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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14394-0.txt b/14394-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..991db3d --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12124 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14394 *** + +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 + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14394 *** diff --git a/14394-h/14394-h.htm b/14394-h/14394-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5c30ed1 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/14394-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,10659 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta name="generator" content= +"HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 1st February 2004), see www.w3.org" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Street Called Straight, +by Basil King.</title> + +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + text-indent: 1em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + max-width: 40em; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .citation { /* author citation at end of blockquote or poem */ + text-align: right; + } + .noindent {text-indent: 0em;} + ins.correction { + text-decoration:none; + } + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .caption { margin-top: 0; font-size: smaller; text-align: center;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + img { /* the default image has */ + border: 1px solid black; /* a thin black line border */ + padding: 6px; /* ..spaced a bit out from the graphic */ + } + img.plain { /* image with no border or padding, see float */ + border: none; padding: 0; + } + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14394 ***</div> + +<h1>THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT</h1> +<h3>A NOVEL<br /> +<br /> +BY</h3> +<h2>BASIL KING</h2> +<h3>AUTHOR OF<br /> +THE INNER SHRINE, THE WILD OLIVE, ETC.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +ILLUSTRATED BY<br /> +ORSON LOWELL</h3> +<h4 style="margin-top: 5em;">NEW YORK<br /> +GROSSET & DUNLAP<br /> +PUBLISHERS</h4> +<p class="center">Published by Arrangement with Harper & +Brothers</p> +<p class="center">1911, 1912.<br /> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br /> +PUBLISHED MAY, 1912</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"<em>By the Street Called Straight we come to the House called +Beautiful</em>"</p> +<p class="citation">—New England Saying</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">s 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"And what does Colonel Ashley look like, Drucie?" he asked, +glancing slyly at Miss Guion.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"It is like him," Miss Guion laughed.</p> +<p>"Is he as stiff as all that?" the professor inquired.</p> +<p>"Not stiff," Miss Guion explained, "only dignified."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 <em>tour de force</em>. 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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That doesn't do us any good," Rodney Temple corrected, "because +we always blame the spoon."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She held her head slightly to one side, smiling with an air of +mock penitence.</p> +<p>"Dear, dear!" Mrs. Temple murmured, sympathetically. "Just +because you wouldn't marry a Frenchman!"</p> +<p>"And a little because I'm <em>going</em> to marry an Englishman. +To Aunt Vic all Englishmen are grocers."</p> +<p>"Horrid old thing!" Drusilla said, indignantly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"The capacity of the American woman for being domesticated in an +alien environment," observed Rodney Temple, "is only equaled by the +dog's."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we," Mrs. Temple quoted, +gently.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Drusilla had a way of appealing to whatever men were present, as +though her statements lacked something till they had received +masculine corroboration.</p> +<p>"All the same, I wish you could have managed the thing without +giving offence to Aunt Vic."</p> +<p>The words were Henry Guion's first since sitting down to +table.</p> +<p>"I couldn't help it, papa. I didn't <em>give</em> Aunt Vic +offence; she took it."</p> +<p>"She's always been so fond of you—"</p> +<p>"I'm fond of <em>her</em>. 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?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"I've done that, Cousin Cherry."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Olivia simply <em>must</em> 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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What are <em>you</em> going to do, Henry, when the gallant +stranger carries off Olivia, a fortnight hence?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What am I going to do?" he repeated, absently. "Oh, my future +will depend very much on—Hobson's choice."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"What about the big estates?"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Oh, nothing—except what I hear."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Then you've been—hearing—things?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Have I been hearing things? N-no; only that the care of big +estates is a matter of great responsibility—and anxiety."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Perhaps I sha'n't get the chance. Work may give +up—me."</p> +<p>"I wish it would, papa. Then everything would be settled."</p> +<p>"Some things would be settled. Others might be opened—for +discussion."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>could</em> 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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, he had a reason," Mrs. Fane agreed—"the reason of +being hard up. The trouble lay in its not being good enough."</p> +<p>"I imagine it was good enough for him, poor devil."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Since when?"</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"Oh, for no reason. It only strikes me as curious that your +sympathy should take that turn."</p> +<p>"Precisely," Miss Guion chimed in. "It's not a bit like you, +papa. You used to be harder on dishonorable things than any +one."</p> +<p>"Well, I'm not now."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/t.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="T" title="T" /></div> +<p class="noindent">he 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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That's interesting—very," Guion said. "How did you make +the discovery?"</p> +<p>"By being bored to death."</p> +<p>"Bored?—with all your money?"</p> +<p>"The money isn't much; but, even if it were, it couldn't go on +buying me a good time."</p> +<p>"That, of course, depends on what your idea of a good time may +be; doesn't it, Rodney?"</p> +<p>"It depends somewhat," Rodney replied, "on the purchasing power +of money. There are things not to be had for cash."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"A bee," Guion observed, "isn't the product of a high and +complex civilization—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And so you've come back to Boston to work?"</p> +<p>"To work—or something."</p> +<p>"You leave yourself, I see, the latitude +of—something."</p> +<p>"Only because it's better than nothing. It's been nothing for so +long now that I'm willing to make it anything."</p> +<p>"Make what—anything?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Davenant laughed. "A little," he admitted. "But, to any one like +you, sir, it would seem a trifle."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Davenant resisted the impulse to glance at Temple, who spoke +promptly, while Guion swallowed thirstily a glass of cognac.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"So everything you undertook you pulled off successfully?" his +host questioned, abruptly.</p> +<p>"Not everything; some things. I lost money—often; but on +the whole I made it."</p> +<p>"Good! With me it was always the other way."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"You'll miss Olivia when she's gone, Henry."</p> +<p>"Y-yes; if she goes."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Nothing but gossip, Henry."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I was afraid it might be. But in that case I wonder you allowed +Olivia to go ahead."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"You don't think he'd want to back out, do you?"</p> +<p>"I haven't the remotest idea. From Olivia's description he seems +like a decent sort; and yet—"</p> +<p>Davenant got to, his feet. "Shouldn't you like me to go back to +the ladies? You want to talk to the professor—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"They'll not rush things like that," Temple said, tying to speak +reassuringly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Can't anything be done?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Is there nothing to be expected in that quarter for +yourself?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"Ashley, I take it, is a man of some means?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"It was Hallett—Peter Hallett."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Well, what is it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What put that into your head?" was the old man's response to +this stammering confession.</p> +<p>"I suppose the thought occurred to me on general principles. +I've always understood it was the right thing to attempt."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"The difficulty is," he said, after a long silence, "that it's +often so hard to know what <em>is</em> right."</p> +<p>"No, it isn't."</p> +<p>The flat contradiction brought a smile to the young man's lips +as they trudged onward.</p> +<p>"A good many people say so."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Aren't there exceptions to that rule?"</p> +<p>"I allowed for the exceptions. I said <em>chiefly</em>."</p> +<p>"But when you <em>do</em> want to do it?"</p> +<p>"You'll know what it is. There'll be something to tell you."</p> +<p>"And this something to tell you? What do you call it?"</p> +<p>"Some call it conscience. Some call it God. Some call it +neither."</p> +<p>Davenant reflected again.</p> +<p>"And you? What do you call it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Why not to me?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I dare say."</p> +<p>"So what then?"</p> +<p>"Then you do them."</p> +<p>"Oh, but—"</p> +<p>"If there's an 'Oh, but', you don't. That's all. You belong to +the many called, but not to the few chosen."</p> +<p>"But if things <em>are</em> wild—I'm thinking of something +in particular—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I shouldn't dream of classing myself in their company."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Good-night, sir. I hope you're not going to think +me—well, altogether an idiot."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/d.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="D" title="D" /></div> +<p class="noindent">avenant 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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>It was then that he found the question raising itself within +him, "Is that what's wrong with me?"</p> +<p>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 <em>given</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Here's Peter!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Oh, Peter, dear, I'm so glad you've come! The most awful thing +has happened."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What's the matter?" Davenant asked, too deeply astonished even +to take off his hat. "Is it burglars? Where's the professor?"</p> +<p>"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 ... +<em>know</em> ... it's ... <em>true</em>."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What is it?" Peter asked again. "Who's Collins? And what has he +said?"</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>"What was too awful? The way she laid your wrapper on the +bed?"</p> +<p>"No; what she told me. And I <em>know</em> it's true."</p> +<p>"Well, for the Lord's sake, Drusilla, what is it?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Davenant listened in silence. "So the thing is out?" was his +only comment.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 +<em>I</em> don't know."</p> +<p>Mrs. Temple raised her hands and let them drop heavily.</p> +<p>"Oh, Peter, can't you do anything?"</p> +<p>"What can he do, child? If Henry's been making away with all +that money it would take a fortune to—"</p> +<p>"Oh, men can do things—in business," Drusilla asserted. "I +know they can. Banks lend them money, <em>don't</em> they, Peter? +Banks are always lending money to tide people over. I've often +heard of it. Oh, Peter, <em>do</em> something. I'm so glad you're +here. It seems like a providence."</p> +<p>"Colonel Ashley will be here next week, too," Mrs. Temple +groaned, as though the fact brought comfort.</p> +<p>"Oh, mother dear, don't <em>speak</em> 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 <em>impossible</em>—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 <em>me</em>, mother dear, but to stay at home with +father and you."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, Peter, <em>won't</em> you do something?"</p> +<p>Drusilla's hands were clasped beneath an imploring face, +slightly tilted to one side. Her black hair had begun to tumble to +her shoulders.</p> +<p>"I'll—I'll think it over," was all he could find to +answer.</p> +<p>"Oh, <em>thank</em> 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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Some call it conscience. Some call it God. Some call it +neither. But," he added, slowly, "some <em>do</em> call it +God."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/c.png" width= +"80" height="101" alt="C" title="C" /></div> +<p class="noindent">losing 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.</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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 <em>still</em>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>She answered languidly. "Yes, so so. It might have been +pleasanter if it hadn't been for that awful man."</p> +<p>"Who? Young Davenant? I don't see anything awful about him."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm sorry you feel that way about young Davenant. I rather like +him."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Oh, men would," she said, indifferently, without turning round. +"He's their style."</p> +<p>"Which is to his discredit?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Davenant isn't a bore."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She had paused on the landing at the angle of the staircase.</p> +<p>"He's good-looking," Guion said, in continued effort to +interpose the trivial between himself and what he had still to tell +her.</p> +<p>"Oh, that sort of Saxon giant type is always good-looking. Of +course. And dull too."</p> +<p>"I dare say he isn't as dull as you think."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm an American man of business myself."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"No; there's no reason for that," he managed to say.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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...."</p> +<p>"Well, as long as they're not involved now there's no reason why +it shouldn't be better late than never."</p> +<p>"But they <em>are</em> involved now," he said, with an intensity +so poignant that he was surprised she didn't notice it.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I couldn't.... Things weren't shipshape enough ... not even +then."</p> +<p>"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 <em>must</em> go to bed. +You look tired and rather pale—just as I do after a dull +party. Good night; and <em>don't</em> stay up."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Olivia!"</p> +<p>His voice was so sharp that she hurried back to the top of the +stairs.</p> +<p>"What is it, papa? Aren't you well?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>flair</em>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>in loco parentis</em>, that he +should have a free hand.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"O God! O God!"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"O God! O God!"</p> +<p>He repeated them again. He raised his head, as if listening to a +voice.</p> +<p>"O God! O God!"</p> +<p>He continued to sit thus, as if listening.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>He dragged himself to his feet.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/g.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="G" title="G" /></div> +<p class="noindent">uion 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.</p> +<p>"Oh, papa, what's the matter?"</p> +<p>He threw the coverlet from him and dragged himself to a sitting +posture.</p> +<p>"What time is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. "I must have +dropped off to sleep. Is dinner ready?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm cold," was all he said.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm cold," he said again.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm cold," he said for the third time.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Who's that?" he asked, sharply. He dared not turn round to +see.</p> +<p>"It's only the postman, papa darling. Who else should it +be?"</p> +<p>"Yes; of course." He breathed again. "You mustn't mind me, dear. +I'm nervous. I'm—I'm not very well."</p> +<p>"I see you're not, papa. I saw it last night. I knew something +was wrong."</p> +<p>"There's something—very wrong."</p> +<p>"What is it? Tell me."</p> +<p>Leaning on the table, with clasped hands uplifted, the loose +white lace sleeves falling away from her slender wrists, she looked +at him pleadingly.</p> +<p>"We've—that is, I've—lost a great deal of +money."</p> +<p>"Oh!" The sound was just above her breath. Then, after long +silence, she asked: "Is it much?"</p> +<p>He waited before replying, seeking, for the last time, some +mitigation of what he had to tell her.</p> +<p>"It's all we have."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>He forced himself to take a few sips of coffee and crumble a bit +of toast.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>He nodded an affirmative, with his head down.</p> +<p>"Then you mean me to understand what you said just +now—quite literally. We've lost all we have."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Yes; that <em>is</em> worse," she assented, quietly.</p> +<p>Another silence was broken by his saying, hoarsely:</p> +<p>"You'll get married—"</p> +<p>"That will have to be reconsidered."</p> +<p>"Do you mean—on your part?"</p> +<p>"I suppose I mean—on everybody's part?"</p> +<p>"Do you think he would want to—you must excuse the crudity +of the question—do you think he would want to back out?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Take me, papa? Why shouldn't I stay with you? I'd much +rather."</p> +<p>He tried to explain. It was clearly the moment at which to do +it.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>She nodded. "I think I've heard so."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>She was still sitting where he left her, at the head of the +table, pale, pensive, but not otherwise disturbed.</p> +<p>"Does that mean that you're not coming home to-night?"</p> +<p>"I—I don't know. Things may happen to—to prevent +me."</p> +<p>"Where should you go?—to New York?"</p> +<p>"No; not to New York."</p> +<p>He half hoped she would press the question, but when she spoke +it was only to say:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Mr. Davenant would like to see you," came the voice of the +stenographer from the anteroom.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Guion," the visitor said, +apologetically, with a glance at the letters on the desk.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 +<em>was</em> 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.</p> +<p>"I came in to see you, Mr. Guion," he began, apparently with +some hesitation, "about what we were talking of last night."</p> +<p>Guion pulled himself together. His handsome eyebrows arched +themselves, and he half smiled.</p> +<p>"Last night? What <em>were</em> we talking of?"</p> +<p>"We weren't talking of it, exactly. You only told us."</p> +<p>"Only told you—what?" The necessity to do a little fencing +brought some of his old powers into play.</p> +<p>"That you wanted to borrow half a million dollars. I've come in +to—to lend you that sum—if you'll take it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I didn't suppose you were in—in a position—to do +that."</p> +<p>"I am." Davenant nodded with some emphasis.</p> +<p>"Did you think that that was what I meant when I—I opened +my heart to you last night?"</p> +<p>"No. I know it wasn't. My offer is inspired by nothing but what +I feel."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You can borrow what I'm willing to lend, can't you?"</p> +<p>"No; because Tory Hill is mortgaged for all it will stand. I've +nothing else to offer as collateral—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you mean that you'd be willing to—to—to +<em>give</em> it to me?"</p> +<p>"I mean, sir," he explained, reddening a little, "that I want +you to have the money to <em>use</em>—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—"</p> +<p>"I am; but—don't be offended!—it seems to me you'd +put me in a tighter."</p> +<p>"How's that?"</p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/image2.png"><img src= +"images/image2.png" width="500" height="733" alt= +""I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE PENALTY"" +title= +""I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE PENALTY"" /> +</a> +<p class="caption">"I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE +PENALTY"</p> +</div> +<p>"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 <em>ready</em> 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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Davenant attempted, by taking something like a jovial tone, to +carry the thing off lightly.</p> +<p>"There's no reason why you shouldn't do it; there's only a +reason why I shouldn't let you."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I've told you that. I'm not asking for anything else."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I don't want to know how it began," Davenant said, hastily. +"I'm satisfied with knowing the situation as it is."</p> +<p>"But I want to tell you. In proportion as I'm open with you I +shall expect you to be frank with me."</p> +<p>"I don't promise to be frank with you."</p> +<p>"Anyhow, I mean to set you the example."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>sane</em> man—would tell you as +much."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And what <em>is</em> your opinion? Do you mind telling me? You +understand that what you're proposing is immoral, don't you?"</p> +<p>"Yes—in a way."</p> +<p>Guion frowned. He had hoped for some pretense at +contradiction.</p> +<p>"I didn't know whether you'd thought of that."</p> +<p>"Oh yes, I've thought of it. That is, I see what you mean."</p> +<p>"It's compounding a felony and outwitting the ends of justice +and—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I don't know that I have. In fact, I know I haven't."</p> +<p>"Well, whatever its nature, I should like to know what it +is."</p> +<p>"Is that necessary?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Davenant looked at him pensively. "That is, you want to know +what I should be pulling off for myself?"</p> +<p>"That's about it."</p> +<p>"I don't see why that should worry you. If you get the +money—"</p> +<p>"If I get the money I put myself in your power."</p> +<p>"What of that? Isn't it just as well to be in my power as in the +power of other people?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Possibly," he said, not caring to conceal a certain irritation; +"but even so I should like to know in case I <em>were</em> in your +power what you'd expect of me."</p> +<p>"I can answer that question right away. I shouldn't expect +anything at all."</p> +<p>"Then you leave me more in the dark than ever."</p> +<p>Davenant still eyed him pensively. "Do I understand you to be +suspicious of my motives?"</p> +<p>"Suspicious might not be the right word. Suppose we said +curious."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Well, sir, suppose I allowed you to remain curious? What +then?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"In that case I think we must call the bargain off."</p> +<p>Davenant shot out of his seat. He, too, was not without a +current of hot blood.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>Guion looked up sharply. "Has <em>she</em> got anything to do +with it?"</p> +<p>"Nothing," Davenant said, quickly, "nothing whatever."</p> +<p>"I didn't see how she <em>could</em> have—" Guion was +going on, when Davenant interrupted.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Half a million would be too much. Four hundred and fifty +thousand would cover everything."</p> +<p>"That would be all the same to me," Davenant said, in a +matter-of-fact tone.</p> +<p>But he went back to the desk and took his seat again.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/h.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="H" title="H" /></div> +<p class="noindent">aving 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She experienced the same sensation, if it <em>was</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"You see," Olivia said, trying to sound her friend's ideas, +"from one point of view I scarcely know him."</p> +<p>"You know him well enough to be in love with him." Drusilla felt +that that committed her to nothing.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And you know him well enough to be sure that he'll want to do +everything right."</p> +<p>"Oh yes; I'm quite sure of that. I'm only uncertain +that—everything right—would satisfy me."</p> +<p>Drusilla reflected. "I see what you mean. And, of course, you +want to do—everything right—yourself."</p> +<p>Olivia glanced up obliquely under her lashes.</p> +<p>"I see what <em>you</em> mean, too."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"You see, he didn't want to marry an American, in the first +place."</p> +<p>"Well, no one forced him into that. That's one thing he did with +his eyes open, at any rate."</p> +<p>"His doing it was a sort of—concession."</p> +<p>Drusilla looked at her with big, indignant eyes.</p> +<p>"Concession to what, for pity's sake?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But the other things aren't equal now. Don't you see? They're +changed."</p> +<p>"<em>You're</em> not changed." Drusilla felt these words to be +dangerous. It was a relief to her that Olivia should contradict +them promptly.</p> +<p>"Oh yes, I am. I'm changed—in value. With papa's troubles +there's a depreciation in everything we are."</p> +<p>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 <em>will</em> she say when she knows all?—if +she ever has to know it."</p> +<p>"But she hasn't changed," Mrs. Temple argued.</p> +<p>"It doesn't make any difference in <em>her</em>."</p> +<p>Drusilla shook her head. "Yes, it does, mother dear. You don't +know anything about it."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you mean to say they'd make him give it up?"</p> +<p>"They wouldn't make him, mother dear. He'd only have to."</p> +<p>"Well, I never did! If that's the British army—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"The future may be quite different from what I expected. I can't +tell yet for sure. I must see how things—work out."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I know I've got to feel my way," she said, meaning to agree +with him.</p> +<p>"I don't see why."</p> +<p>She raised her eyebrows in some surprise. "You don't +see—?"</p> +<p>"No, I don't. Why should you feel your way? You're not +blind."</p> +<p>"I feel my way because I don't see it."</p> +<p>"Oh yes, you do—all you need to see."</p> +<p>"But I don't see any. I assure you it's all confusion."</p> +<p>"Not a bit, my dear. It's as plain as a pikestaff—for the +next step."</p> +<p>"I don't know what you mean by the next step."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Her lips relaxed in a pale smile. "I'm afraid I must look a +little farther ahead than that."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"W-well," the old man answered, slowly, "it isn't easy to tell +you in any language you'd understand."</p> +<p>"I can understand plain English, if that would do."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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 +<em>Thing</em>."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"That's a pity; because it's there."</p> +<p>"There? Where?"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>know</em> but yourself, because no one but yourself can see +it—but it's possible that at this moment—for +you—it's standing still."</p> +<p>"I don't know what I gain either by its moving or its standing +still, so long as I don't see it."</p> +<p>"No, neither do I," he assented, promptly.</p> +<p>"Well, then?" she questioned.</p> +<p>"Shall I tell you a little story?" He smiled at her behind his +stringy, sandy beard, while his kind old eyes blinked +wistfully.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Yes? I seem to have heard of them. Please go on."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She nodded, to show that she followed him.</p> +<p>"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.'"</p> +<p>"That seems reasonable."</p> +<p>"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—<em>to sit still</em>!'" As he +stood looking down at her his kindly eyes blinked for a minute +longer, before he added, "Do you see the point?"</p> +<p>She smiled and nodded. "Yes. It isn't very obscure. Otherwise +expressed it might be, When in doubt, do nothing."</p> +<p>"Exactly; do nothing—till the pillar of cloud begins to +move."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to +observe.</p> +<p>"No, I didn't."</p> +<p>"Sha'n't you <em>have</em> to go?"</p> +<p>There was an instant's hesitation.</p> +<p>"Perhaps not. In fact—I may almost definitely +say—<em>not</em>. I should like another cup of tea."</p> +<p>"That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake?"</p> +<p>"Nothing will keep me awake to-night."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Has anything happened?" she asked, doing her best to give the +question a casual intonation.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm so glad." She spoke as if he had told her he had shaken +hands with an old friend. "I thought you would."</p> +<p>"Ah, but you never thought of anything like this."</p> +<p>"I knew it would be something pretty good. With your name, there +wasn't the slightest doubt of it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>give</em> me—enough money to +pull me through."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What do you mean by—practically to give you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"How can he tell, then, that you'll ever pay it back?"</p> +<p>"He can't tell. That's just it."</p> +<p>"And can you tell?" She let the lump of sugar fall with a circle +of tiny eddies into the cup of tea.</p> +<p>"I can tell—up to a point." His tone indicated some +abatement of enthusiasm.</p> +<p>"Up to what point?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She handed him his cup. "Isn't that a very queer way to lend +money?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"It doesn't sound fatuous so much as—"</p> +<p>"So much as what?"</p> +<p>The distress gathering in her eyes prepared him for her next +words before she uttered them.</p> +<p>"Papa, I shouldn't think you'd take it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I haven't said I'd take it—positively."</p> +<p>"Naturally. Of course you haven't."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, don't you? To me it's self-evident. We may have lost money, +but we're still not—recipients of alms."</p> +<p>"This wasn't alms. It was four hundred and fifty thousand +dollars."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Y-es; of course—if you look at it in that way." He put +back his cup on the table untasted.</p> +<p>"Surely it's the only way to look at it? Aren't you going to +drink your tea?"</p> +<p>"No, I think not. I've had enough. I've—I've had +enough—of everything."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"I suppose you'll be sorry now for having told me."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>She allowed him a minute in which to resume, but, as he kept +silence, she ventured to ask:</p> +<p>"Does that mean that you don't share them now?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Oh, but I didn't understand that this <em>was</em> 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."</p> +<p>He jerked himself up into a forward posture. When he replied to +her, it was with didactic, explanatory irritation.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Oh! So it was—that man?"</p> +<p>"Yes; it was he. He expressly spoke of it as <em>a loan</em>. I +myself interpreted it as a gift simply to emphasize its +extraordinary generosity. I thought you'd appreciate that. Do you +see?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I had that out with him. He said he didn't expect to gain +anything."</p> +<p>"And you believed him?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But you don't need the money—in that way, papa?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, don't, papa. I'm sure it isn't right. I—I don't like +him."</p> +<p>"Pff! What's that got to do with it? This is business."</p> +<p>"No, papa. It's not business. It's a great deal more—or a +great deal less—I don't know which."</p> +<p>"You don't know anything about it at all, dear. You may take +that from me. This is a man's affair. You really <em>must</em> +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?"</p> +<p>"I've nothing against him—except that I've never liked +him."</p> +<p>"What do you know about him? When did you ever see him?"</p> +<p>"I <em>haven't</em> 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?"</p> +<p>There was no answer. He breathed gently. She spoke more +forcibly.</p> +<p>"Papa, you wouldn't let a stranger pay your debts?"</p> +<p>He continued to breathe gently, his eyes closed, the long black +lashes curling on his cheek.</p> +<p>"Papa, darling," she cried, "I'll help you. I'll take everything +on myself. I'll find a way—somehow. Only, <em>don't</em> do +this."</p> +<p>He stirred, and murmured sleepily.</p> +<p>"You attend to your wedding, dear. That'll be quite enough for +you to look after."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>When he made no response to this shot, she understood finally +that he meant to let the subject drop.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>svelte</em> elegance of the King Arthur beside Maximilian's +tomb at Innspruck.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>mise-en-scène</em>, 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."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"So they told me at his office. I was sorry to hear it."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He colored promptly. "You mean that if they needed anything +you'd offer them the best you had."</p> +<p>"I wonder if you'd understand that I'm not speaking ungraciously +if I said that—I shouldn't offer them anything at all?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I'm sorry. I hoped you would."</p> +<p>"Why?"</p> +<p>She lifted her clear gray eyes on him for the briefest possible +look. "Need I explain?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"But I think you ought. When you enter into what is distinctly +our private family affair, I've a right to give my opinion."</p> +<p>"You don't think I question that?"</p> +<p>"I'm afraid I do. I imagine you're capable of carrying your +point, regardless of what I feel."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Ah, but this is not business. It's charity."</p> +<p>"Did Mr. Guion tell you so?"