"She isn't looking to you, madame. I am. I'm looking to you because I imagine you can help her. There's no one else—"

"And has she sent you as her messenger? Why can't she come herself, if it's so bad as all that—or write? I thought she was married—to some Englishman."

"They're not married yet, madame; and unless you help her I don't see how they're going to be—the way things stand."

"Unless I help her! My good fellow, you don't know what you're saying. Do you know that she refused—refused violently—to help me?"

He shook his head, his blue eyes betraying some incredulity.

"Well, then, I'll tell you. It'll show you. You'll be able to go away again with a clear conscience, knowing you've done your best and failed. Sit down."

As she showed no intention of taking a seat herself, he remained standing.

"She refused the Duc de Berteuil." She made the statement with head erect and hands flung apart. "I suppose you have no idea of what that meant to me?"

"I'm afraid I haven't."

"Of course you haven't. I don't know an American who would have. You're so engrossed in your own small concerns. None of you have any conception of the things that really matter—the higher things. Well, then, let me tell you. The Duc de Berteuil is—or rather was—the greatest parti in France. He isn't any more, because they've married him to a rich girl from South America or one of those places—brown as a berry—with a bust—" She rounded her arms to give an idea of the bust. "Mais, n'importe. My niece refused him. That meant—I've never confessed it to any one before—I've been too proud—but I want you to understand—it meant my defeat—my final defeat. I hadn't the courage to begin again. C'etait le desastre. C'etait Sedan."

"Oh, madame!"

It seemed to him that her mouth worked with an odd piteousness; and before going on she put up a crooked little jeweled hand and dashed away a tear.

"It would have been everything to me. It would have put me where I belong, in the place I've been trying to reach all these years. The life of an American woman in Europe, monsieur, can be very cruel. We've nothing to back us up, and everything to fight against in front. It's all push, and little headway. They don't want us. That's the plain English of it. They can't imagine why we leave our own country and come over here. They're so narrow. They're selfish, too. Everything they've got they want to keep for themselves. They marry us—the Lord only knows why!—and nine times out of ten all we get for it is the knowledge that we've been bamboozled out of our own dots. There was Rene de Lonchartres who married that goose Annie Armstrong. They ridiculed her when she came over here, and at the same time clapped him on the back for having got her. That's as true as you live. It's their way. They would have ridiculed me, too, if I hadn't been determined years ago to beat them on their own ground. I could have done it, too, if—"

"If it had been worth while," he ventured.

"You know nothing about it. I could have done it if my niece had put out just one little finger—when I'd got everything ready for her to do it. Yes, I'd got everything ready—and yet she refused him. She refused him after I'd seen them all—his mother, his sisters, his two uncles—one of them in waiting on the Duc d'Orleans—Philippe V., as we call him—all of them the purest old noblesse d'epee in Normandy."

Her agitation expressed itself again in little dartings to and fro. "I went begging to them, as you might say. I took all their snubs—and oh! so fine some of them were!—more delicate than the point of a needle! I took them because I could see just how I should pay them back. I needn't explain to you how that would be, because you couldn't understand. It would be out of the question for an American."

"I don't think we are good at returning snubs, madame. That's a fact."

"You're not good at anything but making money; and you make that blatantly, as if you were the first people in the world to do it. Why, France and England could buy and sell you, and most of you don't know it. Mais, n'importe. I went begging to them, as I've told you. At first they wouldn't hear of her at any price—didn't want an American. That was bluff, to get a bigger dot. I had counted on it in advance. I knew well enough that they'd take a Hottentot if there was money enough. For the matter of that, Hottentot and American are much the same to them. But I made it bluff for bluff. Oh, I'm sharp. I manage all my own affairs in America—with advice. I've speculated a little in your markets quite successfully. I know how I stand to within a few thousand dollars of your money. I offered half a million of francs. They laughed at it. I knew they would, but it's as much as they'd get with a French girl. I went to a million—to a million and a half—to two millions. At two millions—that would be—let me see—five into twenty makes four—about four hundred thousand dollars of your money—they gave in. Yes, they gave in. I expected them to hold out for it, and they did. But at that figure they made all the concessions and gave in."

"And did he give in?" Davenant asked, with naive curiosity.

"Oh, I'd made sure of him beforehand. He and I understood each other perfectly. He would have let it go at a million and a half. He was next door to being in love with her besides. All he wanted was to be well established, poor boy! But I meant to go up to two millions, anyhow. I could afford it."

"Four hundred thousand dollars," Davenant said, with an idea that he might convey a hint to her, "would be practically the sum—"

"I could afford it," she went on, "because of those ridiculous copper-mines—the Hamlet and Tecla. I wasn't rich before that. My dot was small. No Guion I ever heard of was able to save money. My father was no exception."

"You are in the Hamlet and Tecla!" Davenant's blue eyes were wide open. He was on his own ground. The history of the Hamlet and Tecla Mines had been in his own lifetime a fairy-tale come true.

Madame de Melcourt nodded proudly. "My father had bought nearly two thousand shares when they were down to next to nothing. They came to me when he died. It was mere waste paper for years and years. Then all of a sudden—pouff!—they began to go up and up—and I sold them when they were near a thousand. I could have afforded the two millions of francs—and I promised to settle Melcourt-le-Danois on them into the bargain, when I—if I ever should—But my niece wouldn't take him—simply—would—not. Ah," she cried, in a strangled voice, "c'etait trop fort!"

"But did she know you were—what shall I say?—negotiating?"

"She was in that stupid England. It wasn't a thing I could write to her about. I meant it as a surprise. When all was settled I sent for her—and told her. Oh, monsieur, vous n'avez pas d'idee! Queue scene! Queue scene! J'ai failli en mourir." She wrung her clasped hands at the recollection.

"That girl has an anger like a storm. Avec tous ses airs de reine et de sainte—she was terrible. Never shall I forget it—jamais! jam-ais! au grand jamais! Et puis," she added, with a fatalistic toss of her hands, "c'etait fini. It was all over. Since then—nothing!"

She made a little dash as if to leave him, returning to utter what seemed like an afterthought. "It would have made her. It would have made me. We could have dictated to the Faubourg. We could have humiliated them—like that." She stamped her foot. "It would have been a great alliance—what I've been so much in need of. The Melcourt—well, they're all very well—old noblesse de la Normandie, and all that—but poor!—mais pauvres!—and as provincial as a cure de campagne. When I married my poor husband—but we won't go into that—I've been a widow since I was so high—ever since 1870—with my own way to make. If my niece hadn't deserted me I could have made it. Now all that is past—fini-ni-ni! The clan Berteuil has set the Faubourg against me. They've the power, too. It's all so intricate, so silent, such wheels within wheels—but it's done. They've never wanted me. They don't want any of us—not for ourselves. It's the sou!—the sou!—the everlasting sou! Noble or peasant—it makes no difference. But if my niece hadn't abandoned me—"

"Why shouldn't you come home, madame?" Davenant suggested, touched by so much that was tragic. "You wouldn't find any one after the sou there."

"They're all about me," she whispered—"the Melcourt. They're all over the house. They come and settle on me, and I can't shake them off. They suffocate me—waiting for the moment when—But I've made my will, and some'll be disappointed. Oh, I shall leave them Melcourt-le-Danois. It's mine. I bought it with my own money, after my husband's death, and restored it when the Hamlet and Tecla paid so well. It shall not go out of their family—for my husband's sake. But," she added, fiercely, "neither shall the money go out of mine. They shall know I have a family. It's the only way by which I can force the knowledge on them. They think I sprang out of the earth like a mushroom. You may tell my niece as much as that—and let her get all the comfort from it she can. That's all I have to say, monsieur. Good morning."

The dash she made from him seeming no more final than those which had preceded it, he went on speaking.

"I'm afraid, madame, that help is too far in the future to be of much assistance now. Besides, I'm not sure it's what they want. We've managed to keep Mr. Henry Guion out of prison. That danger is over. Our present concern is for Miss Olivia Guion's happiness."

