Chapter 23

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 Olivia having withdrawn to wait on her father, Madame de Melcourt bade him light his cigar while she herself puffed daintily at a cigarette.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.

"Ça 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 à cela, Col-on-el, il y en a pour tous les goûts, même 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."

"And sit down under him, while he looms up into God knows where?"

"Well, wouldn't that be your idea?"

"Can't say that it is. My idea is that when I take my rights and keep them, I'm as big as any one."

"Quite so; as big as any one--who takes his rights and keeps them. That's very true."