The Street Called Straight Part 26

He laughed. "That won't matter. It's how it'll look."

"Oh, looks!"

"It's what we're talking about, isn't it? It's what makes the difference. I shall figure as a cad."

He spoke as one who makes an astounding discovery. She was inexpressibly shocked.

"Oh, but you couldn't," was all she could find to say, but she said it with conviction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THERE'S NO ONE WHO WON'T BELIEVE BUT THAT I--THREW YOU OVER."]

He laughed again. "You'll see. There's no one--not my best friends--not my mother--not my sisters--who won't believe--whatever you and I may say to the contrary--who won't believe but that I--threw you over."

A toss of his hand, a snap of his fingers, suited the action to the word.

Her color came and went in little shifting flashes. She moved a pace or two aimlessly, restively. Her head went high, her chin tilted. When she spoke her voice trembled with indignation, but she only said:

"They couldn't believe it long."

"Oh, couldn't they! The story would follow me to my grave. Things like that are never forgotten among fellows so intimate as soldiers. There was a chap in our regiment who jilted a nice girl at the Cape--sailed for home secretly only a week before the wedding." He paused to let her take in the dastardly nature of the flight. "Well, he rejoined at the depot. He stayed--but he didn't stay long. The Rangers got too hot for him--or too cold. The last I ever heard of him he was giving English lessons at Boulogne."

The flagrancy of the case gave her an advantage. "It's idle to think that that kind of fate could overtake you."

"The fate that can overtake me easily enough is that as long as I live they'll say I chucked a girl because she'd had bad luck."

She was about to reply when the click of the latch of the gate diverted her attention. Drusilla Fane, attended by Davenant, was coming up the hill. Seeing Olivia and Ashley at the end of the lawn, Drusilla deflected her course across the gra.s.s, Davenant in her wake. Her wide, frank smile was visible from a long way off.

"This is not indiscretion," she laughed, as she advanced; "neither is it vulgar curiosity to see the lion. I shouldn't have come at all if mother hadn't sent me with a message."

Wearing a large hat _a la_ Princesse de Lamballe and carrying a long-handled sunshade which she held daintily, like a Watteau shepherdess holding a crook, Drusilla had an air of refined, eighteenth-century dash. Knowing the probability that she disturbed some poignant bit of conversation, she proceeded to take command, stepping up to Olivia with a hasty kiss. "h.e.l.lo, you dear thing!" Turning to Ashley, she surveyed him an instant before offering her hand. "So you've got here! How fit you look! What sort of trip did you have, and how did you leave your people? And, oh, by the way, this is Mr. Davenant."

Davenant, who had been paying his respects to Miss Guion, charged forward, with hand outstretched and hearty: "Happy to meet you, Colonel.

Glad to welcome you to our country."

"Oh!"

Ashley snapped out the monosyllable in a dry, metallic voice pitched higher than his usual key. The English softening of the vowel sound, so droll to the American ear, was also more p.r.o.nounced than was customary in his speech, so that the exclamation became a sharp "A-ow!"

Feeling his greeting to have been insufficient, Davenant continued, pumping up a forced rough-and-ready cordiality. "Heard so much about you, Colonel, that you seem like an old friend. Hope you'll like us.

Hope you'll enjoy your stay."

"Oh, indeed? I don't know, I'm sure."

Ashley's glance shifted from Drusilla to Olivia as though asking in some alarm who was this exuberant b.u.mpkin in his Sunday clothes who had dropped from nowhere. Davenant drew back; his face fell. He looked like a big, sensitive dog hurt by a rebuff. It was Mrs. Fane who came to the rescue.

"Peter's come to see Cousin Henry. They've got business to talk over.

And mother wants to know if you and Colonel Ashley won't come to dinner to-morrow evening. That's my errand. Just ourselves, you know. It'll be very quiet."

Olivia recovered somewhat from the agitation of the previous half-hour as well as from the movement of sudden, inexplicable anger which Ashley's reception of Davenant had produced in her. Even so she could speak but coldly, and, as it were, from a long way off.

"You'll go," she said, turning to Ashley, "and I'll come if I can leave papa. I'll run up flow and see how he is and take Mr. Davenant with me."

XIV

There was dignity in the way in which Davenant both withdrew and stood his ground. He was near the Corinthian portico of the house as Olivia approached him. Leaning on his stick, he looked loweringly back at Ashley, who talked to Drusilla without noticing him further. Olivia guessed that in Davenant's heart there was envy tinged with resentment, antipathy, not tempered by a certain unwilling admiration. She wondered what it was that made the difference between the two men, that gave Ashley his very patent air of superiority. It was a superiority not in looks, since Davenant was the taller and the handsomer; nor in clothes, since Davenant was the better dressed; nor in the moral make-up, since Davenant had given proofs of unlimited generosity. But there it was, a tradition of self-a.s.surance, a habit of command which in any company that knew nothing about either would have made the Englishman easily stand first.

Her flash of anger against the one in defense of the other pa.s.sed away, its place being taken by a feeling that astonished her quite as much.

She tried to think it no more than a pang of jealousy at seeing her own countryman snubbed by a foreigner. She was familiar with the sensation from her European, and especially her English, experiences. At an unfriendly criticism it could be roused on behalf of a chance stranger from Colorado or California, and was generally quite impersonal. She told herself that it was impersonal now, that she would have had the same impulse of protection, of championship, for any one.

Nevertheless, there was a tone in her voice as she joined him that struck a new note in their acquaintanceship.

"I'm glad you came when you did. I wanted you to meet Colonel Ashley.

You'll like him when you know him better. Just at first he was a little embarra.s.sed. We'd been talking of things--"

"I didn't notice anything--that is, anything different from any other Englishman."

"Yes; that's it, isn't it? Meeting an Englishman is often like the first plunge into a cold bath--chilling at first, but delightful afterward."

He stopped under the portico, to say with a laugh that was not quite spontaneous: "Yes; I dare say. But my experience is limited. I've never got to the--afterward."

"Oh, well, you will," she said, encouragingly, "now that you know Colonel Ashley."

"I've heard of men plunging into a cold bath and finding it so icy that they've popped out again."

"Yes; thin-blooded men, who are sensitive to chills. Not men like you."

They entered the house, lingering in the oval sitting-room through which they had to pa.s.s.

"Fortunately," he tried to say, lightly, "it doesn't matter in this case whether I'm sensitive to chills or not."

"Oh, but it does. I want you two to be friends."

"What for?" The question was so point-blank as to be a little scornful, but she ignored that.

"On Colonel Ashley's side, for what he'll gain in knowing you; on yours--for something more."

He stopped again, at the foot of the staircase in the hall. "May I ask--just what you mean by that?"

She hesitated. "It's something that a tactful person wouldn't tell. If I do, it's only because I want you to consider me as--your friend. I know you haven't hitherto," she hurried on, as he flushed and tried to speak.

"I haven't deserved it. But after what's happened--and after all you've done for us--"

"I could consider you my friend without asking Colonel Ashley to think of me as his."

"Hardly--if I marry him; and besides--when you know him--You see," she began again, "what I have in mind depends upon your knowing him--rather well."