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Neo York U609 USA (716) *82 - 0300 - Phone (716) 288-5989 - Fa^ ;, i See page 15S SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN AIR //. *7t'= :1 ^■■'^ M f i{i/' / PSe521 153587 1912 McLennan King, Basil, ^' 1?-*^'"^^ ^ called Straight "**"" 71772042 COPYHIOHT. lail. lgl}. BY HAR PtH ■ BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED MAY. 1912 .1 t \ *"By the Street Called Straight ive come to the House called Beautifur' —New England Saying -agjyp»f»'' ■■ i ILLUSTRATIONS SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN AIR FrotUispiec* OLIVIA GUION . . ,1 , Facing p. 30 I VE DONE WRONG, BUT i'm WILLING TO PAY THE penalty" ,, "who on earth should I be IN LOVE WITH?" ^ INQUIRED DRUSILLA .« "there's no one who won't believe BUT THAT I— THREW YOU OVER" . . «< SHE SPARED NO DETAIL OF HER OWN OPPOSI- nON AND EVENTUAL CAPITULATION . . «< JW "your old auntie has come to take all YOUR TROUBLES AWAY" «« g ASHLEY GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THEIR CO S- VERSATION WAS EARNEST, CONFIDENTIAL " 394 5*S*e)^\ >- i^mm^ I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT tA y^ iil 1 i THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT K a matter of fact, Davenant was under ^ no "Lions concerning the quahty of the welcome his hostess was accordmg him though he found a certam pleasure irbeng once more in her company ^^M'u 'Is not a ^een p.easur. but ne.ther was it an ^mbarrassm^ one -t was exac y supposed It «°»)'l >'; '"J';„VosUy, admiration, and a blending on h.s part of cuno^ty, ^^^ ^^_ reminiscent suffenng out <> "t^' ^^„i„,a the perience had taken the «mg^ astonishment once memory of a mmute "f '"^^"f^^.ts, some months upon a time, f°"°;f^<>.^.'' ?°""\'^t, he years between P"''n"'^?nlSree a" long and var.ed, twenty-four and thirty tnre ^^^^^^ s=en:. w!5^.= f^:i'-rt'-s ShXtsXSsSrsa.nowasM. '^BBm \ I ; : it:)! THE STR E ET_ CALLED STRAIGHT^ Guion must have seen it then, as something so m- congruous and absurd as not only to need no con- sideration, but to call for no reply. Nevertheless, it was the refusal on her part of a reply, ot the mere laconic No which was all that, in his heart of hearts, he had ever expected, that rankled m him longest; but even that mortification had passed, as far as he knew, into the limbo of extinct regrets. For her present superb air of having no recollec- tion of his blunder he had nothing but commenda- tion. It was as becoming to the spirited grace of its wearer as a royal mantle to a queen. Carrying it as she did, with an easy, preoccupied afFability that enabled her to look round him and over him and through him, to greet him and converse with him, without seeming positively to take in the fact of his existence, he was permitted to suppose the incident of their previous acquaintance, once so vital to him- self, to have been forgotten. If this were so, it would be nothing very strange, since a woman of twenty-seven, who has had much social experience, may be permitted to lose sight of the more negligible of the conquests she has made as a girl of eighteen. She had asked him to dinner, and placed him honorably at her right; but words could not have made it plainer than it was that he was but an acci- dent to the occasion. He was there, in short, because he was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Temple. After a two years' absence from New England he had arrived in Waverton that day. "Oh, bother! bring him along," had been the formula in which Miss Guion THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT had conveyed his invitation, the dinner being but an informal, neighborly affair. Two or three wed- ding gifts having arrived from various quarters of the world, it was natural that Miss Guion should want to show them confidentially to her dear friend and distant relative, Drusilla Fane. Mrs. Fane had every right to this privileged inspection, since she had not only timed her yearly visit to her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Temple, so that it should synchronize with the wedding, but had introduced Olivia to Colonel Ashley, m the first place. Indeed, there had been ti rumor at Southsea, right up to the time of Miss Guion's visit to the pretty little house on the M..rine Parade, that the colonel's calls and atten- tions there had been not unconnected with Mrs. Fane herself; but rumor in British naval and military stations is notoriously overactive, especially in mat- ters of the heart. Certain it is, however, that when the fashionable London papers announced that a mar- riage had been arranged, and would shortly take place, between Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Ashley, of the Sussex Rangers, and of Heneage Place, Belvoir, Leicestershire, and Olivia Margaret, only child of Henry Guion, Esquire, of Tory Hill, Waverton, near Boston, Massachusetts, U. S. A., no one offered warmer congratulations than the lady in whose house the interesting pair had met. There were people who ascribed this attitude to the fact that, being constitutionally "game," she refused to betray her disappointment. She had been "awfully game," they said, when poor Gerald Fane, also of the Sussex Rangers, was cut off with 3 hmr. ■rftanr-Tir. r^-^« J I; lid ^j-REET_C ALLED STRAIGH T^ "^c at Peshawur. But the general opinion was to the effect that, not wanting Rupert Ashley (tor some obscure, feminine reason) for herself, she had magnanimously bestowed him elsewhere Around tea-tables, . -I at church parade, it was said Amer- icans do that," with some comment on the methods of the transfer. _ .„ • i j ^^ On every ground, then, Drusilla was entitled to this first look at the presents, some of which had come from Ashley's brother officers, who were con- sequently brother officers of the late Captain Fane; so that when she telephoned saying she was afraid that they, her parents and herself, couldn t come to dinner that evening, because a former ward of her father's— Olivia must remember Peter Dayenant!— was arriving to stay with them for a week or two, Miss Guion had answered, "Oh, bother! bring him along," and the matter was arranged. It was doubt- ful, however, that she knew him in advance to be the Peter Davenant who nine years earlier had h:.d the presumption to fall in love with her; it w: ; still more doubtful, after she had actually shaken hands with him and called him by name, whether she p^id him the tribute of any kind of recollection. Ihe fact that she had seated him at her right, in the place that would naturally be accorded to Rodney Temple, the scholarly director of the Department ot Ceramics in the Harvard Gallery of Fine Arts, made it look as if she considered Davenant a total stranger. In the few conventionally gracious words she ad- dressed to him, her manner was that of the hostess who receives a good many people in the course ot a 4 I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT year toward the chance guest she had never seen before and expects never to see again. "Twice round the world since you were last in Boston? How interesting!" Then, as if she had said enough for courtesy, she continued across the lights and flowers to Mrs. Fane: "Drusilla, did you know Colonel Ashley had declined that post at Gibraltar? I'm so glad. I should hate the Gib." "The Gib wouldn't hate you," Mrs. Fane assured her. "You'd have a heavenly time there. Rupert Ashley is deep in the graces of old Bannockburn, who's in command. He's not a bad old sort, old Ban isn't, though he's a bit of a martinet. Lady Ban is awful — a bounder in petticoats. She looks like that." Drusilla pulled down the corners of a large, mobile mouth, so as to simulate Lady Bannockburn's expression, in a way that drew a laugh from every one at the table but the host. Henry Guion re- mained serious, not from natural gravity, but from inattention. He was obviously not in a mood for joking, nor apparently for eating, since he had scarcely tasted his soup and was now only playing with the fish. As this corroborated what Mrs. Temple had more than once asserted to her husband during the past few weeks, that "Henry Guion had something on his mind," she endeavored to exchange a glance with him, but he was too frankly enjoying tlie exercise of his daughter's mimetic gift to be other- wise observant. "And what docs Colonel Ashley look like, Drucie?" he asked, glancing slyly at Miss Guion. ^^^'^ '^^^li If THE_S TREET^ALL^D_^Tj^AJCHr "Like that," Mrs. Fane saTdjiJ^i^" Straight ening the corners of her mouth nn^ .