The Street Called Straight Part 21

Oh, I shouldn't have them on my mind for a minute."

She was too startled to suspect him of ruse or strategy.

"I haven't had them on my mind. It seems queer--and yet I haven't. Now that you speak of them, of course I see--" She pa.s.sed her hand across her brow. There was a long, meditative silence before she resumed. "I don't know what I've been dreaming of that it didn't occur to me before. Papa and Mr. Davenant both said that I hadn't considered all the sides to the question; and I suppose that's what they were thinking of. It seems so obvious--now."

She adjusted her veil and picked up her parasol as though about to take leave; but when she rose it was only to examine, without seeing it, a plaque hanging on the wall.

"If papa were to take Mr. Davenant's money," she said, after long silence, without turning round, "then his clients would be as well off as before, wouldn't they?"

"I presume they would."

"And now, I suppose, they're very poor."

"I don't know much about that. None of them were great heiresses, as it was. Miss Prince, who keeps the school, told your cousin Cherry yesterday that the Rodman girls had written her from Florence, asking if she could give them a job to teach Italian. They'll have to teach away like blazes now--anything and everything they know."

She turned round toward him, her eyes misty with distress.

"See this bit of jade?" he continued, getting up from his chair. "Real jade that is. Cosway, of the Gallery, brought it to me when he came home from Peking. That's not real jade you've got at Tory Hill. It's jadeite."

"Is it?" She took the little mandarin in her hand, but without examining him. "I've no doubt you've been dreadfully worried about them--papa's clients, I mean."

"W-well--a little--or, rather, not at all. That is, I should have been worried if it hadn't been for the conviction that something would look out for them. Something always does, you know."

The faint smile that seemed to have got frozen on her lips quivered piteously. "I wish you could have that comfortable feeling about me."

"Oh, I have. That'll be all right. You'll be taken care of from start to finish. Don't have a qualm of doubt about it. There's a whole host of ministering spirits--angels some people call them--I don't say I should myself--but there are legions of mighty influences appointed to wait on just such brave steps as you're about to take."

"That is, if I take them!"

"Oh, you'll take 'em all right, dearie. You'll not be able to help it when you see just what they ought to be. In a certain sense they'll take you. You'll be pa.s.sed along from point to point as safely as that bit of jade"--he took the carving from between her fingers and held it up--"as safely as that bit of jade has been transmitted from the quarries of Tibet to brighten my old eyes. It's run no end of risks, but the Angel of Beauty has watched over all its journeys. It's been in every sort of queer, mysterious place; it's pa.s.sed through the hands of mandarins, merchants, and slaves; it's probably stood in palaces and been exposed in shops; it's certainly come over mountains and down rivers and across seas; and yet here it is, as perfect as when some sallow-faced dwarf of a craftsman gave it the last touch of the tool a hundred years ago. And that's the way it'll be with you, dearie. You may go through some difficult places, but you'll come out as unscathed as my little Chinaman. The Street called Straight is often a crooked one; and yet it's the surest and safest route we can take from point to point."

As, a few minutes later, she hurried homeward, this mystical optimism was to her something like a rose to a sick man--beautiful to contemplate, but of little practical application in alleviating pain.

Her mind turned away from it. It turned away, too, from the pillar of cloud, of which the symbolism began to seem deceptive. Under the stress of the moment the only vision to which she could attain was that of the Misses Rodman begging for the pitiful job of teaching Italian in a young ladies' school. She remembered them vaguely--tall, scraggy, permanently girlish in dress and manner, and looking their true fifty only about the neck and eyes. With their mother they lived in a pretty villa on the Poggio Imperiale, and had called on her occasionally when she pa.s.sed through Florence. The knowledge of being indebted to them, of having lived on their modest substance and reduced them to poverty, brought her to the point of shame in which it would have been a comfort to have the mountains fall on her and the rocks cover her from the gaze of men. She upbraided herself for her blindness to the most obviously important aspect of the situation. Now that she saw it, her zeal to "pay," by doing penance in public, became tragic and farcical at once. The absurdity of making satisfaction to Mrs. Rodman and Mrs. Clay, to f.a.n.n.y Burnaby and the Brown girls, by calling in the law, when less suffering--to her father at least--would give them actual cash, was not the least element in her humiliation.

She walked swiftly, seeing nothing of the cheerful stir around her, lashed along by the fear that Peter Davenant might have left Tory Hill.

She was too intent on her purpose to perceive any change in her mental att.i.tude toward him. She was aware of saying to herself that everything concerning him must be postponed; but beyond that she scarcely thought of him at all. Once the interests of the poor women who had trusted to her father had been secured, she would have time to face the claims of this new creditor; but nothing could be attempted till the one imperative duty was performed.

Going up the stairs toward her father's room, the sound of voices rea.s.sured her. Davenant was there still. That was so much relief. She was able to collect herself, to put on something like her habitual air of quiet dignity, before she pushed open the door and entered.