</p> +<p>"He did. He told me all about it. My father has no secrets from +me."</p> +<p>"Did he use the word—charity?"</p> +<p>"Almost. He said you offered him a loan, but that it really was +a gift."</p> +<p>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 <em>was</em> a gift. Would there be +any harm in it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But I should say that those conditions existed—between +Mr. Guion and me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I wonder how much you know?"</p> +<p>"About my father's affairs? I know everything."</p> +<p>"Everything?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You understood, then," Davenant stammered, "that he might have +to—to—go away?"</p> +<p>"Oh, perfectly."</p> +<p>"And aren't you very much appalled?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, but one like this—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But how could there be worse?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Did he say I wanted anything?"</p> +<p>"He said you hadn't asked for anything. That's what leaves us so +much in the dark."</p> +<p>"Isn't it conceivable—" he began, with a slightly puzzled +air.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Isn't it conceivable," he persisted, "that a man might like to +do a thing, once in a way, without—"</p> +<p>"Without asking for an equivalent in return? Possibly. But in +this case it would only make it harder for me."</p> +<p>"How so?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Who are total strangers, just like me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But you know Mrs. Rodman and Mrs. Clay. They're not +impersonal."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Does my father owe money to <em>them</em>?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I really can't say anything about it. I suppose they would be +among the creditors—as a matter of course."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Isn't it very serious—when there's anything wrong with +estates?"</p> +<p>He answered readily, still forcing a tone of careless +matter-of-fact.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Wasn't it for something of that kind—something wrong with +estates—that Jack Berrington was sent to prison?"</p> +<p>The question took him unawares. "I—I don't remember."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I think I remember hearing about them," he said, for the sake +of saying something; "but—"</p> +<p>"I should like to go and talk with my father. Would you mind +waiting?"</p> +<p>She made as though she would pass him, but he managed to bar her +way.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I don't see that," he returned, adopting her own tone. "I +should think it would be just the other way."</p> +<p>She shook her head.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You'll think differently," he began, "when you've looked at the +thing all round; and then—"</p> +<p>But before he could complete his sentence she had gone.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/f.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="F" title="F" /></div> +<p class="noindent">inding the door of her father's room ajar, Miss +Guion pushed it open and went in.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>dot</em>, +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He opened his eyes without giving any other sign of waking.</p> +<p>"Hallo! What are you looking at me for?"</p> +<p>The tone was not impatient, but she heard in it an implication +of fear.</p> +<p>"Papa, are your troubles anything like Jack Berrington's?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What makes you ask that?"</p> +<p>The intonation was expressionless, and yet, it seemed to her, a +little wary.</p> +<p>"I ask chiefly because—well, because I think they +are."</p> +<p>He looked at her for a minute more, perhaps for longer.</p> +<p>"Well, then—you're right."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That's what I meant—exactly."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I suppose it's the Clay heirs and the Rodman heirs you owe the +money to?"</p> +<p>"And the Compton heirs, and old Miss Burnaby, and the two Misses +Brown, and—"</p> +<p>"Haven't they anything left?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Yes; in the main." He felt it useless to quibble or to try to +extenuate the facts.</p> +<p>"How many years would that be?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"So that their money has been paying for—for all +this."</p> +<p>Her hands made a confused little gesture, indicating the luxury +of his personal appointments and of the room.</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>"I don't see any need," he said, with a touch of peevishness, +"for going so terribly into detail."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You mustn't think it was deliberately planned—" he began, +weakly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I confess I don't follow you there," he complained. "If he +doesn't—then I go to Singville."</p> +<p>"Wouldn't you rather?"</p> +<p>He raised himself stiffly into a sitting posture. "Would +<em>you</em>?"</p> +<p>She did not hesitate in her reply. "Yes, papa. I <em>would</em> +rather—if I were you."</p> +<p>"But since you're not me—since you are +yourself—would you still rather that I went to +Singville?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Do you mean that you'd rather do it if it wasn't for me?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Had a claim on you? How do you mean?"</p> +<p>"He'll have that—if he pays for everything—pays for +everything for years and years back. Don't you see?"</p> +<p>"A claim on you for what, pray?"</p> +<p>"That's what I don't know. But whatever it is, I shall feel that +I'm in his debt."</p> +<p>"Nonsense, dear. I call that morbid. It <em>is</em> morbid."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>There was a long silence before he said, wearily:</p> +<p>"If we call the deal off we must do it with our eyes open to the +consequences. Ashley would almost certainly throw you +over—"</p> +<p>"No; because that possibility couldn't arise."</p> +<p>"And you'll have to be prepared for the disgrace—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Why do you say we?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"They can't put <em>you</em> in Singville."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"That's all very fine now, dear, when you're—what shall I +say?—a little bit <em>exaltée</em>; 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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What would you do?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Yes? And what would you scribble?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Which would be a good deal, wouldn't it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, of course."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on +October 28th."</p> +<p>"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on +October 28th."</p> +<p>"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on +October 28th."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Drusilla, do you remember Jack Berrington?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Y-es."</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>"Do you know what makes me think of him?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I can guess."</p> +<p>Olivia kept on writing. "How long have you known?"</p> +<p>Drusilla threw back the answer while blotting with unnecessary +force the card she had just written: "A couple of days."</p> +<p>"Has it got about—generally?"</p> +<p>"Generally might be too much to say. Some people have got wind +of it; and, of course, a thing of that kind spreads."</p> +<p>"Of course."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia wrote energetically. "What's he doing?"</p> +<p>"Oh, the kind of thing men do. They seem to have wonderful ways +of raising money."</p> +<p>"How do you know he's trying it?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Have you such a lot of confidence in him?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Did I ever tell you that he once asked me to marry him?"</p> +<p>Drusilla wheeled round in her chair and stared, open-mouthed, at +her friend's back.</p> +<p>"<em>No</em>!"</p> +<p>"Oh, it was years ago. I dare say he's forgotten it."</p> +<p>"I'll bet you ten to one he hasn't."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"I shouldn't wonder. I shouldn't wonder at all."</p> +<p>"What <em>could</em> it have?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"And now poor, dear old mother is manœuvering to have +<em>me</em> marry him."</p> +<p>The idea was not new to Olivia, so she said, simply, "And are +you going to?"</p> +<p>"Oh, I don't know." Drusilla sighed wearily, then added: "I +sha'n't if I can help it."</p> +<p>"Does that mean that you'll take him if you can't do +better?"</p> +<p>"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 <em>raison +d'être</em>. 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."</p> +<p>"I suppose you're not in love with any one over there?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Who on earth should I be in love with? What put that into your +head?"</p> +<p>"Oh, I don't know. Stranger things have happened. You see a +great many men—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/d.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="D" title="D" /></div> +<p class="noindent">uring 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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 <em>idée +fixe</em>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I don't think he's in the least likely to turn up."</p> +<p>"But if he did?"</p> +<p>"Well, I suppose you'll be back before long. We couldn't settle +anything without talking it over, in any case."</p> +<p>Forced to be content with that, she kissed him and turned +away.</p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/image1.png"><img src= +"images/image1.png" width="500" height="773" alt= +"SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN AIR" title= +"SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN AIR" /></a> +<p class="caption">SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN +AIR</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I hope he's better," was Davenant's only answer.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I hoped he'd be able to see me to-day. I was on my way to Tory +Hill."</p> +<p>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 <em>farouche</em> 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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I shouldn't if it wasn't important. I don't want to annoy you +more than I can help."</p> +<p>"I don't see how anything can be important when—when +there's nothing to be done."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That doesn't make any difference to us. My father has decided +to take the consequences of his acts."</p> +<p>"You say that so serenely that I guess you don't understand yet +just what they'd be."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I think you mistaken. I don't want to say more than that. If I +find Mr. Guion of the same opinion—"</p> +<p>"I see. You don't consider my word sufficient."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Why should you be so bent on seeing your father follow Jack +Berrington, when it could be avoided?"</p> +<p>"Why should you care? What difference does it make to you? If +you'd only explain that—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"You'd let him have it, just the same?"</p> +<p>"Of course. Why not?"</p> +<p>"In spite of all I've said as to what I should feel?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She was some minutes silent, her eyes ranging over the river and +the marshes, like his own.</p> +<p>"If you urged it on him," she said at last, "I think he'd take +it."</p> +<p>"Then so much the better, from my point of view."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We could talk of that," he smiled, trying to be reassuring, +"after more important things had been settled."</p> +<p>"There wouldn't be anything more important—for me."</p> +<p>"Oh, you wouldn't find me an importunate creditor."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>She lifted her chin scornfully. "That would be childish. It +would be a mere quibbling with words."</p> +<p>"But it would be true. It's the way I should take it."</p> +<p>She confronted him with one of her imperious looks. "Why?"</p> +<p>In the monosyllable there was a demand for complete explanation, +but he met it with one of his frank smiles.</p> +<p>"Couldn't you let me keep that as my secret?"</p> +<p>"So that you would be acting in the daylight and we in the +dark."</p> +<p>"You might be in the dark, and still have nothing to be afraid +of."</p> +<p>She shook her head. "I <em>should</em> 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."</p> +<p>"Do I look like that kind of a hunter?" He smiled again at the +absurdity of her comparison.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"<em>He</em> doesn't feel so." He nodded his head in the +direction of Tory Hill.</p> +<p>"<em>He</em> feels so. He's only a little—wavering."</p> +<p>"And I guess you're a little wavering, too, Miss Guion, if you'd +only own up to it."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">s 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That might do as one definition."</p> +<p>"Because in that case you may like to know that I think I've +seen it."</p> +<p>"I thought you would if you looked for it."</p> +<p>"I didn't look for it. It was just—there!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"The light is always shining in darkness, dearie; only the +darkness comprehendeth it not. That's all there is to it."</p> +<p>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 <em>are</em> 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?"</p> +<p>He shook his head.</p> +<p>"Of course I couldn't let him do it."</p> +<p>"Couldn't you?"</p> +<p>"Do you think I could?"</p> +<p>"Not if you think differently. You're the only judge."</p> +<p>"But if I don't, you know, papa will have to go—" She +hesitated. "You know what would happen, don't you?"</p> +<p>"I suppose I do."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Does it?"</p> +<p>"You don't seem very much interested, Cousin Rodney. I hoped +you'd give me some advice."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I do. The Street called Straight is all very well, +but—"</p> +<p>"Then you're not so sure, after all."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And you're not going to?"</p> +<p>"How could I, Cousin Rodney? How could I put myself under such +an obligation to a man I hardly know?"</p> +<p>"He could probably afford it."</p> +<p>"Is he so very rich?" There was a hint of curiosity in the +tone.</p> +<p>Rodney Temple shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, rich enough. It would +pretty well clean him out; but, then, that would do him good."</p> +<p>"Do him good—how?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I dare say not."</p> +<p>"And he isn't offering us the money merely for the sake of +getting rid of it, do you think?"</p> +<p>"Then what <em>is</em> he offering it to you for?"</p> +<p>"That's exactly what I want to know. Haven't you any idea?"</p> +<p>"Haven't you?"</p> +<p>She waited a minute before deciding to speak openly. "I suppose +you never heard that he once asked me to marry him?"</p> +<p>He betrayed his surprise by the way in which he put down the +little Chinese figure and wheeled round more directly toward +her.</p> +<p>"Who? Peter?"</p> +<p>She nodded.</p> +<p>"What the dickens made him do that?"</p> +<p>She opened her eyes innocently. "I'm sure I can't imagine."</p> +<p>"It isn't a bit like him. You must have led him on."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And what did you say to him? Did you box his ears?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"In that case he's got you on the hip, hasn't he? It's a lovely +turning of the tables."</p> +<p>"You see that, Cousin Rodney, don't you? I <em>couldn't</em> let +a man like that get the upper hand of me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She looked at him wonderingly. "Let—who—go to the +deuce?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I—I haven't," she stammered. "I haven't thought of them +at all."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She was too startled to suspect him of ruse or strategy.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I presume they would."</p> +<p>"And now, I suppose, they're very poor."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She turned round toward him, her eyes misty with distress.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The faint smile that seemed to have got frozen on her lips +quivered piteously. "I wish you could have that comfortable feeling +about me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That is, if I take them!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You couldn't be expected to think of everything at once, Miss +Guion," Davenant said, clumsily.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>By an instinctive movement she snatched her fingers away; but, +recovering herself, she took the package deliberately into her +hands and stood holding it.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"But there's no certainty of that, papa."</p> +<p>"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 <em>should</em> 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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She overtook him, however, when he was downstairs picking up his +hat and stick from the hall table.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He shook his head.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you think I've found it now?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"And you?" she asked. "Is it the right way for you?"</p> +<p>"Yes; and it's the first time I've ever struck it."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Who told you that?" he asked, sharply.</p> +<p>"It doesn't matter who told me; but it's very important if we +are. <em>Are</em> we?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"But you'll have to begin all over again, sha'n't you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Didn't I do something very rude to you—once—a long +time ago?"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"It was really of no consequence—"</p> +<p>"Don't say that. It was of great consequence. Any one can see +that—now. I was insolent. I knew I <em>had</em> been. You +must have been perfectly aware of it all these years; and—I +<em>will</em> say it!—I <em>must</em> say it!—you're +taking your revenge—very nobly."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He continued to stand gazing up the stairway long after he had +heard her close the door of Guion's room behind her.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"I'm so glad that <em>is</em> your reason for helping Cousin +Henry, Peter; because I was afraid there might +be—another."</p> +<p>He stopped abruptly, looking dashed. Unaccustomed to light +methods of attack and defense, it took him a few seconds to see +Drusilla's move.</p> +<p>"You thought I might be—in love?"</p> +<p>She nodded.</p> +<p>"That's queer," he went on, "because I'd got the same impression +about you."</p> +<p>It was Drusilla's turn to be aghast. She was a little surprised +at not being offended, too.</p> +<p>"What made you think that?" she managed to ask, after getting +command of herself.</p> +<p>"What makes one think anything? However," he conceded, "I dare +say I'm wrong."</p> +<p>"That's a very good conclusion to come to. I advise you to keep +to it."</p> +<p>"I will if you'll do the same about me."</p> +<p>She seized the opening to carry the attack back in his +direction.</p> +<p>"I can't make a bargain of that kind, Peter. The scientific mind +bases its conclusions on—observed phenomena."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It mightn't be any harm; but would it be any good?"</p> +<p>"Well, that might depend a good deal—on you."</p> +<p>"On me? How so? I don't know what you're driving at."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Rot, Drusilla!"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"You don't <em>expect</em> anything to miscarry?"</p> +<p>She shook her head. "No; I don't expect it. But it might be a +fortunate thing if it did."</p> +<p>"You don't mean to infer that this man Ashley mightn't come up +to the scratch?"</p> +<p>"Colonel Ashley has come up to a good many scratches in his +time. He's not likely to fail in this one."</p> +<p>"Well, then, what more is there to it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And you mean that your Colonel Ashley would be brave enough to +walk up and have <em>his</em> head cut off?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But I don't understand why it should."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He nodded thoughtfully. "I see."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He jumped to his feet. "Their ways and traditions +be—!"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Yes; I've seen 'em. Got it pretty straight, too, all things +considered."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He leaned his shoulders against the mantelpiece, his hands +behind his back. "Pooh! That sort of dog can only bark."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"The deuce take his promotion! Let's think +of—<em>her</em>."</p> +<p>"That's just what I thought you'd do, Peter; and with all your +advantages—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm thinking of every one, Peter—of every one but myself, +that is. I'm thinking of him, and her, and you—"</p> +<p>"Then you'll do me a favor if you leave me out."</p> +<p>She sprang to her feet, her little figure looking slim and +girlish.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"But you would if she was the first, Peter. And I'm convinced +that for you she <em>is</em> the first—"</p> +<p>"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—?"</p> +<p>"You're all first with me," she protested. "I don't know which +of you I'm the most sorry for."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Then for Heaven's sake what <em>have</em> you asked for? +<em>I</em> don't see."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I'll consider that," he called after her, as she sped up the +stairs, "when I see it lying there."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>faute de +mieux</em>; but many a man has chosen his wife on no better ground +than that.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<em>stunning</em>."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I shouldn't think harshly of any one simply because he'd had +business bad luck."</p> +<p>"He <em>has</em> had business bad luck—but that isn't all. +We'll sit here."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Her voice was gentle and even; she spoke with a certain kind of +ease. She appeared to rehearse something already learned by +heart.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"But the money did come?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"So that part of it is settled?"</p> +<p>"That part of it is settled to the extent that no action will be +taken against papa."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">shley 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>Though he raised his eyebrows in surprise that she should +introduce the subject, he managed to say, "He seems pretty +game."</p> +<p>"He does; but I dare say he isn't as game as he looks. There's a +good deal before him still."</p> +<p>"If we're married on the 28th he'd have one care the less."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I've two months' leave. You could do a lot for him in that +time."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Oh, but I say!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He smiled indulgently. "And so you're asking me—a +soldier!—to run away."</p> +<p>"No, to let me do it. It's so—so impossible that I can't +face it."</p> +<p>"Oh, nonsense!" He spoke with kindly impatience. "Don't you love +me? You said just now—in the +dining-room—when—"</p> +<p>"Yes, I know; I did say that. But, you see—we +<em>must</em> consider it—love can't be the most important +thing in the world for either you or me."</p> +<p>"I understand. You mean to say it's duty. Very good. In that +case, my duty is as plain as a pikestaff."</p> +<p>"Your duty to stand by me?"</p> +<p>"I should be a hound if I didn't do it."</p> +<p>"And I should feel myself a common adventuress if I were to let +you."</p> +<p>"Oh—I say!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"One doesn't think that way—or speak that way—of +marrying the woman one—adores."</p> +<p>"Men have been known to marry the women they adored, and still +regret the consequences they had to meet."</p> +<p>"She's right," he said to himself. "It <em>is</em> serious."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Olivia had let the bit of embroidery rest idly in her lap. She +looked up at his approach. He stood before her.</p> +<p>"Do I understand," he asked, with a roughness assumed to conceal +his agitation, "that you're offering me my liberty?"</p> +<p>"No; that I'm asking you for mine."</p> +<p>"On what grounds?"</p> +<p>She arched her eyebrows, looking round about her +comprehensively. "I should think that was clear. On the grounds +of—of everything."</p> +<p>"That's not enough. So long as you can't say that you +don't—don't care about me any more—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I can't say that; but I can say something more important."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"As my wife," he said, slowly, with significant deliberation, +"we could make the position anything you felt able to fill."</p> +<p>She considered this. "That is, you could send in your papers and +retire into private life."</p> +<p>"If we liked."</p> +<p>"So that you'd be choosing between your career—and +me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm afraid you'll think me captious if I say that nothing +<em>could do</em> it. If you weren't happy, I couldn't be; and +you'd never be happy except as a soldier."</p> +<p>"That trade would be open to me whatever happened."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 <em>am</em> plucky—alone. But I +shouldn't be if I involved anybody else."</p> +<p>"But if it was some one who could help you?"</p> +<p>"That might be different, but I don't know of any one who could. +<em>You</em> couldn't. If you tried you'd only injure yourself +without doing me any good."</p> +<p>"At the least, I could take you away from—from all +this."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>To hide the renewal of his dismay he pooh-poohed this +possibility. "As a mere nine days' wonder."</p> +<p>"Which isn't forgotten when the nine days are past. Long after +they've ceased speaking of it they'll remember—"</p> +<p>"They'll remember," he interrupted, fiercely, "that I jilted +you."</p> +<p>She colored hotly. "That you—what?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"If we're not married—if I go home without you—it's +what'll be on everybody's lips."</p> +<p>"But it won't be true," she said, with a little gasp.</p> +<p>He laughed. "That won't matter. It's how it'll look."</p> +<p>"Oh, looks!"</p> +<p>"It's what we're talking about, isn't it? It's what makes the +difference. I shall figure as a cad."</p> +<p>He spoke as one who makes an astounding discovery. She was +inexpressibly shocked.</p> +<p>"Oh, but you couldn't," was all she could find to say, but she +said it with conviction.</p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/image3.png"><img src= +"images/image3.png" width="500" height="766" alt= +""THERE'S NO ONE WHO WON'T BELIEVE BUT THAT I—THREW YOU OVER."" + title= + ""THERE'S NO ONE WHO WON'T BELIEVE BUT THAT I—THREW YOU OVER."" /> +</a> +<p class="caption">"THERE'S NO ONE WHO WON'T BELIEVE BUT THAT +I—THREW YOU OVER."</p> +</div> +<p>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."</p> +<p>A toss of his hand, a snap of his fingers, suited the action to +the word.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"They couldn't believe it long."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The flagrancy of the case gave her an advantage. "It's idle to +think that that kind of fate could overtake you."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Wearing a large hat <em>à la</em> 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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh!"</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, indeed? I don't know, I'm sure."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/t.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="T" title="T" /></div> +<p class="noindent">here 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, there was a tone in her voice as she joined him +that struck a new note in their acquaintanceship.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I didn't notice anything—that is, anything different from +any other Englishman."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, well, you will," she said, encouragingly, "now that you +know Colonel Ashley."</p> +<p>"I've heard of men plunging into a cold bath and finding it so +icy that they've popped out again."</p> +<p>"Yes; thin-blooded men, who are sensitive to chills. Not men +like you."</p> +<p>They entered the house, lingering in the oval sitting-room +through which they had to pass.</p> +<p>"Fortunately," he tried to say, lightly, "it doesn't matter in +this case whether I'm sensitive to chills or not."</p> +<p>"Oh, but it does. I want you two to be friends."</p> +<p>"What for?" The question was so point-blank as to be a little +scornful, but she ignored that.</p> +<p>"On Colonel Ashley's side, for what he'll gain in knowing you; +on yours—for something more."</p> +<p>He stopped again, at the foot of the staircase in the hall. "May +I ask—just what you mean by that?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"I could consider you my friend without asking Colonel Ashley to +think of me as his."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Still," she persisted, "if I marry him you'd be sometimes in +England; and you'd come to visit us, wouldn't you?"</p> +<p>"Come and—what?" His astonishment made him speak +slowly.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, intervene as much as you like, Miss Guion," he said, +honestly.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Hold on! Let's see what you mean by—things. If it's +visiting round in high society—"</p> +<p>He tried to render as scorn his dismay at this touching on his +weakness.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You mean get me into society."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What made you think of it?"</p> +<p>"Isn't that obvious? After you've done so much for +me—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 +<em>something</em>—something within my power, and which I +thought you might like. But since you don't—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He looked at her with sudden curiosity. "Why do you always say +that with—an 'if'?"</p> +<p>She reflected an instant. "Because," she said, slowly, "I can't +say it in any other way."</p> +<p>He straightened himself; he advanced again to the foot of the +stairway.</p> +<p>"Is that because of any reason of—<em>his?</em>"</p> +<p>"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 <em>do</em>. The more I try to +ignore it, the more it comes in between me and—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"But, Miss Guion, you're—you're—in love with +him?—the man you'd be going away with?"</p> +<p>She nodded. "Yes; but that wouldn't help me to feel justified +with regard to the—the duty—I was leaving behind."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"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 <em>hard</em> for +me to be married."</p> +<p>"How so? I thought it would be all the other way."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But if it was a satisfaction to him—"</p> +<p>"That wouldn't make any difference to us. The facts would be the +same."</p> +<p>"Then, as far as I see, I've done more harm than good."</p> +<p>"You've helped papa."</p> +<p>"But I haven't helped you."</p> +<p>"As I understand it, you didn't want to."</p> +<p>"I didn't want to—to do the reverse."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>"Oh!" It was the protest of one who has been hurt.</p> +<p>"I'll take that back," he said, instantly. "There <em>is</em> +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."</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Things are very hard as it is," she said, reproachfully. "You +needn't go out of your way to make them gratuitously cruel."</p> +<p>"But, Miss Guion—" he began to protest.</p> +<p>"Please go in," she commanded, throwing open, as she spoke, the +door of her father's room.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/m.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="M" title="M" /></div> +<p class="noindent">eanwhile, 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:</p> +<p>"That's our house—the one with the little white +cupola."</p> +<p>He made no pretense to listen or to look. "She says she doesn't +want to marry me."</p> +<p>He made the statement dispassionately, as though laying down a +subject for academic discussion.</p> +<p>It was some little time before she could think what to say.</p> +<p>"Well, that doesn't surprise me," she risked at last.</p> +<p>"Doesn't surprise you?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I don't care a hang for my position."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"In honor it's the positive, not the negative, that takes +precedence, and the positive happens to be mine."</p> +<p>"I don't think you can argue that way, you know. What takes +precedence of everything else is—common sense."</p> +<p>"And do you mean to say that common sense requires that she +shall give me up?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"On whose account? Mine?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I confess I don't seize your drift."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What about me?"</p> +<p>"Would <em>you</em> take him?"</p> +<p>"I shouldn't <em>take</em> 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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Possibly; except for one factor which you've overlooked."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I don't see," he said, speaking very slowly, "that the Rangers +need be altogether taken into consideration."</p> +<p>She looked at him fixedly. "Do you mean that you'd—send in +your papers?"</p> +<p>"Only in the sense that if my wife wasn't happy in the Service +we could get out of it."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>They proceeded to stroll aimlessly up and down the lawn.</p> +<p>"I can quite see how it looks from your point of view—" +she began.</p> +<p>"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 <em>am</em>—head over +heels—desperately—in love."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Yes," she smiled, bravely. "I know you are. And between two +ills you choose the one that has some compensation attached to +it."</p> +<p>"Between two ills," he corrected, "I'm choosing the only course +open to a man of honor. Isn't that it?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>In this for once she disappointed him. "Of course you are," she +assented, even too promptly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Indeed? And what are they?"</p> +<p>She told them off on her fingers. "First, as you can't do +anything else. Second—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The crow's-foot wrinkles about his eyes deepened to a frown of +inquiry. "About Peter—who?"</p> +<p>Drusilla still affected a casual tone. "Oh? Hasn't she told you +about <em>him?</em>"</p> +<p>"Not a word. Who is he?"</p> +<p>She nodded in the direction of the house. "He's up-stairs with +Cousin Henry."</p> +<p>"The big fellow who was here just now? That—lumpkin?"</p> +<p>"Yes," she said, dryly, "that—lumpkin. It was he who gave +Cousin Henry the money to meet his liabilities."