As he expected, the shock calmed her. Notwithstanding her mask, she grew suddenly haggard, though her eyes, which—since she had never been able to put poudre de riz or cherry paste in them—were almost as fine as ever, instantly flashed out the signal of the Guion pride. Her fluffy head went up, and her little figure stiffened as she entrenched herself again behind the arm-chair. Her only hint of flinching came from a slackening in the flow of speech and a higher, thinner quality in the voice.

"Has my nephew, Henry Guion, been doing things—that—that would send him—to prison?"

In spite of herself the final words came out with a gasp.

"It's a long story, madame—or, at least, a complicated one. I could explain it, if you'd give me the time."

"Sit down."

They took seats at last. Owing to the old lady's possession of what she herself called a business mind he found the tale easy in the telling. Her wits being quick and her questions pertinent, she was soon in command of the facts. She was soon, too, in command of herself. The first shock having passed, she was able to go into complete explanations with courage.

"So that," he concluded, "now that Mr. Guion is safe, if Miss Guion could only marry—the man—the man she cares for—everything would be put as nearly right as we can make it."

"And at present they are at a deadlock. She won't marry him if he has to sell his property, and so forth; and he can't marry her, and live in debt to you. Is that it?"

"That's it, madame, exactly. You've put it in a nutshell."

She looked at him hardly. "And what has it all got to do with me?"

He looked at her steadily in his turn. "I thought perhaps you wouldn't care to live in debt to me, either."

She was startled. "Who? I? En voila une idee!"

"I thought," he went on, "that possibly the Guion sense of family honor—"

"Fiddle-faddle! There's no sense of family honor among Americans. There can't be. You can only have family honor where, as with us, the family is the unit; whereas, with you, the unit is the individual. The American individual may have a sense of honor; but the American family is only a disintegrated mush. What you really thought was that you might get your money back."

"If you like, madame. That's another way of putting it. If the family paid me, Miss Guion would feel quite differently—and so would Colonel Ashley."

"When you say the family," she sniffed, "you mean me."

"In the sense that I naturally think first of its most distinguished member. And, of course, the greater the distinction the greater must be—shall I call it the indignity?—of living under an obligation—"

"Am I to understand that you put up this money—that's your American term, isn't it?—that you put up this money in the expectation that I would pay you back?"

"Not exactly. I put up the money, in the first place, to save the credit of the Guion name, and with the intention, if you didn't pay me back, to do without it."

"And you risked being considered over-officious."

"There wasn't much risk about that," he smiled. "They did think me so—and do."

"And you got every one into a fix."

"Into a fix, but out of prison."

"Hm!"

She grew restless, uncomfortable, fidgeting with her rings and bracelets.

"And pray, what sort of a person is this Englishman to whom my niece has got herself engaged?"

"One of their very finest," he said, promptly. "As a soldier, so they say, he'll catch up one day with men like Roberts and Kitchener; and as for his private character—well, you can judge of it from the fact that he wants to strip himself of all he has so that the Guion name shall owe nothing to any one outside—"

"Then he's a fool."

"From that point of view—yes. There are fools of that sort, madame. But there's something more to him."

He found himself reciting glibly Ashley's claims as a suitor in the way of family, position, and fortune.

"So that it would be what some people might call a good match."

"The best sort of match. It's the kind of thing she's made for—that she'd be happy in—regiments, and uniforms, and glory, and presenting prizes, and all that."

"Hm. I shall have nothing to do with it." She rose with dignity. "If my niece had only held out a little finger—"

"It was a case, madame," he argued, rising, too—"it was a case in which she couldn't hold out a little finger without offering her whole hand."

"You know nothing about it. I'm wrong to discuss it with you at all. I'm sure I don't know why I do, except that—"

"Except that I'm an American," he suggested—"one of your own."

"One of my own! Quelle idee! Do you like him—this Englishman?"

He hedged. "Miss Guion likes him."

"But you don't."

"I haven't said so. I might like him well enough if—"

"If you got your money back."

He smiled and nodded.

"Is she in love with him?"

"Oh—deep!"

"How do you know? Has she told you so?"

"Y-es; I think I may say—she has."

"Did you ask her?"

He colored. "I had to—about something."

"You weren't proposing to her yourself, were you?"

He tried to take this humorously. "Oh no, madame—"

"You can't be in love with her, or you wouldn't be trying so hard to marry her to some one else—not unless you're a bigger fool than you look."

"I hope I'm not that," he laughed.

"Well, I shall have nothing to do with it—nothing. Between my niece and me—tout est fini." She darted from him, swerving again like a bird on the wing. "I don't know you. You come here with what may be no more than a cock-and-bull story, to get inside the chateau."

"I shouldn't expect you to do anything, madame, without verifying all I've told you. For the matter of that, it'll be easy enough. You've only to write to your men of business, or—which would be better still—take a trip to America for yourself."

She threw out her arms with a tragic gesture. "My good man, I haven't been in America for forty years. I nearly died of it then. What it must be like now—"

"It wouldn't be so fine as this, madame, nor so picturesque. But it would be full of people who'd be fond of you, not for the sou—but for yourself."

She did her best to be offended. "You're taking liberties, monsieur. C'est bien american, cela."

"Excuse me, madame," he said, humbly. "I only mean that they are fond of you—at least, I I know Miss Guion is. Two nights before I sailed I heard her almost crying for you—yes, almost crying. That's why I came. I thought I'd come and tell you. I should think it might mean something to you—over here so long—all alone—to have some one like that—such a—such a—such a wonderful young lady wanting you—in her trouble—"

"And such a wonderful young man wanting his money back. Oh, I'm not blind, monsieur. I see a great deal more than you think. I see through and through you. You fancy you're throwing dust in my eyes, and you haven't thrown a grain. Pouff! Oh, la, la! Mais, c'est fini. As for my niece—le bon Dieu l' a bien punie. For me to step in now would be to interfere with the chastisement of Providence. Le bon Dieu is always right. I'll say that for Him. Good morning." She touched a bell. "The man will show you to the door. If you like to stroll about the grounds—now that you've got in—well, you can."

With sleeves blowing she sped down the room as if on pinions. The man-servant waited respectfully. Davenant stood his ground, hoping for some sign of her relenting. It was almost over her shoulder that she called back:

"Where are you staying?"

He told her.

"Stupid place. You'll find the Chariot d'Or at Melcourt a great deal nicer. Simple, but clean. An old chef of mine keeps it. Tell him I sent you. And ask for his poularde au riz."



XXI

"What do you think of him?"

Ashley's tone indicated some uncertainty as to what he thought himself. Indeed, uncertainty was indicated elsewhere than in his tone. It seemed to hang about him, to look from his eyes, to take form in his person. Perhaps this was the one change wrought in him by a month's residence in America. When he arrived everything had bespoken him a man aggressively positive with the habit of being sure. His very attitude, now, as he sat in Rodney Temple's office in the Harvard Gallery of Fine Arts, his hands thrust into his pockets, his legs stretched apart, his hat on the back of his head, suggested one who feels the foundations of the earth to have shifted.

Rodney Temple, making his arrangements for leaving for the day, met one question with another. "What do you?"

"You know him," Ashley urged, "and I don't."

"I thought you did. I thought you'd read him right off—as a cow-puncher."

"He looks like one, by Jove! and he speaks like one, too. You wouldn't call him a gentleman? What?"

"If you mean by a gentleman one who's always been able to take the best in the world for granted, perhaps he isn't. But that isn't our test—over here."

"Then, what is?"

"I'm not sure that I could tell you so that you'd understand—at any rate, not unless you start out with the fact that the English gentleman and the American differ not only in species, but in genus. I'd go so far as to say that they've got to be recognized by different sets of faculties. You get at your man by the eye and the ear; we have to use a subtler apparatus. If we didn't we should let a good many go uncounted. Some of our finest are even more uncouth with their consonants than good friend Davenant. They'd drop right out of your list, but they take a high place in ours. To try to discern one by the methods created for the other is like what George Eliot says of putting on spectacles to detect odors. Ignorance of this basic social fact on both sides has given rise to much international misjudgment. See?"

"Can't say that I do."

"No, you wouldn't. But until you do you won't understand a big simple type—"

"I don't care a hang about his big simple type. What I want to know is how to take him. Is he a confounded sentimentalist?—or is he still putting up a bluff?"