^ 'Straight- • l::f'''\ 'Y^-^' her:;eTin^\Ttt r:rvfri r and stroked horizontally an imaginary lustX^ keeping the play up till her hps quivered. ' , It w hke h.m,' Miss Guion laughed, quired. " '"'^ ^' ^" ''^^^•" ^'^^ P^^f-sor ,n- "Not stiff," Miss Guion exDIain*^r^ " . dignified." explained, only "Dignified!" Drusilla cried. "I should think 1 ^''J"'' Y^^ ^^'^'^ '^^•■^-I^- It's perfect"^ absurd that those two should marry ^ Apart they re a pa.r of splendid specimens; united fhev' i be too much of a eood thin^ Tl, ' ^ , ' '^"^>' " ma convex m.rror. It '|| be simply awful " Her voice had the luscious En^^ll^l, .„,„ • sp.te of its bein« pitched aZle ^'^.'h "rnTe;;:" ng she displayed the superior, initiated mannrapt" I t?^ra3iditr™i- ttr^-:£ Drusilla had acquired notably well, considenW^?hl latter fact persLed^^n^tSsta'nXt'he^t En,£ articulation and style of doing her hair H ^ Rangers were sSd^the e'" Her^ent '""'" to Captain Gerald Fane sonTf .heXleveTeni 6 nLLJT_REETi_CALJ^E^D_STR^ICHT had had no preparation; but she adapted herself as readdy as she would have done had «h. „ ' , a Russian prince or a Spanish grandee n thTeZf and Z : "T T =" '"■"«""^ °f th:-„,atte :«:« that „f '" */°T- • '^'^Sin.ental life is no. unlike w^.n eo'.hi„enMr™-;l: -^^^^^^ S^Ta^d^ r heTsel^I cirV^ T^^-" ' following her husbanTtf BaJb^L Th^'cTneTn Indja, she had just succeeded in passing all ?he test, S ed Tr\T'^^''' """'S quar'ters when h ^f^H^erUothterBTst:rBttrrea''r^ -ttled ,n the small house at Southsea, where from OH^'GuioT ''" '"'' '" ^■'^»"X"''» "-P- oT v^iivia uuion, as a guest. 7 ll!-: I ::|: ^^r«aBBr3r?irfT?*i»«a^'S= .?■ THE STkKET CALLED STRAIGHT tried to r.arry her have wanted to be her servants, when all the while she's been waiting for a master." Davenant understood that, now that it was pointed out to him, though the thought would not iia\e come to him spontaneously. She was the strong woman who would yield only to a stronKcr man. Colonel Ashley might not be stronger than she in intellect or character, but he had done some large things on a large field, and was counted an active force in a country of forceful activities. There might be a question as to whether he would prove to be her master, but he would certainly never think of being her slave. "What are you going to do, Henry, when the gal- lant stranger carries off Olivia, a fortnight hence?" Though she asked the question with the good in- tention of drawing her host into the conversation, Mrs. Temple made it a point to notice the effort with which he rallied himself to meet her words. "What am 1 going to do?" he repeated, ab- sently. "OK, my future will depend very much on — Hobson's choice." "That's true," Miss Guicn agreed, hurriedly, as though to emphasize a point. "It's all the choice I've left to him. I've arranged everything for papa— beautifully. He's to take in a partner, perhaps two partners. You know," she continued, in explanation to Mrs. Fane— "you know that poor papa has been the whole of Guion, Maxwell & Guion since Mr. Maxwell died. Well, then, he's to take in a partner or two, and gradually shift his business into their hands. Tliat wouldn't take more 12 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT thnn a couple of years at lonRcst. Then he's goinR to retire, and come to live near me in England. Rupert says there s a small place close to Heneage hat would just su.t h.m. Papa has always liked the r^nghsh huntmg country, and so—" "And s., everything will be for the best," Rodney Kmple fin.shed. "There's nothing lik; a fresh young mmd, hke a young lady's, for settling business ..tta.rs It would have taken you or me a long time to work that plan out, wouldn't it, Henru? We should be worried over the effect on our trusteeships and rhe big estates we've had the care of—" What about the big estates?" Davenant noticed the tone in which Guion brought out this question, though it was an hour later before he understood its significance. It was a sharp tone, the tone of a man who catches an irritating word o.^ two among remarks he has scarcely followed. Tem- ple apparently had meant to call it forth, since he answered, with the slightest possible air of intention : AX7L- "o^"'"8~except what I hear." While Miss Gu.on and Mrs. Fane chatted of their ZZrfr"' ^^^^^"^"^^•^'"^l-J'ed the way in which Htnry Guion paused, his knife and fork fixed in the chicken wing on his plate, and gazed at his old friend. He bent slightly forward, too, looking, with his superb head and bust slightly French in style very handsome and imposing. "Then you've been— hearing— things?" Rodney Temple lowered his eves in a way that confirmed Davenant-who lew his former guardians tricks of manner-ii. hi. suppositirTs ffl l-l THE STREET CALLED STRAIGH T He was so open in countenance that anything momentarily veiled on his part, either in speech or in address, could reasonably be attributed to stress of circumstances. The broad forehead, straight- forward eyes, and large mouth imperfectly hidden by a shaggy beard and mustache, were of the kind that lend themselves to lucidity and candor. Ex- ternally he was the scholar, as distinct from the pro- fessional man or the "divme." His figure — tall, large-boned, and loose-jointed — had the slight stoop traditionally associated with study, while the profile was thrust forward as though he were peering at something just out of sight. A courtly touch in his style was probably a matter of inheritance, as was also his capacity for looking suitably attired while obviously neglectful of appearances. His thick, lank, sandy hair, fading to white, and long, narrow, stringy beard of the same transitional hue were not well cared for; and yet they helped to give him a little of the air of x Titian or Velasquez noble- min. In answer to Guion now, he spoke without lifting his eyes from his plato. "Have I been hearing things.? N-no; only that the care of big estates is a matter of great respon- sibility — and anxiety." "That's what I tell papa," Miss Guion said, warmly, catching the concluding words. "It's a great responsibility and anxiety. He ought to be free from it. I tell him my marriage is a providen- tial hint to him to give up work." "Perhaps I sha'n't get the chance. Work may give up — me." 14 ii TH E STREE T CALLED STRAIGHT 'I wioh it ild. The I . . ,. ^°"'°' P^pa- 1 hen everything woul be settled. "Some things would be settled. Others might be opened— for discussion." If Rodney Tr-nple had not lifted his eyes in an- other signincant look tow.ird Guion, Davenant would have let these sentences pass unheeded. As It was, his attention was directed to possible things or impossible things, left unsaid. For a second or two he was aware of an odd suspicion, but he brushed It away as absurd, in view of the self-assurance with which Guion roused himself at last to enter into the conversation, which began immediately to turn on persons of whom Davenant had no knowledge. Ihe inability to follow closely -ave him time to make a few superficial observations regarding his host In spite of the fact that Guion had been a tamihar figure to him ever since his boyhood, he now saw him at really close range for the first time in 3'ears. What struck him most was the degree to which Guion conserved his quality of Adonis. Long ago renowned, in that section of American society that clings to the cities and seaboa-J between Maine and Maryland, as a fine specimen o{ manhood, he was perhaps handsomer