</p> +<p>"So he's the Fairy Prince? He certainly doesn't look it."</p> +<p>"No; he doesn't look it; but he's as much of a problem to Olivia +as if he did."</p> +<p>"Why? What has he to do with her?"</p> +<p>"Nothing, except that I suppose she must feel very +grateful."</p> +<p>They reached the edge of the lawn where a hedge of dahlias +separated them from the neighboring garden.</p> +<p>"When you say that," he asked, "do you mean anything in +particular?"</p> +<p>"I suppose I mean everything in particular. The situation is one +in which all the details count."</p> +<p>"And the bearing of this special detail—"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>them</em>."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Probably you had, except just that. I imagine Olivia found it +difficult to speak of, and so I'm doing it for her."</p> +<p>"Why should she find it difficult to speak of? It's a mere +matter of business, I suppose."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"All the same, he's probably done it with a jolly sharp eye to +the main chance."</p> +<p>"Oh, I dare say his motives weren't altogether altruistic. Only +it's a little difficult to see where the main chance comes in."</p> +<p>"Then what the deuce is he up to?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Has all this got anything to do with Olivia? I wish you +wouldn't make mysteries."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Well?"</p> +<p>"I'm just as likely to be wrong as right."</p> +<p>"Then you <em>have</em> drawn inferences?"</p> +<p>"Who wouldn't? I should think you'd be drawing them +yourself."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Have I ever been anything else with you?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Good!"</p> +<p>"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 <em>so</em> fair that I laid myself open to +that imputation. One can, you know. I only ask you to remember it. +That's all."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"She's a good 'un," he said to himself. "Straight as a die, she +is—and true as steel."</p> +<p>None the less he was glad when she left him.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">shley 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She looked at him mildly. "What did she say about him?"</p> +<p>"Only that he was the man who put up the money."</p> +<p>"Yes; he was."</p> +<p>"Why didn't you tell me that this morning?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And the circumstances."</p> +<p>"How do you mean—the circumstances?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Did Drusilla say it was to come to my aid?"</p> +<p>"She didn't say it—exactly. I gathered that it was what +she thought."</p> +<p>She astonished him by saying, simply: "I think so, too."</p> +<p>"Extraordinary! Do you mean to say he dropped out of a clear +sky?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 <em>well?</em>"</p> +<p>"<em>I</em> didn't think it was well; but apparently he did, +because he asked me to marry him."</p> +<p>Ashley bounded. "Who? That—that cowboy!"</p> +<p>"Yes; if he <em>is</em> a cowboy."</p> +<p>"And you took money from him?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"That is," he hastened to say, in some compunction, "your father +took it. We must keep the distinction—"</p> +<p>"No; I took it. Papa was all ready to decline it. He had made up +his mind—"</p> +<p>"Do you mean that the decision to accept it rested with +you?"</p> +<p>"Practically."</p> +<p>"You didn't—" He hesitated, stammered, and grew red. "You +didn't—" he began again. "You'll have to excuse the +question.... I simply <em>must</em> know, by Jove!... You didn't +<em>ask</em> him for it?"</p> +<p>She rose with dignity. "If you'll come in I'll tell you about +it. We can't talk out here."</p> +<p>He came up the portico steps to the level on which she was +standing. "Tell me that first," he begged.</p> +<p>"You <em>didn't</em> ask him for it? Did you?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Guessing that he hoped for a disclaimer on her part, she was +sorry to be unable to make it.</p> +<p>"Not to their exclusion—but perhaps—a little to +their subordination."</p> +<p>He pretended to laugh. "What a pretty distinction!"</p> +<p>"You see, I haven't been able to help it. He's loomed up so +tremendously above everything—"</p> +<p>"And every one."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, I'm not jealous," he exclaimed, pacing up and down the +length of the room.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He came to a standstill on the other side of the table, where he +could see her in profile.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I could only have done it if it was right. Nothing that's right +is very hard, you know."</p> +<p>"And what about the suffering?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>The abstract question didn't interest him. He resumed his +restless pacing.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"None, except that he makes no effort to do it."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Of course I see that."</p> +<p>"Well, what then?"</p> +<p>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 +<em>me</em>!" he was saying to himself. "She's got the pluck of a +Jeanne d'Arc and the nerve of a Christian martyr."</p> +<p>"Well, then," she said, in answer to his words—"then I +don't have to walk into the ambush—unless I want to."</p> +<p>"Does that mean that there are conceivable conditions in which +you might want to?"</p> +<p>She turned completely round in her chair. Both hands, with +fingers interlaced, rested on the table as she looked up at +him.</p> +<p>"I shall have to let you find your own reply to that."</p> +<p>"But you know he's in love with you."</p> +<p>"I know he was in love with me once. I've no absolute reason to +think that he is so still."</p> +<p>"But supposing he was? Would it make any difference to you?"</p> +<p>"Would it make any difference to <em>you?</em>"</p> +<p>"It would make the difference—"</p> +<p>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 <em>could</em> it make? What difference +<em>must</em> it make?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It would make the difference—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He was silent so long that she asked, not impatiently: "It would +make what difference, Rupert?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It would make the difference—"</p> +<p>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 +<em>himself</em> 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.</p> +<p>He was able at last to get his sentence out.</p> +<p>"It would make the difference that ... before we are married ... +or after ... probably after ... I should have to square him."</p> +<p>"Square him?" She echoed the words as though she had no idea +what they meant.</p> +<p>"I'm worth ... I <em>must</em> be worth ... a hundred thousand +pounds ... perhaps more."</p> +<p>"Oh, you mean, square him in that way."</p> +<p>"I must be a man of honor before everything, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"You couldn't be anything else. You don't need to go to extremes +like that to prove it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Oh, but I'm not your wife, Rupert."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"No, it isn't easy. It can't be easy. I couldn't let you do it +for me—"</p> +<p>"But what about <em>him?</em> You let—<em>him!</em>"</p> +<p>"Oh, but that's different."</p> +<p>"How is it different?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, American—be blowed!" The accent was all tenderness, +the protest all beseeching.</p> +<p>"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 +<em>can</em> 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."</p> +<p>"Oh, bosh, darling!"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I can do without it, too."</p> +<p>"Whereas," she persisted, "if I were to let you do this I should +be robbing you of the essence of what you are."</p> +<p>He drew back slightly. "You mean that your Yankee is a strong +man, while I'm—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I don't care a button for my place in the system."</p> +<p>"But I do. I care for it <em>for</em> 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."</p> +<p>"That is," he said, coldly, "you'd rather use <em>his</em> money +than—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"One of yourselves? I thought that's just what he wasn't. I +thought he was a jolly outsider."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, that's all very fine. But look at you with your extremes of +rich and poor!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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 <em>have</em> 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—"</p> +<p>"You do feel it toward the big chap," he said, scornfully.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Of course! She's one of your own people—and all +that."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>His lip curled. "So distant as to be out of sight."</p> +<p>"No; not for him—or for me."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"I'm telling you as plainly as I can."</p> +<p>"What you aren't telling me as plainly as you can is which of us +you're in love with."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I didn't know the question had been raised," she said, "but +since apparently it has—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"You're quite wrong about me," he persisted.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She leaned over him, pressing his head against her breast, as +she whispered:</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He sprang to his feet. "But you <em>came</em> 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."</p> +<p>"I can't admit that, Rupert. I've still the right to draw +back."</p> +<p>"The legal right—yes; whether or not you've the moral +right would depend on your sense of honor."</p> +<p>"Of honor?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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—<em>every one</em>—that I funked the thing because +your father—"</p> +<p>She hastened to speak. "That's a very urgent reason. I admit its +force—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Then I shall tell Harrington that they may as well foreclose at +one time as another."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Which is one more reason why we should be married without +delay. I say," he added, in another tone, "let's have him in."</p> +<p>"Oh no! What for?"</p> +<p>Before she could object further, Ashley had slipped out into the +hall.</p> +<p>"I say! Come along in."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It's too late for town and business at this hour," Ashley +objected. "Come in."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Won't you sit down? Perhaps I ought to ring for tea."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Been up to see—?" Ashley nodded in the direction of what +he took to be Guion's room.</p> +<p>Davenant, too, nodded, but said nothing.</p> +<p>"How did you find papa to-day?"</p> +<p>"Pretty fair, Miss Guion; only, perhaps, a little more down on +his luck than usual."</p> +<p>"The excitement kept him up at first. Now that that's +over—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"My business with Mr. Guion, Colonel, has been private. I hope +you won't mind if we leave it so."</p> +<p>Ashley's manner took on the diplomatic persuasiveness he used +toward restive barbaric potentates.</p> +<p>"Not a bit, my dear fellow. Of course it's private—only +not as regards Miss Guion and me. You simply <em>must</em> allow us +to say how grateful we are for your help, even though it need be no +more than temporary."</p> +<p>The word produced its effect. Davenant looked from Ashley to +Olivia while he echoed it. "Temporary?"</p> +<p>Ashley nodded again. "You have no objection, I presume, to +that?"</p> +<p>"If Mr. Guion is ever in a position to pay me back," Davenant +said, slowly, in some bewilderment, "of course I'll take it."</p> +<p>"Quite so; and I think I may say that with a little +time—let us say a year—we shall be able to +meet—"</p> +<p>"It's a good bit of money," Davenant warned him.</p> +<p>"I know that; but if you'll give us a little leeway—as I +know you will—"</p> +<p>"He means," Olivia spoke up, "that he'll sell his +property—and whatever else he has—and pay you."</p> +<p>"I don't want that," Davenant said, hastily.</p> +<p>"But I do. It's a point of honor with me not to let another man +shoulder—"</p> +<p>"And it's a point of honor with me, Rupert—"</p> +<p>"To stand by me," he broke in, quickly.</p> +<p>"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—<em>I +shouldn't marry you</em>."</p> +<p>"And if I didn't attempt it? Would you marry me then?"</p> +<p>She looked up, then down, then at Davenant, then away from him. +Finally she fixed her gaze on Ashley.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>Davenant came forward, his hand outstretched. "I think I must +say good-by now, Miss Guion—"</p> +<p>"No; wait," Ashley commanded. "This matter concerns you, by +Jove!"</p> +<p>Olivia sprang to her feet. "No; it doesn't, Rupert," she said, +hastily.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 +<em>le beau rôle</em>, 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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I've no objection to that, Colonel, when I <em>do</em> +play—but at present—"</p> +<p>"Look here," Ashley said, with a new inspiration; "I put it to +you—I put it to you as a man—simply as a +<em>man</em>—without any highfalutin principles whatever. +Suppose I'd done what you've done—and given my bottom +dollar—"</p> +<p>"But I haven't."</p> +<p>"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 +<em>man</em>, 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?"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him."</p> +<p>"I don't see what it's got to do with me—" Davenant began +to protest.</p> +<p>"It's got everything to do with you," Ashley broke in. "Since +you've created the situation you can't shirk its +responsibilities."</p> +<p>"Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him," Olivia repeated. "Would you, +or would you not?"</p> +<p>He looked helplessly from one to the other. "Well, then—I +wouldn't," he said, simply.</p> +<p>"There you are!" Ashley cried, triumphantly, moving away from +the wall and turning toward Olivia.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He strode to the table, looking down at her averted face and +bent head.</p> +<p>"Then we're at a deadlock."</p> +<p>She gave him a quick glance. "No; it isn't a deadlock, +because—because there's still a way out."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>The room and the hall behind it were now so dim that Davenant +had no difficulty in slipping between the portières and +getting away.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/h2.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt=""H" title=""H" /></div> +<p class="noindent">e's going to squeeze me out."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>was</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>de trop</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Hello! Where are you off to? Home?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Temple let that pass. "Been up to look at the great man?"</p> +<p>Peter nodded. "Just come from there."</p> +<p>"And what do you make of him?"</p> +<p>"Oh, he's a decent sort."</p> +<p>"Not going to back out, eh?"</p> +<p>"Not at all; just the other way: he wants to step in and take +everything off—off our hands."</p> +<p>"You don't say so. Then he's what you say—a decent +sort."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Oh, he's sporting enough."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Davenant turned away. "I wasn't in a hurry."</p> +<p>"No; but he is. That's the point. That's where the beauty of it +comes in for Olivia and you."</p> +<p>Peter looked blank. "Olivia and—<em>me</em>?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It leaves me free to cut and run." He made little effort to +conceal his bitterness.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>chargé d'affaires</em> without the necessity on his part +of seeing Miss Guion again.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p class="center">Peter Davenant, Esq.,<br /> +31 Charlesbank.</p> +<p>It was premonition again that told him the contents before he +had read a line:</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Davenant</span>,—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,</p> +<p class="citation"><span class="smcap">Olivia Guion</span>.</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm here, Mr. Davenant."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Is there nobody with you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I asked you to come," she said, simply, "because I feel so +helpless."</p> +<p>"That's a very good reason," he responded, guardedly. "I'm glad +you thought of me, rather than of any one else."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"There's no one else for me to think of," she explained, in +self-excuse. "If there were, I shouldn't bother you."</p> +<p>"That's not so kind," he said, keeping to the tone of +conventional gallantry.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Then so much the better for me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It doesn't matter what it's a case of. I'm at your service, +Miss Guion—"</p> +<p>"I know. That's why I asked you to come. I want you to keep +Colonel Ashley from doing what he proposed this afternoon."</p> +<p>She spoke more abruptly, more nervously, than was her habit.</p> +<p>"I would if I could; but I don't know that I've any way of +dissuading him."</p> +<p>"You needn't dissuade him. You've simply to refuse to take his +money."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>The words took her by surprise. He could see her draw her cloak +more tightly about her, her hands still within its folds.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He pushed the liberty a little further. "But if you're going to +marry him—"</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>"It wouldn't be a burden to any one who—who—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Is that your only reason?"</p> +<p>She raised her head slightly and turned toward him. He expected +something cutting, but she only said: "What makes you ask +that?"</p> +<p>He was a little frightened. He backed down, and yet not +altogether. "Oh, nothing. I only—wondered."</p> +<p>"If you think I don't care for him—"</p> +<p>"Oh no. Not that—not that at all."</p> +<p>"Well, if you <em>were</em> to think it, it would probably be +because I've been through so much—I'm <em>going</em> through +so much—that that sort of thing has become secondary."</p> +<p>"I didn't know that—that sort of thing—was ever +secondary."</p> +<p>"Because you've never had the experience. If you had—"</p> +<p>The freedom of speech she seemed to be according him led him on +to say:</p> +<p>"I've had experience enough—as you may know—to be +sure it wouldn't be secondary with me."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Then, what <em>is</em> the most important thing?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"But since you can't," he said, rather cruelly, "wouldn't the +next best thing be—to marry the man you care for?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Why? Would she help you?"</p> +<p>"She's very good and kind—in her way."</p> +<p>"Why don't you write to her?"</p> +<p>"Writing wouldn't be any good now. It's too late."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>They came to the gate, but he did not immediately say good +night.</p> +<p>"I wish you could throw the burden of the whole thing on me, +Miss Guion," he ventured, wistfully, "and just take it easy."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>There was an inflection on the <em>now</em> 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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Good night."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It isn't the most important thing in the world for her," he +whispered to himself, "to marry—<em>the man she cares +for</em>."</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/w.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="W" title="W" /></div> +<p class="noindent">hen 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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 <em>status +quo</em>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <em>was</em> the noblest man in the world and +because he <em>did</em> 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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Papa, darling."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She delivered her message, to which he replied, "He can +come."</p> +<p>"I think I ought to tell you," she continued, "what he's coming +for."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"So he wants to go ahead," Guion said, when she had +finished.</p> +<p>"Apparently."</p> +<p>"Can't he do that and still leave things as they are?"</p> +<p>"He seems to think he can't."</p> +<p>"I don't see why. If I have to owe the money to any one, I'd +rather owe it to Davenant."</p> +<p>"So should I."</p> +<p>"Do you really want to marry him?"</p> +<p>The question startled her. "Marry him? Who?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He raised himself on his elbow, turning toward her. "Then why +don't you tell him so?"</p> +<p>"I have; but he won't take that as a reason. And, besides, I've +said I <em>would</em> marry him if he'd give up this wild +project—"</p> +<p>"But you're in love with him, aren't you? You may as well tell +me," he continued, as she colored. "I must have <em>some</em> data +to go on."</p> +<p>"I—I <em>was</em> 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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>She could hear a muffled assent as she left the room. She was +afraid he was crying.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I know what you've come for," he said, when Ashley, who had +declined a cigar, seated himself beside the couch.</p> +<p>"That means, I suppose, that Olivia has got ahead of me."</p> +<p>"She told me what you've proposed. It's very fine—very +sporting."</p> +<p>"I haven't proposed it because it's either sporting or fine. It +seems to me the only thing to do."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>Ashley was dumb. He was also uncomfortable. He hated this sort +of thing.</p> +<p>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—<em>me</em>."</p> +<p>"Didn't have—you? I don't understand—"</p> +<p>"And you'd <em>have</em> 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 <em>live</em>."</p> +<p>"Oh, I say!"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>me</em>—like a dead rat strung round your +neck—"</p> +<p>"Oh, I say, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Why don't you give him a chance?"</p> +<p>Ashley was startled. "Chance? What chance? Who?"</p> +<p>"Davenant."</p> +<p>Ashley grasped the back of his chair as though about to spring +up. "What's he want a chance for? Chance for what?"</p> +<p>"I might have said: 'Why don't you give <em>her</em> a chance?' +She's half in love with him—as it is."</p> +<p>"That's a lie. That's an infernal lie."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—<em>prayed</em>. I don't know that I ever did +before—that is, not really—<em>pray</em>. 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—"</p> +<p>"I make this, by Jove; that you and he entered into a bargain +that he should supply the cash, and you should—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Suppose he is; that needn't affect <em>her</em>—except as +an impertinence. A woman can defend herself against that sort of +thing, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>do</em> see it yourself. We're not your sort—"</p> +<p>But Ashley could stand it no longer. With a smothered, +inarticulate oath, he turned abruptly, and marched out of the +room.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/f.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="F" title="F" /></div> +<p class="noindent">ortunately 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."</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm making an inventory," she explained. "You know that +everything will have to be sold?"</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"You know already how I feel about that."</p> +<p>They were still standing. He had been too eager to begin his +report to offer her a chair or to take one himself.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I don't think they expect it."</p> +<p>"And yet, if I don't, you know—he's dished. He loses his +money—and everything else."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I don't believe he'd consider that being dished. He's the sort +of man who loses only when he—flings away."</p> +<p>"He's the sort of man who's a beastly cad."</p> +<p>He regretted these words as soon as they were uttered, but she +had stung him to the quick. Her next words did so again.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>It was inevitable that Guion's words should return to him: "Half +in love with him—as it is."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm sorry I said what I did," he whispered.</p> +<p>She stayed her pencil long enough to say: "I hope you're still +sorrier for having thought it."</p> +<p>"I'm sorry you <em>know</em> I think it. Since it affects you so +deeply—"</p> +<p>"It affects me deeply to see you can be unjust."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Is that papa?"</p> +<p>"I don't see that it matters who it is. The only thing of +importance is whether you are or not."</p> +<p>"If you mean that as a question, I shall have to let you answer +it yourself."</p> +<p>"Would you tell me if—if you were?"</p> +<p>"What would be the use of telling you a thing that would make +you unhappy and that I couldn't help?"</p> +<p>"Am I to understand, then, that you <em>are</em> half in love +with him?"</p> +<p>She continued the effort to write.</p> +<p>"I think I've a right to press that question," he resumed. "Am +I, or am I not, to understand—"</p> +<p>She turned slowly. Her face was flushed, her eyes were +misty.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"But you said," he protested, bitterly, "no longer ago than +yesterday that you—<em>loved</em> me."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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 <em>only</em> marry me—"</p> +<p>"I said I'd do that, Rupert—I said it yesterday—if +you'd give up—what I understand you <em>have</em> given +up—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"It comes to the same thing. I'm ready to keep my promise."</p> +<p>"You don't say it with much enthusiasm."</p> +<p>"Perhaps I say it with something better. I think I do. At the +same time I wish—"</p> +<p>"You wish what?"</p> +<p>"I wish I had attached another condition to it."</p> +<p>"It mayn't be too late for that even now. Let's have it."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I do," she said, coldly, turning again to her note-book.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"We're going the same way, aren't we?" he asked, as soon as they +were outside.</p> +<p>"No," Ashley said, promptly; "you're taking the tram, and I +shall walk."</p> +<p>"I should like to walk, too, Colonel, if you don't mind."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'd a great deal rather, Colonel, that—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"My good fellow, I don't care a hang what you'd a great deal +rather."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"We'll leave that name out," Ashley cried, sharply. "Only a +damned cad would introduce it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Look here," he stammered; "we—we—c-can't do this +sort of thing."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"By God, you struck me!"</p> +<p>"I didn't know it, Colonel. If I did, we're quits on +it—because—because you insulted me. Perhaps you didn't +know <em>that</em>. 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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, "<em>The man I care for</em>." 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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>Indiana</em> sailed last week ... it ought to be the turn of +the <em>Louisiana</em> the day after to-morrow. By George, I +believe I could make it if ..."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Davenant approached to within a few feet. "Look here, Colonel," +he said, gently, "we've got to forget this evening."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>Ashley turned quickly. "Off? Where?"</p> +<p>"Where we're not likely to meet—for some little +time—again."</p> +<p>"Oh, but I say! You can't—"</p> +<p>"Can't what, Colonel?"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>me</em>—after all that's—"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"But what the deuce—?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He turned away abruptly, but, having taken a few steps, came +back again.</p> +<p>"Look here! Let's have a cigarette."</p> +<p>Ashley fumbled for his case, opened it, and held it up. "I say, +take two or three."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Thanks; and good night again," he said, briefly, as he strode +finally away into the darkness.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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 <em>Louisiana</em>, 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.</p> +<p>"Madame est à la campagne."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>hôtel</em>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>There was no reason why all this should make him feel +<ins class="correction" title= +"Transcriber's Note: original reads 'outide'.">outside</ins> 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.</p> +<p><em>Were</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I wonder if it is—God," he questioned.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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 <em>The Flying +Dutchman</em> 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 +<em>plage</em>, 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:</p> +<p>"Voilà, monsieur—voilà le château de +madame la marquise."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"On ne visite pas le château."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Madame la marquise n'est pas visible."</p> +<p>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: +"<em>Prenez</em>."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"<em>Allez</em>, please," he said, earnestly, +"and—<em>vite</em>."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Madame herself had no such feeling. She wore her mask with +absolute nonchalance, beginning to speak while still some yards +away.</p> +<p>"Eh, bien, monsieur?"</p> +<p>Davenant doubled himself up into a deep bow, but before he had +time to stammer out some apologetic self-introduction, she +continued:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I haven't come on business, my—my lady."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Then what <em>have</em> 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!"</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>"I haven't come to see the château either, my +lady—"</p> +<p>"You can call me madame," she interrupted, not without a +kindlier inflection on the hint.</p> +<p>He began again. "I haven't come to see the château, +either—madame. I've come to see <em>you</em>."</p> +<p>She made one of her little plunges. "Oh, indeed! <em>Have</em> +you? I thought you'd learned better than that—over there. You +used to come in ship-loads, but—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"You'd like to know them now, madame—because they're in +great trouble."</p> +<p>She took refuge behind a big English arm-chair, leaning on the +back.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"She isn't looking to you, madame. <em>I</em> am. I'm looking to +you because I imagine you can help her. There's no one +else—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 <em>me</em>?"</p> +<p>He shook his head, his blue eyes betraying some incredulity.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>As she showed no intention of taking a seat herself, he remained +standing.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I'm afraid I haven't."</p> +<p>"Of course you haven't. I don't know an American who +<em>would</em> 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 <em>was</em>—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."</p> +<p>"Oh, madame!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>dots</em>. 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—"</p> +<p>"If it had been worth while," he ventured.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I don't think we <em>are</em> good at returning snubs, madame. +That's a fact."</p> +<p>"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 <em>dot</em>. 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."</p> +<p>"And did he give in?" Davenant asked, with naïve +curiosity.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Four hundred thousand dollars," Davenant said, with an idea +that he might convey a hint to her, "would be practically the +sum—"</p> +<p>"I could afford it," she went on, "because of those ridiculous +copper-mines—the Hamlet and Tecla. I wasn't rich before that. +My <em>dot</em> was small. No Guion I ever heard of was able to +save money. My father was no exception."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>"But did she know you were—what shall I +say?—negotiating?"</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>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 <em>me</em>. 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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The dash she made from him seeming no more final than those +which had preceded it, he went on speaking.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Has my nephew, Henry Guion, been doing +things—that—that would send him—to prison?"</p> +<p>In spite of herself the final words came out with a gasp.</p> +<p>"It's a long story, madame—or, at least, a complicated +one. I could explain it, if you'd give me the time."</p> +<p>"Sit down."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"That's it, madame, exactly. You've put it in a nutshell."</p> +<p>She looked at him hardly. "And what has it all got to do with +me?"</p> +<p>He looked at her steadily in his turn. "I thought perhaps you +wouldn't care to live in debt to me, either."</p> +<p>She was startled. "Who? I? En voilà une idée!"</p> +<p>"I thought," he went on, "that possibly the Guion sense of +family honor—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"When you say the family," she sniffed, "you mean me."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And you risked being considered over-officious."</p> +<p>"There wasn't much risk about that," he smiled. "They did think +me so—and do."</p> +<p>"And you got every one into a fix."</p> +<p>"Into a fix, but out of prison."</p> +<p>"Hm!"</p> +<p>She grew restless, uncomfortable, fidgeting with her rings and +bracelets.</p> +<p>"And pray, what sort of a person is this Englishman to whom my +niece has got herself engaged?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Then he's a fool."</p> +<p>"From that point of view—yes. There <em>are</em> fools of +that sort, madame. But there's something more to him."</p> +<p>He found himself reciting glibly Ashley's claims as a suitor in +the way of family, position, and fortune.</p> +<p>"So that it would be what some people might call a good +match."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Hm. I shall have nothing to do with it." She rose with dignity. +"If my niece had only held out a little finger—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Except that I'm an American," he suggested—"one of your +own."</p> +<p>"One of my own! Quelle idée! Do you like him—this +Englishman?"</p> +<p>He hedged. "Miss Guion likes him."</p> +<p>"But you don't."</p> +<p>"I haven't said so. I might like him well enough if—"</p> +<p>"If you got your money back."</p> +<p>He smiled and nodded.