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!"