"What difference does it make to you?"

"If he's putting up a bluff, he's waiting out there at Michigan for me to call it. If he's working the sentimental racket, then I've got to be the beneficiary of his beastly good-will."

"If he's putting up a bluff, you can fix him by not calling it at all; and as for his beastly good-will, well, he's a beneficiary of it, too."

"How so?"

"Because beastly good-will is a thing that cuts both ways. He'll get as much out of it as you."

"That's all very fine—"

"It's very fine, indeed, for him. We've an old saying in these parts: By the Street called Straight we come to the House called Beautiful. It's one of those fanciful saws of which the only justification is that it works. Any one can test the truth of it by taking the highway. Well, friend Davenant is taking it. He'll reach the House called Beautiful as straight as a die. Don't you fret about that. You'll owe him nothing in the long run, because he'll get all the reward he's entitled to. When's the wedding? Fixed the date yet?"

"Not going to fix one," Ashley explained, moodily. "One of these days, when everything is settled at Tory Hill and the sale is over, we shall walk off to the church and get married. That seems to be the best way, as matters stand."

"It's a very sensible way at all times. And I hear you're carrying Henry off with you to England."

Ashley shrugged his shoulders. "Going the whole hog. What? Had to make the offer. Olivia couldn't leave him behind. Anything that will make her happy—"

"Will make you happy."

"That's about the size of it."

Having locked the last drawer and put out the desk light, Temple led his guest down the long gallery and across the Yard to the house on Charlesbank. Here Ashley pursued kindred themes in the company of Mrs. Fane, finding himself alone with her at tea. He was often alone with her at tea, her father having no taste for this form of refreshment, while her mother found reasons for being absent.

"Queer old cove, your governor," Ashley observed, stretching himself comfortably before the fire. The blaze of logs alone lit up the room.

"Is that why you seem to have taken a fancy to him?"

"I like to hear him gassing. Little bit like the Bible, don't you know."

"He's very fond of the Bible."

"Seems to think a lot of that chap—your governor."

A nod supposed to indicate the direction of the State of Michigan enabled her to follow his line of thought.

"He does. There's something rather colossal about the way he's dropped out—"

"A jolly sight too colossal. Makes him more important than if he'd stayed on the spot and fought the thing to a finish."

"Fought what thing to a finish?"

He was sorry to have used the expression. "Oh, there's still a jolly lot to settle up, you know."

"But I thought everything was arranged—that you'd accepted the situation."

He stretched himself more comfortably before the fire. "We'd a row," he said, suddenly.

"A row? What kind of a row?"

"A street row—just like two hooligans. He struck me."

"Rupert!" She half sprang up. "He—"

Ashley swung round in his chair. He was smiling.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she cried, in confusion. "I can't think what made me call you that. I never do—never. It was the surprise—and the shock—"

"That's all right," he assured her. "I often call you Drusilla when I'm talking to Olivia. I don't see why we shouldn't—we've always been such pals—and we're going to be a kind of cousins—"

"Tell me about Peter."

"Oh, there's nothing much that stands telling. We were two idiots—two silly asses. I insulted him—and he struck out. I called him a cad—I believe I called him a damned cad."

"To his face?"

"To his nose."

"Oh, you shouldn't have done that."

"And he got mad, by Jove! Oh, it didn't last. We pulled off in a second or two. We saw we were two idiots—two kids. It wasn't worth getting on one's high horse about—or attempting to follow it up—it was too beastly silly for heroics—except that—that he—"

"Except that he—what?"

"Except that he—got the better of me. He has the better of me still. And I can't allow that, by Jove! Do you see?"

"I don't see very clearly. In what way did he get the better of you?"

"In the whole thing—the way he carried it off—the whole silly business."

"Then I don't see what's to be done about it now."

"Something's got to be done, by Jove! I can't let it go at that."

"Well, what do you propose?"

"I don't propose anything. But I can't go through life letting that fellow stay on top. Why, considering everything—all he's done for Olivia and her father—and now this other thing—and his beastly magnanimity besides—he's frightfully on top. It won't do, you know. But I say, you'll not tell Olivia, will you? She'd hate it—about the row, I mean. I don't mind your knowing. You're always such a good pal to me—"

It was impossible to go on, because Mrs. Temple bustled in from the task of helping Olivia with the packing and sacking at Tory Hill. Having greeted Ashley with the unceremoniousness permissible with one who was becoming an intimate figure at the fireside, she settled to her tea.

"Oh, so sad!" she reflected, her little pursed-up mouth twitching nervously. "The dear old house all dismantled! Everything to go! I've asked Henry to come and stay here. It's too uncomfortable for him, with all the moving and packing going on around him. It'll be easier for dear Olivia, too. So hard for her to take care of him, with all the other things she has on her hands. There's Peter's room. Henry may as well have it. I don't suppose we shall see anything more of Peter for ages to come. But I do wish he'd write. Don't you, Colonel Ashley? I've written to him three times now—and not a line from him! I suppose they must be able to get letters out there, at Stoughton, Michigan. It can't be so far beyond civilization as all that. And Olivia would like it. She's worried about him—about his not writing—and everything. Don't you think, Colonel Ashley?"

Ashley looked blank. "I haven't noticed it—"

"Oh, I have. A woman's eye sees those little things, don't you think? Men have so much on their hands—the great things of the world—but the little things, they often count, don't you think? But I tell dear Olivia not to worry. Everything will come right. Things do come right—very often. I'm more pessimistic than Rodney—that I must say. But still I think things have a way of coming right when we least expect it. I tell dear Olivia that Peter will send a line just when we're not looking for it. It's the watched pot that never boils, you know, and so I tell her to stop watching for the postman. That's fatal to getting a letter—watching for the postman. How snug you two look here together! Well, I'll run up and take off my things. No; no more tea, dear. I won't say good-by, Colonel Ashley, because you'll be here when I come down."

Mrs. Temple was a good woman who would have been astonished to hear herself accused of falsehood but, as a matter of fact, her account of the conversation with Olivia bore little relation to the conversation itself. What she had actually said was:

"Poor Peter! I suppose he doesn't write because he's trying to forget."

The challenge here being so direct, Olivia felt it her duty to take it up. The ladies were engaged in sorting the linen in preparation for the sale.

"Forget what?"

"Forget Drusilla, I suppose. Hasn't it struck you—how much he was in love with her?"

Olivia held a table-cloth carefully to the light. "Is this Irish linen or German? I know mamma did get some at Dresden—"

Mrs. Temple pointed out the characteristic of the Belfast weave and pressed her question. "Haven't you noticed it—about Peter?"

Olivia tried to keep her voice steady as she said: "I've no doubt I should have seen it if I hadn't been so preoccupied."

"Some people think—Rodney, for instance—that he'd lost his head about you, dear; but we mothers have an insight—"

"Of course! There seems to be one missing from the dozen of this pattern."

"Oh, it'll turn up. It's probably in the pile over there. I thought I'd speak about it, dear," she went on, "because it must be a relief to you not to have that complication. Things are so complicated already, don't you think? But if you haven't Peter on your mind, why, that's one thing the less to worry about. If you thought he was in love with you, dear—in your situation—going to be married to some one else—But you needn't be afraid of that at all. I never saw a young man more in love with any one than he is with Drusilla—and I think she must have refused him. If she hadn't he would never have shot off in that way, like a bolt from the blue—But what's the matter, dear? You look white. You're not ill?"

"It's the smell of lavender," Olivia gasped, weakly. "I never could endure it. I'll just run into the air a minute—"

This was all that passed between Olivia and Mrs. Temple on the subject. If the latter reported it with suppressions and amplifications it was doubtless due to her knowledge of what could be omitted as well as of what would have been said had the topic been pursued. In any case it caused her to sigh and mumble as she went on with her task of folding and unfolding and of examining textures and designs:

"Oh, how mixy! Such sixes and sevens! Everything the wrong way round! My poor Drusilla!—my poor little girlie! And such a good position! Just what she's capable of filling!—as well as Olivia—better, with all her experience of their army. ''Tis better to have loved and lost,' dear Tennyson says; but I don't know. Besides, she's done that already—with poor Gerald—and now, to have to face it all a second time—my poor little girlie!"