</p> +<p>"Is she in love with him?"</p> +<p>"Oh—deep!"</p> +<p>"How do <em>you</em> know? Has she told you so?"</p> +<p>"Y-es; I think I may say—she has."</p> +<p>"Did you ask her?"</p> +<p>He colored. "I had to—about something."</p> +<p>"You weren't proposing to her yourself, were you?"</p> +<p>He tried to take this humorously. "Oh no, madame—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I hope I'm not that," he laughed.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She did her best to be offended. "You're taking liberties, +monsieur. C'est bien américan, céla."</p> +<p>"Excuse me, madame," he said, humbly. "I only mean that they +<em>are</em> 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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Where are you staying?"</p> +<p>He told her.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/w2.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt=""W" title=""W" /></div> +<p class="noindent">hat do you think of him?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Rodney Temple, making his arrangements for leaving for the day, +met one question with another. "What do <em>you?</em>"</p> +<p>"You know him," Ashley urged, "and I don't."</p> +<p>"I thought you did. I thought you'd read him right off—as +a cow-puncher."</p> +<p>"He looks like one, by Jove! and he speaks like one, too. You +wouldn't call him a gentleman? What?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Then, what is?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Can't say that I do."</p> +<p>"No, you wouldn't. But until you do you won't understand a big +simple type—"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"What difference does it make to you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"How so?"</p> +<p>"Because beastly good-will is a thing that cuts both ways. He'll +get as much out of it as you."</p> +<p>"That's all very fine—"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It's a very sensible way at all times. And I hear you're +carrying Henry off with you to England."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"Will make you happy."</p> +<p>"That's about the size of it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Queer old cove, your governor," Ashley observed, stretching +himself comfortably before the fire. The blaze of logs alone lit up +the room.</p> +<p>"Is that why you seem to have taken a fancy to him?"</p> +<p>"I like to hear him gassing. Little bit like the Bible, don't +you know."</p> +<p>"He's very fond of the Bible."</p> +<p>"Seems to think a lot of that chap—your governor."</p> +<p>A nod supposed to indicate the direction of the State of +Michigan enabled her to follow his line of thought.</p> +<p>"He does. There's something rather colossal about the way he's +dropped out—"</p> +<p>"A jolly sight too colossal. Makes him more important than if +he'd stayed on the spot and fought the thing to a finish."</p> +<p>"Fought what thing to a finish?"</p> +<p>He was sorry to have used the expression. "Oh, there's still a +jolly lot to settle up, you know."</p> +<p>"But I thought everything was arranged—that you'd accepted +the situation."</p> +<p>He stretched himself more comfortably before the fire. "We'd a +row," he said, suddenly.</p> +<p>"A row? What kind of a row?"</p> +<p>"A street row—just like two hooligans. He struck me."</p> +<p>"Rupert!" She half sprang up. "He—"</p> +<p>Ashley swung round in his chair. He was smiling.</p> +<p>"Oh, I <em>beg</em> your pardon," she cried, in confusion. "I +can't think what made me call you that. I never +<em>do</em>—never. It was the surprise—and the +shock—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Tell me about Peter."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"To his <em>face</em>?"</p> +<p>"To his <em>nose</em>."</p> +<p>"Oh, you shouldn't have done that."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Except that he—what?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I don't see very clearly. In what way did he get the better of +you?"</p> +<p>"In the whole thing—the way he carried it off—the +whole silly business."</p> +<p>"Then I don't see what's to be done about it <em>now</em>."</p> +<p>"Something's got to be done, by Jove! I can't let it go at +that."</p> +<p>"Well, what do you propose?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Ashley looked blank. "I haven't noticed it—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Poor Peter! I suppose he doesn't write because he's trying to +forget."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Forget what?"</p> +<p>"Forget Drusilla, I suppose. Hasn't it struck you—how much +he was in love with her?"</p> +<p>Olivia held a table-cloth carefully to the light. "Is this Irish +linen or German? I know mamma did get some at Dresden—"</p> +<p>Mrs. Temple pointed out the characteristic of the Belfast weave +and pressed her question. "Haven't you noticed it—about +Peter?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Some people think—Rodney, for instance—that he'd +lost his head about you, dear; but we mothers have an +insight—"</p> +<p>"Of course! There seems to be one missing from the dozen of this +pattern."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"It's the smell of lavender," Olivia gasped, weakly. "I never +could endure it. I'll just run into the air a minute—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"What difference <em>can</em> it make to me?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>And now there was this thing!</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What kind of a woman am I?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<em>him</em>."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Drusilla, did Mr. Davenant ever say anything to you about +me?"</p> +<p>She was vexed with herself for the form of her question. It was +not Davenant's feeling toward <em>her</em>, 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:</p> +<p>"Why, yes. We've spoken of you."</p> +<p>Having begun with a mistake, Olivia went on with it. "Did he +say—anything in particular?"</p> +<p>"He said a good many things, on and off."</p> +<p>"Some of which might have been—in particular?"</p> +<p>"All of them, if it comes to that."</p> +<p>"Why did you never tell me?"</p> +<p>"For one reason, because you never asked me."</p> +<p>"Have you any idea why I'm asking you now?"</p> +<p>"Not the faintest. I dare say we sha'n't see anything more of +him for years to come."</p> +<p>"Did you—did you—refuse him? Did you send him +away?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia braced herself to say, "And I hope it's not with me."</p> +<p>Drusilla went on counting.</p> +<p>"Did he ever say anything about that?" Olivia persisted.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>Olivia was silent, but she had much to think of.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He nodded at the various points in her recital, blinking at her +searchingly out of his kind old eyes.</p> +<p>"You look pale," he said, "and old. You look forty."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>He understood now the real motive of her visit.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We may do our duty, and still make people unhappy."</p> +<p>"No; not unless we do it in the wrong way."</p> +<p>"So that if I feel that to go on and keep my word is the right +thing—or rather the only thing—?"</p> +<p>"That settles it, dearie. The right thing <em>is</em> the only +thing—and it makes for everybody's happiness."</p> +<p>"Even if it seems that it—it <em>couldn't</em>?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"In the long run! That means—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>But the taxicab whizzed away, and the little lady tripped up the +steps.</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>dot</em> in her +pocket—same old <em>dot!</em>—and everything. There +now, cry. There's nothing like it."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/m.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="M" title="M" /></div> +<p class="noindent">adame 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.</p> +<p>"Il est très bien, ton Anglais."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>It was easy for Olivia to keep her back turned, while she +managed to say: "He thinks you don't like him."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Whom did you hear it from?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm not sure that you ought, you know."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"He isn't an old man at all," Olivia explained, quickly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"No, he didn't. That's just it. He lent it to us—out +of—out of—"</p> +<p>"Yes; out of what?"</p> +<p>"Out of pure goodness," she said, firmly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I think you'd have to make an exception of Mr. Davenant."</p> +<p>"Davenant? Is that his name? Yes, I believe your papa did tell +me so—the boy Tom Davenant fished out of the slums."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We may get rid of him, Aunt Vic, but we can never pay him +off."</p> +<p>"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.?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Well, I call that princely—six per cent."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"So there was a time when you didn't like him," was Madame de +Melcourt's first comment.</p> +<p>"There was a time when I didn't understand him."</p> +<p>"But when you did understand him you changed your mind."</p> +<p>"I couldn't help it."</p> +<p>"And did you change anything more than your—mind?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Did you ever think he might be in love with you?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"And what happened then?"</p> +<p>"Drusilla told me he'd said he—wasn't."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Didn't answer him?"</p> +<p>"I got up and walked away, right in the middle of—of what +he was trying to tell me."</p> +<p>"Ti-ens! And you had to take his money after all?"</p> +<p>Olivia bowed her head.</p> +<p>"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 <em>you</em> off, hasn't he? +It's a more beautiful situation than I fancied. He didn't tell me +that."</p> +<p>Olivia looked up. "He didn't tell you? Who?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I should if there wasn't something about him that—"</p> +<p>"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 <em>you</em> can't, +can you? You've <em>got</em> 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."</p> +<p>"Of course, Aunt Vic."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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 <em>dot</em> 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?"</p> +<p>"He's out in Michigan, at a little place called Stoughton."</p> +<p>"Then send for him."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'll ask Cousin Cherry to write to him again."</p> +<p>"Stuff, dear. That won't do any good. Wire him yourself, and +tell him I'm here."</p> +<p>"Oh, but, Aunt Vic, dear."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Later that day Madame de Melcourt was making a confession to +Rodney Temple.</p> +<p>"Oui, mon bon Rodney. It was love at first sight. The thing +hadn't happened to me for years."</p> +<p>"Had it been in the habit of happening?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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 <em>him</em>—"</p> +<p>"The young fellow you've taken such a fancy to?"</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>"I hope you told him so."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"As he came to know you."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>Louisiana</em> to New York. Mais +hélas!—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, the world is full of brave fellows, when the moment comes +to try them."</p> +<p>"Perhaps. I'm not convinced. What about <em>him</em>?" She +flicked her hand again toward Ashley. "Would he stand a big +test?"</p> +<p>"He's stood a good many of them, I understand. He's certainly +been equal to his duty here."</p> +<p>"He's done what a gentleman couldn't help doing. That's +something, but it's possible to ask more."</p> +<p>"I hope you're not going to ask it," he began, in some +anxiety.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We shall see."</p> +<p>"What shall we see? I hope you're not up to anything, Vic?"</p> +<p>With another jerk of her hand in the direction of Ashley and +Drusilla, she said, "That's the match that should have—"</p> +<p>But the old man was out of his seat. "You must excuse me now, +Vic. I've some work to do."</p> +<p>"Yes, be off. Only—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Olivia received the reply to her telegram: "Shall arrive in +Boston Wednesday night."</p> +<p>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 +<em>dot</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"She doesn't like me, what?" he had more than once said to +Olivia, and with some misgiving.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"She acts as if she had something up her sleeve."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Ashley bowed. "We shall always feel greatly indebted—" he +began, endeavoring to be more elegant than in his words of a few +minutes earlier.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I know she does, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>me</em>. 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—"</p> +<p>"The devil he did!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"But he's not my friend."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He looked mystified. "But he's out there in Michigan—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"Did he say he was in love with her himself?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Did he say—" He swallowed hard, and began again, more +hoarsely: "Did he say she was—in love with—with +<em>him</em>?"</p> +<p>There was a hint of rebuke in her tone. "He's a very loyal +gentleman. He didn't."</p> +<p>"Did he make you think—?"</p> +<p>"What he made me think, Col-on-el, is my own affair."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"May I ask your motive in springing this on me, Marquise?"</p> +<p>"Mon Dieu, Col-on-el, I thought you'd like to know what a friend +you have."</p> +<p>"Damn his friendship. That's not the reason. You've something up +your sleeve."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"And in England women are straight with men. What they have to +say they say. They don't lay snares, or lie in ambush."</p> +<p>She laughed. "Quant à cela, Col-on-el, il y en a pour +tous les goûts, même en Angleterre."</p> +<p>"I'll bid you good-by, madame."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"By Gad, she's <em>mine</em>!" he said, fiercely.</p> +<p>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 +<em>will</em> raise it—unless you do yourself."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">shley'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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Then that's why he didn't answer mother's letters," she said, +absently, when he had finished. "He wasn't there."</p> +<p>"He wasn't there, by Jove! And don't you see what a fix he's put +me in?"</p> +<p>She replied, still absently: "I'm not sure that I do."</p> +<p>"He's given away the whole show to me. The question is now +whether I can take it, what?"</p> +<p>"He hasn't given away anything you didn't have before."</p> +<p>"He's given away something he might perhaps have had +himself."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"Don't <em>you</em> think so?"</p> +<p>"That's not a fair question."</p> +<p>"It's a vital one."</p> +<p>"To you—yes. But—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I'm afraid I can't help you to see anything. If I were to try I +might mislead you."</p> +<p>"But you must <em>know</em>, by Jove! Two women can't be such +pals as Olivia and you—"</p> +<p>"If I did know I shouldn't tell you. It's something you should +find out for yourself."</p> +<p>"Find out! I've <em>asked</em> her."</p> +<p>"Well, if she's told you, isn't that enough?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Peter's going to see old Cousin Vic might be unexpected; but I +don't think you can call it preposterous."</p> +<p>"It's preposterous to have another man racing about the world +trying to do you good, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He sprang to his feet. "And he's got me where I must either call +his bluff or—or—or accept his beastly sacrifice."</p> +<p>He tugged fiercely, first at one end, then at the other, of the +bristling, horizontal mustache. Drusilla tried to speak calmly.</p> +<p>"He's not making a sacrifice if there was nothing for him to +give up."</p> +<p>"That's what I must find out."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Yes, I know. That's Browning. In other words, it means, let +well enough alone."</p> +<p>"Which isn't bad advice, you know."</p> +<p>"Which isn't bad advice—except in love. Love won't put up +with reserves. It must have all—or it will take nothing."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"And suppose you discovered that you couldn't <em>get</em> +all?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Again some minutes went by before she said: "Is it as bad as all +that?"</p> +<p>"It's as bad as all that."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Couldn't I—?"</p> +<p>The offer of help was in the tone, in its timid beseeching.</p> +<p>He understood it, and shook his head without looking up.</p> +<p>"No," he said, briefly. "No. No one can."</p> +<p>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—<em>I</em> do!—<em>I</em> +do!" she would have felt that life had reached fruition.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She must say something, no matter what, and the words that came +were: "Won't you have another cup of tea?"</p> +<p>He shook his head, still without looking up. "Thanks; no."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"It seems to me you take it too tragically to begin +with—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>His face brightened. "Did he, by Jove?"</p> +<p>"And when I told her that—the other day—she +said—"</p> +<p>"Yes? Yes? She said—?"</p> +<p>"She didn't put it in so many words—but she gave me to +understand—or <em>tried</em> 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 +<em>has</em> those things on her mind, you know, about one man when +she loves another."</p> +<p>He jumped up. "I say! You're a good pal. I shall never forget +it."</p> +<p>He came toward her, but she stepped back at his approach. She +was more sure of herself in the shadow.</p> +<p>"Oh, it's nothing—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You mean, if he does something fine, you must do something +finer."</p> +<p>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 <em>is</em> +my—my rival—he must have a show."</p> +<p>"And how are you going to give him a show if he won't take +it?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"That's what <em>she</em> said, by Jove!—the old Marquise. +She said the question would never be raised unless I raised +it."</p> +<p>Drusilla tried to laugh. "Eh, bien? as she'd say herself."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I say, that's your governor. I'll go and talk to him."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>The old man nodded. "Your difficulties do seem to have been +smoothed out."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm not called on to go poking behind things to see what's +there, now am I?"</p> +<p>"Not in the least."</p> +<p>"I'm willing to consider every one, and I think I do. But there +are limits, by Jove! Now, really?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Ashley rounded sharply. "You mean he's so big that no one can be +bigger."</p> +<p>"Not exactly. I mean that very few of us <em>need</em> 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."</p> +<p>"And sit down under him, while he looms up into God knows +where?"</p> +<p>"Well, wouldn't that be your idea?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Quite so; as big as any one—who takes his rights and +keeps them. That's very true."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It's a very high ideal."</p> +<p>"I propose to accept the status quo without asking any more +questions."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you mean that, sir? or are you—trying it on?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What makes you think I should do that?"</p> +<p>"Because—because—hang it all! If I let this fellow +keep ahead of me—why, I <em>should</em> come in second +best."</p> +<p>"You say <em>keep</em> ahead of me. Do you think he's ahead of +you now?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, that's nothing. To a fellow like him that sort of thing +comes easy."</p> +<p>"It wouldn't come easy to me, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"Then it would be all the more to your credit, if you ever did +anything of the kind."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>Ashley struck a vesta on the edge of his match-box and applied +it to the old man's pipe.</p> +<p>"Should you say," he asked, while doing it, "that I ought to +attempt anything in that line?"</p> +<p>"Certainly not—unless you want to—to get ahead."</p> +<p>"I don't want to stay behind."</p> +<p>"Then, it's for you to judge, my son."</p> +<p>There was something like an affectionate stress on the two +concluding monosyllables. Ashley backed off, out of the +lamplight.</p> +<p>"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 +<em>can't</em>—let a chap like that make me a present of all +his chances—"</p> +<p>"Did he have any?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"But not of any more."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"Oh, don't worry. A rich soil is never barren. When nothing is +planted in it, Nature uses it for flowers."</p> +<p>Ashley answered restively. "I see, sir, your sympathies are all +on his side."</p> +<p>"Not at all. Quite the contrary. My certainties are on his side. +My sympathies are on yours."</p> +<p>"Because you think I need them."</p> +<p>"Because I think you may."</p> +<p>"In case I—"</p> +<p>"In case you should condemn yourself in the thing you're going +to allow."</p> +<p>"But what's it to be?"</p> +<p>"That's for you to settle with yourself."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, there'll be no trouble about that. In the Street called +Straight, my son, there are lights to show the way."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"Rum old cove," was Ashley's comment to himself as he went back +to Boston. "Got an answer to everything."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/image4.png"><img src= +"images/image4.png" width="500" height="778" alt= +"ASHLEY GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THEIR CONVERSATION WAS EARNEST, CONFIDENTIAL." + title= + "ASHLEY GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THEIR CONVERSATION WAS EARNEST, CONFIDENTIAL." /> +</a> +<p class="caption">ASHLEY GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THEIR +CONVERSATION WAS EARNEST, CONFIDENTIAL.</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He nodded to Davenant before shaking hands with Miss Guion. +"Hello! Back again?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I had to come East on business," Davenant explained, at +once.</p> +<p>Olivia hastened to corroborate this statement. "Aunt Vic wanted +Mr. Davenant to come—to settle up all the things—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia looked inquiringly at Ashley. Her eyes were misty.</p> +<p>"Hadn't you better talk to <em>him</em> about it?" Ashley +said.</p> +<p>"I thought I'd better speak to you and Miss Guion first. I +understand you've offered to—to take him—"</p> +<p>"I shouldn't interfere with what suited him better, in any case. +By the way, how did you like the <em>Louisiana</em>?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Mr. Davenant wasn't on the <em>Louisiana</em>. It was Aunt Vic. +Mr. Davenant has just come from the West. You do that by +train."</p> +<p>"Of course he was on the <em>Louisiana</em>. Landed on +the—let me see!—she sailed again +yesterday!—landed on the 20th, didn't you?"</p> +<p>"No, no," Olivia corrected again, smiling. "That was the day +Aunt Vic landed. You're getting every one mixed."</p> +<p>"But they came together," Ashley persisted. "He brought her. +Didn't you?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia's eyes were still lifted to Davenant's. "Is that +true?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"No," Davenant cried, fiercely. "There was no question of +me."</p> +<p>"Bosh! Bosh, my good fellow! When a man does what you've done +there's no question of any one but him."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>He was about to make his escape, when Olivia stopped him. "No, +no. Wait—please wait. Tell me why you did it."</p> +<p>"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 <em>was</em> 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."</p> +<p>With a laugh Ashley held his hand up toward Davenant, who +ignored it.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/w.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="W" title="W" /></div> +<p class="noindent">hen 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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia, leaning on the mantelpiece, with face partially turned +from him, made no reply.</p> +<p>He allowed some minutes to pass before saying: "When I asked him +how he liked the <em>Louisiana</em> I wanted to know. I'm thinking +of taking her on her next trip home."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She seemed to have some difficulty in getting her mind to follow +his words. "I don't think I understand you."</p> +<p>There was a smile on his lips as he said: "Don't you infer +anything?"</p> +<p>"If I <em>inferred</em> anything, it would be that you think of +going home—alone."</p> +<p>"Well, that's it."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"Isn't it pretty nearly—self-evident?"</p> +<p>She shook her head. "Not to me."</p> +<p>"I'm surprised at that. I thought you would have seen how well +we'd played our game, and that it's—up."</p> +<p>"I don't see—not unless you're trying to tell me that +you've—that your feelings have undergone a—"</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"I'm ready to do everything you like; but I can't help being +surprised."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Saw how they were with you? Do you mean?—No, you can't +mean!—it isn't—Drusilla?"</p> +<p>Since Drusilla would do as well as another, he still stood +smiling. She clasped her hands. Her face was all aglow.</p> +<p>"Oh, I should be so glad! It's only within a few days that I've +seen—how it was—with—"</p> +<p>He hastened to interrupt her, though he had no idea of what she +was going to say. "Then so long as you do see—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I can't bear it," he could hear her panting. "I can't bear +it."</p> +<p>"What is it that you can't bear? The pain?" She nodded without +raising her head.</p> +<p>"Or the happiness?" he asked, gently. She nodded again.</p> +<p>"That is," he went on, "pain for me—and happiness +about—about—the other chap."</p> +<p>She made the same mute sign of affirmation.</p> +<p>"Then, perhaps, that's just as it should be."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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'."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"That's all right," Davenant rejoined; and no more was said till +they reached Rodney Temple's door.</p> +<p>"Good-by." Ashley offered his hand. "Good-by. You're a +first-rate sort. You deserve everything you're—you're coming +in for."</p> +<p>Davenant could only wring the proffered hand wonderingly and +continue on his way.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Not in the Carral country, I hope."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>It was at the door, to which she accompanied him, that he said: +"By the way, when are you coming home?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, I say—"</p> +<p>"In any case I'm here for the winter."</p> +<p>"Oh, but I say, by Jove! That's forever. You'll be back before +spring?"</p> +<p>She weakened in spite of herself. "I couldn't possibly leave +till after Christmas."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He had gone down the steps when he turned again. Drusilla was +still standing in the open doorway.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I've already talked to papa about it," she said. "He's very +grateful—very much touched."</p> +<p>"There's no reason for that. I should like his company. +I'm—I'm fond of him."</p> +<p>For a few minutes she seemed to be pondering, absently. "There's +something I should like to ask you," she said, at last.</p> +<p>"Yes, Miss Guion? What is it?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I wonder," she said, "if you have any idea of the many things +you've taught me?"</p> +<p>"I?" He almost jumped from his seat. "You're laughing at +me."</p> +<p>"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 <em>good</em>. 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 <em>are</em>—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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>very</em> ill, I'll cable. I promise you I +will—on my solemn word."</p> +<p>"You won't have to do that," she said, simply, "because I'm +going, too."</p> +<p>Again he almost jumped from his chair. "Going, too? Going +where?"</p> +<p>"Going to Stoughton with papa."</p> +<p>"But—but—Miss Guion—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"All over—how?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Oh, he's changed, has he?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>She stopped with a little gasp.</p> +<p>"Yes? If he hadn't seen—what?"</p> +<p>"That I—that I—I care—for some one else."</p> +<p>"Oh! Well, of course, that does make a difference."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Some one—in England?"</p> +<p>"No—here."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Is he—is he—coming to Stoughton?"</p> +<p>"He's <em>going</em> to Stoughton. He's been +there—already."</p> +<p>If there was silence again it was because he dared not frame the +words that were on his tongue.</p> +<p>"It isn't—it can't be—?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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 +<em>is</em> true. I think it was true before that—long +ago—when you offered me so much—so +<em>much!</em>—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—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He withdrew his hand, looking troubled.</p> +<p>"Are you—are you—<em>sure?</em>"</p> +<p>She reflected a minute. "I know what makes you ask that. You +think I've changed too suddenly. If so, I can explain it."</p> +<p>The silence in which he waited for her to continue assented in +some sort to this reading of his thoughts.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He would have said something, but she hurried on.</p> +<p>"I've not changed toward the play, except to recognize the fact +that it <em>was</em> 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—"</p> +<p>She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep back what might +have become a sob.</p> +<p>"Did you know I—I loved you?" he asked, still speaking +hoarsely.</p> +<p>"I thought you must," she said, simply. "I used to say I hoped +you didn't—but deep down in my heart—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"You're not—you're <em>not</em>—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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I had come to the end of the end ... and I prayed ... yes, I +<em>prayed</em>.... 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!..."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE END</h2> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14394 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/14394-h/images/a.png b/14394-h/images/a.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..71c653b --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/a.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/c.png b/14394-h/images/c.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..087066e --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/c.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/d.png b/14394-h/images/d.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6244769 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/d.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/f.png b/14394-h/images/f.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5eded3 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/f.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/g.png b/14394-h/images/g.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ce6169e --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/g.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/h.png b/14394-h/images/h.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb5be49 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/h.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/h2.png b/14394-h/images/h2.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d1cd31 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/h2.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/i.png b/14394-h/images/i.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7733f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/i.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/image1.png b/14394-h/images/image1.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d71d329 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/image1.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/image2.png b/14394-h/images/image2.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..355ebf8 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/image2.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/image3.png b/14394-h/images/image3.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..035e0c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/image3.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/image4.png b/14394-h/images/image4.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb5c388 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/image4.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/m.png b/14394-h/images/m.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..74fd0e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/m.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/t.png b/14394-h/images/t.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b72a26 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/t.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/w.png b/14394-h/images/w.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..308d3e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/w.png diff --git a/14394-h/images/w2.png b/14394-h/images/w2.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..63a6821 --- /dev/null +++ b/14394-h/images/w2.png diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..be94c5c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #14394 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14394) diff --git a/old/14394-8.txt b/old/14394-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a911bdc --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14394-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12513 @@ +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT *** + +***** This file should be named 14394-8.txt or 14394-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/3/9/14394/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Karina Aleksandrova and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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 + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT</h1> +<h3>A NOVEL<br /> +<br /> +BY</h3> +<h2>BASIL KING</h2> +<h3>AUTHOR OF<br /> +THE INNER SHRINE, THE WILD OLIVE, ETC.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +ILLUSTRATED BY<br /> +ORSON LOWELL</h3> +<h4 style="margin-top: 5em;">NEW YORK<br /> +GROSSET & DUNLAP<br /> +PUBLISHERS</h4> +<p class="center">Published by Arrangement with Harper & +Brothers</p> +<p class="center">1911, 1912.