now, wiih his noble, regular features his well-trimmed, iron-gray beard, and his splendid head of iron-gray hair, than he had been in his youth. Reckoning roughly, Davenant judged huTi to be sixty. He had been a personage promi- nently .11 view in the group of cities formed by Boston, Cambridge, and Waverton, ever since Davenant IS m I T HE STREET CALLED STR AIGIl T could remember him. Nature having created Guion an ornament to his kind, fate had been equally benefi- cent in ordaining that he should have nothing to do, on leaving the university, but walk into the excel- lent legal practice his grandfather had founded, and his father had brought to a high degree of honor us well as to a reasonable pitch of prosperity. It was. from the younger Guion's point of view, an agne- able practice, concerned chiefly with the care of trust funds, in which a gentleman could engage without any rough-and-tumble loss of gentility. It required little or nothing in the v ay of pleadings in the courts or disputing in the market-place, and — especially during the lifetime of the elder partners —left him leisure for cultivating that graceful re- lationship to life for which he possessed aptitudes. It was a high form of gracefulness, making it a matter of course that he should figure on the Boards of Galleries of Fine Arts and Colleges of Music, and other institutions meant to minister to his country's good through the elevation of its taste. "It's the sort of thing he was cut out for," Dave- nant commented to himself, as his eye traveled from the high-bred face, where refinement blended with authority, to the essentially gentlemanly fig- ure, on which the delicately tied cravat sat with the elegance of an orchid, while the white waist- coat, of the latest and most youthful cut, was as neatly adjusted to the person as the calyx to a bud. The mere sight of so much ease and distinction made Davenant himself feci like a rustic in his Sunday clothes, though he seized the opportunity of being i6 If I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT I in such company to enlarge his perception of the I fine points of bearing. It was an improving ex- j perience of a kind which he only occasionally got. He had an equal sense of the educational value of the conversation, to which, as it skipped from country to country and from one important name to another, it was a privilege to be a listener. His own career— except for his two excursions round the world, conscientiously undertaken in pursuit of knowledge — had been so somberly financial that he was frankly, and somewhat naively, curious concerning the people who "did things" bearing little or no relation to business, and who per- mitted themselves sensations merely for the sake of having them. Olivia Guion's friends, and Drusilla Dane's— admirals, generals, colonels, ambassadors, and secret ries of embassy they apparently were, for the most part— had what seemed to him an un- wonted freedom of dramatic action. Merely to hear them talked about gave him glimpses of a world varied and picturesque, from the human point of view, beyond his dreams. In the exchange of scraps of gossip and latest London anecdotes between Miss Guion and Drusilla Fane, on which Henry Guion commented, Davenant felt himself to be looking at a vivid but fitfully working cinematograph, of which the scenes were snatched at random from life as lived anywhere between Washington and Simla, or Inverness and Rome. The effect was both in- structive and entertaining. It was also in its way enlightening, since it showed him th- true standing 2 17 ll (f: a^Ky4^ag «riM^jj» '°Mii*M[JA-ffe"T^'^aygg^tB»^ THE^STREET CALLED STRJfCf/T in the world of this woman whom lie had once, for a few wild minutes, hoped to make his wife. The dinner was half over before he hejran clearly to detach Miss Guion from that environment which he would have called "the best Boston society." Placing her there, he would have said before this evening that he placed her as high as the reasonable human being could aspire to be set. For any one whose roots were in V/averton, "the best Boston society" would in general be taken as the state of blossoming. It came to him as a discovery, made there and then, that Olivia Guion had seized this elect state with one of her earliest tendrils, and, climbing on by way " New York and Washington, had chosen to do her actual flowering in a cosmopoli- tan air. He had none of the resentment the home-bred American business man habitually feels for this kind of eccentricity. Now that he had caught the idea, he coulJ see at a glance, as his mind changed his metaphor, how admirably she wa"^ suited to the tapestried European setting. He was conscious even of something akin to pride in the triumphs she was capable of achieving on that richly decorated world-stage, much as though she were some com- patriot prima-donna. He could see already how well, as the wife of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Ashley, she would fill the part. It had been written for her. Its strong points and its subtleties were alike of the sort wherein she .vould shine. This perception of his own inward applause ex- plained something in regard to himself about which l8 he had been wondering ever since the beginning of dinner-the absence of any pang, <;f any shade of envy, to see another man win where he had been so ignominiously defeated. He saw now that it was a field on which he never could have won. Within "the best Boston society" he might have had a chance, though even there it must have been a poor one; but out here in the open, so to speak/ where the prowess and chivalry of Christendom furnished his competitors, he had been as little in the running as a mortal at a contest of the gods. That he was no longer in love with her he had known years ago; but it palliated somewhat his old humilia- tion, it rnade the word failure easier to swallow down, to perceive that his love, when it existed, had been doomed, from the nature of things and in advance, to end in nothing, like that of the nightingale for the moon. By dwelling too pensively on these thoughts he found he had missed some of the turns of the talk, his attention awakening to hear Henry Guion say:' "That's all very fine, but a man doesn't risk every- thing he holds dear in the world to go cheating at cards just for the fun of it. You may depend upon it he had a reason." "Oh, he had a reason," Mrs. Fane agreed— "the reason of being hard up. The trouble lay in its not being good enough." "I imagine it was good enough for him, poor devil." "But not for any one else. He was drummed 19 m THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT II f i out. There wasn't a soul in the regiment to speak to him. We heard that he took another name and went abroad. Anyhow, he disappeared. It was all he could do. He was lucky to get off with that; wasn't he, Peter .