As for Olivia, she felt an overpowering desire to flee away. Speeding through the house, where workmen were nailing up cases or sacking rugs, she felt that she was fleeing—fleeing anywhere—anywhere—to hide herself. As a matter of fact, the flight was inward, for there was nowhere to go but to her room. Her way was down the short staircase from the attic and along a hall; but it seemed to her that she lived through a succession of emotional stages in the two or three minutes it took to cover it. Her first wild cry "It isn't true! It isn't true!" was followed by the question "Why shouldn't it be true?" to end with her asking herself: "What difference does it make to me?"

"What difference can it make to me?"

She had reached that form of the query by the time she took up her station at the window of her room, to stare blankly at the November landscape. She saw herself face to face now with the question which, during the past month, ever since Davenant's sudden disappearance, she had used all her resources to evade. That it would one day force itself upon her she knew well enough; but she hoped, too, that before there was time for that she would have pronounced her marriage vows, and so burned her bridges behind her. Amid the requirements of duty, which seemed to shift from week to week, the one thing stable was the necessity on her part to keep her promise to the man who had stood by her so nobly. If once it had seemed to her that Davenant's demands—whatever they might prove to be—would override all others, it was now quite clear that Ashley's claim on her stood first of all. He had been so loyal, so true, so indifferent to his own interests! Besides, he loved her. It was now quite another love from that of the romantic knight who had wooed a gracious lady in the little house at Southsea. That tapestry-tale had ended on the day of his arrival at Tory Hill. In its place there had risen the tested devotion of a man for a woman in great trouble, compelled to deal with the most sordid things in life. He had refused to be spared any of the details she would have saved him from or to turn away from any of the problems she was obliged to face. His very revolt against it, that repugnance to the necessity for doing it which he was not at all times able to conceal, made his self-command in bringing himself to it the more worthy of her esteem. He had the defects of his qualities and the prejudices of his class and profession; but over and above these pardonable failings he had the marks of a hero.

And now there was this thing!

She had descried it from afar. She had had a suspicion of it before Davenant went away. It had not created a fear; it was too strange and improbable for that; but it had brought with it a sense of wonder. She remembered the first time she had felt it, this sense of wonder, this sense of something enchanted, outside life and the earth's atmosphere. It was at that moment on the lawn when, after the unsuccessful meeting between Ashley and Davenant, she had turned with the latter to go into the house. That there was a protective, intimate element in her feeling she had known on the instant; but what she hadn't known on the instant, but was perfectly aware of now, was that her whole subconscious being, had been crying out even then: "My own! My own!"

With the exaggeration of this thought she was able to get herself in hand. She was able to debate so absurd a suggestion, to argue it down, and turn it into ridicule. But she yielded again as the Voice that talked with her urged the plea: "I didn't say you knew it consciously. You couldn't cry 'My own! My own!' to a man whom up to that point you had treated with disdain. But your subliminal being had begun to know him, to recognize him as—"

To elude this fancy she set herself to recapitulating his weak points. She could see why Ashley should thrust him aside as being "not a gentleman." He fell short, in two or three points, of the English standard. That he had little experience of life as it is lived, of its balance and proportion and perspective, was clear from the way in which he had flung himself and his money into the midst of the Guion disasters. No man of the world could possibly have done that. The very fact of his doing it made him lawfully a subject for some of the epithets Ashley applied to him. Almost any one would apply them who wanted to take him from a hostile point of view.

She forgot herself so far as to smile faintly. It was just the sort of deficiency which she had it in her power to make up. The reflection set her to dreaming when she wanted to be doing something else. She could have brought him the dower of all the things he didn't know, while he could give her.... But she caught herself again.

"What kind of a woman am I?"

She began to be afraid. She began to see in herself the type she most detested—the woman who could deliberately marry a man and not be loyal to him. She was on the threshold of marriage with Ashley, and she was thinking of the marvel of life with some one else. When one of the inner Voices denied this charge, another pressed it home by nailing the precise incident on which her heart had been dwelling. "You were thinking of this—of that—of the time on the stairs when, with his face close to yours, he asked you if you loved the man you'd be going away with—of the evening at the gate when your hand was in his and it was so hard to take it away. He has no position to offer you. There's nothing remarkable about him beyond a capacity for making money. He's beneath you from every point of view except that of his mere manhood, and yet you feel that you could let yourself slip into that—into the strength and peace of it—"

She caught herself again—impatiently. It was no use! There was something wilful within her, something that could be called by even a stronger name, that worked back to the point from which she tried to flee, whatever means she took to get away from it.

She returned to her work, persuading Cousin Cherry to go home to tea and leave her to finish the task alone. Even while she did so one of the inner Voices taunted her by saying: "That'll leave you all the more free to dream of—him."

* * * * *

Some days passed before she felt equal to talking about Davenant again. This time it was to the tinkling silver, as she and Drusilla Fane sorted spoons and forks at the sideboard in the dismantled dining-room. Olivia was moved to speak in the desperate hope that one stab from Drusilla—who might be in a position to deliver it—would free her from the obsession haunting her.

There had been a long silence, sufficiently occupied, it seemed, in laying out the different sorts and sizes of spoons in rows of a dozen, while Mrs. Fane did the same with the forks.

"Drusilla, did Mr. Davenant ever say anything to you about me?"

She was vexed with herself for the form of her question. It was not Davenant's feeling toward her, but toward Drusilla, that she wanted to know. She was drawing the fire in the wrong place. Mrs. Fane counted her dozen forks to the end before saying:

"Why, yes. We've spoken of you."

Having begun with a mistake, Olivia went on with it. "Did he say—anything in particular?"

"He said a good many things, on and off."

"Some of which might have been—in particular?"

"All of them, if it comes to that."

"Why did you never tell me?"

"For one reason, because you never asked me."

"Have you any idea why I'm asking you now?"

"Not the faintest. I dare say we sha'n't see anything more of him for years to come."

"Did you—did you—refuse him? Did you send him away?"

"Well, that's one thing I didn't have to do, thank the Lord. There was no necessity. I was afraid at one time that mother might make him propose to me—she's terribly subtle in that way, though you mightn't think it—but she didn't. No; if Peter's in love with any one, it's not with me."

Olivia braced herself to say, "And I hope it's not with me."

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."



XXII

Madame de Melcourt the chief novelty of American life, for the first few days at least, lay in the absence of any necessity for striving. To wake up in the morning into a society not keeping its heart hermetically shut against her was distinctly a new thing. Not to have to plan or push or struggle, to take snubs or repay them, to wriggle in where she was not wanted, or to keep people out where she had wriggled in, was really amusing. In the wide friendliness by which she found herself surrounded she had a droll sense of having reached some scholastic paradise painted by Puvis de Chavannes. She was even seated on a kind of throne, like Justitia or Sapientia, with all kinds of flattering, welcoming attentions both from old friends who could remember her when she had lived as a girl among them and new ones who were eager to take her into hospitable arms. It was decidedly funny. It was like getting into a sphere where all the wishes were gratified and there were no more worlds to conquer. It would pall in the end; in the end she would come to feel like a gourmet in a heaven where there is no eating, or an Englishman in some Blessed Isle where there is no sport; but for the moment it offered that refreshing change which strengthens the spirit for taking up the more serious things of life again. In any case, it put her into a good-humor of which the residents at Tory Hill were the first to feel the effect.

"Il est tres bien, ton Anglais."

Olivia acknowledged this approval with a smile and a blush, as she went about the drawing-room trying to give it something of its former air. With the new turn of events it had become necessary to restore the house to a condition fit for occupancy. Madame de Melcourt had moved into it with her maid and her man, announcing her intention to remain till she got ready to depart. Her bearing was that of Napoleon making a temporary stay in some German or Italian palace for the purposes of national reorganization and public weal. At the present instant she was enthroned amid cushions in a corner of the sofa, watching Olivia dispose of such bric-a-brac as had not been too remotely packed away.

"I always say," the old lady declared, "that when an Englishman is chic he's very chic, and your Ashley is no exception. I don't wonder you're in love with him."

