The Street Called Straight Part 46

Drusilla went on counting. "Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. That's all of that set. What a lot of silver you've got! And some of it must have been in the family for thousands of years. Yes," she added, in another tone, "yes, he did. He said he wasn't."

Olivia laid down the ladle she was holding with infinite precaution. She had got the stab she was looking for. It seemed for a minute as if she was free--gloatingly free. He hadn't cared anything about her after all, and had said so! She steadied herself by holding to the edge of the sideboard.

Drusilla stooped to the basket of silver standing on the floor, in a seemingly pa.s.sionate desire for more forks. By the time she had straightened herself again, Olivia was able to say: "I'm so glad of that. You know what his kindness in helping papa has made people think, don't you?"

But Mrs. Fane astonished her by throwing down her handful of silver with unnecessary violence of clang and saying: "Look here, Olivia, I'd rather not talk about it any more. I've reasons. I can't take a hand in your affairs without being afraid that perhaps--perhaps--I--I--sha'n't play the game."

Olivia was silent, but she had much to think of.

It was a few days later still that she found herself in Rodney Temple's little office in the Gallery of Fine Arts. She had come ostensibly to tell him that everything had been arranged for the sale.

"Lemon and Company think that early in December would be the best time, as people are beginning then to spend money for Christmas. Mr. Lemon seems to think we've got a good many things the smaller connoisseurs will want. The servants are to go next Tuesday, so that if you and Cousin Cherry could take papa then--I'm to stay with Lulu Sentner; and I shall go from her house to be married--some day, when everything else is settled. Did you know that before Mr. Davenant went away he left a small bank account for papa?--two or three thousand dollars--so that we have money to go on with. Rupert wants to spend a week or two in New York and Washington, after which we shall come back here and pick up papa. He's not very keen on coming with us, but I simply couldn't--"

He nodded at the various points in her recital, blinking at her searchingly out of his kind old eyes.

"You look pale," he said, "and old. You look forty."

She surprised him by saying, with a sudden outburst: "Cousin Rodney, do you think it's any harm for a woman to marry one man when she's in love with another?" Before he had time to recover himself, she followed this question with a second. "Do you think it's possible for a person to be in love with two people at the same time?"

He understood now the real motive of her visit.

"I'm not a very good judge of love affairs," he said, after a minute's reflection. "But one thing I know, and it's this--that when we do our duty we don't have to bother with the question as to whether it's any harm or not."

"We may do our duty, and still make people unhappy."

"No; not unless we do it in the wrong way."

"So that if I feel that to go on and keep my word is the right thing--or rather the only thing--?"

"That settles it, dearie. The right thing _is_ the only thing--and it makes for everybody's happiness."

"Even if it seems that it--it _couldn't_?"

"I'm only uttering plat.i.tudes, dearie, when I say that happiness is the flower of right. No other plant can grow it; and that plant can't grow any other flower. When you've done the thing you feel you're called to do--the thing you couldn't refuse while still keeping your self-respect--well, then, you needn't be afraid that any one will suffer in the long run--and yourself least of all."

"In the long run! That means--"

"Oh, there may be a short run. I'm not denying that. But no one worth his salt would be afraid of it. And that, dearie," he added, blinking, "is all I know about love affairs."

There being no one in the gallery on which the office opened, she kissed him as she thanked him and went away. She walked homeward, taking the more retired streets through Cambridge and into Waverton, so as to be the more free for thinking. It was a relief to her to have spoken out. Oddly enough, she felt her heart lighter toward Davenant from the mere fact of having told some one, or having partially told some one, that she loved him.

When, on turning in at the gate of Tory Hill, she saw a taxicab standing below the steps of the main entrance, she was not surprised, since Ashley occasionally took one to run out from town. But when a little lady in furs and an extravagant hat stepped out to pay the chauffeur Olivia stopped to get her breath. If it hadn't been impossible she would have said--

But the taxicab whizzed away, and the little lady tripped up the steps.

Olivia felt herself unable to move. The motor throbbed past her, and out the gate, but she still stood incapable of going farther. It seemed long before the pent-up emotions of the last month or two, controlled, repressed, unacknowledged, as they had been, found utterance in one loud cry: "Aunt Vic!"

Not till that minute had she guessed her need of a woman, a Guion, one of her very own, a mother, on whose breast to lay her head and weep her cares out.

