Chapter 7

"No, I don't. Why should you feel your way? You're not blind."

"I feel my way because I don't see it."

"Oh yes, you do--all you need to see."

"But I don't see any. I assure you it's all confusion."

"Not a bit, my dear. It's as plain as a pikestaff--for the next step."

"I don't know what you mean by the next step."

"I suppose the next step would be--well, let us say what you've got to do to-day. That's about as much ground as any one can cover with a stride. You see that, don't you? You've got to eat your dinner, and go to bed. That's all you've got to settle for the moment."

Her lips relaxed in a pale smile. "I'm afraid I must look a little farther ahead than that."

"What for? What good will it do? You won't see anything straight. It's no use trying to see daylight two hours before dawn. People are foolish enough sometimes to make the attempt, but they only strain their eyesight. For every step you've got to take there'll be something to show you the line to follow."

"What?" She asked the question chiefly for the sake of humoring him. She was not susceptible to this kind of comfort, nor did she feel the need of it.

"W-well," the old man answered, slowly, "it isn't easy to tell you in any language you'd understand."

"I can understand plain English, if that would do."

"You can make it do, but it doesn't do very well. It's really one of those things that require what the primitive Christians called an unknown tongue. Since we haven't got that as a means of communication--" He broke off, stroking his long beard with a big handsome hand, but presently began again.

"Some people call it a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Some people have described it by other figures of speech. The description isn't of importance--it's the _Thing_."

She waited a minute, before saying in a tone that had some awe in it, as well as some impatience: "Oh, but I've never seen anything like that. I never expect to."

"That's a pity; because it's there."

"There? Where?"

"Just where one would look for it--if one looked at all. When it moves," he went on, his hand suiting the action to the word, on a level with his eyes, "when it moves, you follow it, and when it rests, you wait. It's possible--I don't know--I merely throw out the suggestion--no one can really _know_ but yourself, because no one but yourself can see it--but it's possible that at this moment--for you--it's standing still."

"I don't know what I gain either by its moving or its standing still, so long as I don't see it."

"No, neither do I," he assented, promptly.

"Well, then?" she questioned.

"Shall I tell you a little story?" He smiled at her behind his stringy, sandy beard, while his kind old eyes blinked wistfully.

"If you like. I shall be happy to hear it." She was not enthusiastic. She was too deeply engrossed with pressing, practical questions to find his mysticism greatly to the point.

He took a turn around the drawing-room before beginning, stopping to caress the glaze of one of the K'ang-hsi vases on the mantelpiece, while he arranged his thoughts.

"There was once a little people," he began, turning round to where she sat in the corner of a sofa, her hands clasped in her lap--"there was once a little people--a mere handful, who afterward became a race--who saw the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and followed it. That is to say, some of them certainly saw it, enough of them to lead the others on. For a generation or two they were little more than a band of nomads; but at last they came to a land where they fought and conquered and settled down."

"Yes? I seem to have heard of them. Please go on."

"It was a little land, rather curiously situated between the Orient and the West, between the desert and the sea. It had great advantages both for seclusion within itself and communication with the world outside. If a divine power had wanted to nourish a tender shoot, till it grew strong enough to ripen seed that would blow readily into every corner of the globe, it probably couldn't have done better than to have planted it just there."

She nodded, to show that she followed him.

"But this little land had also the dangers attendant on its advantages. To the north of it there developed a great power; to the south of it another. Each turned greedy eyes on the little buffer state. And the little buffer state began to be very wise and politic and energetic. It said, 'If we don't begin to take active measures, the Assyrian, or the Egyptian, whoever gets here first, will eat us up. But if we buy off the one, he will protect us against the other.'"

"That seems reasonable."

"Yes; quite reasonable: too reasonable. They forgot that a power that could lead them by fire and cloud could protect them even against conscript troops and modern methods of fighting. They forgot that if so much trouble had been taken to put them where they were, it was not that--assuming that they behaved themselves--it was not that they might be easily rooted out. Instead of having confidence within they looked for an ally from without, and chose Egypt. Very clever; very diplomatic. There was only one criticism to be made on the course taken--that it was all wrong. There was a man on the spot to tell them so--one of those fellows whom we should call pessimists if we hadn't been taught to speak of them as prophets. 'You are carrying your riches,' he cried to them, 'on the shoulders of young asses, and your treasures on the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit you. For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose. Your strength is--_to sit still_!'" As he stood looking down at her his kindly eyes blinked for a minute longer, before he added, "Do you see the point?"

She smiled and nodded. "Yes. It isn't very obscure. Otherwise expressed it might be, When in doubt, do nothing."

"Exactly; do nothing--till the pillar of cloud begins to move."