<br /> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br /> +PUBLISHED MAY, 1912</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"<em>By the Street Called Straight we come to the House called +Beautiful</em>"</p> +<p class="citation">—New England Saying</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">s 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"And what does Colonel Ashley look like, Drucie?" he asked, +glancing slyly at Miss Guion.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"It is like him," Miss Guion laughed.</p> +<p>"Is he as stiff as all that?" the professor inquired.</p> +<p>"Not stiff," Miss Guion explained, "only dignified."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 <em>tour de force</em>. 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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That doesn't do us any good," Rodney Temple corrected, "because +we always blame the spoon."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She held her head slightly to one side, smiling with an air of +mock penitence.</p> +<p>"Dear, dear!" Mrs. Temple murmured, sympathetically. "Just +because you wouldn't marry a Frenchman!"</p> +<p>"And a little because I'm <em>going</em> to marry an Englishman. +To Aunt Vic all Englishmen are grocers."</p> +<p>"Horrid old thing!" Drusilla said, indignantly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"The capacity of the American woman for being domesticated in an +alien environment," observed Rodney Temple, "is only equaled by the +dog's."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we," Mrs. Temple quoted, +gently.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Drusilla had a way of appealing to whatever men were present, as +though her statements lacked something till they had received +masculine corroboration.</p> +<p>"All the same, I wish you could have managed the thing without +giving offence to Aunt Vic."</p> +<p>The words were Henry Guion's first since sitting down to +table.</p> +<p>"I couldn't help it, papa. I didn't <em>give</em> Aunt Vic +offence; she took it."</p> +<p>"She's always been so fond of you—"</p> +<p>"I'm fond of <em>her</em>. 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?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"I've done that, Cousin Cherry."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Olivia simply <em>must</em> 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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What are <em>you</em> going to do, Henry, when the gallant +stranger carries off Olivia, a fortnight hence?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What am I going to do?" he repeated, absently. "Oh, my future +will depend very much on—Hobson's choice."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"What about the big estates?"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Oh, nothing—except what I hear."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Then you've been—hearing—things?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Have I been hearing things? N-no; only that the care of big +estates is a matter of great responsibility—and anxiety."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Perhaps I sha'n't get the chance. Work may give +up—me."</p> +<p>"I wish it would, papa. Then everything would be settled."</p> +<p>"Some things would be settled. Others might be opened—for +discussion."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>could</em> 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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, he had a reason," Mrs. Fane agreed—"the reason of +being hard up. The trouble lay in its not being good enough."</p> +<p>"I imagine it was good enough for him, poor devil."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Since when?"</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"Oh, for no reason. It only strikes me as curious that your +sympathy should take that turn."</p> +<p>"Precisely," Miss Guion chimed in. "It's not a bit like you, +papa. You used to be harder on dishonorable things than any +one."</p> +<p>"Well, I'm not now."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/t.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="T" title="T" /></div> +<p class="noindent">he 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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That's interesting—very," Guion said. "How did you make +the discovery?"</p> +<p>"By being bored to death."</p> +<p>"Bored?—with all your money?"</p> +<p>"The money isn't much; but, even if it were, it couldn't go on +buying me a good time."</p> +<p>"That, of course, depends on what your idea of a good time may +be; doesn't it, Rodney?"</p> +<p>"It depends somewhat," Rodney replied, "on the purchasing power +of money. There are things not to be had for cash."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"A bee," Guion observed, "isn't the product of a high and +complex civilization—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And so you've come back to Boston to work?"</p> +<p>"To work—or something."</p> +<p>"You leave yourself, I see, the latitude +of—something."</p> +<p>"Only because it's better than nothing. It's been nothing for so +long now that I'm willing to make it anything."</p> +<p>"Make what—anything?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Davenant laughed. "A little," he admitted. "But, to any one like +you, sir, it would seem a trifle."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Davenant resisted the impulse to glance at Temple, who spoke +promptly, while Guion swallowed thirstily a glass of cognac.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"So everything you undertook you pulled off successfully?" his +host questioned, abruptly.</p> +<p>"Not everything; some things. I lost money—often; but on +the whole I made it."</p> +<p>"Good! With me it was always the other way."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"You'll miss Olivia when she's gone, Henry."</p> +<p>"Y-yes; if she goes."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Nothing but gossip, Henry."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I was afraid it might be. But in that case I wonder you allowed +Olivia to go ahead."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"You don't think he'd want to back out, do you?"</p> +<p>"I haven't the remotest idea. From Olivia's description he seems +like a decent sort; and yet—"</p> +<p>Davenant got to, his feet. "Shouldn't you like me to go back to +the ladies? You want to talk to the professor—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"They'll not rush things like that," Temple said, tying to speak +reassuringly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Can't anything be done?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Is there nothing to be expected in that quarter for +yourself?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"Ashley, I take it, is a man of some means?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"It was Hallett—Peter Hallett."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Well, what is it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What put that into your head?" was the old man's response to +this stammering confession.</p> +<p>"I suppose the thought occurred to me on general principles. +I've always understood it was the right thing to attempt."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"The difficulty is," he said, after a long silence, "that it's +often so hard to know what <em>is</em> right."</p> +<p>"No, it isn't."</p> +<p>The flat contradiction brought a smile to the young man's lips +as they trudged onward.</p> +<p>"A good many people say so."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Aren't there exceptions to that rule?"</p> +<p>"I allowed for the exceptions. I said <em>chiefly</em>."</p> +<p>"But when you <em>do</em> want to do it?"</p> +<p>"You'll know what it is. There'll be something to tell you."</p> +<p>"And this something to tell you? What do you call it?"</p> +<p>"Some call it conscience. Some call it God. Some call it +neither."</p> +<p>Davenant reflected again.</p> +<p>"And you? What do you call it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Why not to me?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I dare say."</p> +<p>"So what then?"</p> +<p>"Then you do them."</p> +<p>"Oh, but—"</p> +<p>"If there's an 'Oh, but', you don't. That's all. You belong to +the many called, but not to the few chosen."</p> +<p>"But if things <em>are</em> wild—I'm thinking of something +in particular—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I shouldn't dream of classing myself in their company."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Good-night, sir. I hope you're not going to think +me—well, altogether an idiot."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/d.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="D" title="D" /></div> +<p class="noindent">avenant 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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>It was then that he found the question raising itself within +him, "Is that what's wrong with me?"</p> +<p>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 <em>given</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Here's Peter!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Oh, Peter, dear, I'm so glad you've come! The most awful thing +has happened."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What's the matter?" Davenant asked, too deeply astonished even +to take off his hat. "Is it burglars? Where's the professor?"</p> +<p>"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 ... +<em>know</em> ... it's ... <em>true</em>."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What is it?" Peter asked again. "Who's Collins? And what has he +said?"</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>"What was too awful? The way she laid your wrapper on the +bed?"</p> +<p>"No; what she told me. And I <em>know</em> it's true."</p> +<p>"Well, for the Lord's sake, Drusilla, what is it?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Davenant listened in silence. "So the thing is out?" was his +only comment.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 +<em>I</em> don't know."</p> +<p>Mrs. Temple raised her hands and let them drop heavily.</p> +<p>"Oh, Peter, can't you do anything?"</p> +<p>"What can he do, child? If Henry's been making away with all +that money it would take a fortune to—"</p> +<p>"Oh, men can do things—in business," Drusilla asserted. "I +know they can. Banks lend them money, <em>don't</em> they, Peter? +Banks are always lending money to tide people over. I've often +heard of it. Oh, Peter, <em>do</em> something. I'm so glad you're +here. It seems like a providence."</p> +<p>"Colonel Ashley will be here next week, too," Mrs. Temple +groaned, as though the fact brought comfort.</p> +<p>"Oh, mother dear, don't <em>speak</em> 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 <em>impossible</em>—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 <em>me</em>, mother dear, but to stay at home with +father and you."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, Peter, <em>won't</em> you do something?"</p> +<p>Drusilla's hands were clasped beneath an imploring face, +slightly tilted to one side. Her black hair had begun to tumble to +her shoulders.</p> +<p>"I'll—I'll think it over," was all he could find to +answer.</p> +<p>"Oh, <em>thank</em> 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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Some call it conscience. Some call it God. Some call it +neither. But," he added, slowly, "some <em>do</em> call it +God."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/c.png" width= +"80" height="101" alt="C" title="C" /></div> +<p class="noindent">losing 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.</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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 <em>still</em>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>She answered languidly. "Yes, so so. It might have been +pleasanter if it hadn't been for that awful man."</p> +<p>"Who? Young Davenant? I don't see anything awful about him."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm sorry you feel that way about young Davenant. I rather like +him."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Oh, men would," she said, indifferently, without turning round. +"He's their style."</p> +<p>"Which is to his discredit?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Davenant isn't a bore."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She had paused on the landing at the angle of the staircase.</p> +<p>"He's good-looking," Guion said, in continued effort to +interpose the trivial between himself and what he had still to tell +her.</p> +<p>"Oh, that sort of Saxon giant type is always good-looking. Of +course. And dull too."</p> +<p>"I dare say he isn't as dull as you think."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm an American man of business myself."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"No; there's no reason for that," he managed to say.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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...."</p> +<p>"Well, as long as they're not involved now there's no reason why +it shouldn't be better late than never."</p> +<p>"But they <em>are</em> involved now," he said, with an intensity +so poignant that he was surprised she didn't notice it.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I couldn't.... Things weren't shipshape enough ... not even +then."</p> +<p>"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 <em>must</em> go to bed. +You look tired and rather pale—just as I do after a dull +party. Good night; and <em>don't</em> stay up."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Olivia!"</p> +<p>His voice was so sharp that she hurried back to the top of the +stairs.</p> +<p>"What is it, papa? Aren't you well?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>flair</em>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>in loco parentis</em>, that he +should have a free hand.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"O God! O God!"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"O God! O God!"</p> +<p>He repeated them again. He raised his head, as if listening to a +voice.</p> +<p>"O God! O God!"</p> +<p>He continued to sit thus, as if listening.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>He dragged himself to his feet.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/g.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="G" title="G" /></div> +<p class="noindent">uion 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.</p> +<p>"Oh, papa, what's the matter?"</p> +<p>He threw the coverlet from him and dragged himself to a sitting +posture.</p> +<p>"What time is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. "I must have +dropped off to sleep. Is dinner ready?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm cold," was all he said.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm cold," he said again.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm cold," he said for the third time.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Who's that?" he asked, sharply. He dared not turn round to +see.</p> +<p>"It's only the postman, papa darling. Who else should it +be?"</p> +<p>"Yes; of course." He breathed again. "You mustn't mind me, dear. +I'm nervous. I'm—I'm not very well."</p> +<p>"I see you're not, papa. I saw it last night. I knew something +was wrong."</p> +<p>"There's something—very wrong."</p> +<p>"What is it? Tell me."</p> +<p>Leaning on the table, with clasped hands uplifted, the loose +white lace sleeves falling away from her slender wrists, she looked +at him pleadingly.</p> +<p>"We've—that is, I've—lost a great deal of +money."</p> +<p>"Oh!" The sound was just above her breath. Then, after long +silence, she asked: "Is it much?"</p> +<p>He waited before replying, seeking, for the last time, some +mitigation of what he had to tell her.</p> +<p>"It's all we have."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>He forced himself to take a few sips of coffee and crumble a bit +of toast.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>He nodded an affirmative, with his head down.</p> +<p>"Then you mean me to understand what you said just +now—quite literally. We've lost all we have."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Yes; that <em>is</em> worse," she assented, quietly.</p> +<p>Another silence was broken by his saying, hoarsely:</p> +<p>"You'll get married—"</p> +<p>"That will have to be reconsidered."</p> +<p>"Do you mean—on your part?"</p> +<p>"I suppose I mean—on everybody's part?"</p> +<p>"Do you think he would want to—you must excuse the crudity +of the question—do you think he would want to back out?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Take me, papa? Why shouldn't I stay with you? I'd much +rather."</p> +<p>He tried to explain. It was clearly the moment at which to do +it.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>She nodded. "I think I've heard so."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>She was still sitting where he left her, at the head of the +table, pale, pensive, but not otherwise disturbed.</p> +<p>"Does that mean that you're not coming home to-night?"</p> +<p>"I—I don't know. Things may happen to—to prevent +me."</p> +<p>"Where should you go?—to New York?"</p> +<p>"No; not to New York."</p> +<p>He half hoped she would press the question, but when she spoke +it was only to say:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Mr. Davenant would like to see you," came the voice of the +stenographer from the anteroom.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Guion," the visitor said, +apologetically, with a glance at the letters on the desk.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 +<em>was</em> 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.</p> +<p>"I came in to see you, Mr. Guion," he began, apparently with +some hesitation, "about what we were talking of last night."</p> +<p>Guion pulled himself together. His handsome eyebrows arched +themselves, and he half smiled.</p> +<p>"Last night? What <em>were</em> we talking of?"</p> +<p>"We weren't talking of it, exactly. You only told us."</p> +<p>"Only told you—what?" The necessity to do a little fencing +brought some of his old powers into play.</p> +<p>"That you wanted to borrow half a million dollars. I've come in +to—to lend you that sum—if you'll take it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I didn't suppose you were in—in a position—to do +that."</p> +<p>"I am." Davenant nodded with some emphasis.</p> +<p>"Did you think that that was what I meant when I—I opened +my heart to you last night?"</p> +<p>"No. I know it wasn't. My offer is inspired by nothing but what +I feel."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You can borrow what I'm willing to lend, can't you?"</p> +<p>"No; because Tory Hill is mortgaged for all it will stand. I've +nothing else to offer as collateral—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you mean that you'd be willing to—to—to +<em>give</em> it to me?"</p> +<p>"I mean, sir," he explained, reddening a little, "that I want +you to have the money to <em>use</em>—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—"</p> +<p>"I am; but—don't be offended!—it seems to me you'd +put me in a tighter."</p> +<p>"How's that?"</p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/image2.png"><img src= +"images/image2.png" width="500" height="733" alt= +""I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE PENALTY"" +title= +""I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE PENALTY"" /> +</a> +<p class="caption">"I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE +PENALTY"</p> +</div> +<p>"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 <em>ready</em> 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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Davenant attempted, by taking something like a jovial tone, to +carry the thing off lightly.</p> +<p>"There's no reason why you shouldn't do it; there's only a +reason why I shouldn't let you."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I've told you that. I'm not asking for anything else."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I don't want to know how it began," Davenant said, hastily. +"I'm satisfied with knowing the situation as it is."</p> +<p>"But I want to tell you. In proportion as I'm open with you I +shall expect you to be frank with me."</p> +<p>"I don't promise to be frank with you."</p> +<p>"Anyhow, I mean to set you the example."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>sane</em> man—would tell you as +much."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And what <em>is</em> your opinion? Do you mind telling me? You +understand that what you're proposing is immoral, don't you?"</p> +<p>"Yes—in a way."</p> +<p>Guion frowned. He had hoped for some pretense at +contradiction.</p> +<p>"I didn't know whether you'd thought of that."</p> +<p>"Oh yes, I've thought of it. That is, I see what you mean."</p> +<p>"It's compounding a felony and outwitting the ends of justice +and—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I don't know that I have. In fact, I know I haven't."</p> +<p>"Well, whatever its nature, I should like to know what it +is."</p> +<p>"Is that necessary?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Davenant looked at him pensively. "That is, you want to know +what I should be pulling off for myself?"</p> +<p>"That's about it."</p> +<p>"I don't see why that should worry you. If you get the +money—"</p> +<p>"If I get the money I put myself in your power."</p> +<p>"What of that? Isn't it just as well to be in my power as in the +power of other people?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Possibly," he said, not caring to conceal a certain irritation; +"but even so I should like to know in case I <em>were</em> in your +power what you'd expect of me."</p> +<p>"I can answer that question right away. I shouldn't expect +anything at all."</p> +<p>"Then you leave me more in the dark than ever."</p> +<p>Davenant still eyed him pensively. "Do I understand you to be +suspicious of my motives?"</p> +<p>"Suspicious might not be the right word. Suppose we said +curious."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Well, sir, suppose I allowed you to remain curious? What +then?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"In that case I think we must call the bargain off."</p> +<p>Davenant shot out of his seat. He, too, was not without a +current of hot blood.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>Guion looked up sharply. "Has <em>she</em> got anything to do +with it?"</p> +<p>"Nothing," Davenant said, quickly, "nothing whatever."</p> +<p>"I didn't see how she <em>could</em> have—" Guion was +going on, when Davenant interrupted.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Half a million would be too much. Four hundred and fifty +thousand would cover everything."</p> +<p>"That would be all the same to me," Davenant said, in a +matter-of-fact tone.</p> +<p>But he went back to the desk and took his seat again.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/h.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="H" title="H" /></div> +<p class="noindent">aving 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She experienced the same sensation, if it <em>was</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"You see," Olivia said, trying to sound her friend's ideas, +"from one point of view I scarcely know him."</p> +<p>"You know him well enough to be in love with him." Drusilla felt +that that committed her to nothing.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And you know him well enough to be sure that he'll want to do +everything right."</p> +<p>"Oh yes; I'm quite sure of that. I'm only uncertain +that—everything right—would satisfy me."</p> +<p>Drusilla reflected. "I see what you mean. And, of course, you +want to do—everything right—yourself."</p> +<p>Olivia glanced up obliquely under her lashes.</p> +<p>"I see what <em>you</em> mean, too."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"You see, he didn't want to marry an American, in the first +place."</p> +<p>"Well, no one forced him into that. That's one thing he did with +his eyes open, at any rate."</p> +<p>"His doing it was a sort of—concession."</p> +<p>Drusilla looked at her with big, indignant eyes.</p> +<p>"Concession to what, for pity's sake?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But the other things aren't equal now. Don't you see? They're +changed."</p> +<p>"<em>You're</em> not changed." Drusilla felt these words to be +dangerous. It was a relief to her that Olivia should contradict +them promptly.</p> +<p>"Oh yes, I am. I'm changed—in value. With papa's troubles +there's a depreciation in everything we are."</p> +<p>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 <em>will</em> she say when she knows all?—if +she ever has to know it."</p> +<p>"But she hasn't changed," Mrs. Temple argued.</p> +<p>"It doesn't make any difference in <em>her</em>."</p> +<p>Drusilla shook her head. "Yes, it does, mother dear. You don't +know anything about it."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you mean to say they'd make him give it up?"</p> +<p>"They wouldn't make him, mother dear. He'd only have to."</p> +<p>"Well, I never did! If that's the British army—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"The future may be quite different from what I expected. I can't +tell yet for sure. I must see how things—work out."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I know I've got to feel my way," she said, meaning to agree +with him.</p> +<p>"I don't see why."</p> +<p>She raised her eyebrows in some surprise. "You don't +see—?"</p> +<p>"No, I don't. Why should you feel your way? You're not +blind."</p> +<p>"I feel my way because I don't see it."</p> +<p>"Oh yes, you do—all you need to see."</p> +<p>"But I don't see any. I assure you it's all confusion."</p> +<p>"Not a bit, my dear. It's as plain as a pikestaff—for the +next step."</p> +<p>"I don't know what you mean by the next step."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Her lips relaxed in a pale smile. "I'm afraid I must look a +little farther ahead than that."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"W-well," the old man answered, slowly, "it isn't easy to tell +you in any language you'd understand."</p> +<p>"I can understand plain English, if that would do."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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 +<em>Thing</em>."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"That's a pity; because it's there."</p> +<p>"There? Where?"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>know</em> but yourself, because no one but yourself can see +it—but it's possible that at this moment—for +you—it's standing still."</p> +<p>"I don't know what I gain either by its moving or its standing +still, so long as I don't see it."</p> +<p>"No, neither do I," he assented, promptly.</p> +<p>"Well, then?" she questioned.</p> +<p>"Shall I tell you a little story?" He smiled at her behind his +stringy, sandy beard, while his kind old eyes blinked +wistfully.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Yes? I seem to have heard of them. Please go on."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She nodded, to show that she followed him.</p> +<p>"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.'"</p> +<p>"That seems reasonable."</p> +<p>"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—<em>to sit still</em>!'" As he +stood looking down at her his kindly eyes blinked for a minute +longer, before he added, "Do you see the point?"</p> +<p>She smiled and nodded. "Yes. It isn't very obscure. Otherwise +expressed it might be, When in doubt, do nothing."</p> +<p>"Exactly; do nothing—till the pillar of cloud begins to +move."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to +observe.</p> +<p>"No, I didn't."</p> +<p>"Sha'n't you <em>have</em> to go?"</p> +<p>There was an instant's hesitation.</p> +<p>"Perhaps not. In fact—I may almost definitely +say—<em>not</em>. I should like another cup of tea."</p> +<p>"That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake?"</p> +<p>"Nothing will keep me awake to-night."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Has anything happened?" she asked, doing her best to give the +question a casual intonation.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm so glad." She spoke as if he had told her he had shaken +hands with an old friend. "I thought you would."</p> +<p>"Ah, but you never thought of anything like this."</p> +<p>"I knew it would be something pretty good. With your name, there +wasn't the slightest doubt of it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>give</em> me—enough money to +pull me through."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What do you mean by—practically to give you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"How can he tell, then, that you'll ever pay it back?"</p> +<p>"He can't tell. That's just it."</p> +<p>"And can you tell?" She let the lump of sugar fall with a circle +of tiny eddies into the cup of tea.</p> +<p>"I can tell—up to a point." His tone indicated some +abatement of enthusiasm.</p> +<p>"Up to what point?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She handed him his cup. "Isn't that a very queer way to lend +money?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"It doesn't sound fatuous so much as—"</p> +<p>"So much as what?"</p> +<p>The distress gathering in her eyes prepared him for her next +words before she uttered them.</p> +<p>"Papa, I shouldn't think you'd take it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I haven't said I'd take it—positively."</p> +<p>"Naturally. Of course you haven't."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, don't you? To me it's self-evident. We may have lost money, +but we're still not—recipients of alms."</p> +<p>"This wasn't alms. It was four hundred and fifty thousand +dollars."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Y-es; of course—if you look at it in that way." He put +back his cup on the table untasted.</p> +<p>"Surely it's the only way to look at it? Aren't you going to +drink your tea?"</p> +<p>"No, I think not. I've had enough. I've—I've had +enough—of everything."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"I suppose you'll be sorry now for having told me."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>She allowed him a minute in which to resume, but, as he kept +silence, she ventured to ask:</p> +<p>"Does that mean that you don't share them now?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Oh, but I didn't understand that this <em>was</em> 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."</p> +<p>He jerked himself up into a forward posture. When he replied to +her, it was with didactic, explanatory irritation.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Oh! So it was—that man?"</p> +<p>"Yes; it was he. He expressly spoke of it as <em>a loan</em>. I +myself interpreted it as a gift simply to emphasize its +extraordinary generosity. I thought you'd appreciate that. Do you +see?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I had that out with him. He said he didn't expect to gain +anything."</p> +<p>"And you believed him?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But you don't need the money—in that way, papa?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, don't, papa. I'm sure it isn't right. I—I don't like +him."</p> +<p>"Pff! What's that got to do with it? This is business."</p> +<p>"No, papa. It's not business. It's a great deal more—or a +great deal less—I don't know which."</p> +<p>"You don't know anything about it at all, dear. You may take +that from me. This is a man's affair. You really <em>must</em> +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?"</p> +<p>"I've nothing against him—except that I've never liked +him."</p> +<p>"What do you know about him? When did you ever see him?"</p> +<p>"I <em>haven't</em> 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?"</p> +<p>There was no answer. He breathed gently. She spoke more +forcibly.</p> +<p>"Papa, you wouldn't let a stranger pay your debts?"</p> +<p>He continued to breathe gently, his eyes closed, the long black +lashes curling on his cheek.</p> +<p>"Papa, darling," she cried, "I'll help you. I'll take everything +on myself. I'll find a way—somehow. Only, <em>don't</em> do +this."</p> +<p>He stirred, and murmured sleepily.</p> +<p>"You attend to your wedding, dear. That'll be quite enough for +you to look after."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>When he made no response to this shot, she understood finally +that he meant to let the subject drop.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>svelte</em> elegance of the King Arthur beside Maximilian's +tomb at Innspruck.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>mise-en-scène</em>, 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."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"So they told me at his office. I was sorry to hear it."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He colored promptly. "You mean that if they needed anything +you'd offer them the best you had."</p> +<p>"I wonder if you'd understand that I'm not speaking ungraciously +if I said that—I shouldn't offer them anything at all?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I'm sorry. I hoped you would."</p> +<p>"Why?"</p> +<p>She lifted her clear gray eyes on him for the briefest possible +look. "Need I explain?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"But I think you ought. When you enter into what is distinctly +our private family affair, I've a right to give my opinion."</p> +<p>"You don't think I question that?"</p> +<p>"I'm afraid I do. I imagine you're capable of carrying your +point, regardless of what I feel."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Ah, but this is not business. It's charity."</p> +<p>"Did Mr. Guion tell you so?"</p> +<p>"He did. He told me all about it. My father has no secrets from +me."</p> +<p>"Did he use the word—charity?"</p> +<p>"Almost. He said you offered him a loan, but that it really was +a gift."</p> +<p>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 <em>was</em> a gift. Would there be +any harm in it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But I should say that those conditions existed—between +Mr. Guion and me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I wonder how much you know?"</p> +<p>"About my father's affairs? I know everything."</p> +<p>"Everything?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You understood, then," Davenant stammered, "that he might have +to—to—go away?"</p> +<p>"Oh, perfectly."</p> +<p>"And aren't you very much appalled?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, but one like this—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But how could there be worse?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Did he say I wanted anything?"</p> +<p>"He said you hadn't asked for anything. That's what leaves us so +much in the dark."</p> +<p>"Isn't it conceivable—" he began, with a slightly puzzled +air.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Isn't it conceivable," he persisted, "that a man might like to +do a thing, once in a way, without—"</p> +<p>"Without asking for an equivalent in return? Possibly. But in +this case it would only make it harder for me."</p> +<p>"How so?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Who are total strangers, just like me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But you know Mrs. Rodman and Mrs. Clay. They're not +impersonal."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Does my father owe money to <em>them</em>?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I really can't say anything about it. I suppose they would be +among the creditors—as a matter of course."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Isn't it very serious—when there's anything wrong with +estates?"</p> +<p>He answered readily, still forcing a tone of careless +matter-of-fact.