The Street Called Straight Part 30

You could only stand and stare at it helplessly, giving it the full tribute of awe.

Ashley gave it. He gave it while lighting mechanically a cigar which he did not smoke and standing motionless in the middle of the lawn, heedless of the glances--furtive, discreet, sympathetic, admiring--cast at him from the windows and balconies of the surrounding houses. His quick eye, trained to notice everything within its ken, saw them plainly enough. The houses were not so distant nor the foliage so dense but that kindly, neighborly interest could follow the whole drama taking place at Tory Hill. Ashley could guess with tolerable accuracy that the ladies whom he saw ostensibly reading or sewing on verandas had been invited to the wedding, and were consequently now in the position of spectators at a play. The mere detail of this American way of living, with unwalled properties merging into one another, and doors and windows flung wide to every pa.s.sing glance, gave him an odd sense of conducting his affairs in the market-place or on the stage. If he did not object to it, it was because of the incitement to keep up to the level of his best which he always drew from the knowledge that other people's eyes were upon him.

He felt this stimulus when Olivia came out to the Corinthian portico, seating herself in a wicker chair, with an obvious invitation to him to join her. "Drusilla Fane has been telling me about your--your friend."

She knew he meant the last two words to be provocative. She knew it by slight signs of nervousness in his way of standing before her, one foot on the gra.s.s and the other on the first step of the portico. He betrayed himself, too, in an unsuccessful attempt to make his intonation casual, as well as by puffing at his cigar without noticing that it had gone out. An instant's reflection decided her to accept his challenge. As the subject had to be met, the sooner it came up the better.

She looked at him mildly. "What did she say about him?"

"Only that he was the man who put up the money."

"Yes; he was."

"Why didn't you tell me that this morning?"

"I suppose because there was so much else to say. We should have come round to it in time. I did tell you everything but his name."

"And the circ.u.mstances."

"How do you mean--the circ.u.mstances?"

"I got the impression from you this morning that it was some millionaire Johnny who'd come to your father's aid by advancing the sum in the ordinary way of business. I didn't understand that it was a comparatively poor chap who was cleaning himself out to come to yours."

In wording his phrase he purposely went beyond the warrant, in order to rouse her to denial, or perhaps to indignation. But she said only:

"Did Drusilla say it was to come to my aid?"

"She didn't say it--exactly. I gathered that it was what she thought."

She astonished him by saying, simply: "I think so, too."

"Extraordinary! Do you mean to say he dropped out of a clear sky?"

"I must answer that by both a yes and a no. He did drop out of a clear sky just lately; but I'd known him before."

"Ah!" His tone was that of a cross-examiner dragging the truth from an unwilling witness. He put his questions rapidly and sharply, as though at a Court-martial. "So you'd known him before! Did you know him _well?_"

"_I_ didn't think it was well; but apparently he did, because he asked me to marry him."

Ashley bounded. "Who? That--that cowboy!"

"Yes; if he _is_ a cowboy."

"And you took money from him?"

Her elbows rested on the arm of her chair; the tip of her chin on the back of her bent fingers. Without taking her eyes from his she inclined her head slowly in a.s.sent.

"That is," he hastened to say, in some compunction, "your father took it. We must keep the distinction--"

"No; I took it. Papa was all ready to decline it. He had made up his mind--"

"Do you mean that the decision to accept it rested with you?"

"Practically."

"You didn't--" He hesitated, stammered, and grew red. "You didn't--" he began again. "You'll have to excuse the question.... I simply _must_ know, by Jove!... You didn't _ask_ him for it?"

She rose with dignity. "If you'll come in I'll tell you about it. We can't talk out here."

He came up the portico steps to the level on which she was standing.

"Tell me that first," he begged.

"You _didn't_ ask him for it? Did you?"

In the French window, as she was about to enter the room, she half turned round. "I don't think it would bear that construction; but it might. I'd rather you judged for yourself. I declined it at first--and then I said I'd take it. I don't know whether you'd call that asking.

But please come in."

He followed her into the oval room, where they were screened from neighborly observation, while, with the French window open, they had the advantage of the air and the rich, westering sunshine. Birds hopped about in the trees, and now and then a gray squirrel darted across the gra.s.s.

"I should think," he said, nervously, before she had time to begin her explanation, "that a fellow who had done that for you would occupy your mind to the exclusion of everybody else."

Guessing that he hoped for a disclaimer on her part, she was sorry to be unable to make it.

"Not to their exclusion--but perhaps--a little to their subordination."

He pretended to laugh. "What a pretty distinction!"

"You see, I haven't been able to help it. He's loomed up so tremendously above everything--"

"And every one."

"Yes," she admitted, with apologetic frankness, "and every one--that is, in the past few days--that it's as if I couldn't see anything but him."

"Oh, I'm not jealous," he exclaimed, pacing up and down the length of the room.

"Of course not," she agreed, seating herself in one of the straight-backed chairs. Her clasped hands rested on the small round table in the center of the room, while she looked out across the lawn to the dahlias and zinnias on its farther edge.

Ashley, who had flung his panama on a sofa, continued to pace up and down the room, his head bent and his fingers clasped tightly under his jacket behind his back. He moved jerkily, like a man preserving outward self-control in spite of extreme nervous tension.

He listened almost without interruption while she gave him a precise account of Davenant's intervention in her father's troubles. She spared no detail of her own opposition and eventual capitulation. She spoke simply and easily, as though repeating something learned by heart, just as she had narrated the story of Guion's defaulting in the morning.

Apart from the fact that she toyed with a paper-knife lying on the table, she sat rigidly still, her eyes never wandering from the line of autumn flowers on the far side of the lawn.

"So you see," she concluded, in her quiet voice, "I came to understand that it was a choice between taking it from him and taking it from the poor women papa had ruined; and I thought that as he was young--and strong--and a man--he'd be better able to bear it. That was the reason."

He came to a standstill on the other side of the table, where he could see her in profile.

"You're extraordinary, by Jove!" he muttered. "You're not a bit like what you look. You look so fragile and tender; and yet you could have let that old man--"

"I could only have done it if it was right. Nothing that's right is very hard, you know."