Out of the old man's parable she extracted just one hint that she considered useful. In the letter which she proceeded to write Rupert Ashley as soon as she was alone, a letter that would meet him on his arrival in New York, she gave a statement of such facts as had come to her knowledge, but abstained from comments of her own, and from suggestions. She had intended to make both. She had thought it at first her duty to take the initiative in pointing out the gulf of difficulties that had suddenly opened up between her lover and herself. It occurred to her now that she might possibly discern the leading of the pillar of cloud from self-betrayal on his part. She would note carefully his acts, his words, the expressions of his face. She had little doubt of being able to read in them some indication of her duty. This in itself was a relief. It was like being able to learn a language instead of having to invent one. Nevertheless, as she finished her letter she was impelled to add:

"We have asked some three hundred people to the church for the 28th. Many of them will not be in town, as the season is still so early; but I think it wisest to withdraw all invitations without consulting you further. This will leave us free to do as we think best after you arrive. We can then talk over everything from the beginning."

With the hint thus conveyed she felt her letter to be discreetly worded. By the time she had slipped down the driveway to the box at the gate and posted it with her own hands her father had returned.

She had ordered tea in the little oval sitting-room they used when quite alone, and told the maid to say she was not receiving if anybody called. She knew her father would be tired, but she hoped that if they were undisturbed he would talk to her of his affairs. There was so much in them that was mysterious to her. Notwithstanding her partial recovery from the shock of the morning, she still felt herself transported to a world in which the needs were new to her, and the chain of cause and effect had a bewildering inconsequence. For this reason it seemed to her quite in the order of things--the curiously inverted order now established, in which one thing was as likely as another--that her father should stretch himself in a comfortable arm-chair and say nothing at all till after he had finished his second cup of tea. Even then he might not have spoken if her own patience had held out.

"So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to observe.

"No, I didn't."

"Sha'n't you _have_ to go?"

There was an instant's hesitation.

"Perhaps not. In fact--I may almost definitely say--_not_. I should like another cup of tea."

"That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake?"

"Nothing will keep me awake to-night."

The tone caused her to look at him more closely as she took the cup he handed back to her. She noticed that his eyes glittered and that in either cheek, above the line of the beard, there was a hectic spot. She adjusted the spirit-lamp, and, lifting the cover of the kettle, looked inside.

"Has anything happened?" she asked, doing her best to give the question a casual intonation.

"A great deal has happened." He allowed that statement to sink in before continuing. "I think"--he paused long--"I think I'm going to get the money."

She held herself well in hand, though at the words the old familiar landmarks of her former world seemed to rise again, rosily, mistily, like the walls of Troy to the sound of Apollo's lute. She looked into the kettle again to see if the water was yet boiling, taking longer than necessary to peer into the quiet depth.

"I'm so glad." She spoke as if he had told her he had shaken hands with an old friend. "I thought you would."

"Ah, but you never thought of anything like this."

"I knew it would be something pretty good. With your name, there wasn't the slightest doubt of it."

Had he been a wise man he would have let it go at that. He was not, however, a wise man. The shallow, brimming reservoir of his nature was of the kind that spills over at a splash.

"The most extraordinary thing has happened," he went on. "A man came to my office to-day and offered to lend me--no, not to lend--practically to _give_ me--enough money to pull me through."

She held a lump of sugar poised above his cup with the sugar-tongs. Her astonishment was so great that she kept it there. The walls of the city which just now had seemed to be rising magically faded away again, leaving the same unbounded vacancy into which she had been looking out all day.

"What do you mean by--practically to give you?"

"The man said lend. But my name is good for even more than you supposed, since he knows, and I know, that I can offer him no security."

"How can he tell, then, that you'll ever pay it back?"

"He can't tell. That's just it."

"And can you tell?" She let the lump of sugar fall with a circle of tiny eddies into the cup of tea.

"I can tell--up to a point." His tone indicated some abatement of enthusiasm.

"Up to what point?"

"Up to the point that I'll pay it back--if I can. That's all he asks. As a matter of fact, he doesn't seem to care."

She handed him his cup. "Isn't that a very queer way to lend money?"

"Of course it's queer. That's why I'm telling you. That's what makes it so remarkable--such a--tribute--to me, I dare say that sounds fatuous, but--"

"It doesn't sound fatuous so much as--"

"So much as what?"

The distress gathering in her eyes prepared him for her next words before she uttered them.

"Papa, I shouldn't think you'd take it."

He stared at her dully. Her perspicacity disconcerted him. He had expected to bolster up the ruins of his honor by her delighted acquiescence. He had not known till now how much he had been counting on the justification of her relief. It was a proof, however, of the degree to which his own initiative had failed him that he cowered before her judgment, with little or no protest.

"I haven't said I'd take it--positively."

"Naturally. Of course you haven't."

