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?"