The Street Called Straight Part 31

"And what about the suffering?"

She half smiled, faintly shrugging her shoulders. "Don't you think we make more of suffering than there's any need for? Suffering is nothing much--except, I suppose, the suffering that comes from want. That's tragic. But physical pain--and the things we call trials--are nothing so terrible if you know the right way to bear them."

The abstract question didn't interest him. He resumed his restless pacing.

"So," he began again, in his tone of conducting a court-martial--"so you refused the money in the first place, because you thought the fellow was trying to get you into his power. Have you had any reason to change your opinion since?"

"None, except that he makes no effort to do it."

He stopped again beside the table. "And do you suppose he would? When you've prepared your ambush cleverly enough you don't have to go out and drag your victim into it. You've only to lie still and he'll walk in of his own accord."

"Of course I see that."

"Well, what then?"

She threw him a glance over her shoulder. To do so it was necessary for her to turn her head both sidewise and upward, so that he got the exquisite lines of the neck and profile, the mysterious gray-green tint of the eyes, and the coppery gleam of her hair. The appeal to his senses and to something beyond his senses made him gasp. It made him tremble.

"My G.o.d, what a wife for _me_!" he was saying to himself. "She's got the pluck of a Jeanne d'Arc and the nerve of a Christian martyr."

"Well, then," she said, in answer to his words--"then I don't have to walk into the ambush--unless I want to."

"Does that mean that there are conceivable conditions in which you might want to?"

She turned completely round in her chair. Both hands, with fingers interlaced, rested on the table as she looked up at him.

"I shall have to let you find your own reply to that."

"But you know he's in love with you."

"I know he was in love with me once. I've no absolute reason to think that he is so still."

"But supposing he was? Would it make any difference to you?"

"Would it make any difference to _you?_"

"It would make the difference--"

He stopped in confusion. While he was not clear as to what he was going to say, he was startled by the possibilities before him. The one thing plain was that her question, simple as it seemed, gave an entirely new turn to the conversation. It called on him to take the lead, and put him, neatly and skilfully, in the one place of all others which--had he descried it in advance--he would have been eager to avoid. Would it make any difference to him? What difference _could_ it make? What difference _must_ it make?

It was one of those moments which occur from time to time when a man of honor must speak first and reflect afterward--just as at the heights of Dargal he had had to risk his life for Private Vickerson's, without debating as to which of them, in the general economy of lives, could the more easily be spared.

"It would make the difference--"

He stopped again. It was a great deal to say. Once he had said it there could be no reconsideration. Reconsideration would be worse than not saying it at all, on the principle that not to stand by one's guns might be a greater cowardice than not to mount them. Fear, destruction, and the pit might come upon him; the service, the country, Heneage, home, honors, ambitions, promotions, high posts of command, all might be swept into the abyss, and yet one imperative duty would survive the wreck, the duty to be Rupert Ashley at his finest. The eyes of England were on him.

There was always that conviction, that incentive. Let his heroism be never so secret, sooner or later those eyes would find him out.

He was silent so long that she asked, not impatiently: "It would make what difference, Rupert?"

It was clear that she had no idea as to what was pa.s.sing in his mind.

There had been an instant--just an instant--no more--when he had almost doubted her, when her strategy in putting him where he was had seemed too deft to be the result of chance. But, with her pure face turned upward and her honest eyes on his, that suspicion couldn't last.

"It would make the difference--"

If he paused again, it was only because his throat swelled with a choking sensation that made it difficult to speak; he felt, too, that his face was congested. Nevertheless the s.p.a.ce, which was not longer than a few seconds by the clock, gave him time to remember that as his mother's and his sisters' incomes were inalienable he was by so much the more free. He was by so much the more free to do the mad, romantic, quixotic thing, which might seem to be a contradiction of his past, but was not so much a contradiction of _himself_ as people who knew him imperfectly might suppose. He was taken to be ambitious, calculating, shrewd; when all the while he knew himself to be--as most Englishmen are at heart--quixotic, romantic, and even a little mad, when madness can be sublime.

He was able at last to get his sentence out.

"It would make the difference that ... before we are married ... or after ... probably after ... I should have to square him."

"Square him?" She echoed the words as though she had no idea what they meant.

"I'm worth ... I _must_ be worth ... a hundred thousand pounds ...

perhaps more."

"Oh, you mean, square him in that way."

"I must be a man of honor before everything, by Jove!"

"You couldn't be anything else. You don't need to go to extremes like that to prove it."

Her lack of emotion, of glad enthusiasm, chilled him. She even ceased to look at him, turning her profile toward him and gazing again abstractedly across the lawn. A sudden fear took hold of him, the fear that his hesitations, his evident difficulty in getting the thing out, had enabled her to follow the processes by which he whipped himself up to an act that should have been spontaneous. He had a suspicion, too, that in this respect he had fallen short of the American--the cowboy, as he had called him. "I must do better than him," he said, in his English idiom. The thought that he might not have done as well was rather sickening. If he had so failed it was through inadvertence, but the effect on Olivia would be as great as if it was from fear. To counteract it he felt the need of being more emphatic. His emphasis took the form of simple common sense.

"It isn't going to extremes to take up one's own responsibilities. I can't let a fellow like that do things for your father any more than for mine, by Jove! It's not only doing things for my father, but for--my wife."

Drawing up a small chair, he sat down on the other side of the table. He sat down with the air of a man who means to stay and take possession.

"Oh, but I'm not your wife, Rupert."

"You're my wife already," he declared, "to all intents and purposes.

We've published our intention to become man and wife to the world.

Neither of us can go back on that. The mere fact that certain words haven't been mumbled over us is secondary. For everything that const.i.tutes duty I'm your husband now."

"Oh no, you're not. You're the n.o.blest man in the world, Rupert. I never dreamed that there could be any one like you. But I couldn't let you--I couldn't--"

He crushed her hands in both of his own, leaning toward her across the table. "Oh, my darling, if you only knew how easy it is--"

"No, it isn't easy. It can't be easy. I couldn't let you do it for me--"

"But what about _him?_ You let--_him!_"

"Oh, but that's different."

"How is it different?"

"I don't know, Rupert; but it is. Or rather," she went on, rapidly, "I do know, but I can't explain. If you were an American you'd understand it."

"Oh, American--be blowed!" The accent was all tenderness, the protest all beseeching.

"I can't explain it," she hurried on, "because you don't understand us.