He dabbled the spoon uneasily in his tea, looking downcast. "I don't quite see that," he objected, trying to rally his pluck, "why it should be--naturally."

"Oh, don't you? To me it's self-evident. We may have lost money, but we're still not--recipients of alms."

"This wasn't alms. It was four hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

She was plainly awe-struck. "That's a great deal; but I supposed it would be something large. And yet the magnitude of the sum only makes it the more impossible to accept."

"Y-es; of course--if you look at it in that way." He put back his cup on the table untasted.

"Surely it's the only way to look at it? Aren't you going to drink your tea?"

"No, I think not. I've had enough. I've--I've had enough--of everything."

He sank back wearily into the depths of his arm-chair. The glitter had passed from his eyes; he looked ill. He had clearly not enough courage to make a stand for what he wanted. She could see how cruelly he was disappointed. After all, he might have accepted the money and told her nothing about it! He had taken her into his confidence because of that need of expansion that had often led him to "give away" what a more crafty man would have kept to himself. She was profiting by his indiscretion to make what was already so hard for him still harder. Sipping her tea slowly, she turned the subject over and over in her mind, seeking some ground on which to agree with him.

She did this the more conscientiously, since she had often reproached herself with a fixity of principle that might with some show of reason be called too inflexible. Between right and wrong other people, especially the people of her "world," were able to see an infinitude of shadings she had never been able to distinguish. She half accepted the criticism often made of her in Paris and London that her Puritan inheritance had given an inartistic rigidity to her moral prospect. It inclined her to see the paths of life as ruled and numbered like the checker-board plan of an American city, instead of twisting and winding, quaintly and picturesquely, with round-about evasions and astonishing short-cuts, amusing to explore, whether for the finding or the losing of the way, as in any of the capitals long trodden by the feet of men. Between the straight, broad avenues of conduct, well lighted and well defined, there lay apparently whole regions of byways, in which those who could not easily do right could wander vaguely, without precisely doing wrong, following a line that might be termed permissible. Into this tortuous maze her spirit now tried to penetrate, as occasionally, to visit some historic monument, she had plunged into the slums of a medieval town.

It was an exercise that brought her nothing but a feeling of bewilderment. Having no sense of locality for this kind of labyrinth, she could only turn round and round confusedly. All she could do, when from the drooping of her father's lids she feared he was falling off to sleep, leaving the question unsettled, was to say, helplessly:

"I suppose you'll be sorry now for having told me."

He lifted his long lashes, that were like a girl's, and looked at her. The minutes that had passed had altered his expression. There was again a sparkle of resolve, perhaps of relief, in his glance. Without changing his position, he spoke drowsily, and yet reassuringly, like a man with a large and easy grasp of the situation. She was not sure whether it was a renewal of confidence on his part or a bit of acting.

"No, dear, no. I wanted to get your point of view. It's always interesting to me. I see your objections--of course. I may say that I even shared some of them--till--"

She allowed him a minute in which to resume, but, as he kept silence, she ventured to ask:

"Does that mean that you don't share them now?"

"I see what there is to be said--all round. It isn't to be expected, dear, that you, as a woman, not used to business--"

"Oh, but I didn't understand that this _was_ business. That's just the point. To borrow money might be business--to borrow it on security, you know, or whatever else is the usual way--but not to take it as a present."

He jerked himself up into a forward posture. When he replied to her, it was with didactic, explanatory irritation.

"When I said that, I was legitimately using language that might be called exaggerated. Hyperbole is, I believe, the term grammarians use for it. I didn't expect you, dear, to take me up so literally. It isn't like you. You generally have more imagination. As a matter of fact, Davenant's offer was that of a loan--"

"Oh! So it was--that man?"

"Yes; it was he. He expressly spoke of it as _a loan_. I myself interpreted it as a gift simply to emphasize its extraordinary generosity. I thought you'd appreciate that. Do you see?"

"Perfectly, papa; and it's the extraordinary generosity that seems to me just what makes it impossible. Why should Mr. Davenant be generous to us? What does he expect to gain?"

"I had that out with him. He said he didn't expect to gain anything."

"And you believed him?"

"Partly; though I suppose he has something up his sleeve. It wasn't my policy to question him too closely about that. It's not altogether my first concern. I need the money."

"But you don't need the money--in that way, papa?"

"I need it in any way. If Davenant will let me have it--especially on such terms--I've no choice but to take it."

"Oh, don't, papa. I'm sure it isn't right. I--I don't like him."

"Pff! What's that got to do with it? This is business."

"No, papa. It's not business. It's a great deal more--or a great deal less--I don't know which."

"You don't know anything about it at all, dear. You may take that from me. This is a man's affair. You really _must_ leave it to me to deal with it." Once more he fell back into the depth of his arm-chair and closed his eyes. "If you don't mind, I think I should like a little nap. What have you got so especially against Davenant, anyhow?"

