+landscape. She saw herself face to face now with the question which,
+during the past month, ever since Davenant's sudden disappearance, she
+had used all her resources to evade. That it would one day force itself
+upon her she knew well enough; but she hoped, too, that before there was
+time for that she would have pronounced her marriage vows, and so burned
+her bridges behind her. Amid the requirements of duty, which seemed to
+shift from week to week, the one thing stable was the necessity on her
+part to keep her promise to the man who had stood by her so nobly. If
+once it had seemed to her that Davenant's demands--whatever they might
+prove to be--would override all others, it was now quite clear that
+Ashley's claim on her stood first of all. He had been so loyal, so true,
+so indifferent to his own interests! Besides, he loved her. It was now
+quite another love from that of the romantic knight who had wooed a
+gracious lady in the little house at Southsea. That tapestry-tale had
+ended on the day of his arrival at Tory Hill. In its place there had
+risen the tested devotion of a man for a woman in great trouble,
+compelled to deal with the most sordid things in life. He had refused to
+be spared any of the details she would have saved him from or to turn
+away from any of the problems she was obliged to face. His very revolt
+against it, that repugnance to the necessity for doing it which he was
+not at all times able to conceal, made his self-command in bringing
+himself to it the more worthy of her esteem. He had the defects of his
+qualities and the prejudices of his class and profession; but over and
+above these pardonable failings he had the marks of a hero.
+
+And now there was this thing!
+
+She had descried it from afar. She had had a suspicion of it before
+Davenant went away. It had not created a fear; it was too strange and
+improbable for that; but it had brought with it a sense of wonder. She
+remembered the first time she had felt it, this sense of wonder, this
+sense of something enchanted, outside life and the earth's atmosphere.
+It was at that moment on the lawn when, after the unsuccessful meeting
+between Ashley and Davenant, she had turned with the latter to go into
+the house. That there was a protective, intimate element in her feeling
+she had known on the instant; but what she hadn't known on the instant,
+but was perfectly aware of now, was that her whole subconscious being,
+had been crying out even then: "My own! My own!"
+
+With the exaggeration of this thought she was able to get herself in
+hand. She was able to debate so absurd a suggestion, to argue it down,
+and turn it into ridicule. But she yielded again as the Voice that
+talked with her urged the plea: "I didn't say you knew it consciously.
+You couldn't cry 'My own! My own!' to a man whom up to that point you
+had treated with disdain. But your subliminal being had begun to know
+him, to recognize him as--"
+
+To elude this fancy she set herself to recapitulating his weak points.
+She could see why Ashley should thrust him aside as being "not a
+gentleman." He fell short, in two or three points, of the English
+standard. That he had little experience of life as it is lived, of its
+balance and proportion and perspective, was clear from the way in which
+he had flung himself and his money into the midst of the Guion
+disasters. No man of the world could possibly have done that. The very
+fact of his doing it made him lawfully a subject for some of the
+epithets Ashley applied to him. Almost any one would apply them who
+wanted to take him from a hostile point of view.
+
+She forgot herself so far as to smile faintly. It was just the sort of
+deficiency which she had it in her power to make up. The reflection set
+her to dreaming when she wanted to be doing something else. She could
+have brought him the dower of all the things he didn't know, while he
+could give her.... But she caught herself again.
+
+"What kind of a woman am I?"
+
+She began to be afraid. She began to see in herself the type she most
+detested--the woman who could deliberately marry a man and not be loyal
+to him. She was on the threshold of marriage with Ashley, and she was
+thinking of the marvel of life with some one else. When one of the inner
+Voices denied this charge, another pressed it home by nailing the
+precise incident on which her heart had been dwelling. "You were
+thinking of this--of that--of the time on the stairs when, with his face
+close to yours, he asked you if you loved the man you'd be going away
+with--of the evening at the gate when your hand was in his and it was so
+hard to take it away. He has no position to offer you. There's nothing
+remarkable about him beyond a capacity for making money. He's beneath
+you from every point of view except that of his mere manhood, and yet
+you feel that you could let yourself slip into that--into the strength
+and peace of it--"
+
+She caught herself again--impatiently. It was no use! There was
+something wilful within her, something that could be called by even a
+stronger name, that worked back to the point from which she tried to
+flee, whatever means she took to get away from it.
+
+She returned to her work, persuading Cousin Cherry to go home to tea and
+leave her to finish the task alone. Even while she did so one of the
+inner Voices taunted her by saying: "That'll leave you all the more free
+to dream of--_him_."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some days passed before she felt equal to talking about Davenant again.
+This time it was to the tinkling silver, as she and Drusilla Fane sorted
+spoons and forks at the sideboard in the dismantled dining-room. Olivia
+was moved to speak in the desperate hope that one stab from
+Drusilla--who might be in a position to deliver it--would free her from
+the obsession haunting her.
+
+There had been a long silence, sufficiently occupied, it seemed, in
+laying out the different sorts and sizes of spoons in rows of a dozen,
+while Mrs. Fane did the same with the forks.
+
+"Drusilla, did Mr. Davenant ever say anything to you about me?"
+
+She was vexed with herself for the form of her question. It was not
+Davenant's feeling toward _her_, but toward Drusilla, that she wanted to
+know. She was drawing the fire in the wrong place. Mrs. Fane counted her
+dozen forks to the end before saying:
+
+"Why, yes. We've spoken of you."
+
+Having begun with a mistake, Olivia went on with it. "Did he
+say--anything in particular?"
+
+"He said a good many things, on and off."
+
+"Some of which might have been--in particular?"
+
+"All of them, if it comes to that."
+
+"Why did you never tell me?"
+
+"For one reason, because you never asked me."
+
+"Have you any idea why I'm asking you now?"
+
+"Not the faintest. I dare say we sha'n't see anything more of him for
+years to come."
+
+"Did you--did you--refuse him? Did you send him away?"
+
+"Well, that's one thing I didn't have to do, thank the Lord. There was
+no necessity. I was afraid at one time that mother might make him
+propose to me--she's terribly subtle in that way, though you mightn't
+think it--but she didn't. No; if Peter's in love with any one, it's not
+with me."
+
+Olivia braced herself to say, "And I hope it's not with me."
+
+Drusilla went on counting.
+
+"Did he ever say anything about that?" Olivia persisted.
+
+Drusilla went on counting. "Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. That's all
+of that set. What a lot of silver you've got! And some of it must have
+been in the family for thousands of years. Yes," she added, in another
+tone, "yes, he did. He said he wasn't."
+
+Olivia laid down the ladle she was holding with infinite precaution. She
+had got the stab she was looking for. It seemed for a minute as if she
+was free--gloatingly free. He hadn't cared anything about her after all,
+and had said so! She steadied herself by holding to the edge of the
+sideboard.
+
+Drusilla stooped to the basket of silver standing on the floor, in a
+seemingly passionate desire for more forks. By the time she had
+straightened herself again, Olivia was able to say: "I'm so glad of
+that. You know what his kindness in helping papa has made people think,
+don't you?"
+
+But Mrs. Fane astonished her by throwing down her handful of silver with
+unnecessary violence of clang and saying: "Look here, Olivia, I'd rather
+not talk about it any more. I've reasons. I can't take a hand in your
+affairs without being afraid that perhaps--perhaps--I--I--sha'n't play
+the game."
+
+Olivia was silent, but she had much to think of.
+
+It was a few days later still that she found herself in Rodney Temple's
+little office in the Gallery of Fine Arts. She had come ostensibly to
+tell him that everything had been arranged for the sale.
+
+"Lemon and Company think that early in December would be the best time,
+as people are beginning then to spend money for Christmas. Mr. Lemon
+seems to think we've got a good many things the smaller connoisseurs
+will want. The servants are to go next Tuesday, so that if you and
+Cousin Cherry could take papa then--I'm to stay with Lulu Sentner; and I
+shall go from her house to be married--some day, when everything else is
+settled. Did you know that before Mr. Davenant went away he left a small
+bank account for papa?--two or three thousand dollars--so that we have
+money to go on with. Rupert wants to spend a week or two in New York and
+Washington, after which we shall come back here and pick up papa. He's
+not very keen on coming with us, but I simply couldn't--"
+
+He nodded at the various points in her recital, blinking at her
+searchingly out of his kind old eyes.
+
+"You look pale," he said, "and old. You look forty."
+
+She surprised him by saying, with a sudden outburst: "Cousin Rodney, do
+you think it's any harm for a woman to marry one man when she's in love
+with another?" Before he had time to recover himself, she followed this
+question with a second. "Do you think it's possible for a person to be
+in love with two people at the same time?"
+
+He understood now the real motive of her visit.
+
+"I'm not a very good judge of love affairs," he said, after a minute's
+reflection. "But one thing I know, and it's this--that when we do our
+duty we don't have to bother with the question as to whether it's any
+harm or not."
+
+"We may do our duty, and still make people unhappy."
+
+"No; not unless we do it in the wrong way."
+
+"So that if I feel that to go on and keep my word is the right thing--or
+rather the only thing--?"
+
+"That settles it, dearie. The right thing _is_ the only thing--and it
+makes for everybody's happiness."
+
+"Even if it seems that it--it _couldn't_?"
+
+"I'm only uttering platitudes, dearie, when I say that happiness is the
+flower of right. No other plant can grow it; and that plant can't grow
+any other flower. When you've done the thing you feel you're called to
+do--the thing you couldn't refuse while still keeping your
+self-respect--well, then, you needn't be afraid that any one will suffer
+in the long run--and yourself least of all."
+
+"In the long run! That means--"
+
+"Oh, there may be a short run. I'm not denying that. But no one worth
+his salt would be afraid of it. And that, dearie," he added, blinking,
+"is all I know about love affairs."
