Chapter 19

"You may understand this," she said, keeping her voice as much under control as possible, "you may understand this, that I don't know whom I'm in love with, or whether or not I'm in love with any one. That's the best I can say. I'm sorry, Rupert--but I don't think it's altogether my fault. Papa's troubles seem to have transported me into a world where they neither marry nor are given in marriage--where the whole subject is alien to--"

"But you said," he protested, bitterly, "no longer ago than yesterday that you--_loved_ me."

"And I suppose I do. I did in Southsea. I did--right up to the minute when I learned what papa--and I--had been doing all these years--and that if the law had been put in force--You see, that's made me feel as if I were benumbed--as if I were frozen--or dead. You mustn't blame me too much--"

"My darling, I'm not blaming you. I'm not such a duffer but that I can understand how you feel. It'll be all right. You'll come round. This is like an illness, by Jove!--that's what it's like. But you'll get better, dear. After we're married--if you'll _only_ marry me--"

"I said I'd do that, Rupert--I said it yesterday--if you'd give up--what I understand you _have_ given up--"

He was on his guard against admitting this. "I haven't given it up. They've made it impossible for me to do it; that's all. It's their action, not mine."

"It comes to the same thing. I'm ready to keep my promise."

"You don't say it with much enthusiasm."

"Perhaps I say it with something better. I think I do. At the same time I wish--"

"You wish what?"

"I wish I had attached another condition to it."

"It mayn't be too late for that even now. Let's have it."

"If I had thought of it," she said, with a faint, uncertain smile, "I should have exacted a promise that you and he should be--friends."

He spoke sharply. "Who? Me? That's a good 'un, by Jove! You may as well understand me, dear, once and for all. I don't make friends of cow-punchers of that sort."

"I do," she said, coldly, turning again to her note-book.

* * * * *

It was not strange that Ashley should pass the remainder of the day in a state of irritation against what he called "this American way of doing things." Neither was it strange that when, after dinner in the evening, Davenant kept close to him as they were leaving Rodney Temple's house, the act should have struck the Englishman as a bit of odious presumption. Having tried vainly to shake his companion off, he was obliged to submit to walking along the Embankment with him, side by side.

He had not found the dinner an entertaining event. Drusilla talked a great deal, but was uneasy and distraite. Rodney Temple seemed to him "a queer old cove," while Mrs. Temple made no impression on him at all. Olivia had urged her inability to leave her father as an excuse for not coming. Davenant said little beyond giving the information that he was taking leave of his host and hostess to sleep that night in his old quarters in Boston and proceed next day to Stoughton, Michigan. This fact gave him a pretext for saying good night when Ashley did and leaving the house in his company.

"We're going the same way, aren't we?" he asked, as soon as they were outside.

"No," Ashley said, promptly; "you're taking the tram, and I shall walk."

"I should like to walk, too, Colonel, if you don't mind."

Since silence raised the most telling objection, Ashley made no reply. Taking out his cigarette-case, he lit a cigarette, without offering one to his companion. The discourtesy was significant, but Davenant ignored it, commenting on the extraordinary mildness of the October night and giving items of information as to the normal behavior of American autumn weather. As Ashley expressed no appreciation of these data, the subject was dropped. There was a long silence before Davenant nerved himself to begin on the topic he had sought this opportunity to broach.

"You said yesterday, Colonel, that you'd like to pay me back the money I've advanced to Mr. Guion. I'd just as soon you wouldn't, you know."

Ashley deigned no answer. The tramp went on in silence broken only by distant voices or a snatch of song from a students' club-house near the river. Somewhere in the direction of Brookline a locomotive kept up a puffing like the beating of a pulse.

"I don't need that money," Davenant began again. "There's more where it came from. I shall be out after it--from to-morrow on."

Ashley's silence was less from rudeness than from self-restraint. All his nerves were taut with the need to visit his troubles on some one's head. A soldiering life had not accustomed him to indefinite repression of his irritable impulses, and now after two or three days of it he was at the limit of his powers. It was partly because he knew his patience to be nearly at an end that he wanted to be alone. It was also because he was afraid of the blind fury with which Davenant's mere presence inspired him. While he expressed this fury to himself in epithets of scorn, he was aware, too, that there were shades of animosity in it for which he had no ready supply of terms. Such exclamatory fragments as forced themselves up through the troubled incoherence of his thoughts were of the nature of "damned American," "vulgar Yankee," "insolent bounder," rendering but inadequately the sentiments of a certain kind of Englishman toward his fancied typical American, a crafty Colossus who accomplishes everything by money and brutal strength. Had there been nothing whatever to create a special antagonism between them, Ashley's feeling toward Davenant would still have been that of a civilized Jack-the-Giant-Killer toward a stupendous, uncouth foe. It would have had elements in it of fear, jealousy, even of admiration, making at its best for suspicion and neutrality, and at its worst for.... But Davenant spoke again.