When seated the Marquise accompanied her words with little jerkings and perkings of her fluffy head, with wavings of the hands and rollings of the eyes—the corelatives of her dartings and dashings while on her feet.

It was easy for Olivia to keep her back turned, while she managed to say: "He thinks you don't like him."

Madame shrugged her shoulders. "I like him as well as I could like any Englishman. He's very smart. You can see at a glance he's some one. From what I'd heard of him—his standing by you and all that—I was afraid he might be an eccentric."

"Whom did you hear it from?"

"Oh, I heard it. There's nothing wonderful in that. A thing that's been the talk of Boston and New York, and telegraphed to the London papers—you don't suppose I shouldn't hear of it some time. And I came right over—just as soon as I was convinced you needed me."

Olivia looked round with misty eyes. "I shall never forget it, Aunt Vic, dear—nor your kindness to papa. He feels it more than he can possibly express to you—your taking what he did so—so gently."

"Ma foi! The Guions must have money. When it comes to spending they're not morally responsible. I'm the only one among them who ever had a business head; and even with me, if it hadn't been for my wonderful Hamlet and Tecla—But you can see what I am at heart—throwing two million francs into your lap as if it were a box of bonbons."

"I'm not sure that you ought, you know."

"And what about the Guion family honor and all that? Who's to take care of it if I don't? The minute I heard what had happened I held up my head and said, Everything may go so long as the credit of the Guion name is saved. N'est-ce pas? We can't live in debt to the old man who advanced your papa the money."

"He isn't an old man at all," Olivia explained, quickly.

"Ca ne fait rien. His age isn't the question. I suppose he lent the money expecting us to pay him back at a handsome rate of interest."

"No, he didn't. That's just it. He lent it to us—out of—out of—"

"Yes; out of what?"

"Out of pure goodness," she said, firmly.

"Fiddle-faddle! People don't do things out of pure goodness. The man who seems to is either a sentimentalist or a knave. If he's a sentimentalist, he does it for effect; if he's a knave, because it helps roguery. There's always some ax to grind."

"I think you'd have to make an exception of Mr. Davenant."

"Davenant? Is that his name? Yes, I believe your papa did tell me so—the boy Tom Davenant fished out of the slums."

With some indignation Olivia told the story of Davenant's birth and adoption. "So you see," she went on, "he has goodness in his blood. There's no reason why that shouldn't be inherited as much as—as insanity—or a taste for alcohol."

"Stuff, dear! The man or the boy, or whatever he is, calculated on getting something better than he gave. We must simply pay him off and get rid of him. Noblesse oblige."

"We may get rid of him, Aunt Vic, but we can never pay him off."

"He'll be paid off, won't he, if we return his loan at an interest of five—I'm willing to say six—per cent.?"

Olivia came forward, looking distressed. "Oh, I hope you won't, dear Aunt Vic. I mean about the five or six per cent. Give him back his money if you will, only give it back in the—in the princely way in which he let us have it."

"Well, I call that princely—six per cent."

"Oh, please, Aunt Vic! You'd offend him. You'd hurt him. He's just the sort of big, sensitive creature that's most easily wounded, and—"

"Tiens! You interest me. Stop fidgeting round the room and come and tell me about him. Sit down," she commanded, pointing to the other corner of the sofa. "There must be a lot I haven't heard."

If Olivia hesitated, it was chiefly because of her own eagerness to talk of him, to sing his praises. Since, however, she must sooner or later learn to do this with self-possession, she fortified herself to begin. With occasional interruptions from her aunt she told the tale as she understood it, taking as point of departure the evening when Davenant came to dine at Tory Hill, on his return from his travels round the world.

"So there was a time when you didn't like him," was Madame de Melcourt's first comment.

"There was a time when I didn't understand him."

"But when you did understand him you changed your mind."

"I couldn't help it."

"And did you change anything more than your—mind?"

There was so much insinuation in the cracked voice that Olivia colored, in spite of the degree in which she thought herself armed against all surprises. It was a minute or more before she was prepared with an answer.

"I changed my attitude toward him. Before that I'd been hostile and insolent, and then—and then—I grew humble. Yes, Aunt Vic—humble. I grew more than humble. I came to feel—well, as you might feel if you'd struck a great St. Bernard dog who'd been rescuing you in the snow. There's something about him that makes you think of a St. Bernard—so big and true and loyal—"

"Did you ever think he might be in love with you?"

She was ready for this question, and had made up her mind to answer it frankly. "Yes. I was afraid he was advancing the money on that account. I felt so right up to—to a few days ago."

"And what happened then?"

"Drusilla told me he'd said he—wasn't."

Madame de Melcourt let that pass. "Did you think he'd fallen in love with you all of a sudden when he came that night to dinner?"

She resolved to tell the whole truth. "I'd known him before. He asked me to marry him years ago. And something happened. I hardly know how to tell you. I didn't answer him."

"Didn't answer him?"

"I got up and walked away, right in the middle of—of what he was trying to tell me."

"Ti-ens! And you had to take his money after all?"

Olivia bowed her head.

"Ca c'est trop fort," the old lady went on. "You're quite right then when you say you'll never be able to pay him off, even if you get rid of him. But he's paid you off, hasn't he? It's a more beautiful situation than I fancied. He didn't tell me that."

Olivia looked up. "He didn't tell you? Who?"

"Your papa," the old lady said, promptly. "It's perfectly lovely, isn't it? I should think when you meet him you must feel frightfully ashamed. Don't you?"

"I should if there wasn't something about him that—"

"And you'll never get over it," the old lady went on, pitilessly, "not even after you've married the other man. The humiliation will haunt you—toujours—toujours! N'est-ce pas? If it were I, I should want to marry a man I'd done a thing like that to—just to carry it off. But you can't, can you? You've got to marry the other man. Even if you weren't so horribly in love with him, you'd have to marry him, when he's stood by you like that. I should be ashamed of you if you didn't."

"Of course, Aunt Vic."

"If he were to back out that would be another thing. But as it is you've got to swallow your humiliation, with regard to this Davenant. Or, rather, you can't swallow it. You've simply got to live on it, so to speak. You'll never be able to forget for an hour of the day that you treated a man like that—and then took his money, will you? It isn't exactly like striking a St. Bernard who's rescuing you in the snow. It's like beating him first and then having him come and save you afterward. Oh, la la! Quelle drole de chose que la vie! Well, it's a good thing we can return his money, at the least."

"You're so good about that, dear Aunt Vic. I didn't understand I was to have it when I couldn't see my way to—to—"

"To marry Berteuil. That's all over and done with. I see you weren't made for life in the real world. Anyhow," she added, taking a virtuous air, "when my word was passed it was passed. Not that your dot will do you much good. It'll all have to go to settle the claims of this Mr.—By the way, where is he? Why doesn't he come and be paid?"

"He's out in Michigan, at a little place called Stoughton."

"Then send for him."

"I'm not sure we can get him. Cousin Cherry has written to him three times since he went away, and he doesn't answer."

"Cousin Cherry! What a goose! Who'd ever think she was the pretty Charlotte Hawke that Rodney Temple fell in love with. What's the matter with you, over here, that you all grow old at a minute's notice, so to speak? I never saw such a lot of frumps as the women who used to be my own contemporaries. Rodney and I were very good friends once. If I could only have settled down in humdrum old Waverton—but we'll let bygones be bygones, and send for your man."

"I'll ask Cousin Cherry to write to him again."

"Stuff, dear. That won't do any good. Wire him yourself, and tell him I'm here."

"Oh, but, Aunt Vic, dear."

With little perkings of the head and much rolling of the eyes the Marquise watched the warm color rise in Olivia's cheek and surge slowly upward to the temples. Madame de Melcourt made signs of trying to look anywhere and everywhere, up to the ceiling and down at the floor, rather than be a witness of so much embarrassment. She emphasized her discretion, too, by making a great show of seeing nothing in particular, toying with her rings and bracelets till Olivia had sufficiently recovered to be again commanded to send for Davenant.

"Tell him I'm here and that I want to have a look at him. Use my name so that he'll see it's urgent. Then you can sign the telegram with your own. Cousin Cherry! Stuff!"