+
+There being no one in the gallery on which the office opened, she
+kissed him as she thanked him and went away. She walked homeward, taking
+the more retired streets through Cambridge and into Waverton, so as to
+be the more free for thinking. It was a relief to her to have spoken
+out. Oddly enough, she felt her heart lighter toward Davenant from the
+mere fact of having told some one, or having partially told some one,
+that she loved him.
+
+When, on turning in at the gate of Tory Hill, she saw a taxicab standing
+below the steps of the main entrance, she was not surprised, since
+Ashley occasionally took one to run out from town. But when a little
+lady in furs and an extravagant hat stepped out to pay the chauffeur
+Olivia stopped to get her breath. If it hadn't been impossible she would
+have said--
+
+But the taxicab whizzed away, and the little lady tripped up the steps.
+
+Olivia felt herself unable to move. The motor throbbed past her, and out
+the gate, but she still stood incapable of going farther. It seemed long
+before the pent-up emotions of the last month or two, controlled,
+repressed, unacknowledged, as they had been, found utterance in one loud
+cry: "Aunt Vic!"
+
+Not till that minute had she guessed her need of a woman, a Guion, one
+of her very own, a mother, on whose breast to lay her head and weep her
+cares out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first tears since the beginning of her trials came to Olivia Guion,
+as, with arms clasped round her aunt and forehead pressed into the
+little old lady's furs, she sat beside her on a packing-case in the
+hail. She cried then as she never knew before she was capable of crying.
+She cried for the joy of the present, for the trouble of the past, and
+for the relief of clinging to some one to whom she had a right. Madame
+de Melcourt would have cried with her, had it not been for the effect of
+tears on cosmetics.
+
+"There, there, my pet," she murmured, soothingly. "Didn't you know your
+old auntie would come to you? Why didn't you cable? Didn't you know I
+was right at the end of the wire. There now, cry all you want to. It'll
+do you good. Your old auntie has come to take all your troubles away,
+and see you happily married to your Englishman. She's brought your _dot_
+in her pocket--same old _dot!_--and everything. There now, cry. There's
+nothing like it."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Madame de Melcourt the chief novelty of American life, for the first few
+days at least, lay in the absence of any necessity for striving. To wake
+up in the morning into a society not keeping its heart hermetically shut
+against her was distinctly a new thing. Not to have to plan or push or
+struggle, to take snubs or repay them, to wriggle in where she was not
+wanted, or to keep people out where she had wriggled in, was really
+amusing. In the wide friendliness by which she found herself surrounded
+she had a droll sense of having reached some scholastic paradise painted
+by Puvis de Chavannes. She was even seated on a kind of throne, like
+Justitia or Sapientia, with all kinds of flattering, welcoming
+attentions both from old friends who could remember her when she had
+lived as a girl among them and new ones who were eager to take her into
+hospitable arms. It was decidedly funny. It was like getting into a
+sphere where all the wishes were gratified and there were no more worlds
+to conquer. It would pall in the end; in the end she would come to feel
+like a gourmet in a heaven where there is no eating, or an Englishman in
+some Blessed Isle where there is no sport; but for the moment it
+offered that refreshing change which strengthens the spirit for taking
+up the more serious things of life again. In any case, it put her into a
+good-humor of which the residents at Tory Hill were the first to feel
+the effect.
+
+"Il est très bien, ton Anglais."
+
+Olivia acknowledged this approval with a smile and a blush, as she went
+about the drawing-room trying to give it something of its former air.
+With the new turn of events it had become necessary to restore the house
+to a condition fit for occupancy. Madame de Melcourt had moved into it
+with her maid and her man, announcing her intention to remain till she
+got ready to depart. Her bearing was that of Napoleon making a temporary
+stay in some German or Italian palace for the purposes of national
+reorganization and public weal. At the present instant she was enthroned
+amid cushions in a corner of the sofa, watching Olivia dispose of such
+bric-à-brac as had not been too remotely packed away.
+
+"I always say," the old lady declared, "that when an Englishman is chic
+he's very chic, and your Ashley is no exception. I don't wonder you're
+in love with him."
+
+When seated the Marquise accompanied her words with little jerkings and
+perkings of her fluffy head, with wavings of the hands and rollings of
+the eyes--the corelatives of her dartings and dashings while on her
+feet.
+
+It was easy for Olivia to keep her back turned, while she managed to
+say: "He thinks you don't like him."
+
+Madame shrugged her shoulders. "I like him as well as I could like any
+Englishman. He's very smart. You can see at a glance he's some one. From
+what I'd heard of him--his standing by you and all that--I was afraid he
+might be an eccentric."
+
+"Whom did you hear it from?"
+
+"Oh, I heard it. There's nothing wonderful in that. A thing that's been
+the talk of Boston and New York, and telegraphed to the London
+papers--you don't suppose I shouldn't hear of it some time. And I came
+right over--just as soon as I was convinced you needed me."
+
+Olivia looked round with misty eyes. "I shall never forget it, Aunt Vic,
+dear--nor your kindness to papa. He feels it more than he can possibly
+express to you--your taking what he did so--so gently."
+
+"Ma foi! The Guions must have money. When it comes to spending they're
+not morally responsible. I'm the only one among them who ever had a
+business head; and even with me, if it hadn't been for my wonderful
+Hamlet and Tecla--But you can see what I am at heart--throwing two
+million francs into your lap as if it were a box of bonbons."
+
+"I'm not sure that you ought, you know."
+
+"And what about the Guion family honor and all that? Who's to take care
+of it if I don't? The minute I heard what had happened I held up my head
+and said, Everything may go so long as the credit of the Guion name is
+saved. N'est-ce pas? We can't live in debt to the old man who advanced
+your papa the money."
+
+"He isn't an old man at all," Olivia explained, quickly.
+
+"Ça ne fait rien. His age isn't the question. I suppose he lent the
+money expecting us to pay him back at a handsome rate of interest."
+
+"No, he didn't. That's just it. He lent it to us--out of--out of--"
+
+"Yes; out of what?"
+
+"Out of pure goodness," she said, firmly.
+
+"Fiddle-faddle! People don't do things out of pure goodness. The man who
+seems to is either a sentimentalist or a knave. If he's a
+sentimentalist, he does it for effect; if he's a knave, because it helps
+roguery. There's always some ax to grind."
+
+"I think you'd have to make an exception of Mr. Davenant."
+
+"Davenant? Is that his name? Yes, I believe your papa did tell me
+so--the boy Tom Davenant fished out of the slums."
+
+With some indignation Olivia told the story of Davenant's birth and
+adoption. "So you see," she went on, "he has goodness in his blood.
+There's no reason why that shouldn't be inherited as much as--as
+insanity--or a taste for alcohol."
+
+"Stuff, dear! The man or the boy, or whatever he is, calculated on
+getting something better than he gave. We must simply pay him off and
+get rid of him. Noblesse oblige."
+
+"We may get rid of him, Aunt Vic, but we can never pay him off."
+
+"He'll be paid off, won't he, if we return his loan at an interest of
+five--I'm willing to say six--per cent.?"
+
+Olivia came forward, looking distressed. "Oh, I hope you won't, dear
+Aunt Vic. I mean about the five or six per cent. Give him back his money
+if you will, only give it back in the--in the princely way in which he
+let us have it."
+
+"Well, I call that princely--six per cent."
+
+"Oh, please, Aunt Vic! You'd offend him. You'd hurt him. He's just the
+sort of big, sensitive creature that's most easily wounded, and--"
+
+"Tiens! You interest me. Stop fidgeting round the room and come and tell
+me about him. Sit down," she commanded, pointing to the other corner of
+the sofa. "There must be a lot I haven't heard."
+
+If Olivia hesitated, it was chiefly because of her own eagerness to talk
+of him, to sing his praises. Since, however, she must sooner or later
+learn to do this with self-possession, she fortified herself to begin.
+With occasional interruptions from her aunt she told the tale as she
+understood it, taking as point of departure the evening when Davenant
+came to dine at Tory Hill, on his return from his travels round the
+world.
+
+"So there was a time when you didn't like him," was Madame de Melcourt's
+first comment.
+
+"There was a time when I didn't understand him."
+
+"But when you did understand him you changed your mind."
+
+"I couldn't help it."
+
+"And did you change anything more than your--mind?"
+
+There was so much insinuation in the cracked voice that Olivia colored,
+in spite of the degree in which she thought herself armed against all
+surprises. It was a minute or more before she was prepared with an
+answer.
+
+"I changed my attitude toward him. Before that I'd been hostile and
+insolent, and then--and then--I grew humble. Yes, Aunt Vic--humble. I
+grew more than humble. I came to feel--well, as you might feel if you'd
+struck a great St. Bernard dog who'd been rescuing you in the snow.
+There's something about him that makes you think of a St. Bernard--so
+big and true and loyal--"
+
+"Did you ever think he might be in love with you?"
+
+She was ready for this question, and had made up her mind to answer it
+frankly. "Yes. I was afraid he was advancing the money on that account.
+I felt so right up to--to a few days ago."
+
+"And what happened then?"
+
+"Drusilla told me he'd said he--wasn't."
+
+Madame de Melcourt let that pass. "Did you think he'd fallen in love
+with you all of a sudden when he came that night to dinner?"
+
+She resolved to tell the whole truth. "I'd known him before. He asked me
+to marry him years ago. And something happened. I hardly know how to
+tell you. I didn't answer him."
+
+"Didn't answer him?"
+
+"I got up and walked away, right in the middle of--of what he was trying
+to tell me."
+
+"Ti-ens! And you had to take his money after all?"
+
+Olivia bowed her head.
+
+"Ça c'est trop fort," the old lady went on. "You're quite right then
+when you say you'll never be able to pay him off, even if you get rid of
+him. But he's paid _you_ off, hasn't he? It's a more beautiful situation
+than I fancied. He didn't tell me that."
+
+Olivia looked up. "He didn't tell you? Who?"