"I've nothing against him--except that I've never liked him."

"What do you know about him? When did you ever see him?"

"I _haven't_ seen him for years--not since Drusilla used to bring him to dances, when we were young girls. She didn't like it particularly, but she had to do it because he was her father's ward and had gone to live with them. He was uncouth--aggressive. Wasn't he a foundling, or a street Arab, or something like that? He certainly seemed so. He wasn't a bit--civilized. And once he--he said something--he almost insulted me. You wouldn't take his money now, papa?"

There was no answer. He breathed gently. She spoke more forcibly.

"Papa, you wouldn't let a stranger pay your debts?"

He continued to breathe gently, his eyes closed, the long black lashes curling on his cheek.

"Papa, darling," she cried, "I'll help you. I'll take everything on myself. I'll find a way--somehow. Only, _don't_ do this."

He stirred, and murmured sleepily.

"You attend to your wedding, dear. That'll be quite enough for you to look after."

"But I can't have a wedding if Mr. Davenant has to pay for it. Don't you see? I can't be married at all."

When he made no response to this shot, she understood finally that he meant to let the subject drop.

VII

It was in the nature of a relief to Olivia Guion when, on the following day, her father was too ill to go to his office. A cold, caused by the exposure of two nights previous, and accompanied by a rising temperature, kept him confined to his room, though not to bed. The occurrence, by maintaining the situation where it was, rendered it impossible to take any irretrievable step that day. This was so much gain.

She had slept little; she had passed most of the night in active and, as it seemed to her, lucid thinking. Among the points clearest to her was the degree to which she herself was involved in the present business. In a measure, the transfer of a large sum of money from Peter Davenant to her father would be an incident more vital to her than to any one else, since she more than any one else must inherit its moral effects. While she was at a loss to see what the man could claim from them in return for his generosity, she was convinced that his exactions would be not unconnected with herself. If, on the other hand, he demanded nothing, then the lifelong obligation in the way of gratitude that must thus be imposed on her would be the most intolerable thing of all. Better any privation than the incurring of such a debt--a debt that would cover everything she was or could become. Its magnitude would fill her horizon; she must live henceforth in the world it made, her very personality would turn into a thing of confused origin, sprung, it was true, from Henry and Carlotta Guion in the first place, but taking a second lease of life from the man whose beneficence started her afresh. She would date back to him, as barbarous women date to their marriage or Mohammedans to the Flight. It was a relation she could not have endured toward a man even if she loved him; still less was it sufferable with one whom she had always regarded with an indefinable disdain, when she had not ignored him. The very possibility that he might purchase a hold on her inspired a frantic feeling, like that of the ermine at pollution.

Throughout the morning she was obliged to conceal from her father this intense opposition--or, at least to refrain from speaking of it. When she made the attempt he grew so feverish that the doctor advised the postponement of distressing topics till he should be better able to discuss them. She could only make him as comfortable as might be, pondering while she covered him up in the chaise-longue, putting his books and his cigars within easy reach, how she could best convert him to her point of view. It was inconceivable to her that he would persist in the scheme when he realized how it would affect her.

She had gone down to the small oval sitting-room commanding the driveway, thinking it probable that Drusilla Fane might come to see her. Watching for her approach, she threw open the French window set in the rounded end of the room and leading out to the Corinthian-columned portico that adorned what had once been the garden side of the house. There was no garden now, only a stretch of elm-shaded lawn, with a few dahlias and zinnias making gorgeous clusters against the already gorgeous autumn-tinted shrubbery. On the wall of a neighboring brick house, Virginia creeper and ampelopsis added fuel to the fire of surrounding color, while a maple in the middle distance blazed with all the hues that might have flamed in Moses's burning bush. It was one of those days of the American autumn when the air is shot with gold, when there is gold in the light, gold on the foliage, gold on the grass, gold on all surfaces, gold in all shadows, and a gold sheen in the sky itself. Red gold like a rich lacquer overlay the trunks of the occasional pines, and pale-yellow gold, beaten and thin, shimmered along the pendulous garlands of the American elms, where they caught the sun. It was a windless morning and a silent one; the sound of a hammer or of a motorist's horn, coming up from the slope of splendid woodland that was really the town, accentuated rather than disturbed the immediate stillness.

To Olivia Guion this quiet ecstasy of nature was uplifting. Its rich, rejoicing quality restored as by a tonic her habitual confidence in her ability to carry the strongholds of life with a high and graceful hand. Difficulties that had been paramount, overpowering, fell all at once into perspective, becoming heights to be scaled rather than barriers defying passage. For the first time in the twenty-four hours since the previous morning's revelations, she thought of her lover as bringing comfort rather than as creating complications.