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Wasn't it for something of that kind—something wrong with +estates—that Jack Berrington was sent to prison?"</p> +<p>The question took him unawares. "I—I don't remember."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I think I remember hearing about them," he said, for the sake +of saying something; "but—"</p> +<p>"I should like to go and talk with my father. Would you mind +waiting?"</p> +<p>She made as though she would pass him, but he managed to bar her +way.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I don't see that," he returned, adopting her own tone. "I +should think it would be just the other way."</p> +<p>She shook her head.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You'll think differently," he began, "when you've looked at the +thing all round; and then—"</p> +<p>But before he could complete his sentence she had gone.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/f.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="F" title="F" /></div> +<p class="noindent">inding the door of her father's room ajar, Miss +Guion pushed it open and went in.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>dot</em>, +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He opened his eyes without giving any other sign of waking.</p> +<p>"Hallo! What are you looking at me for?"</p> +<p>The tone was not impatient, but she heard in it an implication +of fear.</p> +<p>"Papa, are your troubles anything like Jack Berrington's?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What makes you ask that?"</p> +<p>The intonation was expressionless, and yet, it seemed to her, a +little wary.</p> +<p>"I ask chiefly because—well, because I think they +are."</p> +<p>He looked at her for a minute more, perhaps for longer.</p> +<p>"Well, then—you're right."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That's what I meant—exactly."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I suppose it's the Clay heirs and the Rodman heirs you owe the +money to?"</p> +<p>"And the Compton heirs, and old Miss Burnaby, and the two Misses +Brown, and—"</p> +<p>"Haven't they anything left?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Yes; in the main." He felt it useless to quibble or to try to +extenuate the facts.</p> +<p>"How many years would that be?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"So that their money has been paying for—for all +this."</p> +<p>Her hands made a confused little gesture, indicating the luxury +of his personal appointments and of the room.</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>"I don't see any need," he said, with a touch of peevishness, +"for going so terribly into detail."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You mustn't think it was deliberately planned—" he began, +weakly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I confess I don't follow you there," he complained. "If he +doesn't—then I go to Singville."</p> +<p>"Wouldn't you rather?"</p> +<p>He raised himself stiffly into a sitting posture. "Would +<em>you</em>?"</p> +<p>She did not hesitate in her reply. "Yes, papa. I <em>would</em> +rather—if I were you."</p> +<p>"But since you're not me—since you are +yourself—would you still rather that I went to +Singville?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Do you mean that you'd rather do it if it wasn't for me?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Had a claim on you? How do you mean?"</p> +<p>"He'll have that—if he pays for everything—pays for +everything for years and years back. Don't you see?"</p> +<p>"A claim on you for what, pray?"</p> +<p>"That's what I don't know. But whatever it is, I shall feel that +I'm in his debt."</p> +<p>"Nonsense, dear. I call that morbid. It <em>is</em> morbid."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>There was a long silence before he said, wearily:</p> +<p>"If we call the deal off we must do it with our eyes open to the +consequences. Ashley would almost certainly throw you +over—"</p> +<p>"No; because that possibility couldn't arise."</p> +<p>"And you'll have to be prepared for the disgrace—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Why do you say we?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"They can't put <em>you</em> in Singville."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"That's all very fine now, dear, when you're—what shall I +say?—a little bit <em>exaltée</em>; 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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What would you do?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Yes? And what would you scribble?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Which would be a good deal, wouldn't it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, of course."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on +October 28th."</p> +<p>"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on +October 28th."</p> +<p>"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on +October 28th."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Drusilla, do you remember Jack Berrington?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Y-es."</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>"Do you know what makes me think of him?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I can guess."</p> +<p>Olivia kept on writing. "How long have you known?"</p> +<p>Drusilla threw back the answer while blotting with unnecessary +force the card she had just written: "A couple of days."</p> +<p>"Has it got about—generally?"</p> +<p>"Generally might be too much to say. Some people have got wind +of it; and, of course, a thing of that kind spreads."</p> +<p>"Of course."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia wrote energetically. "What's he doing?"</p> +<p>"Oh, the kind of thing men do. They seem to have wonderful ways +of raising money."</p> +<p>"How do you know he's trying it?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Have you such a lot of confidence in him?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Did I ever tell you that he once asked me to marry him?"</p> +<p>Drusilla wheeled round in her chair and stared, open-mouthed, at +her friend's back.</p> +<p>"<em>No</em>!"</p> +<p>"Oh, it was years ago. I dare say he's forgotten it."</p> +<p>"I'll bet you ten to one he hasn't."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"I shouldn't wonder. I shouldn't wonder at all."</p> +<p>"What <em>could</em> it have?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"And now poor, dear old mother is manœuvering to have +<em>me</em> marry him."</p> +<p>The idea was not new to Olivia, so she said, simply, "And are +you going to?"</p> +<p>"Oh, I don't know." Drusilla sighed wearily, then added: "I +sha'n't if I can help it."</p> +<p>"Does that mean that you'll take him if you can't do +better?"</p> +<p>"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 <em>raison +d'être</em>. 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."</p> +<p>"I suppose you're not in love with any one over there?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Who on earth should I be in love with? What put that into your +head?"</p> +<p>"Oh, I don't know. Stranger things have happened. You see a +great many men—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/d.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="D" title="D" /></div> +<p class="noindent">uring 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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 <em>idée +fixe</em>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I don't think he's in the least likely to turn up."</p> +<p>"But if he did?"</p> +<p>"Well, I suppose you'll be back before long. We couldn't settle +anything without talking it over, in any case."</p> +<p>Forced to be content with that, she kissed him and turned +away.</p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/image1.png"><img src= +"images/image1.png" width="500" height="773" alt= +"SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN AIR" title= +"SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN AIR" /></a> +<p class="caption">SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN +AIR</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I hope he's better," was Davenant's only answer.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I hoped he'd be able to see me to-day. I was on my way to Tory +Hill."</p> +<p>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 <em>farouche</em> 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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I shouldn't if it wasn't important. I don't want to annoy you +more than I can help."</p> +<p>"I don't see how anything can be important when—when +there's nothing to be done."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That doesn't make any difference to us. My father has decided +to take the consequences of his acts."</p> +<p>"You say that so serenely that I guess you don't understand yet +just what they'd be."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I think you mistaken. I don't want to say more than that. If I +find Mr. Guion of the same opinion—"</p> +<p>"I see. You don't consider my word sufficient."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Why should you be so bent on seeing your father follow Jack +Berrington, when it could be avoided?"</p> +<p>"Why should you care? What difference does it make to you? If +you'd only explain that—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"You'd let him have it, just the same?"</p> +<p>"Of course. Why not?"</p> +<p>"In spite of all I've said as to what I should feel?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She was some minutes silent, her eyes ranging over the river and +the marshes, like his own.</p> +<p>"If you urged it on him," she said at last, "I think he'd take +it."</p> +<p>"Then so much the better, from my point of view."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We could talk of that," he smiled, trying to be reassuring, +"after more important things had been settled."</p> +<p>"There wouldn't be anything more important—for me."</p> +<p>"Oh, you wouldn't find me an importunate creditor."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>She lifted her chin scornfully. "That would be childish. It +would be a mere quibbling with words."</p> +<p>"But it would be true. It's the way I should take it."</p> +<p>She confronted him with one of her imperious looks. "Why?"</p> +<p>In the monosyllable there was a demand for complete explanation, +but he met it with one of his frank smiles.</p> +<p>"Couldn't you let me keep that as my secret?"</p> +<p>"So that you would be acting in the daylight and we in the +dark."</p> +<p>"You might be in the dark, and still have nothing to be afraid +of."</p> +<p>She shook her head. "I <em>should</em> 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."</p> +<p>"Do I look like that kind of a hunter?" He smiled again at the +absurdity of her comparison.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"<em>He</em> doesn't feel so." He nodded his head in the +direction of Tory Hill.</p> +<p>"<em>He</em> feels so. He's only a little—wavering."</p> +<p>"And I guess you're a little wavering, too, Miss Guion, if you'd +only own up to it."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">s 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That might do as one definition."</p> +<p>"Because in that case you may like to know that I think I've +seen it."</p> +<p>"I thought you would if you looked for it."</p> +<p>"I didn't look for it. It was just—there!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"The light is always shining in darkness, dearie; only the +darkness comprehendeth it not. That's all there is to it."</p> +<p>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 <em>are</em> 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?"</p> +<p>He shook his head.</p> +<p>"Of course I couldn't let him do it."</p> +<p>"Couldn't you?"</p> +<p>"Do you think I could?"</p> +<p>"Not if you think differently. You're the only judge."</p> +<p>"But if I don't, you know, papa will have to go—" She +hesitated. "You know what would happen, don't you?"</p> +<p>"I suppose I do."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Does it?"</p> +<p>"You don't seem very much interested, Cousin Rodney. I hoped +you'd give me some advice."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I do. The Street called Straight is all very well, +but—"</p> +<p>"Then you're not so sure, after all."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And you're not going to?"</p> +<p>"How could I, Cousin Rodney? How could I put myself under such +an obligation to a man I hardly know?"</p> +<p>"He could probably afford it."</p> +<p>"Is he so very rich?" There was a hint of curiosity in the +tone.</p> +<p>Rodney Temple shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, rich enough. It would +pretty well clean him out; but, then, that would do him good."</p> +<p>"Do him good—how?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I dare say not."</p> +<p>"And he isn't offering us the money merely for the sake of +getting rid of it, do you think?"</p> +<p>"Then what <em>is</em> he offering it to you for?"</p> +<p>"That's exactly what I want to know. Haven't you any idea?"</p> +<p>"Haven't you?"</p> +<p>She waited a minute before deciding to speak openly. "I suppose +you never heard that he once asked me to marry him?"</p> +<p>He betrayed his surprise by the way in which he put down the +little Chinese figure and wheeled round more directly toward +her.</p> +<p>"Who? Peter?"</p> +<p>She nodded.</p> +<p>"What the dickens made him do that?"</p> +<p>She opened her eyes innocently. "I'm sure I can't imagine."</p> +<p>"It isn't a bit like him. You must have led him on."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And what did you say to him? Did you box his ears?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"In that case he's got you on the hip, hasn't he? It's a lovely +turning of the tables."</p> +<p>"You see that, Cousin Rodney, don't you? I <em>couldn't</em> let +a man like that get the upper hand of me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She looked at him wonderingly. "Let—who—go to the +deuce?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I—I haven't," she stammered. "I haven't thought of them +at all."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She was too startled to suspect him of ruse or strategy.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I presume they would."</p> +<p>"And now, I suppose, they're very poor."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She turned round toward him, her eyes misty with distress.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The faint smile that seemed to have got frozen on her lips +quivered piteously. "I wish you could have that comfortable feeling +about me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"That is, if I take them!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You couldn't be expected to think of everything at once, Miss +Guion," Davenant said, clumsily.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>By an instinctive movement she snatched her fingers away; but, +recovering herself, she took the package deliberately into her +hands and stood holding it.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"But there's no certainty of that, papa."</p> +<p>"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 <em>should</em> 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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She overtook him, however, when he was downstairs picking up his +hat and stick from the hall table.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He shook his head.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you think I've found it now?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"And you?" she asked. "Is it the right way for you?"</p> +<p>"Yes; and it's the first time I've ever struck it."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Who told you that?" he asked, sharply.</p> +<p>"It doesn't matter who told me; but it's very important if we +are. <em>Are</em> we?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"But you'll have to begin all over again, sha'n't you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Didn't I do something very rude to you—once—a long +time ago?"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"It was really of no consequence—"</p> +<p>"Don't say that. It was of great consequence. Any one can see +that—now. I was insolent. I knew I <em>had</em> been. You +must have been perfectly aware of it all these years; and—I +<em>will</em> say it!—I <em>must</em> say it!—you're +taking your revenge—very nobly."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He continued to stand gazing up the stairway long after he had +heard her close the door of Guion's room behind her.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"I'm so glad that <em>is</em> your reason for helping Cousin +Henry, Peter; because I was afraid there might +be—another."</p> +<p>He stopped abruptly, looking dashed. Unaccustomed to light +methods of attack and defense, it took him a few seconds to see +Drusilla's move.</p> +<p>"You thought I might be—in love?"</p> +<p>She nodded.</p> +<p>"That's queer," he went on, "because I'd got the same impression +about you."</p> +<p>It was Drusilla's turn to be aghast. She was a little surprised +at not being offended, too.</p> +<p>"What made you think that?" she managed to ask, after getting +command of herself.</p> +<p>"What makes one think anything? However," he conceded, "I dare +say I'm wrong."</p> +<p>"That's a very good conclusion to come to. I advise you to keep +to it."</p> +<p>"I will if you'll do the same about me."</p> +<p>She seized the opening to carry the attack back in his +direction.</p> +<p>"I can't make a bargain of that kind, Peter. The scientific mind +bases its conclusions on—observed phenomena."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It mightn't be any harm; but would it be any good?"</p> +<p>"Well, that might depend a good deal—on you."</p> +<p>"On me? How so? I don't know what you're driving at."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Rot, Drusilla!"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"You don't <em>expect</em> anything to miscarry?"</p> +<p>She shook her head. "No; I don't expect it. But it might be a +fortunate thing if it did."</p> +<p>"You don't mean to infer that this man Ashley mightn't come up +to the scratch?"</p> +<p>"Colonel Ashley has come up to a good many scratches in his +time. He's not likely to fail in this one."</p> +<p>"Well, then, what more is there to it?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And you mean that your Colonel Ashley would be brave enough to +walk up and have <em>his</em> head cut off?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But I don't understand why it should."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He nodded thoughtfully. "I see."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He jumped to his feet. "Their ways and traditions +be—!"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Yes; I've seen 'em. Got it pretty straight, too, all things +considered."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He leaned his shoulders against the mantelpiece, his hands +behind his back. "Pooh! That sort of dog can only bark."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"The deuce take his promotion! Let's think +of—<em>her</em>."</p> +<p>"That's just what I thought you'd do, Peter; and with all your +advantages—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm thinking of every one, Peter—of every one but myself, +that is. I'm thinking of him, and her, and you—"</p> +<p>"Then you'll do me a favor if you leave me out."</p> +<p>She sprang to her feet, her little figure looking slim and +girlish.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"But you would if she was the first, Peter. And I'm convinced +that for you she <em>is</em> the first—"</p> +<p>"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—?"</p> +<p>"You're all first with me," she protested. "I don't know which +of you I'm the most sorry for."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Then for Heaven's sake what <em>have</em> you asked for? +<em>I</em> don't see."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I'll consider that," he called after her, as she sped up the +stairs, "when I see it lying there."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>faute de +mieux</em>; but many a man has chosen his wife on no better ground +than that.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<em>stunning</em>."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I shouldn't think harshly of any one simply because he'd had +business bad luck."</p> +<p>"He <em>has</em> had business bad luck—but that isn't all. +We'll sit here."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Her voice was gentle and even; she spoke with a certain kind of +ease. She appeared to rehearse something already learned by +heart.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"But the money did come?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"So that part of it is settled?"</p> +<p>"That part of it is settled to the extent that no action will be +taken against papa."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">shley 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>Though he raised his eyebrows in surprise that she should +introduce the subject, he managed to say, "He seems pretty +game."</p> +<p>"He does; but I dare say he isn't as game as he looks. There's a +good deal before him still."</p> +<p>"If we're married on the 28th he'd have one care the less."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I've two months' leave. You could do a lot for him in that +time."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Oh, but I say!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He smiled indulgently. "And so you're asking me—a +soldier!—to run away."</p> +<p>"No, to let me do it. It's so—so impossible that I can't +face it."</p> +<p>"Oh, nonsense!" He spoke with kindly impatience. "Don't you love +me? You said just now—in the +dining-room—when—"</p> +<p>"Yes, I know; I did say that. But, you see—we +<em>must</em> consider it—love can't be the most important +thing in the world for either you or me."</p> +<p>"I understand. You mean to say it's duty. Very good. In that +case, my duty is as plain as a pikestaff."</p> +<p>"Your duty to stand by me?"</p> +<p>"I should be a hound if I didn't do it."</p> +<p>"And I should feel myself a common adventuress if I were to let +you."</p> +<p>"Oh—I say!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"One doesn't think that way—or speak that way—of +marrying the woman one—adores."</p> +<p>"Men have been known to marry the women they adored, and still +regret the consequences they had to meet."</p> +<p>"She's right," he said to himself. "It <em>is</em> serious."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Olivia had let the bit of embroidery rest idly in her lap. She +looked up at his approach. He stood before her.</p> +<p>"Do I understand," he asked, with a roughness assumed to conceal +his agitation, "that you're offering me my liberty?"</p> +<p>"No; that I'm asking you for mine."</p> +<p>"On what grounds?"</p> +<p>She arched her eyebrows, looking round about her +comprehensively. "I should think that was clear. On the grounds +of—of everything."</p> +<p>"That's not enough. So long as you can't say that you +don't—don't care about me any more—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I can't say that; but I can say something more important."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"As my wife," he said, slowly, with significant deliberation, +"we could make the position anything you felt able to fill."</p> +<p>She considered this. "That is, you could send in your papers and +retire into private life."</p> +<p>"If we liked."</p> +<p>"So that you'd be choosing between your career—and +me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm afraid you'll think me captious if I say that nothing +<em>could do</em> it. If you weren't happy, I couldn't be; and +you'd never be happy except as a soldier."</p> +<p>"That trade would be open to me whatever happened."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 <em>am</em> plucky—alone. But I +shouldn't be if I involved anybody else."</p> +<p>"But if it was some one who could help you?"</p> +<p>"That might be different, but I don't know of any one who could. +<em>You</em> couldn't. If you tried you'd only injure yourself +without doing me any good."</p> +<p>"At the least, I could take you away from—from all +this."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>To hide the renewal of his dismay he pooh-poohed this +possibility. "As a mere nine days' wonder."</p> +<p>"Which isn't forgotten when the nine days are past. Long after +they've ceased speaking of it they'll remember—"</p> +<p>"They'll remember," he interrupted, fiercely, "that I jilted +you."</p> +<p>She colored hotly. "That you—what?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"If we're not married—if I go home without you—it's +what'll be on everybody's lips."</p> +<p>"But it won't be true," she said, with a little gasp.</p> +<p>He laughed. "That won't matter. It's how it'll look."</p> +<p>"Oh, looks!"</p> +<p>"It's what we're talking about, isn't it? It's what makes the +difference. I shall figure as a cad."</p> +<p>He spoke as one who makes an astounding discovery. She was +inexpressibly shocked.</p> +<p>"Oh, but you couldn't," was all she could find to say, but she +said it with conviction.</p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/image3.png"><img src= +"images/image3.png" width="500" height="766" alt= +""THERE'S NO ONE WHO WON'T BELIEVE BUT THAT I—THREW YOU OVER."" + title= + ""THERE'S NO ONE WHO WON'T BELIEVE BUT THAT I—THREW YOU OVER."" /> +</a> +<p class="caption">"THERE'S NO ONE WHO WON'T BELIEVE BUT THAT +I—THREW YOU OVER."</p> +</div> +<p>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."</p> +<p>A toss of his hand, a snap of his fingers, suited the action to +the word.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"They couldn't believe it long."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The flagrancy of the case gave her an advantage. "It's idle to +think that that kind of fate could overtake you."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Wearing a large hat <em>à la</em> 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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh!"</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, indeed? I don't know, I'm sure."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/t.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="T" title="T" /></div> +<p class="noindent">here 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, there was a tone in her voice as she joined him +that struck a new note in their acquaintanceship.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I didn't notice anything—that is, anything different from +any other Englishman."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, well, you will," she said, encouragingly, "now that you +know Colonel Ashley."</p> +<p>"I've heard of men plunging into a cold bath and finding it so +icy that they've popped out again."</p> +<p>"Yes; thin-blooded men, who are sensitive to chills. Not men +like you."</p> +<p>They entered the house, lingering in the oval sitting-room +through which they had to pass.</p> +<p>"Fortunately," he tried to say, lightly, "it doesn't matter in +this case whether I'm sensitive to chills or not."</p> +<p>"Oh, but it does. I want you two to be friends."</p> +<p>"What for?" The question was so point-blank as to be a little +scornful, but she ignored that.</p> +<p>"On Colonel Ashley's side, for what he'll gain in knowing you; +on yours—for something more."</p> +<p>He stopped again, at the foot of the staircase in the hall. "May +I ask—just what you mean by that?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"I could consider you my friend without asking Colonel Ashley to +think of me as his."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Still," she persisted, "if I marry him you'd be sometimes in +England; and you'd come to visit us, wouldn't you?"</p> +<p>"Come and—what?" His astonishment made him speak +slowly.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, intervene as much as you like, Miss Guion," he said, +honestly.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Hold on! Let's see what you mean by—things. If it's +visiting round in high society—"</p> +<p>He tried to render as scorn his dismay at this touching on his +weakness.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You mean get me into society."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What made you think of it?"</p> +<p>"Isn't that obvious? After you've done so much for +me—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 +<em>something</em>—something within my power, and which I +thought you might like. But since you don't—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He looked at her with sudden curiosity. "Why do you always say +that with—an 'if'?"</p> +<p>She reflected an instant. "Because," she said, slowly, "I can't +say it in any other way."</p> +<p>He straightened himself; he advanced again to the foot of the +stairway.</p> +<p>"Is that because of any reason of—<em>his?</em>"</p> +<p>"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 <em>do</em>. The more I try to +ignore it, the more it comes in between me and—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"But, Miss Guion, you're—you're—in love with +him?—the man you'd be going away with?"</p> +<p>She nodded. "Yes; but that wouldn't help me to feel justified +with regard to the—the duty—I was leaving behind."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"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 <em>hard</em> for +me to be married."</p> +<p>"How so? I thought it would be all the other way."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"But if it was a satisfaction to him—"</p> +<p>"That wouldn't make any difference to us. The facts would be the +same."</p> +<p>"Then, as far as I see, I've done more harm than good."</p> +<p>"You've helped papa."</p> +<p>"But I haven't helped you."</p> +<p>"As I understand it, you didn't want to."</p> +<p>"I didn't want to—to do the reverse."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>"Oh!" It was the protest of one who has been hurt.</p> +<p>"I'll take that back," he said, instantly. "There <em>is</em> +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."</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Things are very hard as it is," she said, reproachfully. "You +needn't go out of your way to make them gratuitously cruel."</p> +<p>"But, Miss Guion—" he began to protest.</p> +<p>"Please go in," she commanded, throwing open, as she spoke, the +door of her father's room.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/m.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="M" title="M" /></div> +<p class="noindent">eanwhile, 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:</p> +<p>"That's our house—the one with the little white +cupola."</p> +<p>He made no pretense to listen or to look. "She says she doesn't +want to marry me."</p> +<p>He made the statement dispassionately, as though laying down a +subject for academic discussion.</p> +<p>It was some little time before she could think what to say.</p> +<p>"Well, that doesn't surprise me," she risked at last.</p> +<p>"Doesn't surprise you?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I don't care a hang for my position."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"In honor it's the positive, not the negative, that takes +precedence, and the positive happens to be mine."</p> +<p>"I don't think you can argue that way, you know. What takes +precedence of everything else is—common sense."</p> +<p>"And do you mean to say that common sense requires that she +shall give me up?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"On whose account? Mine?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I confess I don't seize your drift."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What about me?"</p> +<p>"Would <em>you</em> take him?"</p> +<p>"I shouldn't <em>take</em> 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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Possibly; except for one factor which you've overlooked."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I don't see," he said, speaking very slowly, "that the Rangers +need be altogether taken into consideration."</p> +<p>She looked at him fixedly. "Do you mean that you'd—send in +your papers?"</p> +<p>"Only in the sense that if my wife wasn't happy in the Service +we could get out of it."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>They proceeded to stroll aimlessly up and down the lawn.</p> +<p>"I can quite see how it looks from your point of view—" +she began.</p> +<p>"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 <em>am</em>—head over +heels—desperately—in love."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Yes," she smiled, bravely. "I know you are. And between two +ills you choose the one that has some compensation attached to +it."</p> +<p>"Between two ills," he corrected, "I'm choosing the only course +open to a man of honor. Isn't that it?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>In this for once she disappointed him. "Of course you are," she +assented, even too promptly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Indeed? And what are they?"</p> +<p>She told them off on her fingers. "First, as you can't do +anything else. Second—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The crow's-foot wrinkles about his eyes deepened to a frown of +inquiry. "About Peter—who?"</p> +<p>Drusilla still affected a casual tone. "Oh? Hasn't she told you +about <em>him?</em>"</p> +<p>"Not a word. Who is he?"</p> +<p>She nodded in the direction of the house. "He's up-stairs with +Cousin Henry."</p> +<p>"The big fellow who was here just now? That—lumpkin?"</p> +<p>"Yes," she said, dryly, "that—lumpkin. It was he who gave +Cousin Henry the money to meet his liabilities."</p> +<p>"So he's the Fairy Prince? He certainly doesn't look it."</p> +<p>"No; he doesn't look it; but he's as much of a problem to Olivia +as if he did."</p> +<p>"Why? What has he to do with her?"</p> +<p>"Nothing, except that I suppose she must feel very +grateful."</p> +<p>They reached the edge of the lawn where a hedge of dahlias +separated them from the neighboring garden.</p> +<p>"When you say that," he asked, "do you mean anything in +particular?"</p> +<p>"I suppose I mean everything in particular. The situation is one +in which all the details count."</p> +<p>"And the bearing of this special detail—"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>them</em>."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Probably you had, except just that. I imagine Olivia found it +difficult to speak of, and so I'm doing it for her."</p> +<p>"Why should she find it difficult to speak of? It's a mere +matter of business, I suppose."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"All the same, he's probably done it with a jolly sharp eye to +the main chance."</p> +<p>"Oh, I dare say his motives weren't altogether altruistic. Only +it's a little difficult to see where the main chance comes in."</p> +<p>"Then what the deuce is he up to?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Has all this got anything to do with Olivia? I wish you +wouldn't make mysteries."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Well?"</p> +<p>"I'm just as likely to be wrong as right."</p> +<p>"Then you <em>have</em> drawn inferences?"</p> +<p>"Who wouldn't? I should think you'd be drawing them +yourself."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Have I ever been anything else with you?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Good!"</p> +<p>"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 <em>so</em> fair that I laid myself open to +that imputation. One can, you know. I only ask you to remember it. +That's all."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"She's a good 'un," he said to himself. "Straight as a die, she +is—and true as steel."</p> +<p>None the less he was glad when she left him.