Guion was lying on the couch with the rug thrown over him. Davenant stood by the fireplace, endangering with his elbow a dainty Chelsea shepherdess on the mantelpiece. He was smoking one of Guion's cigars, which he threw into an ash-tray as Olivia came in.

Conversation stopped abruptly on her appearance. She herself walked straight to the round table in the middle of the room, and for a second or two, which seemed much longer in s.p.a.ce of time, stood silent, the tips of her fingers just touching a packet of papers strapped with rubber bands, which she guessed that Davenant must have brought. Through her downcast lashes she could see, thrown carelessly on the table, three or four strips, tinted blue or green or yellow, which she recognized as checks.

"I only want to say," she began, with a kind of panting in her breath--"I only want to say, papa, that if ... Mr. Davenant will ...

lend you the money ... I shall be ... I shall be ... very glad."

Guion said nothing. His eyes, regarding her aslant, had in them the curious receding light she had noticed once before. With a convulsive clutching of the fingers he pulled the rug up about his chin. Davenant stood as he had been standing when she came in, his arm resting on the mantelpiece. When she looked at him with one hasty glance, she noticed that he reddened hotly.

"I've changed my mind," she went on, impelled by the silence of the other two to say something more. "I've changed my mind. It's because of papa's clients--the Miss Rodmans and the others--that I've done it. I couldn't help it. I never thought of them till this afternoon. I don't know why. I've been very dense. I've been cruel. I've considered only how we--papa and I--could exonerate ourselves, if you can call it exoneration. I'm sorry."

"You couldn't be expected to think of everything at once, Miss Guion,"

Davenant said, clumsily.

"I might have been expected to think of this; but I didn't. I suppose it's what you meant when you said that there were sides to the question that I didn't see. You said it, too, papa. I wish you had spoken more plainly."

"We talked it over, Miss Guion. We didn't want to seem to force you.

It's the kind of thing that's better done when it's done of one's own impulse. We were sure you'd come to it. All the same, if you hadn't done it to-day, we'd made up our minds to--to suggest it. That's why I took the liberty of bringing these things. Those are bonds that you've got your hand on--and the checks make up the sum total."

By an instinctive movement she s.n.a.t.c.hed her fingers away; but, recovering herself, she took the package deliberately into her hands and stood holding it.

"I've been explaining to Davenant," Guion said, in a m.u.f.fled voice, "that things aren't quite so hopeless as they seem. If we ever come into Aunt Vic's money--"

"But there's no certainty of that, papa."

"No certainty, but a good deal of probability. She's always given us to understand that the money wouldn't go out of her own family; and there's practically no one left now but you and me. And if it _should_ come to us, there'd be more than enough to--to square everything. You'd do it, dear, wouldn't you, if Aunt Vic were to leave the whole thing to you? I think she's as likely to do that as not."

"Mr. Davenant must know already that I shall give my whole life to trying to pay our debt. If there's anything I could sign at once--"

Davenant moved from the fireside. "There's nothing to sign, Miss Guion,"

he said, briefly. "The matter is ended as far as I'm concerned. Mr.

Guion has got the money, and is relieved from his most pressing embarra.s.sments. That's all I care about. There's no reason why we should ever speak of it again. If you'll excuse me now--"

He turned toward the couch with his hand outstretched, but during the minute or two in which Olivia and he had been facing each other Guion had drawn the rug over his face. Beneath it there was a convulsive shaking, from which the younger man turned away. With a nod of comprehension to Olivia he tiptoed softly from the room. As he did so he could see her kneel beside the couch and kiss the hand that lay outside the coverlet.

She overtook him, however, when he was downstairs picking up his hat and stick from the hall table.

She stood on the lowest step of the stairs, leaning on the low, white pillar that finished the bal.u.s.trade. He was obliged to pa.s.s her on his way to the door. The minute was the more awkward for him owing to the fact that she did not take the initiative in carrying it off. On the contrary, she made it harder by looking at him gravely without speaking.

"It's relief," he said, nodding with understanding toward the room up-stairs. "I've seen men do that before--after they'd been facing some danger or other with tremendous pluck."

He spoke for the sake of saying something, standing before her with his hat and stick in his hand, not seeing precisely how he was to get away.

"It's a relief to me, too," she said, simply. "You can't imagine what it's been the last few days--seeing things go to pieces like that. Now, I suppose, they'll hold together somehow, though it can't be very well.

I dare say you think me all wrong--"

He shook his head.

"I couldn't see any other way. When you've done wrong as we've done it, you'd rather be punished. You don't want to go scot-free. It's something like the kind of impulse that made the hermits and ascetics submit to scourging. But it's quite possible that I shouldn't have had the courage to go through with it--especially if papa had broken down. As you said from the first, I didn't see what was truly vital."

"I shouldn't blame myself too much for that, Miss Guion. It often happens that one only finds the right way by making two or three plunges into wrong ones."

"Do you think I've found it now?"

There was something wistful in the question, and not a little humble, that induced him to say with fervor, "I'm very sure of it."

"And you?" she asked. "Is it the right way for you?"