^ wasn't he, father.?" "What he got off with," said Guion, "was a quality of traj^ic interest which never pertains to the people who stick to the Street called Straight." "Oh, certainly," Mrs. Fane assented, dryly. "He did acquire that. But I'm surprised to hear you commend it; aren't you, father.? aren't you, Peter?" "I'm not commending it," Guion asserted; "I only feel its force. I've a great deal of sympathy with any poor beggar in his — downfall." "Since when?" The look with which Rodney Temple accompanied the question once more affected Davenant oddly. It probably made the same impression on Guion, since he replied with a calmness that seemed studied: "Since — lately. Why do you ask?" "Oh, for no reason. It only strikes me as curious that your sympathy should take that turn." "Precisely," Miss Guion chimed in. "It's not a bit Hke you, papa. You used to be harder on dis- honorable things than any one." "Well, I'm not now." It was clear to Davenant by this time that in these words Guion was not so much making a state- ment as flinging a challenge. He made that evident by the way in which he sat upright, squared his shoulders, and rested a large, white fist clenched upon the table. His eyes, too, shone, glittered rather. just Ar^i:tTF»^s ,,i:r¥a SS^JP^ 'IMI^IL^J^ ET CALLED HTR^ICIIT with a light quite other than that which a host usually turns upon his guests. To Davenant, as to Mrs. Temple, it seemed as if he had "something on his mind"— something of which he had a per- sistent desire to talk covertly, in the way in which an undetected felon will risk discovery to talk about the crime. No one else apparently at the table shared this impression. Rodney Temple, with eyes pensively downcast, toyed with the seeds of a pear, while Miss Guion and Mrs. Fane began speaking of some other incident of what to them was above every- thing else, "the Service." A minute or two later Olivia rose. "Come, Cousin Cherry. Come, Drusilla," she said, with her easy, authoritative manner. Then, apparently with an attempt to make up for her neglect of Davenant, she said, as «he held the door open for the ladies to pass: "Don't let them keep you here forever. We shall be terribly dull till you join us. He was not too dense to comprehend that the words were conventional, as the smile she flung him was perfunctory. Nevertheless, the little attention pleased him. •il ■•ii- I ill VK'-jis^se^-^asss'Bim^^ssissw.s: l. p.. .». II f i i i I HE three men beinj; left together, Davenant's conviction of inner excite- ment on the part of his host was deep- ened. It was as if, on the withdrawal of the ladies, Guion had less intention of conceahng it. Not that at first he said anything directly or acted otherwise than as a man with guests to entertain. It was only that he threw into the task of offering liqueurs and pass- ing cigars a something febrile that caused his two companions to watch him quietly. Once or twice Davenant caught Temple's eye; but with a common impulse each hastily looked elsewhere. "So, Mr. Davenant, you've come back to us. Got here only this afternoon, didn't you ? I wonder why you came. Having got out of a dull place like Waverton, why should you return to it?" Looking the more debonair because of the flush in his face and the gleam in his eye, Guion seated himself in the place his daughter had left vacant be- tween his two guests. Both his movements and his man- ner of speech were marked by a quick jerkiness, which, however, was not without a certain masculine grace. "I don't know hat I've any better reason," Davenant laughed, snipping off the end of his cigar, 22 THE S TREE T CJLLIW_STRJICIfT "than that which leads the ox to his stall— because he knows the way." "Good!" Guion laughed, rather loudly. Then, stopping abruptly, he continued, "I fancy you knbw your way pretty well in any direction you want to go, don't you?" " I can find it— if I know where I'm going. I came back to Boston chiefly because that was just what 1 didn't know." "He means," Rodney Temple explained, "that he'd got out of his beat; and so, like a wise man, he returns to his starting-point." "I'd got out of something more than my beat; I'd got out of my element. I found that the life' of elegant leisure on which I'd embarked wasn't what I'd been cut out for." "That's interesting— very," Guion said. "How did you make the discovery.?" " Hy being bored to death." "Bored?— with all your money?" "The money isn't much; but, even if it were, it couldn't go on buying me a good time." "That, of course, depends on what your idea of a good time may be; doesn't it, Rodney?" "It depends somewhat," Rodney replied, "on the purchasing power of money. There are things not to be had for cash." "I'm afraid my conception of a good time,' Davenant smiled, "might be more feasible without the cash than with it. After all, money would be a doubtful blessing to a bee if it took away the task of going out to gather honey." 23 ll 'im .-''^ic^^^kiJk a-s am^ ia:f^Si,MJi*'.n'^im^fik : o|'*tdfflK.«2k;F7_ - A ^tr^jiP«S»fir«9-K.4IU' ■ T HE STREET CALLE D STR A I C II T "A bee," Guion observed, "isn't the ptodiKt of a hiRh and complex civilization — " "Neither am I," Davenant declared, with a bin laugh. "I spring from the primitive stratum of people born to work, who expect to work, and who, when they don't work, have no particular object in living on." "And so you've come back to Boston to work.^" "To work — or something." "You leave yourself, I see, the latitude of — some- thing." "Only because it's better than nothing. Tr's been nothing for so long now that I'm willing to make it anything." "Make what — anything?" "My excuse for remaining on earth. If I'm to go on doing that, I've got to have something more to justify it than the mere ability to pay my hotel bill." "You're luckier than you Vnow to be able to do that much," Guion said, witu one of his abrupt, nervous changes of position. "But you've been uncommonly lucky, anyhow, haven't you? Made some money out of that mine business, didn't you ? Or was It in sugar ?' Davenant laughed. "A little," he admitted. " But, to any one like you, sir, it would seem a trifle." "To any one like me! Listen." He leaned for- ward, with feverish eyes, and spoke slowly, tapping on the table-cloth as he did so. "For half a million dollars I'd sell my soul." Davenant resisted the impulse to glance at Temple, 24 ■i\V^-^::-Sitsiiii^;-SS}£S.3SS!S .^'^'A^-^ 77? /i AT_r;^ A Ai^/;_ S TR/1l(;iir who spokr promptly, whilr (;iiion swjllow.-d thii .tilv a p:la.ss of cognac. "I'hat'.s a KfMKl deal for a soul, Henry. It's a large amount of the sure and tauKihle for a very imcertain (|uantity of the impalpable and proble- matical." Davenant laup,hed at this more boisterously than the degree of humor warranted. I le began definitely to feel that sense of discomfort which in the last half- hour he had been only afraid of. It was not the commonplace fact that (jinon might be short of money that he dreaded; it was the possibility of get- ting a glimpse of another man's inner secret self. He had been in this position more than once before— when men wanted to tell him things he didn't want to know—when, whipped by conscience or crazed by misfortune or hysterical from drink, they tried to rend with their own hands the veil that only the lost or the desperate suffer to be torn. He had noted before that it was generally men like Guion of a high strung temperament, perhaps with a femi- nme streak in it, who reached this pass, and because of his own reserve — his rather cowardly reserve, he called it— he was always impelled to run away from them. As there was no possibility of running a^yay now, he could only dodge, by pretending to misunderstand, what he feared Guion was trying to say. "So everything you undertook vou pulled off successfully?" his host questioned, abruptly. "Not everything; some things. I lost money— often; but on the whole I made ir." 25 m M ? . ff I - »: ill l\ !■ j TflESTREET_C/fLLFDSTRJrCfrr "Good! With me it was always the other way.*' The pause that followed was an uneasy one, otherwise Temple would not have seized on the first topic that came to hand to fill it up. "You'll miss Olivia when she's gone, Henry." " Y-yes; if she goes." The impli I doubt startled Davenant, but Temple continued » smoke pensively. "I've thought," Iv said, after a puff or two at his cigar, "I've thought you seemed to he anticipating something in the way of a — hitch." Guion held his cigar with some deliberation over an ash-tray, knocking off the ash with his little finger as though it were a task demanding precision. "You'll know all about it to-morrow, perhaps - or in a few days at latest. It can't be kept quiet much longer. I got the impression at dinner that you'd heard .something already." "Nothing bur gossip, Henry." Guioii Si ^ li'd, but with a wince. "I've noticed," he said, "that there's a certain kind of gossip that rarely gets about unless there's some cause for it - on the principle of no smoke without fire. If you've heard anything, it's probably true." "I was afraid it might be. But in that case I wonder you allowed Olivia to go ahead." "I had to let fate take charge of that. When a man gets himself so entangled in a coil of barbed wir? that he trips whichever way he turns, his only re- source is to stand still. That's my case." He poured himself out another glass of cognac, and tasted it before continuing. "Olivia goes over to 26 i THE ST R E ET CA LLE D STR /tlCHT Knuland, ami nets herself onKaRcd to a man I nrvci luarcl of. G(M)d! She fixes her wedding-day with- out consulting me and irrespective of my affairs. CI OLIVIA UUION ^.