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">shley 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She looked at him mildly. "What did she say about him?"</p> +<p>"Only that he was the man who put up the money."</p> +<p>"Yes; he was."</p> +<p>"Why didn't you tell me that this morning?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And the circumstances."</p> +<p>"How do you mean—the circumstances?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Did Drusilla say it was to come to my aid?"</p> +<p>"She didn't say it—exactly. I gathered that it was what +she thought."</p> +<p>She astonished him by saying, simply: "I think so, too."</p> +<p>"Extraordinary! Do you mean to say he dropped out of a clear +sky?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 <em>well?</em>"</p> +<p>"<em>I</em> didn't think it was well; but apparently he did, +because he asked me to marry him."</p> +<p>Ashley bounded. "Who? That—that cowboy!"</p> +<p>"Yes; if he <em>is</em> a cowboy."</p> +<p>"And you took money from him?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"That is," he hastened to say, in some compunction, "your father +took it. We must keep the distinction—"</p> +<p>"No; I took it. Papa was all ready to decline it. He had made up +his mind—"</p> +<p>"Do you mean that the decision to accept it rested with +you?"</p> +<p>"Practically."</p> +<p>"You didn't—" He hesitated, stammered, and grew red. "You +didn't—" he began again. "You'll have to excuse the +question.... I simply <em>must</em> know, by Jove!... You didn't +<em>ask</em> him for it?"</p> +<p>She rose with dignity. "If you'll come in I'll tell you about +it. We can't talk out here."</p> +<p>He came up the portico steps to the level on which she was +standing. "Tell me that first," he begged.</p> +<p>"You <em>didn't</em> ask him for it? Did you?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Guessing that he hoped for a disclaimer on her part, she was +sorry to be unable to make it.</p> +<p>"Not to their exclusion—but perhaps—a little to +their subordination."</p> +<p>He pretended to laugh. "What a pretty distinction!"</p> +<p>"You see, I haven't been able to help it. He's loomed up so +tremendously above everything—"</p> +<p>"And every one."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, I'm not jealous," he exclaimed, pacing up and down the +length of the room.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He came to a standstill on the other side of the table, where he +could see her in profile.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I could only have done it if it was right. Nothing that's right +is very hard, you know."</p> +<p>"And what about the suffering?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>The abstract question didn't interest him. He resumed his +restless pacing.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"None, except that he makes no effort to do it."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Of course I see that."</p> +<p>"Well, what then?"</p> +<p>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 +<em>me</em>!" he was saying to himself. "She's got the pluck of a +Jeanne d'Arc and the nerve of a Christian martyr."</p> +<p>"Well, then," she said, in answer to his words—"then I +don't have to walk into the ambush—unless I want to."</p> +<p>"Does that mean that there are conceivable conditions in which +you might want to?"</p> +<p>She turned completely round in her chair. Both hands, with +fingers interlaced, rested on the table as she looked up at +him.</p> +<p>"I shall have to let you find your own reply to that."</p> +<p>"But you know he's in love with you."</p> +<p>"I know he was in love with me once. I've no absolute reason to +think that he is so still."</p> +<p>"But supposing he was? Would it make any difference to you?"</p> +<p>"Would it make any difference to <em>you?</em>"</p> +<p>"It would make the difference—"</p> +<p>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 <em>could</em> it make? What difference +<em>must</em> it make?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It would make the difference—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He was silent so long that she asked, not impatiently: "It would +make what difference, Rupert?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It would make the difference—"</p> +<p>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 +<em>himself</em> 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.</p> +<p>He was able at last to get his sentence out.</p> +<p>"It would make the difference that ... before we are married ... +or after ... probably after ... I should have to square him."</p> +<p>"Square him?" She echoed the words as though she had no idea +what they meant.</p> +<p>"I'm worth ... I <em>must</em> be worth ... a hundred thousand +pounds ... perhaps more."</p> +<p>"Oh, you mean, square him in that way."</p> +<p>"I must be a man of honor before everything, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"You couldn't be anything else. You don't need to go to extremes +like that to prove it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Oh, but I'm not your wife, Rupert."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"No, it isn't easy. It can't be easy. I couldn't let you do it +for me—"</p> +<p>"But what about <em>him?</em> You let—<em>him!</em>"</p> +<p>"Oh, but that's different."</p> +<p>"How is it different?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, American—be blowed!" The accent was all tenderness, +the protest all beseeching.</p> +<p>"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 +<em>can</em> 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."</p> +<p>"Oh, bosh, darling!"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I can do without it, too."</p> +<p>"Whereas," she persisted, "if I were to let you do this I should +be robbing you of the essence of what you are."</p> +<p>He drew back slightly. "You mean that your Yankee is a strong +man, while I'm—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I don't care a button for my place in the system."</p> +<p>"But I do. I care for it <em>for</em> 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."</p> +<p>"That is," he said, coldly, "you'd rather use <em>his</em> money +than—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"One of yourselves? I thought that's just what he wasn't. I +thought he was a jolly outsider."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Oh, that's all very fine. But look at you with your extremes of +rich and poor!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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 <em>have</em> 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—"</p> +<p>"You do feel it toward the big chap," he said, scornfully.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Of course! She's one of your own people—and all +that."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>His lip curled. "So distant as to be out of sight."</p> +<p>"No; not for him—or for me."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"I'm telling you as plainly as I can."</p> +<p>"What you aren't telling me as plainly as you can is which of us +you're in love with."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I didn't know the question had been raised," she said, "but +since apparently it has—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"You're quite wrong about me," he persisted.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She leaned over him, pressing his head against her breast, as +she whispered:</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He sprang to his feet. "But you <em>came</em> 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."</p> +<p>"I can't admit that, Rupert. I've still the right to draw +back."</p> +<p>"The legal right—yes; whether or not you've the moral +right would depend on your sense of honor."</p> +<p>"Of honor?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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—<em>every one</em>—that I funked the thing because +your father—"</p> +<p>She hastened to speak. "That's a very urgent reason. I admit its +force—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Then I shall tell Harrington that they may as well foreclose at +one time as another."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Which is one more reason why we should be married without +delay. I say," he added, in another tone, "let's have him in."</p> +<p>"Oh no! What for?"</p> +<p>Before she could object further, Ashley had slipped out into the +hall.</p> +<p>"I say! Come along in."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It's too late for town and business at this hour," Ashley +objected. "Come in."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Won't you sit down? Perhaps I ought to ring for tea."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Been up to see—?" Ashley nodded in the direction of what +he took to be Guion's room.</p> +<p>Davenant, too, nodded, but said nothing.</p> +<p>"How did you find papa to-day?"</p> +<p>"Pretty fair, Miss Guion; only, perhaps, a little more down on +his luck than usual."</p> +<p>"The excitement kept him up at first. Now that that's +over—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"My business with Mr. Guion, Colonel, has been private. I hope +you won't mind if we leave it so."</p> +<p>Ashley's manner took on the diplomatic persuasiveness he used +toward restive barbaric potentates.</p> +<p>"Not a bit, my dear fellow. Of course it's private—only +not as regards Miss Guion and me. You simply <em>must</em> allow us +to say how grateful we are for your help, even though it need be no +more than temporary."</p> +<p>The word produced its effect. Davenant looked from Ashley to +Olivia while he echoed it. "Temporary?"</p> +<p>Ashley nodded again. "You have no objection, I presume, to +that?"</p> +<p>"If Mr. Guion is ever in a position to pay me back," Davenant +said, slowly, in some bewilderment, "of course I'll take it."</p> +<p>"Quite so; and I think I may say that with a little +time—let us say a year—we shall be able to +meet—"</p> +<p>"It's a good bit of money," Davenant warned him.</p> +<p>"I know that; but if you'll give us a little leeway—as I +know you will—"</p> +<p>"He means," Olivia spoke up, "that he'll sell his +property—and whatever else he has—and pay you."</p> +<p>"I don't want that," Davenant said, hastily.</p> +<p>"But I do. It's a point of honor with me not to let another man +shoulder—"</p> +<p>"And it's a point of honor with me, Rupert—"</p> +<p>"To stand by me," he broke in, quickly.</p> +<p>"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—<em>I +shouldn't marry you</em>."</p> +<p>"And if I didn't attempt it? Would you marry me then?"</p> +<p>She looked up, then down, then at Davenant, then away from him. +Finally she fixed her gaze on Ashley.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>Davenant came forward, his hand outstretched. "I think I must +say good-by now, Miss Guion—"</p> +<p>"No; wait," Ashley commanded. "This matter concerns you, by +Jove!"</p> +<p>Olivia sprang to her feet. "No; it doesn't, Rupert," she said, +hastily.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 +<em>le beau rôle</em>, 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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I've no objection to that, Colonel, when I <em>do</em> +play—but at present—"</p> +<p>"Look here," Ashley said, with a new inspiration; "I put it to +you—I put it to you as a man—simply as a +<em>man</em>—without any highfalutin principles whatever. +Suppose I'd done what you've done—and given my bottom +dollar—"</p> +<p>"But I haven't."</p> +<p>"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 +<em>man</em>, 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?"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him."</p> +<p>"I don't see what it's got to do with me—" Davenant began +to protest.</p> +<p>"It's got everything to do with you," Ashley broke in. "Since +you've created the situation you can't shirk its +responsibilities."</p> +<p>"Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him," Olivia repeated. "Would you, +or would you not?"</p> +<p>He looked helplessly from one to the other. "Well, then—I +wouldn't," he said, simply.</p> +<p>"There you are!" Ashley cried, triumphantly, moving away from +the wall and turning toward Olivia.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He strode to the table, looking down at her averted face and +bent head.</p> +<p>"Then we're at a deadlock."</p> +<p>She gave him a quick glance. "No; it isn't a deadlock, +because—because there's still a way out."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>The room and the hall behind it were now so dim that Davenant +had no difficulty in slipping between the portières and +getting away.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/h2.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt=""H" title=""H" /></div> +<p class="noindent">e's going to squeeze me out."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>was</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <em>de trop</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Hello! Where are you off to? Home?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Temple let that pass. "Been up to look at the great man?"</p> +<p>Peter nodded. "Just come from there."</p> +<p>"And what do you make of him?"</p> +<p>"Oh, he's a decent sort."</p> +<p>"Not going to back out, eh?"</p> +<p>"Not at all; just the other way: he wants to step in and take +everything off—off our hands."</p> +<p>"You don't say so. Then he's what you say—a decent +sort."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Oh, he's sporting enough."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Davenant turned away. "I wasn't in a hurry."</p> +<p>"No; but he is. That's the point. That's where the beauty of it +comes in for Olivia and you."</p> +<p>Peter looked blank. "Olivia and—<em>me</em>?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It leaves me free to cut and run." He made little effort to +conceal his bitterness.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>chargé d'affaires</em> without the necessity on his part +of seeing Miss Guion again.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p class="center">Peter Davenant, Esq.,<br /> +31 Charlesbank.</p> +<p>It was premonition again that told him the contents before he +had read a line:</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Davenant</span>,—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,</p> +<p class="citation"><span class="smcap">Olivia Guion</span>.</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm here, Mr. Davenant."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Is there nobody with you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I asked you to come," she said, simply, "because I feel so +helpless."</p> +<p>"That's a very good reason," he responded, guardedly. "I'm glad +you thought of me, rather than of any one else."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"There's no one else for me to think of," she explained, in +self-excuse. "If there were, I shouldn't bother you."</p> +<p>"That's not so kind," he said, keeping to the tone of +conventional gallantry.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Then so much the better for me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It doesn't matter what it's a case of. I'm at your service, +Miss Guion—"</p> +<p>"I know. That's why I asked you to come. I want you to keep +Colonel Ashley from doing what he proposed this afternoon."</p> +<p>She spoke more abruptly, more nervously, than was her habit.</p> +<p>"I would if I could; but I don't know that I've any way of +dissuading him."</p> +<p>"You needn't dissuade him. You've simply to refuse to take his +money."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>The words took her by surprise. He could see her draw her cloak +more tightly about her, her hands still within its folds.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He pushed the liberty a little further. "But if you're going to +marry him—"</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>"It wouldn't be a burden to any one who—who—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Is that your only reason?"</p> +<p>She raised her head slightly and turned toward him. He expected +something cutting, but she only said: "What makes you ask +that?"</p> +<p>He was a little frightened. He backed down, and yet not +altogether. "Oh, nothing. I only—wondered."</p> +<p>"If you think I don't care for him—"</p> +<p>"Oh no. Not that—not that at all."</p> +<p>"Well, if you <em>were</em> to think it, it would probably be +because I've been through so much—I'm <em>going</em> through +so much—that that sort of thing has become secondary."</p> +<p>"I didn't know that—that sort of thing—was ever +secondary."</p> +<p>"Because you've never had the experience. If you had—"</p> +<p>The freedom of speech she seemed to be according him led him on +to say:</p> +<p>"I've had experience enough—as you may know—to be +sure it wouldn't be secondary with me."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Then, what <em>is</em> the most important thing?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"But since you can't," he said, rather cruelly, "wouldn't the +next best thing be—to marry the man you care for?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Why? Would she help you?"</p> +<p>"She's very good and kind—in her way."</p> +<p>"Why don't you write to her?"</p> +<p>"Writing wouldn't be any good now. It's too late."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>They came to the gate, but he did not immediately say good +night.</p> +<p>"I wish you could throw the burden of the whole thing on me, +Miss Guion," he ventured, wistfully, "and just take it easy."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>There was an inflection on the <em>now</em> 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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Good night."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It isn't the most important thing in the world for her," he +whispered to himself, "to marry—<em>the man she cares +for</em>."</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/w.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="W" title="W" /></div> +<p class="noindent">hen 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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 <em>status +quo</em>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <em>was</em> the noblest man in the world and +because he <em>did</em> 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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Papa, darling."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She delivered her message, to which he replied, "He can +come."</p> +<p>"I think I ought to tell you," she continued, "what he's coming +for."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"So he wants to go ahead," Guion said, when she had +finished.</p> +<p>"Apparently."</p> +<p>"Can't he do that and still leave things as they are?"</p> +<p>"He seems to think he can't."</p> +<p>"I don't see why. If I have to owe the money to any one, I'd +rather owe it to Davenant."</p> +<p>"So should I."</p> +<p>"Do you really want to marry him?"</p> +<p>The question startled her. "Marry him? Who?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He raised himself on his elbow, turning toward her. "Then why +don't you tell him so?"</p> +<p>"I have; but he won't take that as a reason. And, besides, I've +said I <em>would</em> marry him if he'd give up this wild +project—"</p> +<p>"But you're in love with him, aren't you? You may as well tell +me," he continued, as she colored. "I must have <em>some</em> data +to go on."</p> +<p>"I—I <em>was</em> 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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>She could hear a muffled assent as she left the room. She was +afraid he was crying.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I know what you've come for," he said, when Ashley, who had +declined a cigar, seated himself beside the couch.</p> +<p>"That means, I suppose, that Olivia has got ahead of me."</p> +<p>"She told me what you've proposed. It's very fine—very +sporting."</p> +<p>"I haven't proposed it because it's either sporting or fine. It +seems to me the only thing to do."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>Ashley was dumb. He was also uncomfortable. He hated this sort +of thing.</p> +<p>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—<em>me</em>."</p> +<p>"Didn't have—you? I don't understand—"</p> +<p>"And you'd <em>have</em> 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 <em>live</em>."</p> +<p>"Oh, I say!"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>me</em>—like a dead rat strung round your +neck—"</p> +<p>"Oh, I say, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Why don't you give him a chance?"</p> +<p>Ashley was startled. "Chance? What chance? Who?"</p> +<p>"Davenant."</p> +<p>Ashley grasped the back of his chair as though about to spring +up. "What's he want a chance for? Chance for what?"</p> +<p>"I might have said: 'Why don't you give <em>her</em> a chance?' +She's half in love with him—as it is."</p> +<p>"That's a lie. That's an infernal lie."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—<em>prayed</em>. I don't know that I ever did +before—that is, not really—<em>pray</em>. 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—"</p> +<p>"I make this, by Jove; that you and he entered into a bargain +that he should supply the cash, and you should—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Suppose he is; that needn't affect <em>her</em>—except as +an impertinence. A woman can defend herself against that sort of +thing, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>do</em> see it yourself. We're not your sort—"</p> +<p>But Ashley could stand it no longer. With a smothered, +inarticulate oath, he turned abruptly, and marched out of the +room.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/f.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="F" title="F" /></div> +<p class="noindent">ortunately 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."</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm making an inventory," she explained. "You know that +everything will have to be sold?"</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"You know already how I feel about that."</p> +<p>They were still standing. He had been too eager to begin his +report to offer her a chair or to take one himself.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I don't think they expect it."</p> +<p>"And yet, if I don't, you know—he's dished. He loses his +money—and everything else."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I don't believe he'd consider that being dished. He's the sort +of man who loses only when he—flings away."</p> +<p>"He's the sort of man who's a beastly cad."</p> +<p>He regretted these words as soon as they were uttered, but she +had stung him to the quick. Her next words did so again.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>It was inevitable that Guion's words should return to him: "Half +in love with him—as it is."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm sorry I said what I did," he whispered.</p> +<p>She stayed her pencil long enough to say: "I hope you're still +sorrier for having thought it."</p> +<p>"I'm sorry you <em>know</em> I think it. Since it affects you so +deeply—"</p> +<p>"It affects me deeply to see you can be unjust."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Is that papa?"</p> +<p>"I don't see that it matters who it is. The only thing of +importance is whether you are or not."</p> +<p>"If you mean that as a question, I shall have to let you answer +it yourself."</p> +<p>"Would you tell me if—if you were?"</p> +<p>"What would be the use of telling you a thing that would make +you unhappy and that I couldn't help?"</p> +<p>"Am I to understand, then, that you <em>are</em> half in love +with him?"</p> +<p>She continued the effort to write.</p> +<p>"I think I've a right to press that question," he resumed. "Am +I, or am I not, to understand—"</p> +<p>She turned slowly. Her face was flushed, her eyes were +misty.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"But you said," he protested, bitterly, "no longer ago than +yesterday that you—<em>loved</em> me."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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 <em>only</em> marry me—"</p> +<p>"I said I'd do that, Rupert—I said it yesterday—if +you'd give up—what I understand you <em>have</em> given +up—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"It comes to the same thing. I'm ready to keep my promise."</p> +<p>"You don't say it with much enthusiasm."</p> +<p>"Perhaps I say it with something better. I think I do. At the +same time I wish—"</p> +<p>"You wish what?"</p> +<p>"I wish I had attached another condition to it."</p> +<p>"It mayn't be too late for that even now. Let's have it."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I do," she said, coldly, turning again to her note-book.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"We're going the same way, aren't we?" he asked, as soon as they +were outside.</p> +<p>"No," Ashley said, promptly; "you're taking the tram, and I +shall walk."</p> +<p>"I should like to walk, too, Colonel, if you don't mind."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'd a great deal rather, Colonel, that—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"My good fellow, I don't care a hang what you'd a great deal +rather."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"We'll leave that name out," Ashley cried, sharply. "Only a +damned cad would introduce it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Look here," he stammered; "we—we—c-can't do this +sort of thing."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"By God, you struck me!"</p> +<p>"I didn't know it, Colonel. If I did, we're quits on +it—because—because you insulted me. Perhaps you didn't +know <em>that</em>. 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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, "<em>The man I care for</em>." 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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>Indiana</em> sailed last week ... it ought to be the turn of +the <em>Louisiana</em> the day after to-morrow. By George, I +believe I could make it if ..."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Davenant approached to within a few feet. "Look here, Colonel," +he said, gently, "we've got to forget this evening."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>Ashley turned quickly. "Off? Where?"</p> +<p>"Where we're not likely to meet—for some little +time—again."</p> +<p>"Oh, but I say! You can't—"</p> +<p>"Can't what, Colonel?"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>me</em>—after all that's—"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"But what the deuce—?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He turned away abruptly, but, having taken a few steps, came +back again.</p> +<p>"Look here! Let's have a cigarette."</p> +<p>Ashley fumbled for his case, opened it, and held it up. "I say, +take two or three."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Thanks; and good night again," he said, briefly, as he strode +finally away into the darkness.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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 <em>Louisiana</em>, 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.</p> +<p>"Madame est à la campagne."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<em>hôtel</em>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>There was no reason why all this should make him feel +<ins class="correction" title= +"Transcriber's Note: original reads 'outide'.">outside</ins> 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.</p> +<p><em>Were</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I wonder if it is—God," he questioned.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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 <em>The Flying +Dutchman</em> 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 +<em>plage</em>, 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:</p> +<p>"Voilà, monsieur—voilà le château de +madame la marquise."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"On ne visite pas le château."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Madame la marquise n'est pas visible."</p> +<p>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: +"<em>Prenez</em>."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"<em>Allez</em>, please," he said, earnestly, +"and—<em>vite</em>."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Madame herself had no such feeling. She wore her mask with +absolute nonchalance, beginning to speak while still some yards +away.</p> +<p>"Eh, bien, monsieur?"</p> +<p>Davenant doubled himself up into a deep bow, but before he had +time to stammer out some apologetic self-introduction, she +continued:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I haven't come on business, my—my lady."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Then what <em>have</em> 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!"</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>"I haven't come to see the château either, my +lady—"</p> +<p>"You can call me madame," she interrupted, not without a +kindlier inflection on the hint.</p> +<p>He began again. "I haven't come to see the château, +either—madame. I've come to see <em>you</em>."</p> +<p>She made one of her little plunges. "Oh, indeed! <em>Have</em> +you? I thought you'd learned better than that—over there. You +used to come in ship-loads, but—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"You'd like to know them now, madame—because they're in +great trouble."</p> +<p>She took refuge behind a big English arm-chair, leaning on the +back.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"She isn't looking to you, madame. <em>I</em> am. I'm looking to +you because I imagine you can help her. There's no one +else—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 <em>me</em>?"</p> +<p>He shook his head, his blue eyes betraying some incredulity.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>As she showed no intention of taking a seat herself, he remained +standing.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I'm afraid I haven't."</p> +<p>"Of course you haven't. I don't know an American who +<em>would</em> 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 <em>was</em>—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."</p> +<p>"Oh, madame!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>dots</em>. 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—"</p> +<p>"If it had been worth while," he ventured.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"I don't think we <em>are</em> good at returning snubs, madame. +That's a fact."</p> +<p>"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 <em>dot</em>. 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."</p> +<p>"And did he give in?" Davenant asked, with naïve +curiosity.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Four hundred thousand dollars," Davenant said, with an idea +that he might convey a hint to her, "would be practically the +sum—"</p> +<p>"I could afford it," she went on, "because of those ridiculous +copper-mines—the Hamlet and Tecla. I wasn't rich before that. +My <em>dot</em> was small. No Guion I ever heard of was able to +save money. My father was no exception."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>"But did she know you were—what shall I +say?—negotiating?"</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>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 <em>me</em>. 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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The dash she made from him seeming no more final than those +which had preceded it, he went on speaking.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Has my nephew, Henry Guion, been doing +things—that—that would send him—to prison?"</p> +<p>In spite of herself the final words came out with a gasp.</p> +<p>"It's a long story, madame—or, at least, a complicated +one. I could explain it, if you'd give me the time."</p> +<p>"Sit down."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"That's it, madame, exactly. You've put it in a nutshell."</p> +<p>She looked at him hardly. "And what has it all got to do with +me?"</p> +<p>He looked at her steadily in his turn. "I thought perhaps you +wouldn't care to live in debt to me, either."</p> +<p>She was startled. "Who? I? En voilà une idée!"</p> +<p>"I thought," he went on, "that possibly the Guion sense of +family honor—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"When you say the family," she sniffed, "you mean me."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"And you risked being considered over-officious."</p> +<p>"There wasn't much risk about that," he smiled. "They did think +me so—and do."</p> +<p>"And you got every one into a fix."</p> +<p>"Into a fix, but out of prison."</p> +<p>"Hm!"</p> +<p>She grew restless, uncomfortable, fidgeting with her rings and +bracelets.</p> +<p>"And pray, what sort of a person is this Englishman to whom my +niece has got herself engaged?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Then he's a fool."</p> +<p>"From that point of view—yes. There <em>are</em> fools of +that sort, madame. But there's something more to him."</p> +<p>He found himself reciting glibly Ashley's claims as a suitor in +the way of family, position, and fortune.</p> +<p>"So that it would be what some people might call a good +match."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Hm. I shall have nothing to do with it." She rose with dignity. +"If my niece had only held out a little finger—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Except that I'm an American," he suggested—"one of your +own."</p> +<p>"One of my own! Quelle idée! Do you like him—this +Englishman?"</p> +<p>He hedged. "Miss Guion likes him."</p> +<p>"But you don't."</p> +<p>"I haven't said so. I might like him well enough if—"</p> +<p>"If you got your money back."</p> +<p>He smiled and nodded.</p> +<p>"Is she in love with him?"</p> +<p>"Oh—deep!"</p> +<p>"How do <em>you</em> know? Has she told you so?"</p> +<p>"Y-es; I think I may say—she has."</p> +<p>"Did you ask her?"</p> +<p>He colored. "I had to—about something."</p> +<p>"You weren't proposing to her yourself, were you?"</p> +<p>He tried to take this humorously. "Oh no, madame—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I hope I'm not that," he laughed.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She did her best to be offended. "You're taking liberties, +monsieur. C'est bien américan, céla."</p> +<p>"Excuse me, madame," he said, humbly. "I only mean that they +<em>are</em> 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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Where are you staying?"</p> +<p>He told her.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/w2.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt=""W" title=""W" /></div> +<p class="noindent">hat do you think of him?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Rodney Temple, making his arrangements for leaving for the day, +met one question with another. "What do <em>you?</em>"</p> +<p>"You know him," Ashley urged, "and I don't."</p> +<p>"I thought you did. I thought you'd read him right off—as +a cow-puncher."</p> +<p>"He looks like one, by Jove! and he speaks like one, too. You +wouldn't call him a gentleman? What?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Then, what is?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Can't say that I do."</p> +<p>"No, you wouldn't. But until you do you won't understand a big +simple type—"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"What difference does it make to you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"How so?"</p> +<p>"Because beastly good-will is a thing that cuts both ways. He'll +get as much out of it as you."</p> +<p>"That's all very fine—"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It's a very sensible way at all times. And I hear you're +carrying Henry off with you to England."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"Will make you happy."</p> +<p>"That's about the size of it."