* * * * *

Later that day Madame de Melcourt was making a confession to Rodney Temple.

"Oui, mon bon Rodney. It was love at first sight. The thing hadn't happened to me for years."

"Had it been in the habit of happening?"

"In the habit of happening—that's too much to say. I may have had a little toquade from time to time—I don't say no—of an innocence!—or nearly of an innocence!—Mais que voulez-vous?—a woman in my position!—a widow since I was so high!—and exposed to the most flattering attentions. You know nothing about it over here. L'amour est l'enfant de Boheme, as the song says, and, whatever you can say for Waverton and Cambridge and Boston, you'll admit—"

He leaned back in his rocking-chair with a laugh. "One does the best one can, Vic. We're children of opportunity as well as enfants de Boheme. If your chances have been more generous, and I presume more tempting, than ours, it isn't kind of you to come back and taunt us."

"Don't talk about tempting, Rodney. You can't imagine how tiresome those men become—always on the hunt for money—always trying to find a wife who'll support them without their having to work. I speak of the good people, of course. With the bourgeoisie it's different. They work and take care of their families like other people. Only they don't count. If I hadn't money—they'd slam the door on me like that." She indicated the violence of the act by gesture. "As it is, they smother me. There are three of them at Melcourt-le-Danois at this present moment—Anne Marie de Melcourt's two boys and one girl. They're all waiting for me to supply the funds with which they're to make rich marriages. Is it any wonder that I look upon what's done for my own niece as so much saved? Henry's getting into such a hole seemed to me providential—gives me the chance to snatch something away from them before they—and when it's to go ultimately to him—"

"The young fellow you've taken such a fancy to?"

"You'd have taken a fancy to him, too, if you'd known only men who make it a trade to ask all and give next to nothing in return. You'd be smitten to the core by a man who asks nothing and offers all, if he were as ugly as a gargoyle. But when he takes the form of a blond Hercules, with eyes blue as the myosotis, and a mustache—mais une moustache!—and with no idea whatever of the bigness of the thing he's doing! It was the thunderbolt, Rodney—le coup de foudre—and no wonder!"

"I hope you told him so."

"I was very stiff with him. I sent him about his business just like that." She snapped her fingers. "But I only meant it with reserves. I let him see how I had been wronged—how cruelly Olivia had misunderstood me—but I showed him, too, how I could forgive." She tore at her breast as though to lay bare her heart. "Oh, I impressed him—not all at once perhaps—but little by little—"

"As he came to know you."

"I wouldn't let him go away. He stayed at the inn in the village two weeks and more. It's an old chef of mine who keeps it. And I learned all his secrets. He thought he was throwing dust in my eyes, but he didn't throw a grain. As if I couldn't see who was in love with who—after all my experience! Ah, mon bon Rodney, if I'd been fifty years younger! And yet if I'd been fifty years younger, I shouldn't have judged him at his worth. He's the type to which you can do justice only when you've a standard of comparison, n'est-ce pas? It's in putting him beside other men—the best—even Ashley over there—that you see how big he is."

She tossed her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla, sitting by the tea-table at the other end of the room. Mrs. Temple had again found errands of mercy to insure her absence.

"Il est tres bien, cet Ashley," the Marquise continued, "chic—distinguished—no more like a wooden man than any other Englishman. Il est tres bien—but what a difference!—two natures—the one a mountain pool, fierce, deep, hemmed in all round—the other the great sea. Voila—Ashley et mon Davenant. And he helped me. He gave me courage to stand up against the Melcourt—to run away from them. Oh yes, we ran away—almost. I made a pretext for going to Paris—the old pretext, the dentist. They didn't suspect at my age—how should they?—or they wouldn't have let me come alone. Helie or Paul or Anne Marie would have come with me. Oh, they smother me! But we ran away. We took the train to Cherbourg, just like two eloping lovers—and the bateau de luxe, the Louisiana to New York. Mais helas!—"

She paused to laugh, and at the same time to dash away a tear. "At New York we parted, never to meet again—so he thinks. His work was done! He went straight to that funny place in Michigan to join his pal. He's there now—waiting to hear that Olivia has married her Englishman, as you might wait to hear that sentence of death on some one you were fond of had been carried out. Ah, mon Dieu, quel brave homme! I'm proud to belong to the people who produced him. I don't know that I ever was before."

"Oh, the world is full of brave fellows, when the moment comes to try them."

"Perhaps. I'm not convinced. What about him?" She flicked her hand again toward Ashley. "Would he stand a big test?"

"He's stood a good many of them, I understand. He's certainly been equal to his duty here."

"He's done what a gentleman couldn't help doing. That's something, but it's possible to ask more."

"I hope you're not going to ask it," he began, in some anxiety.

"He strikes me as a man who would grant what was wrung from him, while the other—my blond Hercules—gives royally, like a king."

"There's a soul that climbs as by a ladder, and there's a soul that soars naturally as a lark. I don't know that it matters which they do, so long as they both mount upward."

"We shall see."

"What shall we see? I hope you're not up to anything, Vic?"

With another jerk of her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla, she said, "That's the match that should have—"

But the old man was out of his seat. "You must excuse me now, Vic. I've some work to do."

"Yes, be off. Only—"

She put her forefinger on her lips, rolling her eyes under the brim of her extravagant hat with an expression intended to exclude from their pact of confidence not only the other two occupants of the room, but every one else.

Olivia received the reply to her telegram: "Shall arrive in Boston Wednesday night."

Considering it time to bring the purely financial side of the situation under discussion, Madame de Melcourt explained to her niece that she, the Marquise, had nothing to do, in her own person, with the extraordinary person who was about to arrive. Her part would be accomplished when once she had handed over the dot either to Olivia or to her trustees. As the passing of this sum through Miss Guion's hands was to be no more than a formality, the question of trustees was not worth taking up. With the transfer of securities for the amount agreed upon from the one name to the other—a piece of business which would be carried out by Davis & Stern—the Marquise considered that she would have done all for which she could be called upon. Everything else concerned Olivia and her father and Davenant. Her own interest in the young man would be satisfied with a glance of curiosity.

The brief conversation to this effect having taken place before luncheon, Madame de Melcourt pursued other aspects of the subject with Colonel Ashley when that repast was ended and coffee was being served to them in the library. Olivia having withdrawn to wait on her father, Madame de Melcourt bade him light his cigar while she herself puffed daintily at a cigarette. If she was a little grotesque in doing it, he had seen more than one elderly Englishwoman who, in the same pastime, was even more so.

Taking one thing with another, he liked his future great-aunt by marriage. That is, he liked a connection that would bring him into touch with such things in the world as he held to be important. While he had the scorn natural to the Englishman of the Service class for anything out of England that pretended to be an aristocracy, he admitted that the old French royalist cause had claims to distinction. The atmosphere of it clinging to one who was presumably in the heart of its counsels restored him to that view of his marriage as an alliance between high contracting powers which events in Boston had made so lamentably untenable. If he was disconcerted, it was by her odd way of keeping him at arm's-length.

"She doesn't like me, what?" he had more than once said to Olivia, and with some misgiving.

Olivia could only answer: "I think she must. She's said a good many times that you were chic and distinguished. That's a great deal for any Englishman from her."

"She acts as if she had something up her sleeve."

That had become something like a conviction with him; but to-day he flattered himself that he had made some progress in her graces. His own spirits, too, were so high that he could be affable to Guion, who appeared at table for the only time since the day of their first meeting. Hollow-checked, hollow-eyed, his figure shrunken, and his handsome hand grown so thin that the ring kept slipping from his finger, Guion essayed, in view of his powerful relative's vindication—for so he liked to think of it—to recapture some of his old elegance as a host. To this Ashley lent himself with entire good-will, taking Guion's timid claim for recognition as part of the new heaven and the new earth under process of construction. In this greatly improved universe Olivia, too, acquired in her lover's eyes a charm, a dignity, a softened grace beyond anything he had dreamed of. If she seemed older, graver, sadder perhaps, the change was natural to one who had passed through trials so sordid and so searching. A month of marriage, a month of England, would restore all her youth and freshness.

