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."