The first tears since the beginning of her trials came to Olivia Guion, as, with arms clasped round her aunt and forehead pressed into the little old lady's furs, she sat beside her on a packing-case in the hail. She cried then as she never knew before she was capable of crying.

She cried for the joy of the present, for the trouble of the past, and for the relief of clinging to some one to whom she had a right. Madame de Melcourt would have cried with her, had it not been for the effect of tears on cosmetics.

"There, there, my pet," she murmured, soothingly. "Didn't you know your old auntie would come to you? Why didn't you cable? Didn't you know I was right at the end of the wire. There now, cry all you want to. It'll do you good. Your old auntie has come to take all your troubles away, and see you happily married to your Englishman. She's brought your _dot_ in her pocket--same old _dot!_--and everything. There now, cry. There's nothing like it."

XXII

Madame de Melcourt the chief novelty of American life, for the first few days at least, lay in the absence of any necessity for striving. To wake up in the morning into a society not keeping its heart hermetically shut against her was distinctly a new thing. Not to have to plan or push or struggle, to take snubs or repay them, to wriggle in where she was not wanted, or to keep people out where she had wriggled in, was really amusing. In the wide friendliness by which she found herself surrounded she had a droll sense of having reached some scholastic paradise painted by Puvis de Chavannes. She was even seated on a kind of throne, like Just.i.tia or Sapientia, with all kinds of flattering, welcoming attentions both from old friends who could remember her when she had lived as a girl among them and new ones who were eager to take her into hospitable arms. It was decidedly funny. It was like getting into a sphere where all the wishes were gratified and there were no more worlds to conquer. It would pall in the end; in the end she would come to feel like a gourmet in a heaven where there is no eating, or an Englishman in some Blessed Isle where there is no sport; but for the moment it offered that refreshing change which strengthens the spirit for taking up the more serious things of life again. In any case, it put her into a good-humor of which the residents at Tory Hill were the first to feel the effect.

"Il est tres bien, ton Anglais."

Olivia acknowledged this approval with a smile and a blush, as she went about the drawing-room trying to give it something of its former air.

With the new turn of events it had become necessary to restore the house to a condition fit for occupancy. Madame de Melcourt had moved into it with her maid and her man, announcing her intention to remain till she got ready to depart. Her bearing was that of Napoleon making a temporary stay in some German or Italian palace for the purposes of national reorganization and public weal. At the present instant she was enthroned amid cushions in a corner of the sofa, watching Olivia dispose of such bric-a-brac as had not been too remotely packed away.

"I always say," the old lady declared, "that when an Englishman is chic he's very chic, and your Ashley is no exception. I don't wonder you're in love with him."

When seated the Marquise accompanied her words with little jerkings and perkings of her fluffy head, with wavings of the hands and rollings of the eyes--the corelatives of her dartings and dashings while on her feet.

It was easy for Olivia to keep her back turned, while she managed to say: "He thinks you don't like him."

Madame shrugged her shoulders. "I like him as well as I could like any Englishman. He's very smart. You can see at a glance he's some one. From what I'd heard of him--his standing by you and all that--I was afraid he might be an eccentric."

"Whom did you hear it from?"

"Oh, I heard it. There's nothing wonderful in that. A thing that's been the talk of Boston and New York, and telegraphed to the London papers--you don't suppose I shouldn't hear of it some time. And I came right over--just as soon as I was convinced you needed me."

Olivia looked round with misty eyes. "I shall never forget it, Aunt Vic, dear--nor your kindness to papa. He feels it more than he can possibly express to you--your taking what he did so--so gently."

"Ma foi! The Guions must have money. When it comes to spending they're not morally responsible. I'm the only one among them who ever had a business head; and even with me, if it hadn't been for my wonderful Hamlet and Tecla--But you can see what I am at heart--throwing two million francs into your lap as if it were a box of bonbons."

"I'm not sure that you ought, you know."

"And what about the Guion family honor and all that? Who's to take care of it if I don't? The minute I heard what had happened I held up my head and said, Everything may go so long as the credit of the Guion name is saved. N'est-ce pas? We can't live in debt to the old man who advanced your papa the money."

"He isn't an old man at all," Olivia explained, quickly.

"ca ne fait rien. His age isn't the question. I suppose he lent the money expecting us to pay him back at a handsome rate of interest."

"No, he didn't. That's just it. He lent it to us--out of--out of--"

"Yes; out of what?"

"Out of pure goodness," she said, firmly.