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.