Drusilla went on counting.
"Did he ever say anything about that?" Olivia persisted.
Drusilla went on counting. "Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. That's all
of that set. What a lot of silver you've got! And some of it must have
been in the family for thousands of years. Yes," she added, in another
tone, "yes, he did. He said he wasn't."
Olivia laid down the ladle she was holding with infinite precaution. She
had got the stab she was looking for. It seemed for a minute as if she
was free--gloatingly free. He hadn't cared anything about her after all,
and had said so! She steadied herself by holding to the edge of the
sideboard.
Drusilla stooped to the basket of silver standing on the floor, in a
seemingly passionate desire for more forks. By the time she had
straightened herself again, Olivia was able to say: "I'm so glad of
that. You know what his kindness in helping papa has made people think,
don't you?"
But Mrs. Fane astonished her by throwing down her handful of silver with
unnecessary violence of clang and saying: "Look here, Olivia, I'd rather
not talk about it any more. I've reasons. I can't take a hand in your
affairs without being afraid that perhaps--perhaps--I--I--sha'n't play
the game."
Olivia was silent, but she had much to think of.
It was a few days later still that she found herself in Rodney Temple's
little office in the Gallery of Fine Arts. She had come ostensibly to
tell him that everything had been arranged for the sale.
"Lemon and Company think that early in December would be the best time,
as people are beginning then to spend money for Christmas. Mr. Lemon
seems to think we've got a good many things the smaller connoisseurs
will want. The servants are to go next Tuesday, so that if you and
Cousin Cherry could take papa then--I'm to stay with Lulu Sentner; and I
shall go from her house to be married--some day, when everything else is
settled. Did you know that before Mr. Davenant went away he left a small
bank account for papa?--two or three thousand dollars--so that we have
money to go on with. Rupert wants to spend a week or two in New York and
Washington, after which we shall come back here and pick up papa. He's
not very keen on coming with us, but I simply couldn't--"
He nodded at the various points in her recital, blinking at her
searchingly out of his kind old eyes.
"You look pale," he said, "and old. You look forty."
She surprised him by saying, with a sudden outburst: "Cousin Rodney, do
you think it's any harm for a woman to marry one man when she's in love
with another?" Before he had time to recover himself, she followed this
question with a second. "Do you think it's possible for a person to be
in love with two people at the same time?"
He understood now the real motive of her visit.
"I'm not a very good judge of love affairs," he said, after a minute's
reflection. "But one thing I know, and it's this--that when we do our
duty we don't have to bother with the question as to whether it's any
harm or not."
"We may do our duty, and still make people unhappy."
"No; not unless we do it in the wrong way."
"So that if I feel that to go on and keep my word is the right thing--or
rather the only thing--?"
"That settles it, dearie. The right thing _is_ the only thing--and it
makes for everybody's happiness."
"Even if it seems that it--it _couldn't_?"
"I'm only uttering platitudes, dearie, when I say that happiness is the
flower of right. No other plant can grow it; and that plant can't grow
any other flower. When you've done the thing you feel you're called to
do--the thing you couldn't refuse while still keeping your
self-respect--well, then, you needn't be afraid that any one will suffer
in the long run--and yourself least of all."
"In the long run! That means--"
"Oh, there may be a short run. I'm not denying that. But no one worth
his salt would be afraid of it. And that, dearie," he added, blinking,
"is all I know about love affairs."
There being no one in the gallery on which the office opened, she
kissed him as she thanked him and went away. She walked homeward, taking
the more retired streets through Cambridge and into Waverton, so as to
be the more free for thinking. It was a relief to her to have spoken
out. Oddly enough, she felt her heart lighter toward Davenant from the
mere fact of having told some one, or having partially told some one,
that she loved him.
When, on turning in at the gate of Tory Hill, she saw a taxicab standing
below the steps of the main entrance, she was not surprised, since
Ashley occasionally took one to run out from town. But when a little
lady in furs and an extravagant hat stepped out to pay the chauffeur
Olivia stopped to get her breath. If it hadn't been impossible she would
have said--
But the taxicab whizzed away, and the little lady tripped up the steps.
Olivia felt herself unable to move. The motor throbbed past her, and out
the gate, but she still stood incapable of going farther. It seemed long
before the pent-up emotions of the last month or two, controlled,
repressed, unacknowledged, as they had been, found utterance in one loud
cry: "Aunt Vic!"
Not till that minute had she guessed her need of a woman, a Guion, one
of her very own, a mother, on whose breast to lay her head and weep her
cares out.
* * * * *
The first tears since the beginning of her trials came to Olivia Guion,
as, with arms clasped round her aunt and forehead pressed into the
little old lady's furs, she sat beside her on a packing-case in the
hail. She cried then as she never knew before she was capable of crying.
She cried for the joy of the present, for the trouble of the past, and
for the relief of clinging to some one to whom she had a right. Madame
de Melcourt would have cried with her, had it not been for the effect of
tears on cosmetics.
"There, there, my pet," she murmured, soothingly. "Didn't you know your
old auntie would come to you? Why didn't you cable? Didn't you know I
was right at the end of the wire. There now, cry all you want to. It'll
do you good. Your old auntie has come to take all your troubles away,
and see you happily married to your Englishman. She's brought your _dot_
in her pocket--same old _dot!_--and everything. There now, cry. There's
nothing like it."