"I'd a great deal rather, Colonel, that--"

The very sound of his voice, with its harsh consonants and its absurd repetitions of the military title, grated insufferably on Ashley's ear. He was beyond himself although he seemed cool.

"My good fellow, I don't care a hang what you'd a great deal rather."

Ashley lit a fresh cigarette with the end of the old one, throwing the stump into the river almost across Davenant's face, as the latter walked the nearer to the railing.

The American turned slightly and looked down. The action, taken in conjunction with his height and size and his refusal to be moved, intensified Ashley's rage, which began now to round on himself. Even the monotonous tramp-tramp of their footsteps, as the Embankment became more deserted, got on his nerves. It was long before Davenant made a new attempt to fulfil his mission.

"In saying what I said just now," he began, in what he tried to make a reasonable tone, "I've no ax to grind for myself. If Miss Guion--"

"We'll leave that name out," Ashley cried, sharply. "Only a damned cad would introduce it."

Though the movement with which Davenant swung his left arm through the darkness and with the back of his left hand struck Ashley on the mouth was so sudden as to surprise no one more than himself, it came with all the cumulative effect of twenty-four hours' brooding. The same might be said of the spring with which Ashley bounded on his adversary. It had the agility and strength of a leopard's. Before Davenant had time to realize what he had done he found himself staggering--hurled against the iron railing, which threatened to give way beneath his weight. He had not taken breath when he was flung again. In the dim light of the electrics he could see the glare in Ashley's eyes and hear him panting. Davenant, too, panted, but his wrath that had flared up like a rocket had already come down like a stick.

"Look here," he stammered; "we--we--c-can't do this sort of thing."

Ashley fell back. He, too, seemed to realize quickly the folly of the situation. When he spoke it was less in anger than in protest.

"By God, you struck me!"

"I didn't know it, Colonel. If I did, we're quits on it--because--because you insulted me. Perhaps you didn't know _that_. I'm willing to think you didn't--if you'll only believe that the whole thing has been a mistake--a damned, idiotic, tom-fool mistake."

The words had their effect. Ashley fell back still farther. There was a sinking of his head and a shrinking of his figure that told of reaction from the moment of physical excess.

A roadside bench was visible beneath an arc-lamp but a few yards away. "Come and sit down," Davenant said, hoarsely. He found it difficult to speak.

Ashley stumbled along. He sat down heavily, like a man spent with fatigue or drink. With his elbows on his knees, he hid his face in his hands, while his body rocked.

Davenant turned away, walking down the Embankment. He walked on for fifty or sixty yards. He himself felt a curious sense of being battered and used up. His heart pounded and the perspiration stood on his brow. Putting his hand to his collar, he found his evening cravat awry and his waistcoat pulled out of shape.

He grasped the rail, as if for support, looking off with unseeing eyes into the night. Lights along the river-side were reflected in the water; here and there a bridge made a long low arch of lamps; more lights sprinkled the suburban hills, making a fringe to the pall of stars. They grew pale, even while he looked at them, as before a brighter radiance, and he knew that behind him the moon was coming up. He thought of the moonrise of the previous evening, when Olivia Guion had walked with him to the gate and let her hand rest in his. He recalled her words, as he had recalled them a hundred times that day, "_The man I care for_." He went back over each phase of their conversation, as though it was something he was trying to learn by heart. He remembered her longing for her aunt de Melcourt.

All at once he struck the railing with the energy of a man who has a new inspiration. "By George!" he said, half aloud, "that's an idea--that's certainly an idea! I wonder if.... The _Indiana_ sailed last week ... it ought to be the turn of the _Louisiana_ the day after to-morrow. By George, I believe I could make it if ..."

He hurried back to the bench where Ashley was still sitting. The latter was upright now, his arm stretched along the back. He had lit a cigarette.

Davenant approached to within a few feet. "Look here, Colonel," he said, gently, "we've got to forget this evening."

It was a minute or two before Ashley said: "What's the good of forgetting one thing when there are so many others to remember?"

"Perhaps we can forget them, too--one by one. I guess you haven't understood me. I dare say I haven't understood you, either, though I think I could if you'd give me a chance. But all I want to say is this, that I'm--off--"

Ashley turned quickly. "Off? Where?"

"Where we're not likely to meet--for some little time--again."

"Oh, but I say! You can't--"

"Can't what, Colonel?"

"Can't drop--drop out of the running--damn it all, man! you can't--you can't--let it be a walk-over for _me_--after all that's--"

"That's where you've made your mistake, Colonel, I guess. You thought there was--was a--a race, so to speak--and that I was in it. Well, I wasn't?"

"But what the deuce--?"

"I not only wasn't in it--but there was no race. There never was. It was a walk-over for--for some one--from the start. Now I guess I'll say good night."