+
+"Your papa," the old lady said, promptly. "It's perfectly lovely, isn't
+it? I should think when you meet him you must feel frightfully ashamed.
+Don't you?"
+
+"I should if there wasn't something about him that--"
+
+"And you'll never get over it," the old lady went on, pitilessly, "not
+even after you've married the other man. The humiliation will haunt
+you--toujours--toujours! N'est-ce pas? If it were I, I should want to
+marry a man I'd done a thing like that to--just to carry it off. But
+_you_ can't, can you? You've _got_ to marry the other man. Even if you
+weren't so horribly in love with him, you'd have to marry him, when he's
+stood by you like that. I should be ashamed of you if you didn't."
+
+"Of course, Aunt Vic."
+
+"If he were to back out that would be another thing. But as it is you've
+got to swallow your humiliation, with regard to this Davenant. Or,
+rather, you can't swallow it. You've simply got to live on it, so to
+speak. You'll never be able to forget for an hour of the day that you
+treated a man like that--and then took his money, will you? It isn't
+exactly like striking a St. Bernard who's rescuing you in the snow.
+It's like beating him first and then having him come and save you
+afterward. Oh, la la! Quelle drôle de chose que la vie! Well, it's a
+good thing we can return his money, at the least."
+
+"You're so good about that, dear Aunt Vic. I didn't understand I was to
+have it when I couldn't see my way to--to--"
+
+"To marry Berteuil. That's all over and done with. I see you weren't
+made for life in the real world. Anyhow," she added, taking a virtuous
+air, "when my word was passed it was passed. Not that your _dot_ will do
+you much good. It'll all have to go to settle the claims of this Mr.--By
+the way, where is he? Why doesn't he come and be paid?"
+
+"He's out in Michigan, at a little place called Stoughton."
+
+"Then send for him."
+
+"I'm not sure we can get him. Cousin Cherry has written to him three
+times since he went away, and he doesn't answer."
+
+"Cousin Cherry! What a goose! Who'd ever think she was the pretty
+Charlotte Hawke that Rodney Temple fell in love with. What's the matter
+with you, over here, that you all grow old at a minute's notice, so to
+speak? I never saw such a lot of frumps as the women who used to be my
+own contemporaries. Rodney and I were very good friends once. If I could
+only have settled down in humdrum old Waverton--but we'll let bygones be
+bygones, and send for your man."
+
+"I'll ask Cousin Cherry to write to him again."
+
+"Stuff, dear. That won't do any good. Wire him yourself, and tell him
+I'm here."
+
+"Oh, but, Aunt Vic, dear."
+
+With little perkings of the head and much rolling of the eyes the
+Marquise watched the warm color rise in Olivia's cheek and surge slowly
+upward to the temples. Madame de Melcourt made signs of trying to look
+anywhere and everywhere, up to the ceiling and down at the floor, rather
+than be a witness of so much embarrassment. She emphasized her
+discretion, too, by making a great show of seeing nothing in particular,
+toying with her rings and bracelets till Olivia had sufficiently
+recovered to be again commanded to send for Davenant.
+
+"Tell him I'm here and that I want to have a look at him. Use my name so
+that he'll see it's urgent. Then you can sign the telegram with your
+own. Cousin Cherry! Stuff!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later that day Madame de Melcourt was making a confession to Rodney
+Temple.
+
+"Oui, mon bon Rodney. It was love at first sight. The thing hadn't
+happened to me for years."
+
+"Had it been in the habit of happening?"
+
+"In the habit of happening--that's too much to say. I may have had a
+little toquade from time to time--I don't say no--of an innocence!--or
+nearly of an innocence!--Mais que voulez-vous?--a woman in my
+position!--a widow since I was so high!--and exposed to the most
+flattering attentions. You know nothing about it over here. L'amour est
+l'enfant de Bohème, as the song says, and, whatever you can say for
+Waverton and Cambridge and Boston, you'll admit--"
+
+He leaned back in his rocking-chair with a laugh. "One does the best one
+can, Vic. We're children of opportunity as well as enfants de Bohème. If
+your chances have been more generous, and I presume more tempting, than
+ours, it isn't kind of you to come back and taunt us."
+
+"Don't talk about tempting, Rodney. You can't imagine how tiresome those
+men become--always on the hunt for money--always trying to find a wife
+who'll support them without their having to work. I speak of the good
+people, of course. With the bourgeoisie it's different. They work and
+take care of their families like other people. Only they don't count. If
+I hadn't money--they'd slam the door on me like that." She indicated the
+violence of the act by gesture. "As it is, they smother me. There are
+three of them at Melcourt-le-Danois at this present moment--Anne Marie
+de Melcourt's two boys and one girl. They're all waiting for me to
+supply the funds with which they're to make rich marriages. Is it any
+wonder that I look upon what's done for my own niece as so much saved?
+Henry's getting into such a hole seemed to me providential--gives me the
+chance to snatch something away from them before they--and when it's to
+go ultimately to _him_--"
+
+"The young fellow you've taken such a fancy to?"
+
+"You'd have taken a fancy to him, too, if you'd known only men who make
+it a trade to ask all and give next to nothing in return. You'd be
+smitten to the core by a man who asks nothing and offers all, if he were
+as ugly as a gargoyle. But when he takes the form of a blond Hercules,
+with eyes blue as the myosotis, and a mustache--mais une moustache!--and
+with no idea whatever of the bigness of the thing he's doing! It was the
+thunderbolt, Rodney--le coup de foudre--and no wonder!"
+
+"I hope you told him so."
+
+"I was very stiff with him. I sent him about his business just like
+that." She snapped her fingers. "But I only meant it with reserves. I
+let him see how I had been wronged--how cruelly Olivia had misunderstood
+me--but I showed him, too, how I could forgive." She tore at her breast
+as though to lay bare her heart. "Oh, I impressed him--not all at once
+perhaps--but little by little--"
+
+"As he came to know you."
+
+"I wouldn't let him go away. He stayed at the inn in the village two
+weeks and more. It's an old chef of mine who keeps it. And I learned all
+his secrets. He thought he was throwing dust in my eyes, but he didn't
+throw a grain. As if I couldn't see who was in love with who--after all
+my experience! Ah, mon bon Rodney, if I'd been fifty years younger! And
+yet if I'd been fifty years younger, I shouldn't have judged him at his
+worth. He's the type to which you can do justice only when you've a
+standard of comparison, n'est-ce pas? It's in putting him beside other
+men--the best--even Ashley over there--that you see how big he is."
+
+She tossed her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla, sitting by
+the tea-table at the other end of the room. Mrs. Temple had again found
+errands of mercy to insure her absence.
+
+"Il est très bien, cet Ashley," the Marquise continued,
+"chic--distinguished--no more like a wooden man than any other
+Englishman. Il est très bien--but what a difference!--two natures--the
+one a mountain pool, fierce, deep, hemmed in all round--the other the
+great sea. Voilà--Ashley et mon Davenant. And he helped me. He gave me
+courage to stand up against the Melcourt--to run away from them. Oh yes,
+we ran away--almost. I made a pretext for going to Paris--the old
+pretext, the dentist. They didn't suspect at my age--how should
+they?--or they wouldn't have let me come alone. Helie or Paul or Anne
+Marie would have come with me. Oh, they smother me! But we ran away. We
+took the train to Cherbourg, just like two eloping lovers--and the
+bateau de luxe, the _Louisiana_ to New York. Mais hélas!--"
+
+She paused to laugh, and at the same time to dash away a tear. "At New
+York we parted, never to meet again--so he thinks. His work was done! He
+went straight to that funny place in Michigan to join his pal. He's
+there now--waiting to hear that Olivia has married her Englishman, as
+you might wait to hear that sentence of death on some one you were fond
+of had been carried out. Ah, mon Dieu, quel brave homme! I'm proud to
+belong to the people who produced him. I don't know that I ever was
+before."
+
+"Oh, the world is full of brave fellows, when the moment comes to try
+them."
+
+"Perhaps. I'm not convinced. What about _him_?" She flicked her hand
+again toward Ashley. "Would he stand a big test?"
+
+"He's stood a good many of them, I understand. He's certainly been equal
+to his duty here."
+
+"He's done what a gentleman couldn't help doing. That's something, but
+it's possible to ask more."
+
+"I hope you're not going to ask it," he began, in some anxiety.
+
+"He strikes me as a man who would grant what was wrung from him, while
+the other--my blond Hercules--gives royally, like a king."
+
+"There's a soul that climbs as by a ladder, and there's a soul that
+soars naturally as a lark. I don't know that it matters which they do,
+so long as they both mount upward."
+
+"We shall see."
+
+"What shall we see? I hope you're not up to anything, Vic?"
+
+With another jerk of her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla,
+she said, "That's the match that should have--"
+
+But the old man was out of his seat. "You must excuse me now, Vic. I've
+some work to do."
+
+"Yes, be off. Only--"
+
+She put her forefinger on her lips, rolling her eyes under the brim of
+her extravagant hat with an expression intended to exclude from their
+pact of confidence not only the other two occupants of the room, but
+every one else.
+
+Olivia received the reply to her telegram: "Shall arrive in Boston
+Wednesday night."
+
+Considering it time to bring the purely financial side of the situation
+under discussion, Madame de Melcourt explained to her niece that she,
+the Marquise, had nothing to do, in her own person, with the
+extraordinary person who was about to arrive. Her part would be
+accomplished when once she had handed over the _dot_ either to Olivia or
+to her trustees. As the passing of this sum through Miss Guion's hands
+was to be no more than a formality, the question of trustees was not
+worth taking up. With the transfer of securities for the amount agreed
+upon from the one name to the other--a piece of business which would be
+carried out by Davis & Stern--the Marquise considered that she would
+have done all for which she could be called upon. Everything else
+concerned Olivia and her father and Davenant. Her own interest in the
+young man would be satisfied with a glance of curiosity.
