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."