*^^UKS1l■«TaF*■" rt^Ta* i^4^]iisi!!i'=:i Mill iiMi I a^n>nn»'awi. ■jg rT^c'vs.* ■.^-' ■>J'U:^'' '^iyiit'i TJL^STREET^JU^ED_STRJ^lGn T room door. It was a wide opening, hiinE with nor t.eres, through which he could .^e Ohvia cZ,^ tand.ng by the crackling wood fire, a foot on e low fender. One hand rested lightly on the mante^ piece, while the other d-ew back her skirt ,,?" me ing black from th , olaze. Drusi la an^'afZ: ZZ:::. ''""""""' "™ -^^''"''-'^ n.oref;m,iiar He was still thinking of this glimpse when, a half- hour later, he said to Rodney Temple, as they waS "Well, what is it?" "I thought-that is, I hoped-that if I did the way might open up for me to do what miX he culled— well, a little good." ^ ^"^ "What put that into ycjuMiead?)' was the old man s response to this stanLering cLfession 1 suppose the thought occurred to me on ireneni other. To start out to do good is much hl„ you'll add a cubit to your's^ature Bu ';o7c;"; always do right. Do right, and the good '11 IZ c^^ Davenant reflected on this in silence as thev camped onward. By this time they had de ei dc'd IroTes^ofthTcSs."" "■'•■ '""' "•^' "-""- "- 31 m i I' I- THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT By a' common impulse both Temple and Davenant kept silent concerning Guion. On leaving Tory Hill they had elected to walk homeward, the ladies taking the carriage. The radiant moonlight and the clear, crisp October air helped to restore Dave- nant's faculties to a normal waking condition after the nightmare of Guion's hints. Fitting what ne sup- posed must be the facts into the perspective of com- mon life, to which the wide, out-of-door prospect offered some analogy, they were, if not less appall- ing, at least less overwhelming. Without seeing what was to be done much more clearly than he had seen an hour ago, he had a freer consciousness of power- something like the matter-of-course assumption that any given situation could be met with which he ordinarily faced the world. That he lacked au- thority in the case was a thought that did not oc- cur to him— no more than it occurred to him on the day when he rescued the woman from drowning, or on the night when he had dashed into the fire to save a man. , , , v It was not till they had descended the straggling, tree-shaded street— along which the infrequent street- lamps threw little more light that that which came from the windows shining placidly out on lawns— and had emerged on the embankment bordering the Charles, that the events of the evening began for Davenant to weave themselves in with that inde- finable desire that had led him back to Boston. He coul I not have said in what way they belonged to- gether; and yet he could perceive that between them there was some such dim interpenetration as the 32 &yb^^/b^.s^^^Rai^^ig»K@SH-'^^^^i^iB&^yiiDe^ f THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT distant lamps of the city made through the silvery mist lying on the river and its adjacent marshes like some efflorescence of the moonlight. « r^^^,^^*^"^^^' '^'" ^^ ^^'^' ^^'^er a long silence, that it's often so hard to know what is rieht " "No, it isn't." The flat^ contradiction brought a smile to the young man's lips as they trudged onward. "A good many people say so." "A good many people say foolish things. It's hard to know what's right chiefly when you're not m a hurry to do it." "Aren't there exceptions to that rule.?" "I allowed for the exceptions. I said chiefly" "But when you do want to do it.?" "You'll know what it is. There'll be somethinc to tell you." "And this something to tell you? What do you call It?" "Some call it conscience. Some call it God Some call it neither." Davenant reflected again. "And you? What do you call it?" "I can't see that anything would be gained by telhng you. That sort of knowledge isn't of much use till^ It's worked out for oneself. At least, it wouldn't be of much use to you." "Why not to me?" "Because you've started out on your own voyage of discovery. You'll bring back more treasures trorn that adventure than any one can give you." These things were said crustily, as though dragged 3 3i K !| I «■• Si?SRi5^ T HE STREET CALLED STRAIGH T from a man thinking of other matters and unwilling to talk. More minutes went by before Davenant spoke again. "But doesn't it happen that what you call the 'something-to-tell-you' tells you now and then to do things that most people would call rather wild— or crazy?" "I dare say." "So what then?" "Then you do them." "Oh, but—" "If there's an 'Oh, but', you don't. That's all. You belong to the many called, but not to the few chosen." " But if things are wild — I'm thinking of something in particular — " "Then you'd better leave it alone, unless you're prepared to be considered a wild man. What Paul did was wild^and Peter — and Joan of Arc — and Columbus — and a good many others. True they were well punished for their folly. Most of them were put in irons, and some of them got death." "I shouldn't dream of classing myself in their company." "Every one's in their company who feels a big impulse and has the courage of it. The trouble with most of us is that we can do the feeling all right; but when it comes to the execution — well, we like to keep on the safe side, among the sane." "So that," Davenant began, stammeringly, "if a fellow got something into Iiis head — something that couldn't be wrong, you know — something that 34 ---., ,-., _— — ^-■-p^.--„y„,-^..-_^-y--.— .^„..,^.^^ ^ --„,p--. „- I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGH T would be right — awfully right in its way, but in a way that most people would consider all wrong — or wild, af I said before — you'd advise him — ?" "I shouldn't advise him at all. Some things must be spontaneous, or they're of little use. If a good seed in good ground won't germinate of its own accord, words of counsel can't help it. But here we are at home. You won't come in just yet.'' Very well; you've got your latch-key." "Good-night, sir. I hope you're not going to think me — well, altogether an idiot." "Very likely I shall; but it '11 be nothing if I do. If you can't stand a little thing like that you'd better not have come back with the ideas that have brought you." :. ! I -3nssas!?!^ms^sttii:^^^tmxs'?^, <^7^SF5 Ill AVENANT turned away into the moon- lit mist. Through it the electric lamps of Boston, curving in crescent lines hy \l the water's edge, or sprinkled at ran- dom over the hill which the city climbs, shone for him with the steadiness and quiet comfort inherent in the familiar and the sure after his long roaming. Lighting a cigarette, he strode along the cement pavement beside the iron railing below which the river ran swiftly and sound- lessly. At this late hour of the evening he had the embankment to himself, save for an occasional pair of lovers or a group of sauntering students. Lights from the dignified old houses — among which was Rodney Temple's — overlooking the embank- ment and the Charles threw out a pleasant glow of friendliness. Beyond the liver a giant shadow looming through the mist reminded him of the Roman Colisseum seen in a like aspect, the resem- blance being accentuated in his imagination by the Stadium's vast silence, by its rows upon rows of ghostly gray sedilia looking down on a haunted, empty ring. His thoughts strayed to Rome, to Cairo, to Calcutta, to Singapore, to the stages of those two patient journeys round the world, made 36 •«J#JiE'a>£>. ."