+
+The brief conversation to this effect having taken place before
+luncheon, Madame de Melcourt pursued other aspects of the subject with
+Colonel Ashley when that repast was ended and coffee was being served to
+them in the library. Olivia having withdrawn to wait on her father,
+Madame de Melcourt bade him light his cigar while she herself puffed
+daintily at a cigarette. If she was a little grotesque in doing it, he
+had seen more than one elderly Englishwoman who, in the same pastime,
+was even more so.
+
+Taking one thing with another, he liked his future great-aunt by
+marriage. That is, he liked a connection that would bring him into touch
+with such things in the world as he held to be important. While he had
+the scorn natural to the Englishman of the Service class for anything
+out of England that pretended to be an aristocracy, he admitted that the
+old French royalist cause had claims to distinction. The atmosphere of
+it clinging to one who was presumably in the heart of its counsels
+restored him to that view of his marriage as an alliance between high
+contracting powers which events in Boston had made so lamentably
+untenable. If he was disconcerted, it was by her odd way of keeping him
+at arm's-length.
+
+"She doesn't like me, what?" he had more than once said to Olivia, and
+with some misgiving.
+
+Olivia could only answer: "I think she must. She's said a good many
+times that you were chic and distinguished. That's a great deal for any
+Englishman from her."
+
+"She acts as if she had something up her sleeve."
+
+That had become something like a conviction with him; but to-day he
+flattered himself that he had made some progress in her graces. His own
+spirits, too, were so high that he could be affable to Guion, who
+appeared at table for the only time since the day of their first
+meeting. Hollow-checked, hollow-eyed, his figure shrunken, and his
+handsome hand grown so thin that the ring kept slipping from his finger,
+Guion essayed, in view of his powerful relative's vindication--for so he
+liked to think of it--to recapture some of his old elegance as a host.
+To this Ashley lent himself with entire good-will, taking Guion's timid
+claim for recognition as part of the new heaven and the new earth under
+process of construction. In this greatly improved universe Olivia, too,
+acquired in her lover's eyes a charm, a dignity, a softened grace beyond
+anything he had dreamed of. If she seemed older, graver, sadder perhaps,
+the change was natural to one who had passed through trials so sordid
+and so searching. A month of marriage, a month of England, would restore
+all her youth and freshness.
+
+Nevertheless he was glad to be alone with Madame de Melcourt. It was the
+moment he had waited for, the moment of paying some fitting tribute to
+her generosity. He had said little of it hitherto, not wanting, as he
+put it, "to drag it in by the hair of its head." He knew an opportunity
+would arise; and it had arisen.
+
+It was the sort of thing he could have done better had he not been
+haunted by the Englishman's fear of being over-demonstrative. He was
+easily capable of turning a nice little speech. Apart from the fear of
+transgressing the canons of negative good form he would have enjoyed
+turning one. As it was, he assumed a stammer and a drawl, jerking out a
+few inarticulate phrases of which the lady could distinguish only "so
+awfully good of you" and "never forget your jolly kindness." This being
+masculine, soldier-like, and British, he was hurt to notice an amused
+smile on the Marquise's lips. He could have sworn that she felt the
+speech inadequate to the occasion. She would probably have liked it
+better had it been garnished with American flourishes or French
+ornamentation. "She's taking me for a jolly ass," he said to himself,
+and reddened hotly.
+
+In contrast to his deliberate insufficiency the old lady's thin voice
+was silvery and precise. Out of some bit of obscure wilfulness, roused
+by his being an Englishman, she accentuated her Parisian affectations.
+
+"I'm very much delighted, Col-on-el," she said, giving the military
+title its three distinct French syllables, "but you must not think me
+better than I am. I'm very fond of my niece--and of her father. After
+all, they stand nearer to me than any one else in the world. They're all
+I've got of my very own. In any case, they should have had the money
+some day--when I--that is, I'd made my will n'est-ce pas? But what
+matters a little sooner or a little later? And I want my niece to be
+happy. I want a great many things; but when I've sifted them all, I
+think I want that more than anything else."
+
+Ashley bowed. "We shall always feel greatly indebted--" he began,
+endeavoring to be more elegant than in his words of a few minutes
+earlier.
+
+"I want her to be happy, Col-on-el. She deserves it. She's a noble
+creature, with a heart of gold and a spirit of iron. And she loves me, I
+think."
+
+"I know she does, by Jove!"
+
+"And I can't think of any one else who does love me for myself." She
+gave a thin, cackling laugh. "They love my money. Le bon Dieu has
+counted me worthy of having a good deal during these later years. And
+they're all very fond of it. But she's fond of _me_. I was very angry
+with her once; but now I want her to be happy with the man--with the man
+she's in love with. So when Mr. Davenant came and told me of your noble
+character--"
+
+"The devil he did!"
+
+Ashley sprang out of his chair. The cigar dropped from his limp fingers.
+In stooping to pick it up he caught the echo of his own exclamation. "I
+beg your pardon--" he began, when he had raised himself. He grew redder
+than ever; his eyes danced.
+
+"Ça ne fait rien, Col-on-el. It's an expression of which I myself often
+use the equivalent--in French. But I don't wonder you're pleased. Your
+friend Mr. Davenant made the journey to Europe purposely to tell me how
+highly you were qualified as a suitor for my niece's hand. When one has
+a friend like that--"
+
+"But he's not my friend."
+
+"You surprise me, Col-on-el. He spoke of you with so much praise--so
+much affection, I might say. He said no one could be so worthy to marry
+my niece--no one could make her so happy--no one could give her such a
+distinguished position in the world--no one was so fine a fellow in his
+own person--"
+
+He looked mystified. "But he's out there in Michigan--"
+
+She puffed delicately at her cigarette. "He stayed with me two weeks at
+Melcourt-le-Danois. That is, he stayed at the inn in the village. It was
+the same thing. I was very angry with my niece before that. It was he
+who made me see differently. If it were not for him I shouldn't be
+here. He traveled to France expressly to beg my help--how shall I
+say?--on your behalf--in simplifying things--so that you and Olivia
+might be free from your sense of obligation to him--and might marry--"
+
+"Did he say he was in love with her himself?"
+
+She ignored the hoarse suffering in his voice to take another puff or
+two at her cigarette. "Ma foi, Col-on-el, he didn't have to."
+
+"Did he say--" He swallowed hard, and began again, more hoarsely: "Did
+he say she was--in love with--with _him_?"
+
+There was a hint of rebuke in her tone. "He's a very loyal gentleman. He
+didn't."
+
+"Did he make you think--?"
+
+"What he made me think, Col-on-el, is my own affair."
+
+He jumped to his feet, throwing his cigar violently into the fire. For a
+minute or two he stood glaring at the embers. When he turned on her it
+was savagely.
+
+"May I ask your motive in springing this on me, Marquise?"
+
+"Mon Dieu, Col-on-el, I thought you'd like to know what a friend you
+have."
+
+"Damn his friendship. That's not the reason. You've something up your
+sleeve."
+
+She looked up at him innocently. "Have I? Then I must leave it to you to
+tell me what it is. But when you do," she added, smiling, "I hope you'll
+take another tone. In France men are gallant with women--"
+
+"And in England women are straight with men. What they have to say they
+say. They don't lay snares, or lie in ambush."
+
+She laughed. "Quant à cela, Col-on-el, il y en a pour tous les goûts,
+même en Angleterre."
+
+"I'll bid you good-by, madame."
+
+He bowed stiffly, and went out into the hail. She continued to smoke
+daintily, pensively, while she listened to him noisily pulling on his
+overcoat and taking his stick from the stand. As he passed the library
+door he stopped on the threshold.
+
+"By Gad, she's _mine_!" he said, fiercely.
+
+She got up and went to him, taking him by the lapel of the coat. There
+was something like pity in her eyes as she said: "My poor fellow, nobody
+has raised that question. What's more, nobody _will_ raise it--unless
+you do yourself."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Ashley's craving was for space and air. He felt choked, strangled. There
+was a high wind blowing, carrying a sleety rain. It was a physical
+comfort to turn into the teeth of it.
+
+He took a road straggling out of the town toward the remoter suburbs,
+and so into the country. He marched on, his eyes unseeing, his mouth set
+grimly--goaded by a kind of frenzy to run away from that which he knew
+he could not leave behind. It was like fleeing from something
+omnipresent. Though he should turn his back on it never so sternly and
+travel never so fast, it would be with him. It had already entered into
+his life as a constituent element; he could no more get rid of it than
+of his breath or his blood.
+
+And yet the thing itself eluded him. In the very attempt to apprehend it
+by sight or name, he found it mysteriously beyond his grasp. It was like
+an enemy in the air, deadly but out of reach. It had struck him, though
+he could not as yet tell where. He could only stride onward through the
+wind and rain, as a man who has been shot can ride on till he falls.
+
+So he tramped for an hour or more, finding himself at last amid bleak,
+dreary marshes, over which the November twilight was coming down. He
+felt lonely, desolate, far from his familiar things, far from home. His
+familiar things were his ambitions, as home was that life of
+well-ordered English dignity, in which to-morrow will bear some relation
+to to-day.
+
+He felt used up by the succession of American shocks, of American
+violences. They had reduced him to a condition of bewilderment. For four
+or five weeks he had scarcely known from minute to minute where he
+stood. He had maintained his ground as best he was able, holding out for
+the moment when he could marry his wife and go his way; and now, when
+ostensibly the hour had come in which to do it, it was only that he
+might see confusion worse confounded.
+
+He turned back toward the town. He did so with a feeling of futility in
+the act. Where should he go? What should he do? How was he to deal with
+this new, extraordinary feature in the case? It was impossible to return
+to Tory Hill, as if the Marquise had told him nothing, and equally
+impossible to make what she had said a point of departure for anything
+else. If he made it a point of departure for anything at all, it could
+only be for a step which his whole being rebelled against taking.