Nevertheless he was glad to be alone with Madame de Melcourt. It was the moment he had waited for, the moment of paying some fitting tribute to her generosity. He had said little of it hitherto, not wanting, as he put it, "to drag it in by the hair of its head." He knew an opportunity would arise; and it had arisen.

It was the sort of thing he could have done better had he not been haunted by the Englishman's fear of being over-demonstrative. He was easily capable of turning a nice little speech. Apart from the fear of transgressing the canons of negative good form he would have enjoyed turning one. As it was, he assumed a stammer and a drawl, jerking out a few inarticulate phrases of which the lady could distinguish only "so awfully good of you" and "never forget your jolly kindness." This being masculine, soldier-like, and British, he was hurt to notice an amused smile on the Marquise's lips. He could have sworn that she felt the speech inadequate to the occasion. She would probably have liked it better had it been garnished with American flourishes or French ornamentation. "She's taking me for a jolly ass," he said to himself, and reddened hotly.

In contrast to his deliberate insufficiency the old lady's thin voice was silvery and precise. Out of some bit of obscure wilfulness, roused by his being an Englishman, she accentuated her Parisian affectations.

"I'm very much delighted, Col-on-el," she said, giving the military title its three distinct French syllables, "but you must not think me better than I am. I'm very fond of my niece—and of her father. After all, they stand nearer to me than any one else in the world. They're all I've got of my very own. In any case, they should have had the money some day—when I—that is, I'd made my will n'est-ce pas? But what matters a little sooner or a little later? And I want my niece to be happy. I want a great many things; but when I've sifted them all, I think I want that more than anything else."

Ashley bowed. "We shall always feel greatly indebted—" he began, endeavoring to be more elegant than in his words of a few minutes earlier.

"I want her to be happy, Col-on-el. She deserves it. She's a noble creature, with a heart of gold and a spirit of iron. And she loves me, I think."

"I know she does, by Jove!"

"And I can't think of any one else who does love me for myself." She gave a thin, cackling laugh. "They love my money. Le bon Dieu has counted me worthy of having a good deal during these later years. And they're all very fond of it. But she's fond of me. I was very angry with her once; but now I want her to be happy with the man—with the man she's in love with. So when Mr. Davenant came and told me of your noble character—"

"The devil he did!"

Ashley sprang out of his chair. The cigar dropped from his limp fingers. In stooping to pick it up he caught the echo of his own exclamation. "I beg your pardon—" he began, when he had raised himself. He grew redder than ever; his eyes danced.

"Ca ne fait rien, Col-on-el. It's an expression of which I myself often use the equivalent—in French. But I don't wonder you're pleased. Your friend Mr. Davenant made the journey to Europe purposely to tell me how highly you were qualified as a suitor for my niece's hand. When one has a friend like that—"

"But he's not my friend."

"You surprise me, Col-on-el. He spoke of you with so much praise—so much affection, I might say. He said no one could be so worthy to marry my niece—no one could make her so happy—no one could give her such a distinguished position in the world—no one was so fine a fellow in his own person—"

He looked mystified. "But he's out there in Michigan—"

She puffed delicately at her cigarette. "He stayed with me two weeks at Melcourt-le-Danois. That is, he stayed at the inn in the village. It was the same thing. I was very angry with my niece before that. It was he who made me see differently. If it were not for him I shouldn't be here. He traveled to France expressly to beg my help—how shall I say?—on your behalf—in simplifying things—so that you and Olivia might be free from your sense of obligation to him—and might marry—"

"Did he say he was in love with her himself?"

She ignored the hoarse suffering in his voice to take another puff or two at her cigarette. "Ma foi, Col-on-el, he didn't have to."

"Did he say—" He swallowed hard, and began again, more hoarsely: "Did he say she was—in love with—with him?"

There was a hint of rebuke in her tone. "He's a very loyal gentleman. He didn't."

"Did he make you think—?"

"What he made me think, Col-on-el, is my own affair."

He jumped to his feet, throwing his cigar violently into the fire. For a minute or two he stood glaring at the embers. When he turned on her it was savagely.

"May I ask your motive in springing this on me, Marquise?"

"Mon Dieu, Col-on-el, I thought you'd like to know what a friend you have."

"Damn his friendship. That's not the reason. You've something up your sleeve."

She looked up at him innocently. "Have I? Then I must leave it to you to tell me what it is. But when you do," she added, smiling, "I hope you'll take another tone. In France men are gallant with women—"

"And in England women are straight with men. What they have to say they say. They don't lay snares, or lie in ambush."

She laughed. "Quant a cela, Col-on-el, il y en a pour tous les gouts, meme en Angleterre."

"I'll bid you good-by, madame."

He bowed stiffly, and went out into the hail. She continued to smoke daintily, pensively, while she listened to him noisily pulling on his overcoat and taking his stick from the stand. As he passed the library door he stopped on the threshold.

"By Gad, she's mine!" he said, fiercely.

She got up and went to him, taking him by the lapel of the coat. There was something like pity in her eyes as she said: "My poor fellow, nobody has raised that question. What's more, nobody will raise it—unless you do yourself."



XXIII

Ashley's craving was for space and air. He felt choked, strangled. There was a high wind blowing, carrying a sleety rain. It was a physical comfort to turn into the teeth of it.

He took a road straggling out of the town toward the remoter suburbs, and so into the country. He marched on, his eyes unseeing, his mouth set grimly—goaded by a kind of frenzy to run away from that which he knew he could not leave behind. It was like fleeing from something omnipresent. Though he should turn his back on it never so sternly and travel never so fast, it would be with him. It had already entered into his life as a constituent element; he could no more get rid of it than of his breath or his blood.

And yet the thing itself eluded him. In the very attempt to apprehend it by sight or name, he found it mysteriously beyond his grasp. It was like an enemy in the air, deadly but out of reach. It had struck him, though he could not as yet tell where. He could only stride onward through the wind and rain, as a man who has been shot can ride on till he falls.

So he tramped for an hour or more, finding himself at last amid bleak, dreary marshes, over which the November twilight was coming down. He felt lonely, desolate, far from his familiar things, far from home. His familiar things were his ambitions, as home was that life of well-ordered English dignity, in which to-morrow will bear some relation to to-day.

He felt used up by the succession of American shocks, of American violences. They had reduced him to a condition of bewilderment. For four or five weeks he had scarcely known from minute to minute where he stood. He had maintained his ground as best he was able, holding out for the moment when he could marry his wife and go his way; and now, when ostensibly the hour had come in which to do it, it was only that he might see confusion worse confounded.

He turned back toward the town. He did so with a feeling of futility in the act. Where should he go? What should he do? How was he to deal with this new, extraordinary feature in the case? It was impossible to return to Tory Hill, as if the Marquise had told him nothing, and equally impossible to make what she had said a point of departure for anything else. If he made it a point of departure for anything at all, it could only be for a step which his whole being rebelled against taking.

It was a solution of the instant's difficulties to avoid the turning to Tory Hill and go on to Drusilla Fane's. In the wind and rain and gathering darkness the thought of her fireside was cheering. She would understand him, too. She had always understood him. It was her knowledge of the English point of view that made her such an efficient pal. During all the trying four or five weeks through which he had passed she had been able to give him sympathetic support just where and when he needed it. It was something to know she would give it to him again.

As he told her of Davenant's journey to France he could see her eyes grow bigger and blacker than ever in the flickering firelight. She kept them on him all the while he talked. She kept them on him as from time to time she lifted her cup and sipped her tea.

"Then that's why he didn't answer mother's letters," she said, absently, when he had finished. "He wasn't there."

"He wasn't there, by Jove! And don't you see what a fix he's put me in?"

She replied, still absently: "I'm not sure that I do."

"He's given away the whole show to me. The question is now whether I can take it, what?"

"He hasn't given away anything you didn't have before."

"He's given away something he might perhaps have had himself."

She drew back into the shadow so that he might not see her coloring. She had only voice enough to say: "What makes you think so?"

"Don't you think so?"

"That's not a fair question."

"It's a vital one."

"To you—yes. But—"

"But not to you. Oh, I understand that well enough. But you've been such a good pal that I thought you might help me to see—"

"I'm afraid I can't help you to see anything. If I were to try I might mislead you."