^AKi^ k_ • THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT I* •% from a sense of duty, in search of a widening of that sheerly human knowledge which life had hitherto denied him. Having started from London and got back to London again, he saw how imperfectly he had profited by his opportunities, how much he had missed. It was characteristic of him to begin all over again, and more thoroughly, conscientiously revisiting the Pyramids, the Parthenon, and the Taj Mahal, endeavoring to capture some of that true spirit of appreciation of which he read in books. In his way he was not wholly unsuccessful, since by dint of steady gazing he heightened his perceptive powers, whether it were for Notre Dame, the Sistine Madonna, or the Alps, each of which he took with the same seriousness. What eluded him was precisely that human element which was the pri- mary object of his quest. He learned to rtcogni/e the beauty of a picture or a mountain more or less at sight; but the soul of these things, of which he thought more than of their outward aspects, the soul that looks through the eyes and speaks with the tongues of peoples, remained inaccessible to his yearnings. He was always outside — never more than a tourist. He made acquaintances by the way- side easily enough, but only of the rootless variety, beginning without an introduction and ending with- out a farewell. There was nothing that "belonged" to him, nothing to which he himself "belonged." It was the persistency of the defect that had marked most of his life, even that portion of it spent in Boston and Waverton — the places he called "home." He was their citizen only by adoption, Z7 \ ' < 11 I 77/ E _S TRK ET_CAL L ED STRA IG HT as only by adoption he was the son of Tom and Sarah Davcnant. I hat intimate claim — the claim on the family, the claim on the soil — which springs of birth and antedates it was not his, and something had alwa3's been lacking to his life because of the deficiency. Too healthily genial to feel this want more than obscurely, he nevertheless had tried to remedy it by resorting to the obvious means. He had tried to fall in love, with a view to marriage and a family. Once, perhaps twice, he might have been successful had it not been for the intrusive recollection of a moment, years before, when a girl whom he knew to be proud without suspecting how proud she was had in answer to the first passionate words he ever uttered started to her feet, and, fanning herself languidly, walked away. The mem- ory of that instant froze on his tongue words that might have made him happy, sending him back into his solitary ways. They were ways, as he saw plain- ly enough, that led no whither; for which reason he had endeavored, as soon as he was financially justified, to get out of them by taking a long holiday and traveling round the world. He was approaching the end of his second journey when the realization came to him that as far as his great object was concerned the undertaking had been a failure. He was as much outside the broader cur- rent of human sympathies as ever. Then, all at once, he began to see the reason why. The first promptings to this discovery came to him one spring evening as he stood on the deck of the steam-launch he had hired at Shanghai to go up and 38 IE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT 'I down the Yangste-KianR. Born In China, the son of a medical missionary, he had taken a notion to visit his birthplace at Hankow. It was a pilKrimape he had shirked on his first trip to that country, a neglect for which he afterward reproached himself. All things considered, to make it was as little as he could do in memory of the brave man ind woman to whom he owed his existence. Before this visit it must he admitted, Rufus and Corinna Hallett, his parents according to the flesh, had been as remote and mythical to the mind of Peter Davenant as the Dragon's Teeth to their progeny, the Spartans. Merely in the most common- place kind of data he was but poorl>' supplied con- cerning them. He knew his father had once been a zealous young doctor in Graylands, Illinois, and had later become one of tlie pioneers of medical enter- prise in the mission field; he knew, too, that he had already worked for some years at Hankow before he met and married Miss Corinna Meecham, formerly of Drayton, Georgia, but at that time a teacher in a Chinese school supported by one of the great Amer- ican churches. Events after that seemed to have followed rapidly. Within a few years the babe who was to become Peter Davenant had seen the light, the mother had died, and the father had perished as the victim of a rising in the interior of Hupeh. 1 he child, being taken to America, and unclaimed by relatives, was brought up in the institution main- tained for such cases by the Missionary Board of the church to which his father and mother had given their services. He had lived there till, when he was 39 THE STREET CA L LED STRAIGHT seven years old, Tom and Sarah Davenant, child- less and yet longing for a child, had adopted him. These short and simple annals furnished all that Davenant knew of his own origin; but after the visit to Hankow the personality of his parents at least became more vivid. He met old people who could vaguely recall them. He saw entries in the hospital records made by his f.ither's hand. He stood by his mother's grave. As for his father's grave, if he had one, it was like that of Moses, on some lonely Nebo in Hupeh known to God alone. In the com- pound Davenant saw the spot on which his father's simple house had stood — the house in which he him- self was born — though a wing of the modern hos- pital now covered it. It was a relief to him to find that, except for the proximity of the lepers' ward and the opium refuge, the place, with its trim lawns. Its roses, its clematis, its azaleas, its wistaria, had the sweetness of an English rectory garden. He liked to think that Corinna Meecham had been able to escape from her duties in the crowded, fetid, multi-colored city right outside the gates to some- thing like peace and decency within these quiet walls. He was not a born traveler; still less was he an explorer. At the end of three days he was glad to take leave of his hosts at the hospital, and turn his launch down the river toward the civilization of Shanghai. But it was on the very afternoon of his departure that the ideas came to him which ulti- mately took him back to Boston, and of which he was now thinking as he strolled through the sil^ ery mist beside the Charles. 40 % THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT He had been standing then on the deck of his steam-launch gazing beyond the river, with its crowding, outlandish junks, beyond the towns and villages huddled along the banks, beyond walls gay with wistaria, beyond green rice-fields stretching into the horizon, to where a flaming sunset covered half the sky — a sunset which itself seemed hostile, mysterious, alien, Mongolian. He was thinking that it was on just this scene that his father and mother had looked year upon 3'car before his birth. He wondered how it was that it had had no prenatal influence on himself. He wondered how it was that all their devotion had ended with themselves, that their altruism had died when Corinna Meecham's soul had passed away and Rufus Hallett, like another Stephen, had fallen on his knees beneath the missiles of the villagers to whom he was coming with relief. They had spent their lives in the service of others; he had spent his in his own. It was curious. If there was anything in heredity, he ought to have felt at least some faint impulse from their zeal; but he never had. He could not remember that he had ever done anything for any one. He could not re- member that he had ever seen the need of it. It was curious. He mused on it — mused on the odd diff"erences between one generation and another, and on the queer way in which what is light to the father will sometimes become darkness in the son. It was then that he found the question