+
+It was a solution of the instant's difficulties to avoid the turning to
+Tory Hill and go on to Drusilla Fane's. In the wind and rain and
+gathering darkness the thought of her fireside was cheering. She would
+understand him, too. She had always understood him. It was her knowledge
+of the English point of view that made her such an efficient pal.
+During all the trying four or five weeks through which he had passed she
+had been able to give him sympathetic support just where and when he
+needed it. It was something to know she would give it to him again.
+
+As he told her of Davenant's journey to France he could see her eyes
+grow bigger and blacker than ever in the flickering firelight. She kept
+them on him all the while he talked. She kept them on him as from time
+to time she lifted her cup and sipped her tea.
+
+"Then that's why he didn't answer mother's letters," she said, absently,
+when he had finished. "He wasn't there."
+
+"He wasn't there, by Jove! And don't you see what a fix he's put me in?"
+
+She replied, still absently: "I'm not sure that I do."
+
+"He's given away the whole show to me. The question is now whether I can
+take it, what?"
+
+"He hasn't given away anything you didn't have before."
+
+"He's given away something he might perhaps have had himself."
+
+She drew back into the shadow so that he might not see her coloring. She
+had only voice enough to say: "What makes you think so?"
+
+"Don't _you_ think so?"
+
+"That's not a fair question."
+
+"It's a vital one."
+
+"To you--yes. But--"
+
+"But not to you. Oh, I understand that well enough. But you've been
+such a good pal that I thought you might help me to see--"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't help you to see anything. If I were to try I might
+mislead you."
+
+"But you must _know_, by Jove! Two women can't be such pals as Olivia
+and you--"
+
+"If I did know I shouldn't tell you. It's something you should find out
+for yourself."
+
+"Find out! I've _asked_ her."
+
+"Well, if she's told you, isn't that enough?"
+
+"It would be enough in England. But here, where words don't seem to have
+the same meaning as they do anywhere else--and surprises are sprung on
+you--and people have queer, complicated motives--and do preposterous,
+unexpected things--"
+
+"Peter's going to see old Cousin Vic might be unexpected; but I don't
+think you can call it preposterous."
+
+"It's preposterous to have another man racing about the world trying to
+do you good, by Jove!"
+
+"He wasn't trying to do you good so much as not to do you harm. He
+thought he'd done that, apparently, by interfering with Cousin Henry's
+affairs in the first place. His asking the old Marquise to come to the
+rescue was only an attempt to make things easier for you."
+
+He sprang to his feet. "And he's got me where I must either call his
+bluff or--or--or accept his beastly sacrifice."
+
+He tugged fiercely, first at one end, then at the other, of the
+bristling, horizontal mustache. Drusilla tried to speak calmly.
+
+"He's not making a sacrifice if there was nothing for him to give up."
+
+"That's what I must find out."
+
+She considered it only loyal to say: "It's well to remember that in
+making the attempt you may do more harm than good. 'Where the apple
+reddens, never pry, lest we lose our Edens'--You know the warning."
+
+"Yes, I know. That's Browning. In other words, it means, let well enough
+alone."
+
+"Which isn't bad advice, you know."
+
+"Which isn't bad advice--except in love. Love won't put up with
+reserves. It must have all--or it will take nothing."
+
+He dropped into a low chair at the corner of the hearth. Wielding the
+poker in both hands, he knocked sparks idly from a smoldering log. It
+was some minutes before she ventured to say:
+
+"And suppose you discovered that you couldn't _get_ all?"
+
+"I've thought that out. I should go home, and ask to be allowed to join
+the first punitive expedition sent out--one of those jolly little
+parties from which they don't expect more than half the number to come
+back. There's one just starting now--against the Carrals--up on the
+Tibet frontier. I dare say I could catch it."
+
+Again some minutes went by before she said: "Is it as bad as all that?"
+
+"It's as bad as all that."
+
+She got up because she could no longer sit still. His pain was almost
+more than she could bear. At the moment she would have given life just
+to be allowed to lay her hand soothingly on his shoulder or to stroke
+his bowed head. As it was, she could barely give herself the privilege
+of taking one step toward him, and even in doing this she was compelled
+to keep behind him, lest she should betray herself in the approach.
+
+"Couldn't I--?"
+
+The offer of help was in the tone, in its timid beseeching.
+
+He understood it, and shook his head without looking up.
+
+"No," he said, briefly. "No. No one can."
+
+She remained standing behind him, because she hadn't the strength to go
+away. He continued to knock sparks from the log. Repulsed from the
+sphere of his suffering, she was thrown back on her own. She wondered
+how long she should stand there, how long he would sit, bending like
+that, over the dying fire. It was the most intolerable minute of her
+life, and yet he didn't know it. Just for the instant she resented
+that--that while he could get the relief of openness and speech, she
+must be condemned forever to shame and silence. If she could have thrown
+herself on her knees beside him and flung her arms about his neck,
+crying, "I love you; I love you! Whoever doesn't--_I_ do!--_I_ do!" she
+would have felt that life had reached fruition.
+
+The minutes became more unendurable. In sheer self-defense she was
+obliged to move, to say something, to break the tensity of the strain.
+One step--the single step by which she had dared to draw nearer him,
+stretching out yearning hands toward him--one step sufficed to take her
+back to the world of conventionalities and commonplaces, where the
+heart's aching is taboo.
+
+She must say something, no matter what, and the words that came were:
+"Won't you have another cup of tea?"
+
+He shook his head, still without looking up. "Thanks; no."
+
+But she was back again on her own ground, back from the land of
+enchantment and anguish. It was like returning to an empty home after a
+journey of poignant romance. She was mistress of herself again, mistress
+of her secret and her loneliness. She could command her voice, too. She
+could hear herself saying, as if some one else were speaking from the
+other side of the room:
+
+"It seems to me you take it too tragically to begin with--"
+
+"It isn't to begin with. I saw there was a screw loose from the first.
+And since then some one has told me that she was--half in love with him,
+by Jove!--as it was."
+
+She remained standing beside the tea-table. "That must have been Cousin
+Henry. He'd have a motive in thinking so--not so much to deceive you as
+to deceive himself. But if it's any comfort to you to know it, I've
+talked to them both. I suppose they spoke to me confidentially, and I
+haven't felt justified in betraying them. But rather than see you
+suffer--"
+
+He put the poker in its place among the fire-irons and swung round in
+his chair toward her. "Oh, I say! It isn't suffering, you know. That is,
+it isn't--"
+
+She smiled feebly. "Oh, I know what it is. You don't have to explain.
+But I'll tell you. I asked Peter--or practically asked him--some time
+ago--if he was in love with her--and he said he wasn't."
+
+His face brightened. "Did he, by Jove?"
+
+"And when I told her that--the other day--she said--"
+
+"Yes? Yes? She said--?"
+
+"She didn't put it in so many words--but she gave me to understand--or
+_tried_ to give me to understand--that it was a relief to her--because,
+in that case, she wasn't obliged to have him on her mind. A woman _has_
+those things on her mind, you know, about one man when she loves
+another."
+
+He jumped up. "I say! You're a good pal. I shall never forget it."
+
+He came toward her, but she stepped back at his approach. She was more
+sure of herself in the shadow.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing--"
+
+"You see," he tried to explain, "it's this way with me. I've made it a
+rule in my life to do--well, a little more than the right thing--to do
+the high thing, if you understand--and that fellow has a way of getting
+so damnably on top. I can't allow it, you know. I told you so the other
+day."
+
+"You mean, if he does something fine, you must do something finer."
+
+He winced at this. "I can't go on swallowing his beastly favors, don't
+you see? And hang it all! if he is--if he _is_ my--my rival--he must
+have a show."
+
+"And how are you going to give him a show if he won't take it?"
+
+He started to pace up and down the room. "That's your beastly America,
+where everything goes by freaks--where everything is queer and
+inconsequent and tortuous, and you can't pin any one down."
+
+"It seems to me, on the contrary, that you have every one pinned down.
+You've got everything your own way, and yet you aren't satisfied. Peter
+has taken himself off; old Cousin Vic has paid the debts; and Olivia is
+ready to go to church and marry you on the first convenient day. What
+more can you ask?"
+
+"That's what _she_ said, by Jove!--the old Marquise. She said the
+question would never be raised unless I raised it."
+
+Drusilla tried to laugh. "Eh, bien? as she'd say herself."
+
+He paused in front of her. "Eh, bien, there is something else; and," he
+added, tapping his forehead sharply, "I'll be hanged if I know what it
+is."
+
+She was about to say something more when the sound of the shutting of
+the street door stopped her. There was much puffing and stamping, with
+shouts for Jane to come and take an umbrella.
+
+"I say, that's your governor. I'll go and talk to him."
+
+He went without another look at her. She steadied herself with the tips
+of her fingers on the tea-table, in order not to swoon. She knew she
+wouldn't swoon; she only felt like it, or like dying. But all she could
+do was limply to pour herself out an extra cup of tea and drink it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the library Ashley was taking heart of grace. He had come to ask
+advice, but he was really pointing out the things that were in his
+favor. He repeated Drusilla's summing-up of them almost word for word.
+
+"You see, as far as that goes, I've everything my own way. No question
+will be raised unless I raise it. The fellow has taken himself off; the
+Marquise has most generally assumed the family liabilities; and Olivia
+is ready to come to church with me and be married on the first
+convenient day. I should be satisfied with that, now shouldn't I?"
+
+The old man nodded. "Your difficulties do seem to have been smoothed
+out."
+
+He sat, fitting the tips of his fingers together and swinging his leg,
+in his desk-chair. The light of the green-shaded desk-lamp alone lit up
+the room. In the semi-obscurity porcelains and potteries gleamed like
+crystals in a cave. Ashley paced the floor, emerging from minute to
+minute out of the gloom into the radiance of the lamp.