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Queer old cove, your governor," Ashley observed, stretching +himself comfortably before the fire. The blaze of logs alone lit up +the room.</p> +<p>"Is that why you seem to have taken a fancy to him?"</p> +<p>"I like to hear him gassing. Little bit like the Bible, don't +you know."</p> +<p>"He's very fond of the Bible."</p> +<p>"Seems to think a lot of that chap—your governor."</p> +<p>A nod supposed to indicate the direction of the State of +Michigan enabled her to follow his line of thought.</p> +<p>"He does. There's something rather colossal about the way he's +dropped out—"</p> +<p>"A jolly sight too colossal. Makes him more important than if +he'd stayed on the spot and fought the thing to a finish."</p> +<p>"Fought what thing to a finish?"</p> +<p>He was sorry to have used the expression. "Oh, there's still a +jolly lot to settle up, you know."</p> +<p>"But I thought everything was arranged—that you'd accepted +the situation."</p> +<p>He stretched himself more comfortably before the fire. "We'd a +row," he said, suddenly.</p> +<p>"A row? What kind of a row?"</p> +<p>"A street row—just like two hooligans. He struck me."</p> +<p>"Rupert!" She half sprang up. "He—"</p> +<p>Ashley swung round in his chair. He was smiling.</p> +<p>"Oh, I <em>beg</em> your pardon," she cried, in confusion. "I +can't think what made me call you that. I never +<em>do</em>—never. It was the surprise—and the +shock—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Tell me about Peter."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"To his <em>face</em>?"</p> +<p>"To his <em>nose</em>."</p> +<p>"Oh, you shouldn't have done that."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Except that he—what?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I don't see very clearly. In what way did he get the better of +you?"</p> +<p>"In the whole thing—the way he carried it off—the +whole silly business."</p> +<p>"Then I don't see what's to be done about it <em>now</em>."</p> +<p>"Something's got to be done, by Jove! I can't let it go at +that."</p> +<p>"Well, what do you propose?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Ashley looked blank. "I haven't noticed it—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"Poor Peter! I suppose he doesn't write because he's trying to +forget."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Forget what?"</p> +<p>"Forget Drusilla, I suppose. Hasn't it struck you—how much +he was in love with her?"</p> +<p>Olivia held a table-cloth carefully to the light. "Is this Irish +linen or German? I know mamma did get some at Dresden—"</p> +<p>Mrs. Temple pointed out the characteristic of the Belfast weave +and pressed her question. "Haven't you noticed it—about +Peter?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Some people think—Rodney, for instance—that he'd +lost his head about you, dear; but we mothers have an +insight—"</p> +<p>"Of course! There seems to be one missing from the dozen of this +pattern."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"It's the smell of lavender," Olivia gasped, weakly. "I never +could endure it. I'll just run into the air a minute—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"What difference <em>can</em> it make to me?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>And now there was this thing!</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"What kind of a woman am I?"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<em>him</em>."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Drusilla, did Mr. Davenant ever say anything to you about +me?"</p> +<p>She was vexed with herself for the form of her question. It was +not Davenant's feeling toward <em>her</em>, 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:</p> +<p>"Why, yes. We've spoken of you."</p> +<p>Having begun with a mistake, Olivia went on with it. "Did he +say—anything in particular?"</p> +<p>"He said a good many things, on and off."</p> +<p>"Some of which might have been—in particular?"</p> +<p>"All of them, if it comes to that."</p> +<p>"Why did you never tell me?"</p> +<p>"For one reason, because you never asked me."</p> +<p>"Have you any idea why I'm asking you now?"</p> +<p>"Not the faintest. I dare say we sha'n't see anything more of +him for years to come."</p> +<p>"Did you—did you—refuse him? Did you send him +away?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia braced herself to say, "And I hope it's not with me."</p> +<p>Drusilla went on counting.</p> +<p>"Did he ever say anything about that?" Olivia persisted.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>Olivia was silent, but she had much to think of.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He nodded at the various points in her recital, blinking at her +searchingly out of his kind old eyes.</p> +<p>"You look pale," he said, "and old. You look forty."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>He understood now the real motive of her visit.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We may do our duty, and still make people unhappy."</p> +<p>"No; not unless we do it in the wrong way."</p> +<p>"So that if I feel that to go on and keep my word is the right +thing—or rather the only thing—?"</p> +<p>"That settles it, dearie. The right thing <em>is</em> the only +thing—and it makes for everybody's happiness."</p> +<p>"Even if it seems that it—it <em>couldn't</em>?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"In the long run! That means—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>But the taxicab whizzed away, and the little lady tripped up the +steps.</p> +<p>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!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>dot</em> in her +pocket—same old <em>dot!</em>—and everything. There +now, cry. There's nothing like it."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/m.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="M" title="M" /></div> +<p class="noindent">adame 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.</p> +<p>"Il est très bien, ton Anglais."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>It was easy for Olivia to keep her back turned, while she +managed to say: "He thinks you don't like him."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Whom did you hear it from?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'm not sure that you ought, you know."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"He isn't an old man at all," Olivia explained, quickly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"No, he didn't. That's just it. He lent it to us—out +of—out of—"</p> +<p>"Yes; out of what?"</p> +<p>"Out of pure goodness," she said, firmly.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I think you'd have to make an exception of Mr. Davenant."</p> +<p>"Davenant? Is that his name? Yes, I believe your papa did tell +me so—the boy Tom Davenant fished out of the slums."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We may get rid of him, Aunt Vic, but we can never pay him +off."</p> +<p>"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.?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Well, I call that princely—six per cent."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"So there was a time when you didn't like him," was Madame de +Melcourt's first comment.</p> +<p>"There was a time when I didn't understand him."</p> +<p>"But when you did understand him you changed your mind."</p> +<p>"I couldn't help it."</p> +<p>"And did you change anything more than your—mind?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Did you ever think he might be in love with you?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"And what happened then?"</p> +<p>"Drusilla told me he'd said he—wasn't."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Didn't answer him?"</p> +<p>"I got up and walked away, right in the middle of—of what +he was trying to tell me."</p> +<p>"Ti-ens! And you had to take his money after all?"</p> +<p>Olivia bowed her head.</p> +<p>"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 <em>you</em> off, hasn't he? +It's a more beautiful situation than I fancied. He didn't tell me +that."</p> +<p>Olivia looked up. "He didn't tell you? Who?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"I should if there wasn't something about him that—"</p> +<p>"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 <em>you</em> can't, +can you? You've <em>got</em> 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."</p> +<p>"Of course, Aunt Vic."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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 <em>dot</em> 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?"</p> +<p>"He's out in Michigan, at a little place called Stoughton."</p> +<p>"Then send for him."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I'll ask Cousin Cherry to write to him again."</p> +<p>"Stuff, dear. That won't do any good. Wire him yourself, and +tell him I'm here."</p> +<p>"Oh, but, Aunt Vic, dear."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Later that day Madame de Melcourt was making a confession to +Rodney Temple.</p> +<p>"Oui, mon bon Rodney. It was love at first sight. The thing +hadn't happened to me for years."</p> +<p>"Had it been in the habit of happening?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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 <em>him</em>—"</p> +<p>"The young fellow you've taken such a fancy to?"</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>"I hope you told him so."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"As he came to know you."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>Louisiana</em> to New York. Mais +hélas!—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, the world is full of brave fellows, when the moment comes +to try them."</p> +<p>"Perhaps. I'm not convinced. What about <em>him</em>?" She +flicked her hand again toward Ashley. "Would he stand a big +test?"</p> +<p>"He's stood a good many of them, I understand. He's certainly +been equal to his duty here."</p> +<p>"He's done what a gentleman couldn't help doing. That's +something, but it's possible to ask more."</p> +<p>"I hope you're not going to ask it," he began, in some +anxiety.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We shall see."</p> +<p>"What shall we see? I hope you're not up to anything, Vic?"</p> +<p>With another jerk of her hand in the direction of Ashley and +Drusilla, she said, "That's the match that should have—"</p> +<p>But the old man was out of his seat. "You must excuse me now, +Vic. I've some work to do."</p> +<p>"Yes, be off. Only—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Olivia received the reply to her telegram: "Shall arrive in +Boston Wednesday night."</p> +<p>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 +<em>dot</em> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"She doesn't like me, what?" he had more than once said to +Olivia, and with some misgiving.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"She acts as if she had something up her sleeve."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Ashley bowed. "We shall always feel greatly indebted—" he +began, endeavoring to be more elegant than in his words of a few +minutes earlier.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I know she does, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"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 +<em>me</em>. 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—"</p> +<p>"The devil he did!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"But he's not my friend."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He looked mystified. "But he's out there in Michigan—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"Did he say he was in love with her himself?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Did he say—" He swallowed hard, and began again, more +hoarsely: "Did he say she was—in love with—with +<em>him</em>?"</p> +<p>There was a hint of rebuke in her tone. "He's a very loyal +gentleman. He didn't."</p> +<p>"Did he make you think—?"</p> +<p>"What he made me think, Col-on-el, is my own affair."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"May I ask your motive in springing this on me, Marquise?"</p> +<p>"Mon Dieu, Col-on-el, I thought you'd like to know what a friend +you have."</p> +<p>"Damn his friendship. That's not the reason. You've something up +your sleeve."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"And in England women are straight with men. What they have to +say they say. They don't lay snares, or lie in ambush."</p> +<p>She laughed. "Quant à cela, Col-on-el, il y en a pour +tous les goûts, même en Angleterre."</p> +<p>"I'll bid you good-by, madame."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"By Gad, she's <em>mine</em>!" he said, fiercely.</p> +<p>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 +<em>will</em> raise it—unless you do yourself."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/a.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="A" title="A" /></div> +<p class="noindent">shley'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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Then that's why he didn't answer mother's letters," she said, +absently, when he had finished. "He wasn't there."</p> +<p>"He wasn't there, by Jove! And don't you see what a fix he's put +me in?"</p> +<p>She replied, still absently: "I'm not sure that I do."</p> +<p>"He's given away the whole show to me. The question is now +whether I can take it, what?"</p> +<p>"He hasn't given away anything you didn't have before."</p> +<p>"He's given away something he might perhaps have had +himself."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"Don't <em>you</em> think so?"</p> +<p>"That's not a fair question."</p> +<p>"It's a vital one."</p> +<p>"To you—yes. But—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"I'm afraid I can't help you to see anything. If I were to try I +might mislead you."</p> +<p>"But you must <em>know</em>, by Jove! Two women can't be such +pals as Olivia and you—"</p> +<p>"If I did know I shouldn't tell you. It's something you should +find out for yourself."</p> +<p>"Find out! I've <em>asked</em> her."</p> +<p>"Well, if she's told you, isn't that enough?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Peter's going to see old Cousin Vic might be unexpected; but I +don't think you can call it preposterous."</p> +<p>"It's preposterous to have another man racing about the world +trying to do you good, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He sprang to his feet. "And he's got me where I must either call +his bluff or—or—or accept his beastly sacrifice."</p> +<p>He tugged fiercely, first at one end, then at the other, of the +bristling, horizontal mustache. Drusilla tried to speak calmly.</p> +<p>"He's not making a sacrifice if there was nothing for him to +give up."</p> +<p>"That's what I must find out."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Yes, I know. That's Browning. In other words, it means, let +well enough alone."</p> +<p>"Which isn't bad advice, you know."</p> +<p>"Which isn't bad advice—except in love. Love won't put up +with reserves. It must have all—or it will take nothing."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"And suppose you discovered that you couldn't <em>get</em> +all?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Again some minutes went by before she said: "Is it as bad as all +that?"</p> +<p>"It's as bad as all that."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Couldn't I—?"</p> +<p>The offer of help was in the tone, in its timid beseeching.</p> +<p>He understood it, and shook his head without looking up.</p> +<p>"No," he said, briefly. "No. No one can."</p> +<p>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—<em>I</em> do!—<em>I</em> +do!" she would have felt that life had reached fruition.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She must say something, no matter what, and the words that came +were: "Won't you have another cup of tea?"</p> +<p>He shook his head, still without looking up. "Thanks; no."</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"It seems to me you take it too tragically to begin +with—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>His face brightened. "Did he, by Jove?"</p> +<p>"And when I told her that—the other day—she +said—"</p> +<p>"Yes? Yes? She said—?"</p> +<p>"She didn't put it in so many words—but she gave me to +understand—or <em>tried</em> 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 +<em>has</em> those things on her mind, you know, about one man when +she loves another."</p> +<p>He jumped up. "I say! You're a good pal. I shall never forget +it."</p> +<p>He came toward her, but she stepped back at his approach. She +was more sure of herself in the shadow.</p> +<p>"Oh, it's nothing—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"You mean, if he does something fine, you must do something +finer."</p> +<p>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 <em>is</em> +my—my rival—he must have a show."</p> +<p>"And how are you going to give him a show if he won't take +it?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"That's what <em>she</em> said, by Jove!—the old Marquise. +She said the question would never be raised unless I raised +it."</p> +<p>Drusilla tried to laugh. "Eh, bien? as she'd say herself."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I say, that's your governor. I'll go and talk to him."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>The old man nodded. "Your difficulties do seem to have been +smoothed out."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I'm not called on to go poking behind things to see what's +there, now am I?"</p> +<p>"Not in the least."</p> +<p>"I'm willing to consider every one, and I think I do. But there +are limits, by Jove! Now, really?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Ashley rounded sharply. "You mean he's so big that no one can be +bigger."</p> +<p>"Not exactly. I mean that very few of us <em>need</em> 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."</p> +<p>"And sit down under him, while he looms up into God knows +where?"</p> +<p>"Well, wouldn't that be your idea?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Quite so; as big as any one—who takes his rights and +keeps them. That's very true."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It's a very high ideal."</p> +<p>"I propose to accept the status quo without asking any more +questions."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you mean that, sir? or are you—trying it on?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"What makes you think I should do that?"</p> +<p>"Because—because—hang it all! If I let this fellow +keep ahead of me—why, I <em>should</em> come in second +best."</p> +<p>"You say <em>keep</em> ahead of me. Do you think he's ahead of +you now?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, that's nothing. To a fellow like him that sort of thing +comes easy."</p> +<p>"It wouldn't come easy to me, by Jove!"</p> +<p>"Then it would be all the more to your credit, if you ever did +anything of the kind."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>Ashley struck a vesta on the edge of his match-box and applied +it to the old man's pipe.</p> +<p>"Should you say," he asked, while doing it, "that I ought to +attempt anything in that line?"</p> +<p>"Certainly not—unless you want to—to get ahead."</p> +<p>"I don't want to stay behind."</p> +<p>"Then, it's for you to judge, my son."</p> +<p>There was something like an affectionate stress on the two +concluding monosyllables. Ashley backed off, out of the +lamplight.</p> +<p>"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 +<em>can't</em>—let a chap like that make me a present of all +his chances—"</p> +<p>"Did he have any?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"But not of any more."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>"Oh, don't worry. A rich soil is never barren. When nothing is +planted in it, Nature uses it for flowers."</p> +<p>Ashley answered restively. "I see, sir, your sympathies are all +on his side."</p> +<p>"Not at all. Quite the contrary. My certainties are on his side. +My sympathies are on yours."</p> +<p>"Because you think I need them."</p> +<p>"Because I think you may."</p> +<p>"In case I—"</p> +<p>"In case you should condemn yourself in the thing you're going +to allow."</p> +<p>"But what's it to be?"</p> +<p>"That's for you to settle with yourself."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, there'll be no trouble about that. In the Street called +Straight, my son, there are lights to show the way."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"Rum old cove," was Ashley's comment to himself as he went back +to Boston. "Got an answer to everything."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/image4.png"><img src= +"images/image4.png" width="500" height="778" alt= +"ASHLEY GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THEIR CONVERSATION WAS EARNEST, CONFIDENTIAL." + title= + "ASHLEY GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THEIR CONVERSATION WAS EARNEST, CONFIDENTIAL." /> +</a> +<p class="caption">ASHLEY GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THEIR +CONVERSATION WAS EARNEST, CONFIDENTIAL.</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He nodded to Davenant before shaking hands with Miss Guion. +"Hello! Back again?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I had to come East on business," Davenant explained, at +once.</p> +<p>Olivia hastened to corroborate this statement. "Aunt Vic wanted +Mr. Davenant to come—to settle up all the things—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia looked inquiringly at Ashley. Her eyes were misty.</p> +<p>"Hadn't you better talk to <em>him</em> about it?" Ashley +said.</p> +<p>"I thought I'd better speak to you and Miss Guion first. I +understand you've offered to—to take him—"</p> +<p>"I shouldn't interfere with what suited him better, in any case. +By the way, how did you like the <em>Louisiana</em>?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Mr. Davenant wasn't on the <em>Louisiana</em>. It was Aunt Vic. +Mr. Davenant has just come from the West. You do that by +train."</p> +<p>"Of course he was on the <em>Louisiana</em>. Landed on +the—let me see!—she sailed again +yesterday!—landed on the 20th, didn't you?"</p> +<p>"No, no," Olivia corrected again, smiling. "That was the day +Aunt Vic landed. You're getting every one mixed."</p> +<p>"But they came together," Ashley persisted. "He brought her. +Didn't you?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia's eyes were still lifted to Davenant's. "Is that +true?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"No," Davenant cried, fiercely. "There was no question of +me."</p> +<p>"Bosh! Bosh, my good fellow! When a man does what you've done +there's no question of any one but him."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>He was about to make his escape, when Olivia stopped him. "No, +no. Wait—please wait. Tell me why you did it."</p> +<p>"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 <em>was</em> 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."</p> +<p>With a laugh Ashley held his hand up toward Davenant, who +ignored it.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/w.png" width= +"80" height="100" alt="W" title="W" /></div> +<p class="noindent">hen 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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Olivia, leaning on the mantelpiece, with face partially turned +from him, made no reply.</p> +<p>He allowed some minutes to pass before saying: "When I asked him +how he liked the <em>Louisiana</em> I wanted to know. I'm thinking +of taking her on her next trip home."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She seemed to have some difficulty in getting her mind to follow +his words. "I don't think I understand you."</p> +<p>There was a smile on his lips as he said: "Don't you infer +anything?"</p> +<p>"If I <em>inferred</em> anything, it would be that you think of +going home—alone."</p> +<p>"Well, that's it."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"Isn't it pretty nearly—self-evident?"</p> +<p>She shook her head. "Not to me."</p> +<p>"I'm surprised at that. I thought you would have seen how well +we'd played our game, and that it's—up."</p> +<p>"I don't see—not unless you're trying to tell me that +you've—that your feelings have undergone a—"</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>"I'm ready to do everything you like; but I can't help being +surprised."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Saw how they were with you? Do you mean?—No, you can't +mean!—it isn't—Drusilla?"</p> +<p>Since Drusilla would do as well as another, he still stood +smiling. She clasped her hands. Her face was all aglow.</p> +<p>"Oh, I should be so glad! It's only within a few days that I've +seen—how it was—with—"</p> +<p>He hastened to interrupt her, though he had no idea of what she +was going to say. "Then so long as you do see—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I can't bear it," he could hear her panting. "I can't bear +it."</p> +<p>"What is it that you can't bear? The pain?" She nodded without +raising her head.</p> +<p>"Or the happiness?" he asked, gently. She nodded again.</p> +<p>"That is," he went on, "pain for me—and happiness +about—about—the other chap."</p> +<p>She made the same mute sign of affirmation.</p> +<p>"Then, perhaps, that's just as it should be."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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'."</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"That's all right," Davenant rejoined; and no more was said till +they reached Rodney Temple's door.</p> +<p>"Good-by." Ashley offered his hand. "Good-by. You're a +first-rate sort. You deserve everything you're—you're coming +in for."</p> +<p>Davenant could only wring the proffered hand wonderingly and +continue on his way.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Not in the Carral country, I hope."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>It was at the door, to which she accompanied him, that he said: +"By the way, when are you coming home?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Oh, I say—"</p> +<p>"In any case I'm here for the winter."</p> +<p>"Oh, but I say, by Jove! That's forever. You'll be back before +spring?"</p> +<p>She weakened in spite of herself. "I couldn't possibly leave +till after Christmas."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He had gone down the steps when he turned again. Drusilla was +still standing in the open doorway.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2> +<div class="figleft"><img class="plain" src="images/i.png" width= +"80" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></div> +<p class="noindent">t 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I've already talked to papa about it," she said. "He's very +grateful—very much touched."</p> +<p>"There's no reason for that. I should like his company. +I'm—I'm fond of him."</p> +<p>For a few minutes she seemed to be pondering, absently. "There's +something I should like to ask you," she said, at last.</p> +<p>"Yes, Miss Guion? What is it?"</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I wonder," she said, "if you have any idea of the many things +you've taught me?"</p> +<p>"I?" He almost jumped from his seat. "You're laughing at +me."</p> +<p>"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 <em>good</em>. 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 <em>are</em>—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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <em>very</em> ill, I'll cable. I promise you I +will—on my solemn word."</p> +<p>"You won't have to do that," she said, simply, "because I'm +going, too."</p> +<p>Again he almost jumped from his chair. "Going, too? Going +where?"</p> +<p>"Going to Stoughton with papa."</p> +<p>"But—but—Miss Guion—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"All over—how?"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"Oh, he's changed, has he?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>She stopped with a little gasp.</p> +<p>"Yes? If he hadn't seen—what?"</p> +<p>"That I—that I—I care—for some one else."</p> +<p>"Oh! Well, of course, that does make a difference."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Some one—in England?"</p> +<p>"No—here."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Is he—is he—coming to Stoughton?"</p> +<p>"He's <em>going</em> to Stoughton. He's been +there—already."</p> +<p>If there was silence again it was because he dared not frame the +words that were on his tongue.</p> +<p>"It isn't—it can't be—?"</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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?"</p> +<p>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 +<em>is</em> true. I think it was true before that—long +ago—when you offered me so much—so +<em>much!</em>—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—"</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>He withdrew his hand, looking troubled.</p> +<p>"Are you—are you—<em>sure?</em>"</p> +<p>She reflected a minute. "I know what makes you ask that. You +think I've changed too suddenly. If so, I can explain it."</p> +<p>The silence in which he waited for her to continue assented in +some sort to this reading of his thoughts.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He would have said something, but she hurried on.</p> +<p>"I've not changed toward the play, except to recognize the fact +that it <em>was</em> 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—"</p> +<p>She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep back what might +have become a sob.</p> +<p>"Did you know I—I loved you?" he asked, still speaking +hoarsely.</p> +<p>"I thought you must," she said, simply. "I used to say I hoped +you didn't—but deep down in my heart—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"You're not—you're <em>not</em>—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."</p> +<p>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—"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I had come to the end of the end ... and I prayed ... yes, I +<em>prayed</em>.... 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!..."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE END</h2> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Street Called Straight, by Basil King + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT *** + +***** This file should be named 14394-h.htm or 14394-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/3/9/14394/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Karina Aleksandrova and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: ASCII + +*** 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'Universite and chateau 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 Vigee-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 naively, 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 role'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 Caesar 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 Attache 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 role, 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 role 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-scene_, 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 chateaux, 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 naive 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 _exaltee_; 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'etre_. 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 _idee 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 facade 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 Sevres 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 jardiniere 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 Sevres. +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' depot +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' depot 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 attache 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 +depot. 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 _a 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 role 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 +portieres 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 +role_, 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 portieres 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 _charge 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 portieres 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 chateau 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 a 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'Universite 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 _hotel_, 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 chateau 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 Hotel 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 chateaux, 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 Chaussee des Etats-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 Chaussee des Etats-Unis was naturally gay with the +landsman's welcome to the sailor on shore. The cafes 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 cafes 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 Hotel 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: + +"Voila, monsieur--voila le chateau 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 chatelaine 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 role 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 chateau 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 chateau, 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 Lenotre 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 modernise 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 chateau." + +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 recoit 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 chateau 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 chateau 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 chateau, 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'etait le desastre. C'etait 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 Rene 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'Orleans--Philippe V., as we call him--all +of them the purest old noblesse d'epee 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 naive 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'etait +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'idee! Queue scene! +Queue scene! 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'etait 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 cure 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 voila une idee!" + +"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 idee! 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 chateau." + +"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 american, cela." + +"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 tres 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-a-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. + +"Ca 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. + +"Ca 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 drole 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 Boheme, 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 Boheme. 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 tres bien, cet Ashley," the Marquise continued, +"chic--distinguished--no more like a wooden man than any other +Englishman. Il est tres bien--but what a difference!--two natures--the +one a mountain pool, fierce, deep, hemmed in all round--the other the +great sea. Voila--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 helas!--" + +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. + +"Ca 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 a cela, Col-on-el, il y en a pour tous les gouts, +meme 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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT *** + +***** This file should be named 14394.txt or 14394.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/3/9/14394/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Karina Aleksandrova and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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