raising itself within him, "Is that what's wron . with me.?" The query took him by surprise, xt was so out of keeping with his particular kind of self-respect 41 i 1,0 TH E STREET CALLED STR AIGHT that he found it almost droll. If he had never given himself to others, as his parents had, he had certainly paid the world all he owed it. He had nothing wherewith to reproach himself on that score. It had been a matter of satisfaction amounting to pride that he had made his bit of money without resorting in any single instance to methods that could be considered shady. If complaint or criticism could not reach him here, it could not reach him any- where. Therefore the question as to whether there was anything wrong in his attitude toward others was so patently absurd that it could easily be dis- missed. He dismissed it promptly, but it came again. It came repeatedly during that spring and summer. It forced itself on his attention. It became, in its way, the recurrent companion of his journey. It turned up unexpectedly at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places, and on each occasion with an in- creased comprehension on his side of its pertinence. He could look back now and trace the stages by which his understanding of it had progressed. There was a certain small happening in a restaurant at Yokohama; there was an accident on the dock at Vancouver; there was a conversation on a moonlight evening up at Banff"; there was an incident during a drive in the Yosemite; these were mile-stones on the road by which his mind had traveled on to seize the fact that the want of touch between him and his fellow-men might be due to the suppression of some essentially human force within himself. It came to him that something might, after all, have been 42 \ THE STR EET CA LLED STRAIGH T transmitted from Hupeh and Hankow of which he had never hitherto suspected the existence. It cannot he said that his self-questioning had pro- duced any answer more definite than that before he found himself journeying back toward Boston. The final impulse had been given him while he was still loitering aimlessly in Chicago by a letter from Mrs. Temple. "If you have nothing better to do, dear Peter," she wrote, "we shall be delighted if you can come to us for a week or two. Dear Drusilla is with us once again, and you can imagine our joy at having her. It would seem like old times if you were here to complete the little circle. The room you used to have in your college vacations— after dear Tom and Sarah were taken from us — is all ready for you; and Drusilla would like to know you were here to occupy it just as much as we." In accepting this invitation Davenant knew him- self to be drawn by a variety of strands of motive, no one of which had much force in itself, but which when woven together lent one another strength. Now that he had come, he was glad to have done it, since in the combination of circumstances he felt there must be an acknowledged need of a young man, a strong man, a man capable of shouldering re- sponsibilities. He would have been astonished to think that that could be gainsaid. The feeling was confirmed in him after he had watched the tip of his smoked-out cigarette drop, like a tiny star, into the current of the Charles, and had re-entered Rodney Temple's house. 43 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT V- "Here's Peter!" It was Drusilla's voice, with a sob in it. She was sitting on the stairs, three steps from the top, huddled into a voluminous mauve-and-white dress- ing-gown. In the one dim light burning in the hall her big black eyes gleamed tragically, as those of certain animals gleam in dusk. "Oh, Peter, dear, I'm so glad you've come! The most awful thing has happened." That was Mrs. Temple who, wrapped in some- thing fleecy in texture and pink in hue, was crouched on the lowest step, looking more than ever like a tea- cozy dropped by accident. "What's the matter?" Davenant asked, too deeply astonished even to take off his hat. "Is it burglars? Where's the professor?" "He's gone to bed. It isn't burglars. I wish it was. It's something far, far worse. Collins told Drusilla. Oh, I know it's true — though Rodney wouldn't say so. I simply . . . know . . . it's . . . true!' "Oh, it's true," Drusilla corroborated. "I knew that the minute ColHns began to speak. It explains everything — all the little queernesses I've noticed ever since I came home — and everything." "What is it?" Peter asked again. "Who's Collins? And what has he said?" "It isn't a he; it's a she," Drusilla explained. "She's my maid. I knew the minute I came into the room that she'd got something on her mind — I knew it by the way she took my wrapper from the wardrobe and laid it on the bed. It was too awful!" 44 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT The way she laid your "What was too awful? wrapper on the bed?" II No; what she told me. And I know it's true." "Well, for the Lord's sake, Drusilla, what is it?" Drusilla began to narrate. She had forborne, she said, to put any questions till she was being "un- done"; but in that attitude, favorable for confidence, she had asked Collins over her shoulder if anything troubled her, and Collins had told her tale. Briefly, it was to the effect that some of the most distin- guished kitchens in Boston and Waverton had been divided into two factions, one pro and the other contra, ever since the day, now three weeks ago, when Miss Maggie Murphy, whose position of hon- orable service at Lawyer Benn's enabled her to profit by the hints dropped at that eminent man's table, had announced, in the ^servant's dining-room of Tory Hill itself, that Henry Guion was "going to be put in jail." He had stolen Jdrl! Clay's money, and Mrs. Rodman's money, "and a lot of other payple's money, too," Miss Murphy was able to affirm— cHents for whom Guion, Maxwell & Guion had long acted as trustees — and was now to be tried and sentenced. Lawyer Benn himself being put in charge of the affair by the parties wronged. Drusilla described the sinking of her own heart as these bits of information were given her, though she had not failed to reprimand Collins for the repetition of foolish gossip. This, it seemed, had put Collins on her mettle in defense of her own order, and she had replied that, if it came to that, m'm, the contents of the waste-paper baskets at Tory Hill, though slightly 45 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT damaged, had borne ample testimony to the truth of the tale as Miss Maggie Murphy told it. If Mrs. Fane required documentary evidence, Collins her- self was in a position to supply it, through the kind- ness of her colleagues in Henry Guion's employ. Davenant listened in silence. "So the thing is out?" was his only comment. "It's out — and all over the place," Drusilla an- swered, tearfully. "We're the only people who haven't known it — but it's always that way with those who are most concerned." "And over three hundred guests invited to Olivia's wedding next Thursday fortnight! And the British Military Attache coming from Washington! And Lord Woolwich from Ottawa! What's to happen / don't know." Mrs. Temple raised her hands and let them drop heavily. "Oh, Peter, can't you do anything?" "What can he do, child? If Henry's been making away with all that money it would take a fortune to—" "Oh, men can do things — in business," Drusilla asserted. "I know they can. Banks lend them money, dont they, Peter? Banks are always lend- ing money to tide people over. I've often heard of it. Oh, Peter, do something. I'm so glad you're here. It seems like a providence." "Colonel Ashley will be here next week, too," Mrs, Temple groaned, as though the fact brought comfort. "Oh, mother dear, don't speak of him!" Drusilla 46 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT put up her two hands, palms outward, before her averted face, as though to banish the suggestion. "If you'd ever known him you'd see how impossible -—how impossible— this kind