+
+"I'm not called on to go poking behind things to see what's there, now
+am I?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"I'm willing to consider every one, and I think I do. But there are
+limits, by Jove! Now, really?"
+
+"The minute we recognize limits it's our duty not to go beyond them.
+It's thus far and no farther--for the man who knows the stretch of his
+tether, at any rate. The trouble with Peter is that his tether is
+elastic. It'll spin out as far as he sees the need to go. For the rest
+of us there are limits, as you say; but about him there's
+something--something you might call limitless."
+
+Ashley rounded sharply. "You mean he's so big that no one can be
+bigger."
+
+"Not exactly. I mean that very few of us _need_ to be as big as that.
+It's all very well for him; but most of us have to keep within the
+measure of our own capacity."
+
+"And sit down under him, while he looms up into God knows where?"
+
+"Well, wouldn't that be your idea?"
+
+"Can't say that it is. My idea is that when I take my rights and keep
+them, I'm as big as any one."
+
+"Quite so; as big as any one--who takes his rights and keeps them.
+That's very true."
+
+Ashley stopped, one hand behind him, the other supporting him as he
+leaned on the desk. "And that's what I propose to do," he said,
+aggressively.
+
+"It's a very high ideal."
+
+"I propose to accept the status quo without asking any more questions."
+
+"I should think that would be a very good plan. A wise man--one of the
+wisest--wrote, apropos of well-disposed people who were seeking a
+standard of conduct: 'Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that
+thing which he alloweth.' I should think you'd have every reason for
+that kind of self-approval."
+
+"Do you mean that, sir? or are you--trying it on?"
+
+"I'm certainly not trying it on. The man who takes his rights and keeps
+them can be amply justified. If there's a counsel of perfection that
+goes beyond that standard--well, it isn't given to all men to receive
+it."
+
+"Then you think it isn't given to me. You'd put me down as a good sort
+of chap who comes in second best."
+
+"What makes you think I should do that?"
+
+"Because--because--hang it all! If I let this fellow keep ahead of
+me--why, I _should_ come in second best."
+
+"You say _keep_ ahead of me. Do you think he's ahead of you now?"
+
+Ashley straightened himself. He looked uncomfortable. "He's got a pull,
+by Jove! He made that journey to France--and cracked me up to the
+Marquise--and wheedled her round--when all the while he must have known
+that he was hammering nails into his own coffin. He did it, too, after
+I'd insulted him and we'd had a row."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing. To a fellow like him that sort of thing comes
+easy."
+
+"It wouldn't come easy to me, by Jove!"
+
+"Then it would be all the more to your credit, if you ever did anything
+of the kind."
+
+The Englishman bounded away. Once more he began to pace the floor
+restlessly. The old man took his pipe from a tray, and his
+tobacco-pouch from a drawer. Having filled the bowl, with meditative
+leisure he looked round for a match. "Got a light?"
+
+Ashley struck a vesta on the edge of his match-box and applied it to the
+old man's pipe.
+
+"Should you say," he asked, while doing it, "that I ought to attempt
+anything in that line?"
+
+"Certainly not--unless you want to--to get ahead."
+
+"I don't want to stay behind."
+
+"Then, it's for you to judge, my son."
+
+There was something like an affectionate stress on the two concluding
+monosyllables. Ashley backed off, out of the lamplight.
+
+"It's this way," he explained, stammeringly; "I'm a British officer and
+gentleman. I'm a little more than that--since I'm a V.C. man--and a
+fellow--dash it all, I might as well say it!--I'm a fellow they've got
+their eye on--in the line of high office, don't you know? And I can't--I
+simply _can't_--let a chap like that make me a present of all his
+chances--"
+
+"Did he have any?"
+
+Ashley hesitated. "Before God, sir, I don't know--but I'm inclined to
+think--he had. If so, I suppose they're of as much value to him as mine
+to me."
+
+"But not of any more."
+
+He hesitated again. "I don't know about that. Perhaps they are. The Lord
+knows I don't say that lightly, for mine are--Well, we needn't go into
+that. But I've got a good deal in my life, and I don't imagine that he,
+poor devil--"
+
+"Oh, don't worry. A rich soil is never barren. When nothing is planted
+in it, Nature uses it for flowers."
+
+Ashley answered restively. "I see, sir, your sympathies are all on his
+side."
+
+"Not at all. Quite the contrary. My certainties are on his side. My
+sympathies are on yours."
+
+"Because you think I need them."
+
+"Because I think you may."
+
+"In case I--"
+
+"In case you should condemn yourself in the thing you're going to
+allow."
+
+"But what's it to be?"
+
+"That's for you to settle with yourself."
+
+He was silent a minute. When he spoke it was with some conviction. "I
+should like to do the right thing, by Jove!--the straight thing--if I
+only knew what it was."
+
+"Oh, there'll be no trouble about that. In the Street called Straight,
+my son, there are lights to show the way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Rum old cove," was Ashley's comment to himself as he went back to
+Boston. "Got an answer to everything."
+
+From the hotel he telephoned an excuse to Olivia for his unceremonious
+departure from Tory Hill. "Had an upset," was the phrase by which he
+conveyed his apologies, leaving it to her to guess the nature of his
+mischance. As she showed no curiosity on the point, he merely
+promised to come to luncheon in the morning.
+
+During his dinner he set himself to think, though, amid the
+kaleidoscopic movement of the hotel dining-room, he got little beyond
+the stage of "mulling." Such symptoms of decision as showed themselves
+through the evening lay in his looking up the dates of sailing of the
+more important liners, and the situation of the Carral country on the
+map. He missed, however, the support of his principle to be Rupert
+Ashley at his best. That guiding motto seemed to have lost its force
+owing to the eccentricities of American methods of procedure. If he was
+still Rupert Ashley, he was Rupert Ashley sadly knocked about, buffeted,
+puzzled, grown incapable of the swift judgment and prompt action which
+had hitherto been his leading characteristics.
+
+He was still beset by uncertainties when he went out to Waverton next
+morning. Impatient for some form of action, he made an early start. On
+the way he considered Rodney Temple's words of the previous afternoon,
+saying to himself: "In the Street called Straight there are lights to
+show the way, by Jove! Gad! I should like to know where they are."
+
+[Illustration: ASHLEY GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THEIR CONVERSATION WAS
+EARNEST, CONFIDENTIAL.]
+
+Nevertheless, it had a clarifying effect on his vision to find, on
+walking into the drawing-room at Tory Hill, Miss Guion seated in
+conversation with Peter Davenant. As he had the advantage of seeing them
+a second before they noticed him, he got the impression that their
+conversation was earnest, confidential. Olivia was seated in a corner of
+the sofa, Davenant in a low chair that gave him the appearance of being
+at her feet.
+
+It was exactly the stimulus Ashley needed to bring his faculties into
+action. He was at once in possession of all his powers. The feeling
+inspired by the sight of them together transformed him on the instant
+into the quick, shrewd, diplomatic officer in whom he recognized
+himself. It was a feeling too complicated to be called jealousy, though
+jealousy might have been in it as an ingredient pang. If so, it was
+entirely subordinate to his new sense--or rather his old sense--of being
+equal to the occasion. As he crossed the room he felt no misgiving, no
+hesitation. Neither did he need to forecast, however rapidly, his plan
+of speech or action, since he knew that in urgent cases it was always
+given him. If he had to define this sudden confidence he might have said
+that Rupert Ashley at his best had been restored to life again, but even
+that would not have expressed the fullness of his consciousness of
+power.
+
+He nodded to Davenant before shaking hands with Miss Guion. "Hello! Back
+again?"
+
+Davenant got up from his low chair with some embarrassment. Ashley bowed
+over Olivia's hand with unusual courtliness. He seated himself in the
+other corner of the sofa, as one who had a right to the place.
+
+"I had to come East on business," Davenant explained, at once.
+
+Olivia hastened to corroborate this statement. "Aunt Vic wanted Mr.
+Davenant to come--to settle up all the things--"
+
+"And I had another reason," Davenant interrupted, nervously. "I was just
+beginning to tell Miss Guion about it when you came in. I've a job out
+there--in my work--that would suit Mr. Guion. It would be quite in his
+line--legal adviser to a company--and would give him occupation. He'd be
+earning money, and wouldn't feel laid aside; and if he was ill I could
+look after him as well as any one. I--I'd like it."
+
+Olivia looked inquiringly at Ashley. Her eyes were misty.
+
+"Hadn't you better talk to _him_ about it?" Ashley said.
+
+"I thought I'd better speak to you and Miss Guion first. I understand
+you've offered to--to take him--"
+
+"I shouldn't interfere with what suited him better, in any case. By the
+way, how did you like the _Louisiana_?"
+
+Davenant's jaw dropped. His blue eyes were wide with amazement. It was
+Olivia who undertook to speak, with a little air of surprise that Ashley
+should make such an odd mistake.
+
+"Mr. Davenant wasn't on the _Louisiana_. It was Aunt Vic. Mr. Davenant
+has just come from the West. You do that by train."
+
+"Of course he was on the _Louisiana_. Landed on the--let me see!--she
+sailed again yesterday!--landed on the 20th, didn't you?"
+
+"No, no," Olivia corrected again, smiling. "That was the day Aunt Vic
+landed. You're getting every one mixed."
+
+"But they came together," Ashley persisted. "He brought her. Didn't
+you?"
+
+The look on Olivia's face frightened Davenant. He got up and stood
+apologetically behind his chair. "You'll have to forgive me, Miss
+Guion," he stammered. "I--I deceived you. I couldn't think of anything
+else to do."
+
+She leaned forward, looking up at him. "But I don't know what you did,
+as it is. I can't understand--what--what any one is saying."