He turned away abruptly, but, having taken a few steps, came back again.

"Look here! Let's have a cigarette."

Ashley fumbled for his case, opened it, and held it up. "I say, take two or three."

As Ashley lifted the one he was smoking to serve as a light Davenant noticed that the hand trembled, and steadied it in the grasp of his own.

"Thanks; and good night again," he said, briefly, as he strode finally away into the darkness.

XX

It was not till the motor had actually got out of Havre and was well along the dusty white road to the château that Davenant began to have misgivings. Up to that point the landmarks--and and the sea-marks--had been familiar. On board the _Louisiana_, in London, in Paris, even in Havre, he had felt himself on his accustomed beat. On steamers or trains and in hotels he had that kind of confidence in himself which, failing him somewhat whenever he entered the precincts of domestic life, was sure to desert him altogether now, as he approached the strange and imposing.

"Madame est à la campagne."

A black-eyed old woman had told him so on the previous day. For the instant he was relieved, since it put off the moment of confronting the great lady a little longer.

He had, in fact, rung the bell at the frowning portal in the rue de l'Université with some trepidation. Suggestions of grandeur and mystery beyond anything he was prepared to meet lay within these seemingly fortified walls. At the same time it gave glory to the glamour in which the image of Olivia Guion always appeared to him to think she had passed and repassed these solemn gates at will, and that the stately Louis Quinze _hôtel_, of which the concierge allowed him a glimpse across the courtyard, had, on and off, been her home for years. It was one more detail that removed her beyond his sphere and made her inaccessible to his yearnings.

From the obliging post-office clerk at the bank on which he drew--a gentleman posted in the movements of all distinguished Americans on the continent of Europe--he learned that "la campagne" for the Marquise de Melcourt meant the château of Melcourt-le-Danois in the neighborhood of Harfleur. He was informed, moreover, that by taking the two-o'clock train to Havre he could sleep that night at the Hôtel Frascati, and motor out to Melcourt easily within an hour in the morning. It began then to occur to him that what had presented itself at first as a prosaic journey from Boston to Paris and back was becoming an adventure, with a background of castles and noble dames.

Nevertheless, he took heart for the run to Havre, and except for feeling at twilight the wistfulness that comes out of the Norman landscape--the melancholy of things forgotten but not gone, dead but still brooding wraith-like over the valley of the Seine, haunting the hoary churches, and the turreted châteaux, and the windings of the river, and the long lines of poplar, and the villages and forests and orchards and corn-fields--except for this, his spirits were good. If now and then he was appalled at what he, a shy fellow with no antecedents to recommend him and no persuasive powers, had undertaken, he thought of Olivia Guion. The thing he was attempting became trivial when compared with the possible benefits to her.

That reflections too, enabled him to come victoriously out of three long hours of inward wrestling--three long hours spent on the jetty which thrust itself into the sea just outside his hotel at Havre. He supposed he had already fought the battle with himself and won it. Its renewal on the part of powers within his soul took him by surprise.

He had strolled out after dinner to the Chaussée des États-Unis to while away the time before going to bed. Ships and sailors, with the lights and sights and sounds of a busy port, had for him the fascination they exert over most men who lead rather sedentary lives. At that time in the evening the Chaussée des États-Unis was naturally gay with the landsman's welcome to the sailor on shore. The cafés were crowded both inside and out. Singing came from one and the twang of an instrument from another, all along the quay. Soldiers mingled fraternally with sailors, and pretty young women, mostly bareheaded and neatly dressed in black, mingled with both. It was what a fastidious observer of life might call "low," but Davenant's judgments had no severity of that kind. He looked at the merry groups, composed for the most part of chance acquaintances, here to-day and gone to-morrow, swift and light of love, with a curious craving for fellowship. From the gatherings of friends he felt himself invariably the one shut out.

It was this sense of exclusion that finally sent him away from the cheerful quay to wander down the jetty which marks the line where the Harbor of Grace, with its intricate series of basins and docks, becomes the sea. It was a mild night, though the waves beat noisily enough against the bastions of the pier. At intervals he was swept by a scud of spray. All sorts of acrid odors were in the wind--smells of tar and salt and hemp and smoke and oil--the perfumes of sea-hazard and romance.

Pulling his cap over his brows and the collar of his ulster about his ears, he sat down on the stone coping. His shoulders were hunched; his hands hung between his knees. He did not care to smoke. For a few minutes he was sufficiently occupied in tracing the lines and the groupings of lights. He had been in Havre more than once before, and knew the quai de Londres from the quai de New York, and both from the quai du Chili. Across the mouth of the Seine he could distinguish the misty radiance which must be Trouville from that which must be Honfleur. Directly under his eyes in the Avant Port the dim hulls of steamers and war-ships, fishing-boats and tugs, lay like monsters asleep.