"But you must know, by Jove! Two women can't be such pals as Olivia and you—"

"If I did know I shouldn't tell you. It's something you should find out for yourself."

"Find out! I've asked her."

"Well, if she's told you, isn't that enough?"

"It would be enough in England. But here, where words don't seem to have the same meaning as they do anywhere else—and surprises are sprung on you—and people have queer, complicated motives—and do preposterous, unexpected things—"

"Peter's going to see old Cousin Vic might be unexpected; but I don't think you can call it preposterous."

"It's preposterous to have another man racing about the world trying to do you good, by Jove!"

"He wasn't trying to do you good so much as not to do you harm. He thought he'd done that, apparently, by interfering with Cousin Henry's affairs in the first place. His asking the old Marquise to come to the rescue was only an attempt to make things easier for you."

He sprang to his feet. "And he's got me where I must either call his bluff or—or—or accept his beastly sacrifice."

He tugged fiercely, first at one end, then at the other, of the bristling, horizontal mustache. Drusilla tried to speak calmly.

"He's not making a sacrifice if there was nothing for him to give up."

"That's what I must find out."

She considered it only loyal to say: "It's well to remember that in making the attempt you may do more harm than good. 'Where the apple reddens, never pry, lest we lose our Edens'—You know the warning."

"Yes, I know. That's Browning. In other words, it means, let well enough alone."

"Which isn't bad advice, you know."

"Which isn't bad advice—except in love. Love won't put up with reserves. It must have all—or it will take nothing."

He dropped into a low chair at the corner of the hearth. Wielding the poker in both hands, he knocked sparks idly from a smoldering log. It was some minutes before she ventured to say:

"And suppose you discovered that you couldn't get all?"

"I've thought that out. I should go home, and ask to be allowed to join the first punitive expedition sent out—one of those jolly little parties from which they don't expect more than half the number to come back. There's one just starting now—against the Carrals—up on the Tibet frontier. I dare say I could catch it."

Again some minutes went by before she said: "Is it as bad as all that?"

"It's as bad as all that."

She got up because she could no longer sit still. His pain was almost more than she could bear. At the moment she would have given life just to be allowed to lay her hand soothingly on his shoulder or to stroke his bowed head. As it was, she could barely give herself the privilege of taking one step toward him, and even in doing this she was compelled to keep behind him, lest she should betray herself in the approach.

"Couldn't I—?"

The offer of help was in the tone, in its timid beseeching.

He understood it, and shook his head without looking up.

"No," he said, briefly. "No. No one can."

She remained standing behind him, because she hadn't the strength to go away. He continued to knock sparks from the log. Repulsed from the sphere of his suffering, she was thrown back on her own. She wondered how long she should stand there, how long he would sit, bending like that, over the dying fire. It was the most intolerable minute of her life, and yet he didn't know it. Just for the instant she resented that—that while he could get the relief of openness and speech, she must be condemned forever to shame and silence. If she could have thrown herself on her knees beside him and flung her arms about his neck, crying, "I love you; I love you! Whoever doesn't—I do!—I do!" she would have felt that life had reached fruition.

The minutes became more unendurable. In sheer self-defense she was obliged to move, to say something, to break the tensity of the strain. One step—the single step by which she had dared to draw nearer him, stretching out yearning hands toward him—one step sufficed to take her back to the world of conventionalities and commonplaces, where the heart's aching is taboo.

She must say something, no matter what, and the words that came were: "Won't you have another cup of tea?"

He shook his head, still without looking up. "Thanks; no."

But she was back again on her own ground, back from the land of enchantment and anguish. It was like returning to an empty home after a journey of poignant romance. She was mistress of herself again, mistress of her secret and her loneliness. She could command her voice, too. She could hear herself saying, as if some one else were speaking from the other side of the room:

"It seems to me you take it too tragically to begin with—"

"It isn't to begin with. I saw there was a screw loose from the first. And since then some one has told me that she was—half in love with him, by Jove!—as it was."

She remained standing beside the tea-table. "That must have been Cousin Henry. He'd have a motive in thinking so—not so much to deceive you as to deceive himself. But if it's any comfort to you to know it, I've talked to them both. I suppose they spoke to me confidentially, and I haven't felt justified in betraying them. But rather than see you suffer—"

He put the poker in its place among the fire-irons and swung round in his chair toward her. "Oh, I say! It isn't suffering, you know. That is, it isn't—"

She smiled feebly. "Oh, I know what it is. You don't have to explain. But I'll tell you. I asked Peter—or practically asked him—some time ago—if he was in love with her—and he said he wasn't."

His face brightened. "Did he, by Jove?"

"And when I told her that—the other day—she said—"

"Yes? Yes? She said—?"

"She didn't put it in so many words—but she gave me to understand—or tried to give me to understand—that it was a relief to her—because, in that case, she wasn't obliged to have him on her mind. A woman has those things on her mind, you know, about one man when she loves another."

He jumped up. "I say! You're a good pal. I shall never forget it."

He came toward her, but she stepped back at his approach. She was more sure of herself in the shadow.

"Oh, it's nothing—"

"You see," he tried to explain, "it's this way with me. I've made it a rule in my life to do—well, a little more than the right thing—to do the high thing, if you understand—and that fellow has a way of getting so damnably on top. I can't allow it, you know. I told you so the other day."

"You mean, if he does something fine, you must do something finer."

He winced at this. "I can't go on swallowing his beastly favors, don't you see? And hang it all! if he is—if he is my—my rival—he must have a show."

"And how are you going to give him a show if he won't take it?"

He started to pace up and down the room. "That's your beastly America, where everything goes by freaks—where everything is queer and inconsequent and tortuous, and you can't pin any one down."

"It seems to me, on the contrary, that you have every one pinned down. You've got everything your own way, and yet you aren't satisfied. Peter has taken himself off; old Cousin Vic has paid the debts; and Olivia is ready to go to church and marry you on the first convenient day. What more can you ask?"

"That's what she said, by Jove!—the old Marquise. She said the question would never be raised unless I raised it."

Drusilla tried to laugh. "Eh, bien? as she'd say herself."

He paused in front of her. "Eh, bien, there is something else; and," he added, tapping his forehead sharply, "I'll be hanged if I know what it is."

She was about to say something more when the sound of the shutting of the street door stopped her. There was much puffing and stamping, with shouts for Jane to come and take an umbrella.

"I say, that's your governor. I'll go and talk to him."

He went without another look at her. She steadied herself with the tips of her fingers on the tea-table, in order not to swoon. She knew she wouldn't swoon; she only felt like it, or like dying. But all she could do was limply to pour herself out an extra cup of tea and drink it.

* * * * *

In the library Ashley was taking heart of grace. He had come to ask advice, but he was really pointing out the things that were in his favor. He repeated Drusilla's summing-up of them almost word for word.

"You see, as far as that goes, I've everything my own way. No question will be raised unless I raise it. The fellow has taken himself off; the Marquise has most generally assumed the family liabilities; and Olivia is ready to come to church with me and be married on the first convenient day. I should be satisfied with that, now shouldn't I?"

The old man nodded. "Your difficulties do seem to have been smoothed out."

He sat, fitting the tips of his fingers together and swinging his leg, in his desk-chair. The light of the green-shaded desk-lamp alone lit up the room. In the semi-obscurity porcelains and potteries gleamed like crystals in a cave. Ashley paced the floor, emerging from minute to minute out of the gloom into the radiance of the lamp.

"I'm not called on to go poking behind things to see what's there, now am I?"

"Not in the least."

"I'm willing to consider every one, and I think I do. But there are limits, by Jove! Now, really?"

"The minute we recognize limits it's our duty not to go beyond them. It's thus far and no farther—for the man who knows the stretch of his tether, at any rate. The trouble with Peter is that his tether is elastic. It'll spin out as far as he sees the need to go. For the rest of us there are limits, as you say; but about him there's something—something you might call limitless."

Ashley rounded sharply. "You mean he's so big that no one can be bigger."

"Not exactly. I mean that very few of us need to be as big as that. It's all very well for him; but most of us have to keep within the measure of our own capacity."