+
+"Then I'll tell you, by Jove! All the time you thought he was out there
+at Michigan he was over in France, following up the Marquise. Tracked
+her like a bloodhound, what? Told her the whole story--how we'd got to a
+deadlock--and everything. Made her think that unless she came and bailed
+us out we'd be caught there for the rest of our lives."
+
+Olivia's eyes were still lifted to Davenant's. "Is that true?"
+
+"It's true, by Jove!--true as you live. What's more, he cracked me up as
+though I was the only man alive--said that when it came to a question of
+who was worthy--worthy to marry you--he wasn't fit to black my boots."
+
+"No," Davenant cried, fiercely. "There was no question of me."
+
+"Bosh! Bosh, my good fellow! When a man does what you've done there's no
+question of any one but him."
+
+The color was hot in Davenant's cheeks, but he himself could not have
+told whether it came from astonishment or anger. "Since Colonel Ashley
+knows so well what happened, I shall leave him to tell it."
+
+He was about to make his escape, when Olivia stopped him. "No, no.
+Wait--please wait. Tell me why you did it."
+
+"I'll tell you," Ashley broke in. He spoke with a kind of nervous
+jauntiness. "I'll tell you, by Jove! We had a row. I called him a cad. I
+called him a damned cad. There _was_ a damned cad present on that
+occasion--only--I didn't hit the right nail on the head. But that's not
+what I'm coming to. He struck me. He struck me right in the teeth, by
+Jove! And when a man strikes you, it's an insult that can only be wiped
+out by blood. Very well; he's offered it--his blood. He didn't wait for
+me to draw it. I suppose he thought I wouldn't go in for the heroic. So
+of his own accord he went over there to France and shed his heart's
+blood, in the hope that I might overlook his offence. All right, old
+chap; I overlook it."
+
+With a laugh Ashley held his hand up toward Davenant, who ignored it.
+
+"Miss Guion," Davenant said, huskily, "Colonel Ashley is pleased to put
+his own interpretation on what was in itself a very simple thing. You
+mayn't think it a very creditable thing, but I'll tell you just what
+happened, and you can draw your own conclusions. I went over to France,
+and saw your aunt, the Marquise, and asked her to let me have my money
+back. That's the plain truth of it. She'll tell you so herself. I'd
+heard she was very fond of you--devoted to you--and that she was very
+rich and generous--and so I thought, if I told her exactly how matters
+stood, it would be a good chance to--to--recoup myself for--the loan."
+
+Ashley sprang up with another laugh. "He does that well, doesn't he?" he
+said to Olivia. "Come along, old boy," he added, slipping his arm
+through Davenant's. "If I let you stay here you'll perjure your very
+soul."
+
+Davenant allowed himself to be escorted to the door. Over his shoulder
+Ashley called back to Olivia: "Fellows are never good friends till after
+they've had a fight."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+When Ashley, after pushing Davenant gently out into the hall, returned
+to Olivia, she was standing by the mantelpiece, where the five K'ang-hsi
+vases had been restored to their place in honor of the Marquise.
+
+"Rum chap, isn't he?" Ashley observed. "So awfully queer and American.
+No Englishman would ever have taken a jaunt like that--after the old
+lady--on another chap's behalf. It wouldn't go down, you know."
+
+Olivia, leaning on the mantelpiece, with face partially turned from him,
+made no reply.
+
+He allowed some minutes to pass before saying: "When I asked him how he
+liked the _Louisiana_ I wanted to know. I'm thinking of taking her on
+her next trip home."
+
+She turned slightly, lifting her eyes. There was a wonderful light in
+them, and yet a light that seemed to shine from afar. "Wouldn't that be
+rather soon?"
+
+"It would give me time for all I want. Now that I'm here I'd better take
+a look at New York and Washington, and perhaps get a glimpse of your
+South. I could do that in three weeks."
+
+She seemed to have some difficulty in getting her mind to follow his
+words. "I don't think I understand you."
+
+There was a smile on his lips as he said: "Don't you infer anything?"
+
+"If I _inferred_ anything, it would be that you think of going
+home--alone."
+
+"Well, that's it."
+
+She turned fully round. For a long minute they stood staring at each
+other. Time and experience seemed both to pass over them before she
+uttered the one word: "Why?"
+
+"Isn't it pretty nearly--self-evident?"
+
+She shook her head. "Not to me."
+
+"I'm surprised at that. I thought you would have seen how well we'd
+played our game, and that it's--up."
+
+"I don't see--not unless you're trying to tell me that you've--that your
+feelings have undergone a--"
+
+He was still smiling rather mechanically, though he tugged nervously at
+the end of his horizontal mustache. "Wouldn't it be possible--now that
+everything has turned out so--so beautifully--wouldn't it be possible to
+let the rest go without--without superfluous explanations?"
+
+"I'm ready to do everything you like; but I can't help being surprised."
+
+"That must be because I've been more successful than I thought I was. I
+fancied that--when I saw how things were with you--you saw how they were
+with me--and that--"
+
+"Saw how they were with you? Do you mean?--No, you can't mean!--it
+isn't--Drusilla?"
+
+Since Drusilla would do as well as another, he still stood smiling. She
+clasped her hands. Her face was all aglow.
+
+"Oh, I should be so glad! It's only within a few days that I've
+seen--how it was--with--"
+
+He hastened to interrupt her, though he had no idea of what she was
+going to say. "Then so long as you do see--"
+
+"Oh yes; I--I begin to see. I'm afraid I've been very stupid. You've
+been so kind--so noble--when all the while--"
+
+"We won't discuss that, what? We won't discuss each other at all. Even
+if you go your way and I go mine, we shall still be--"
+
+He didn't finish, because she dropped again to the sofa, burying her
+face in the cushions. It was the first time he had ever seen her give
+way to deep emotion. If he had not felt so strong to carry the thing
+through to the end, he would have been unnerved. As it was, he sat down
+beside her, bending over her bowed head. He made no attempt to touch
+her.
+
+"I can't bear it," he could hear her panting. "I can't bear it."
+
+"What is it that you can't bear? The pain?" She nodded without raising
+her head.
+
+"Or the happiness?" he asked, gently. She nodded again.
+
+"That is," he went on, "pain for me--and happiness about--about--the
+other chap."
+
+She made the same mute sign of affirmation.
+
+"Then, perhaps, that's just as it should be."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Ashley got out to the road Davenant was still standing by the gate,
+uncertain whether to turn back to the house or go away. Ashley continued
+to smile jauntily. If he was white about the temples and sallow in the
+cheeks there was no one to notice it.
+
+"Miss Guion wants to see you," he announced to Davenant. "It's about
+that matter of her father. I dare say you'll pull it off. No, not just
+now," he added, as Davenant started to go up the driveway. "She--she's
+busy. Later will do. Say this afternoon. Come along with me. I've got
+something to tell you. I'm on my way to the Temples'."
+
+Once more Ashley slipped his arm through Davenant's, but they walked on
+in silence. The silence continued till they were on the Embankment, when
+Ashley said: "On second thoughts, I sha'n't tell you what I was going to
+just now."
+
+"That's all right," Davenant rejoined; and no more was said till they
+reached Rodney Temple's door.
+
+"Good-by." Ashley offered his hand. "Good-by. You're a first-rate sort.
+You deserve everything you're--you're coming in for."
+
+Davenant could only wring the proffered hand wonderingly and continue on
+his way.
+
+Inside the house Ashley asked only for Drusilla. When she came to the
+drawing-room he refused to sit down. He explained his hurry, on the
+ground that he was on his way to Boston to take the earliest possible
+train for New York.
+
+"Oh yes. That's it," he said, in answer to her dumb looks of inquiry.
+"It couldn't go on, you see. You must have known it--in spite of what
+you told me last night. You've been an out-and-out good pal. You've
+cheered me up more than a bit all the time I've been here. If it hadn't
+been for you--Oh yes, I'm hit; but not hit so hard that I can't still go
+on fighting--"
+
+"Not in the Carral country, I hope."
+
+"N-no. On second thoughts that would be only running away. I'm not going
+to run away. Wounds as bad as mine have healed with a bit of nursing,
+and--Well, good-by. Say good-by to your father and mother for me, will
+you?--especially to your governor. Rum old chap, but sound--sound as--as
+Shakespeare and the Bible. Good-by once more. Meet again some time."
+
+It was at the door, to which she accompanied him, that he said: "By the
+way, when are you coming home?"
+
+She called all her dignity to her aid in order to reply lightly: "Oh, I
+don't know. Not for ages and ages. Perhaps not at all. I may stay
+permanently over here. I don't know."
+
+"Oh, I say--"
+
+"In any case I'm here for the winter."
+
+"Oh, but I say, by Jove! That's forever. You'll be back before spring?"
+
+She weakened in spite of herself. "I couldn't possibly leave till after
+Christmas."
+
+"Christmas! It's the end of November now. Well, that's not so bad.
+Expect to be in Southsea some time early in the new year. See you then."
+
+He had gone down the steps when he turned again. Drusilla was still
+standing in the open doorway.
+
+"It's awfully queer, but I feel as if--you'll laugh, I know--but I feel
+as if I'd been kept from the commission of a crime. Funny, isn't it?
+Well, I'll be off. See you in Southsea not later than the middle of
+January. Good-by again; and don't forget my message to your governor."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+It was late in the afternoon when Davenant reappeared at Tory Hill,
+having tramped the streets during most of the time since leaving Ashley
+in the morning. He was nervous. He was even alarmed. He had little clue
+to Olivia's judgment on his visit to the Marquise, and he found Ashley's
+hints mysterious.
+
+It was reassuring, therefore, to have her welcome him with gentle
+cordiality into the little oval sitting-room, where he found her at her
+desk. She made him take the most comfortable seat, while she herself
+turned partially round, her arm stretched along the back of her chair.
+Though the room was growing dim, there was still a crimson light from
+the sunset.