There was no reason why all this should make him feel outside [Transcriber's Note: Original reads 'outide'] the warm glow and life of things; but it did. It did worse in that it inspired a longing for what he knew positively to be unattainable. It stirred a new impulse to fight for what he had definitely given up. It raised again questions he thought he had answered and revived hopes he had never had to quench, since from the beginning they were vain.

_Were_ they vain? In taking this form the query became more insidious--more difficult to debate and settle once for all. To every argument there was a perpetually recurring, "Yes, but--" with the memory of the instants when her hand rested in his longer than there was any need for, of certain looks and lights in her eyes, of certain tones and half-tones in her voice. Other men would have made these things a beginning, whereas he had taken them as the end. He had taken them as the end by a foregone conclusion. They had meant so much to him that he couldn't conceive of asking more, when perhaps they were nothing but the first fruits.

The wind increased in violence; the spray was salt on his mustache, and clung to the nap of his clothing. The radiance that marked Trouville and Honfleur grew dim almost to extinction. Along the quay the cafés began to diminish the number of their lights. The cheerful groups broke up, strolling home to the mansard or to the fo'castle, with bursts of drunken or drowsy song. Davenant continued to sit crouched, huddled, bowed. He ceased to argue, or to follow the conflict between self-interest and duty, or to put up a fight of any kind. He was content to sit still and suffer. In its own way suffering was a relief. It was the first time he had given it a chance since he had brought himself to facing squarely the fact of his useless, pointless love. He had always dodged it by finding something to be done, or choked it down by sheer force of will. Now he let it rush in on him, all through him, all over him, flooding his mind and spirit, making his heart swell and his blood surge and his nerves ache and his limbs throb and quiver. If he could have formed a thought it would have been that of the Hebrew Psalmist when he felt himself poured out like water. He had neither shame for his manhood nor alarm for his pride till he heard himself panting, panting raucously, with a sound that was neither a moan nor a sob, but which racked him convulsively, while there was a hot smarting in his eyes.

But in the end he found relief and worked his way out to a sort of victory. That is to say, he came back to see, as he had seen all along, that there was one clear duty to be done. If he loved Olivia Guion with a love that was worthy to win, it must also be with a love that could lose courageously. This was no new discovery. It was only a fact which loneliness and the craving to be something to her, as she was everything to him, had caused him for the moment to lose sight of. But he came back to it with conviction. It was conviction that gave him confidence, that calmed him, enabling him, as a clock somewhere struck eleven, to get up, shake the sea-spray from his person, and return to his hotel.

It was while he was going to bed that Rodney Temple's words came back to him, as they did from time to time: "Some call it God."

"I wonder if it is--God," he questioned.

* * * * *

But the misgiving that beset him, as he motored out of Havre in the morning, was of another kind. It was that which attaches to the unlikely and the queer. Once having plunged into a country road, away from railways and hotels, he felt himself starting on a wild-goose chase. His assurance waned in proportion as conditions grew stranger. In vain an obliging chauffeur, accustomed to enlighten tourists as to the merits of this highway, pointed out the fact that the dusty road along which they sped had once--and not so many years ago--been the border of the bed of the Seine, that the white cliffs towering above them on the left, and edged along the top with verdure, marked the natural brink of the river, and that the church so admirably placed on a hillside was the shrine of a martyred maiden saint, whose body had come ashore here at Graville, having been flung into the water at Harfleur. Davenant was deaf to these interesting bits of information. He was blind, too. He was blind to the noble sweep of the Seine between soft green hills. He was blind to the craft on its bosom--steamers laden with the produce of orchard and the farm for England; Norwegian brigantines, weird as _The Flying Dutchman_ in their black and white paint, carrying ice or lumber to Rouen; fishing-boats with red or umber sails. He was blind to the villages, clambering over cliffs to a casino, a _plage_, and a Hôtel des Bains, or nestling on the uplands round a spire. He was blind to the picturesque wooded gorges, through which little tributaries of the great river had once run violently down from the table-land of the Pays de Caux. He was blind to the charms of Harfleur, famous and somnolent, on the banks of a still more somnolent stream. He resumed the working of his faculties only when the chauffeur turned and said:

"Voilà, monsieur--voilà le château de madame la marquise."

If it was possible for Davenant's heart to leap and sink in the same instant, it did it then. It leaped at the sight of this white and rose castle, with its towers and donjon and keep; it sank at the thought that he, poor old unpretentious Peter Davenant, with no social or personal passports of any kind, must force his way over drawbridge and beneath portcullis--or whatever else might be the method of entering a feudal pile--into the presence of the châtelaine whose abode here must be that of some legendary princess, and bend her to his will. Stray memories came to him of Siegfrieds and Prince Charmings, with a natural gift for this sort of thing, but only to make his own appearance in the rôle the more absurd.