The Street Called Straight Part 20

"I didn't look for it. It was just--there!"

"It's always there; only, as in the case of the two disciples on the Emmaus road, our eyes are holden so that we don't see it."

"I should have seen it easily enough; but if you hadn't told me, I shouldn't have known what it was. I didn't suppose that we got that kind of guidance nowadays."

"The light is always shining in darkness, dearie; only the darkness comprehendeth it not. That's all there is to it."

He sat at his desk, overlooking the embankment and the curves of the Charles. It was a wide desk littered with papers, but with s.p.a.ce, too, for some of the favorite small possessions that served him as paper-weights--a Chinese dragon in blue-green enamel, a quaintly decorated cow in polychrome Delft, a dancing satyr in biscuit de Sevres.

On the side remote from where he sat was a life-size bust of Christ in fifteenth-century Italian terra-cotta--the face n.o.ble, dignified, strongly sympathetic--once painted, but now worn to its natural tint, except where gleams of scarlet or azure showed in the folds of the vesture. While the old man talked, and chiefly while he listened, the fingers of his large, delicately articulated hand stroked mechanically the surfaces of a grotesque Chinese figure carved in apple-green jade.

It was some minutes before Olivia made any response to his last words.

"Things _are_ very dark to me," she confessed, "and yet this light seems to me absolutely positive. I've had to make a decision that would be too frightful if something didn't seem to be leading me into the Street called Straight, as papa says. Did you know Mr. Davenant had offered to pay our debts?"

He shook his head.

"Of course I couldn't let him do it."

"Couldn't you?"

"Do you think I could?"

"Not if you think differently. You're the only judge."

"But if I don't, you know, papa will have to go--" She hesitated. "You know what would happen, don't you?"

"I suppose I do."

"And I could prevent it, you see, if I let papa take this money. I have to a.s.sume the responsibility of its refusal. It puts me in a position that I'm beginning to feel--well, rather terrible."

"Does it?"

"You don't seem very much interested, Cousin Rodney. I hoped you'd give me some advice."

"Oh, I never give advice. Besides, if you've got into the Street called Straight, I don't see why you need advice from any one."

"I do. The Street called Straight is all very well, but--"

"Then you're not so sure, after all."

"I'm sure in a way. If it weren't for papa I shouldn't have any doubt whatever. But it seems so awful for me to drive him into what I don't think he'd do of his own accord." She went on to explain Davenant's offer in detail. "So you see," she concluded, "that papa's state of mind is peculiar. He agrees with me that the higher thing would be not to take the money; and yet if I gave him the slightest encouragement he would."

"And you're not going to?"

"How could I, Cousin Rodney? How could I put myself under such an obligation to a man I hardly know?"

"He could probably afford it."

"Is he so very rich?" There was a hint of curiosity in the tone.

Rodney Temple shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, rich enough. It would pretty well clean him out; but, then, that would do him good."

"Do him good--how?"

"He's spoiling for work, that fellow is. Since he's had all that money he's been of no use to himself or to anybody else. He's like good capital tied up in a stocking instead of being profitably invested."

"And yet we could hardly put ourselves in a humiliating situation just to furnish Mr. Davenant with an incentive for occupation, could we, Cousin Rodney?"

"I dare say not."

"And he isn't offering us the money merely for the sake of getting rid of it, do you think?"

"Then what _is_ he offering it to you for?"

"That's exactly what I want to know. Haven't you any idea?"

"Haven't you?"

She waited a minute before deciding to speak openly. "I suppose you never heard that he once asked me to marry him?"

He betrayed his surprise by the way in which he put down the little Chinese figure and wheeled round more directly toward her.

"Who? Peter?"

She nodded.

"What the d.i.c.kens made him do that?"

She opened her eyes innocently. "I'm sure I can't imagine."

"It isn't a bit like him. You must have led him on."

"I didn't," she declared, indignantly. "I never took any notice of him at all. Nothing could have astonished me more than his--his presumption."

"And what did you say to him? Did you box his ears?"

"I was very rude, and that's partly the trouble now. I feel as if he'd been nursing a grudge against me all these years--and was paying it."

"In that case he's got you on the hip, hasn't he? It's a lovely turning of the tables."

"You see that, Cousin Rodney, don't you? I _couldn't_ let a man like that get the upper hand of me."

"Of course you couldn't, dear. I'd sit on him if I were you, and sit on him hard. I'd knock him flat--and let Delia Rodman and Clorinda Clay go to the deuce."

She looked at him wonderingly. "Let--who--go to the deuce?"

"I said Delia Rodman and Clorinda Clay. I might have included f.a.n.n.y Burnaby and the Brown girls. I meant them, of course. I suppose you've been doing a lot of worrying on their account."

"I--I haven't," she stammered. "I haven't thought of them at all."

"Then I wouldn't. They've got no legal claim on you whatever. When they put their money into your father's hands--or when other people put it there for them--they took their chances. Life is full of risks like that. You're not responsible for them, not any more than you are for the fortunes of war. If they've had bad luck, then that's their own lookout.