+
+He plunged at once into the subject that had brought him, explaining the
+nature of the work her father would be called upon to do. It would be
+easy work, though real work, just what would be within his powers. There
+would be difficulties, some arising from the relationship of the
+Massachusetts bar to that of Michigan, and others on which he touched
+more lightly; but he thought they could all be overcome. Even if that
+proved to be impossible, there were other things he knew of that Mr.
+Guion could do--things quite in keeping with his dignity.
+
+"I've already talked to papa about it," she said. "He's very
+grateful--very much touched."
+
+"There's no reason for that. I should like his company. I'm--I'm fond of
+him."
+
+For a few minutes she seemed to be pondering, absently. "There's
+something I should like to ask you," she said, at last.
+
+"Yes, Miss Guion? What is it?"
+
+"When people have done so much harm as--as we've done, do you think it's
+right that they should get off scot-free--without punishment?"
+
+"I don't know anything about that, Miss Guion. It seems to me I'm not
+called upon to know. Where we see things going crooked we must butt in
+and help to straighten them. Even when we've done that to the best of
+our powers, I guess there'll still be punishment enough to go round.
+Outside the law-courts, that's something we don't have to look after."
+
+Again she sat silent, watching the shifting splendor of the sunset. He
+could see her profile set against the deep-red glow like an intaglio on
+sard.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "if you have any idea of the many things you've
+taught me?"
+
+"I?" He almost jumped from his seat. "You're laughing at me."
+
+"You've taught me," she went on, quietly, "how hard and narrow my
+character has been. You've taught me how foolish a thing pride can be,
+and how unlovely we can make even that noble thing we call a spirit of
+independence. You've taught me how big human nature is--how vast and
+deep and--and _good_. I don't think I believed in it before. I know I
+didn't. I thought it was the right thing, the clever thing, to distrust
+it, to discredit it. I did that. It was because, until I knew you--that
+is, until I knew you as you _are_--I had no conception of it--not any
+more than a peasant who's always starved on barren, inland hills has a
+conception of the sea."
+
+He was uncomfortable. He was afraid. If she continued to speak like that
+he might say something difficult to withdraw. He fell back awkwardly on
+the subject of her father and the job at Stoughton.
+
+"And you won't have to worry about him, Miss Guion, when you're over
+there in England," he said, earnestly, as he summed up the advantages he
+had to offer, "because if he's ill, I'll look after him, and if he's
+_very_ ill, I'll cable. I promise you I will--on my solemn word."
+
+"You won't have to do that," she said, simply, "because I'm going, too."
+
+Again he almost jumped from his chair. "Going, too? Going where?"
+
+"Going to Stoughton with papa."
+
+"But--but--Miss Guion--"
+
+"I'm not going to be married," she continued, in the same even tone. "I
+thought perhaps Colonel Ashley might have told you. That's all over."
+
+"All over--how?"
+
+"He's been so magnificent--so wonderful. He stood by me during all my
+trouble, never letting me know that he'd changed in any way--"
+
+"Oh, he's changed, has he?"
+
+Because he sat slightly behind her, she missed the thunderous gloom in
+his face, while she was too intent on what she was saying to note the
+significance in his tone.
+
+"Perhaps he hasn't changed so much, after all. As I think it over I'm
+inclined to believe that he was in love with Drusilla from the
+first-only my coming to Southsea brought in a disturbing--"
+
+"Then he's a hound! I'd begun to think better of him--I did think better
+of him--but now, by God, I'll--"
+
+With a backward gesture of the hand, without looking at him, she made
+him resume the seat from which he was again about to spring.
+
+"No, no. You don't understand. He's been superb. He's still superb. He
+would never have told me at all if he hadn't seen--"
+
+She stopped with a little gasp.
+
+"Yes? If he hadn't seen--what?"
+
+"That I--that I--I care--for some one else."
+
+"Oh! Well, of course, that does make a difference."
+
+He fell back into the depths of his chair, his fingers drumming on the
+table beside which he sat. Minutes passed before he spoke again. He got
+the words out jerkily, huskily, with dry throat.
+
+"Some one--in England?"
+
+"No--here."
+
+During the next few minutes of silence he pulled himself imperceptibly
+forward, till his elbows rested on his knees, while he peered up into
+the face of which he could still see nothing but the profile.
+
+"Is he--is he--coming to Stoughton?"
+
+"He's _going_ to Stoughton. He's been there--already."
+
+If there was silence again it was because he dared not frame the words
+that were on his tongue.
+
+"It isn't--it can't be--?"
+
+Without moving otherwise, she turned her head so that her eyes looked
+into his obliquely. She nodded. She could utter no more than the
+briefest syllables. "Yes. It is."
+
+His lips were parched, but he still forced himself to speak. "Is that
+true?--or are you saying it because--because I put up the money?"
+
+She gathered all her strength together. "If you hadn't put up the money,
+I might never have known that it was true; but it _is_ true. I think it
+was true before that--long ago--when you offered me so much--so
+_much!_--that I didn't know how to take it--and I didn't answer you. I
+can't tell. I can't tell when it began--but it seems to me very far
+back--"
+
+Still bending forward, he covered his eyes with his left hand, raising
+his right in a blind, groping movement in her direction. She took it in
+both her own, clasping it to her breast, as she went on:
+
+"I see now--yes, I think I see quite clearly--that that's why I
+struggled against your help, in the first place.... If it had been
+anybody else I should probably have taken it at once.... You must have
+thought me very foolish.... I suppose I was.... My only excuse is that
+it was something like--like revolt--first against the wrong we had been
+doing, and then against the great, sublime thing that was coming up out
+of the darkness to conquer me.... That's the way I felt.... I was
+afraid.... I wanted something smaller--something more conventional--such
+as I'd been trained for.... It was only by degrees that I came to see
+that there were big things to live for--as well as little.... It's all
+so wonderful!--so mysterious! I can't tell!... I only know that now--"
+
+He withdrew his hand, looking troubled.
+
+"Are you--are you--_sure?_"
+
+She reflected a minute. "I know what makes you ask that. You think I've
+changed too suddenly. If so, I can explain it."
+
+The silence in which he waited for her to continue assented in some sort
+to this reading of his thoughts.
+
+"It isn't that I've changed," she said, at last, speaking thoughtfully,
+"so much as that I've wakened to a sense of what's real for me as
+distinguished from what's been forced and artificial. You may understand
+me better if I say that in leading my life up to--up to recently, I've
+been like a person at a play--a play in which the situations are
+interesting and the characters sympathetic, but which becomes like a
+dream the minute you leave the theater and go home. I feel that--that
+with you--I've--I've got home."
+
+He would have said something, but she hurried on.
+
+"I've not changed toward the play, except to recognize the fact that it
+_was_ a play--for me. I knew it the instant I began to learn about
+papa's troubles. That was like a summons to me, like a call. When it
+came, everything else--the things I'd been taught to strive for and the
+people whom I had supposed to be the only ones worth living with, grew
+distant and shadowy, as though they belonged to a picture or a book. It
+seemed to me that I woke then for the first time to a realization of the
+life going on about me here in my own country, and to a sense of my
+share in it. If I hadn't involved myself so much--and involved some one
+else with me--my duty would have been clearer from the start. But
+Colonel Ashley's been so noble!--he's understood me so well!--he's
+helped me so much to understand myself!--that I can't help honoring him,
+honoring him with my whole heart, even if I see now that I don't--that I
+never did--care for him in the way--"
+
+She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep back what might have
+become a sob.
+
+"Did you know I--I loved you?" he asked, still speaking hoarsely.
+
+"I thought you must," she said, simply. "I used to say I hoped you
+didn't--but deep down in my heart--"
+
+He got up and strode to the window, where, with his back to her, he
+stared awhile at the last cold glimmer of the sun set. His big frame and
+broad shoulders shut out the light to such an extent that when he turned
+it was toward a darkened room. He could barely see her, as she sat
+sidewise to the desk, an arm along the back of her chair. His attitude
+bespoke a doubt in his mind that still kept him at a distance.
+
+"You're not--you're _not_--saying all this," he pleaded, "because you
+think I've done anything that calls for a reward? I said once that I
+should never take anything from you, and I never shall--unless it's
+something you give only because you can't help it."
+
+Her answer was quite prompt. "I'm not giving anything--or doing
+anything. What has happened seems to me to have come about simply and
+naturally, like the sunrise or the seasons, because it's the fullness of
+time and what God means. I can't say more about it than that. If it
+depended on my own volition I shouldn't be able to speak of it so
+frankly. But now--if you want me--as you wanted me once--"
+
+She rose and stood by her chair, holding herself proudly and yet with a
+certain meekness. With his hands clasped behind him, as though even yet
+he dared not touch her, he crossed the twilit room toward her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that night Henry Guion stood on the terrace below the
+Corinthian-columned portico. There was no moon, but the stars had
+the gold fire with which they shine when the sky is violet. Above
+the horizon a shimmering halo marked the cluster of cities and towns.
+In the immediate foreground the great elm was leafless now, but for
+that reason more clearly etched against the starlight--line on line,
+curve on curve, sweeping, drooping, interlaced. Guion stood with head
+up and figure erect, as if from strength given back to him. Even
+through the darkness he displayed some of the self-assurance and
+stoutness of heart of the man with whom things are going well. He was
+remembering--questioning--doubting.
+
+"I had come to the end of the end ... and I prayed ... yes, I
+_prayed_.... I asked for a miracle ... and the next day it seemed to
+have been worked.... Was it the prayer that did it?... Was it any one's
+prayer?... Was it any one's faith?... Was it--God?... Had faith and
+prayer and God anything to do with it?... Do things happen by
+coincidence and chance?... or is there a Mind that directs them?... I
+wonder!... I wonder!..."
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Street Called Straight, by Basil King
+
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