of situation is for a man like him. Poor, poor Olivia ! It's impossible for her, too, I know; but then we Americans — well, we're more used to things. But one thing is certain, anyhow," she continued, rising in her place on the stairs and stretching out her hand oratorically: "If this happens I shall never go back to Southsea — never, never! — no, nor to Silchester. With my temperament I couldn't face it. My career will be over. There'll be nothing left for me, mother dear, but to stay at home with father and you." Mrs. Temple rose, sighing heavily. "Well, I suppose we must go to bed, though I must say it seems harder to do that than almost anything. None of us '11 sleep." "Oh, Peter, ivont you do something.?" Drusilla's hands were clasped beneath an im- ploring face, slightly tilted to one side. Her black hair had begun to tumble to her shoulders. "I'll — I'll think it over," was all he could find to answer. "Oh, thank you, Peter! I must say it seems like a providence — your being here. With my tempera- ment I always feel that there's nothing like a big strong man to lean on." The ladies retired, leaving him to put out the light. For a long time he stood, as he had entered, just inside the front door leaning on his stick and wearing his hat and overcoat. He was musing 47 h- fi THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT rather than thinking, musing on the odd way in which he seemed almost to have been waited for. Then, irrelevantly perhaps, there shot across his memory the phrases used by Rodney Temple less than an hour ago: "Some call it conscience. Some call it God. Some call it neither. But," he added, slowly, "some do call it God." IV jLOSING the door behind his depart- C, ing guests, Guion stood for a minute, n with his hand still on the knob, pressing ^ his forehead against the woodwork. He hstened to the sound of the carriage- I wheels die away and to the crunching tread ot the two men down the avenue. T "^u-,hf^ ^"'°" ^^^ received the last guest at Tory Hi 1, he said to himself. "That's all over-all over and done with. Now!" It was the hour to which he had been looking forward, first as an impossibility, then as a danger! and at last as an expectation, ever since the day, now some years ago, when he began to fear that he might not be able to restore all the money he had borrowed from the properties in his trust. Hav- mg descried It from a long way off, he knew that with reasonable luck it could not overtake him soon. 1 here were many chances, indeed, that it might never overtake him at all. Times might change; business might improve; he might come in for the money he expected from his old Aunt de Melcourt; he might die if none of these things happened, there were still ways and means by which he might make money in big strokes and "square himself" without any ■^ , 49 !' THE STRE ET CALLED STRAIGHT one ever being the wiser. He had known of cases, or, at least, he had suspected them, in which men in precisely his position had averted by daring play the deadliest peril and gone down into honored graves. Fortune had generally favored him hitherto, and probably would favor him again. So after the first dreadful days of seeing his "mis- takes," and, in his recoil, calling himself by oppro- brious names,.he began to get used to his situation and boldly to meet its requirements. That he would prove equal to them he had scarcely any doubt. It was, in fact, next to inconceivable that a man of his antecedents and advantages should be unable to cope with conditions that, after all, were not wholly exceptional in the sordid history of business. He admitted that the affair was sordid, while finding an excuse for his own connection with it in the involuntary defilement that comes from touching pitch. It was impossible, he said, for a man of business not to touch pitch, and he was not a man of business of his own accord. The state of life had been forced on him. He was a trustee of other people's property by inheritance, just as a man be- comes a tsar. As a career it was one of the last he would have chosen. Had he received from his father an ample . personal fortune instead of a mere lucrative practice he would have been a country gentleman, in the English style, with, of course, a house in town. Born with a princely aptitude for spending his own money, he felt it hard that he should have been compelled to make it his life's work to husband that of others. The fact that he had 50 I T HE STREET CALL E D STRJ /GHT always, to some extent been a square man in a round hole seemed to entitle him to a large share of moral allowance, especially in his judgment on himself. He emphasized the last consideration, since it en- abled him, in his moments of solitude, to look him- self more straightly in the face. It helped him to buttress up his sense of honor, and so his sense of energy, to be able to say, "I am still a gentleman." He came in time to express it otherwise, and to say, "I must still play the gentleman." He came to define also what he meant by the word still. The future presented itself as a succession of stages, in which this could not happen till that had happened, nor the final disaster arrive till all the intervening phases of the situation had been passed. He had passed them. Of late he had seen that the flames of hell would get hold upon him at that exact in- stant when, the last defense having been broken down and the last shift resorted to, he should turn the key on all outside hope, and be alone with him- self and the knowledge that he could do no more. Till then he could ward them off, and he had been fighting them to the latest second. But on coming home from his office in Boston that afternoon he had told himself that the game was up. Nothing as far as he could see would give him the respite of another four and twenty hours. The minutes between him and the final preparations could be counted with the finger on the clock. In the matter of preparation the most important detail would be to tell Olivia. Hoping against hope that this would never berome necessary, he had put SI I THE S TREET CAL L ED ST RAIGHT off the evil moment till the postponement had be- come cruel. But he had lived through it so often in thought, he had so acutely suffered with her in imagination the staggering humihation of it all, that now, when the time had come, his feelings were benumbed. As he turned into his own grounds that day it seemed to him that his deadness of emo- tion was such that he could carry the thing through mechanically, as a skilled surgeon uses a knife. If he found her at tea in the drawing-room he might tell her then. He found her at tea, but there were people with her. He was almost sorry; and yet it keyed him up to see that there was some necessity "to still play the gentleman." He played it, and played it well — with much of his old-time ease. The feat was so extraordinary as to call out a round of mental applause for himself; and, after all, he reflected, there would be time enough in the evening. Put tea being over. Miss Guion announced that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and Drusilla Fane were com- ing informally to dinner, bringing with them a guest of theirs, "some one of the name of Davenant." For an instant he felt that he must ask her to tele- phone and put them off, but on second thoughts it seemed better to let them come. It would be in the nature of a reprieve, not so much for himself as for Olivia. It would give her one more cheerful evening, the last, perhaps, in her life. Besides — the suggestion was a vague one, sprung doubtless of the hysterical element in his suppressed excitement — he might test his avowals on Temple and 52 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT Davenant, getting a foretaste of what it would be to face the world. He formed no precise in- tention of doing that; he only allowed his mind to linger on the luxury of trying it. He had suspected lately that Rodney Temple knew more of his situation than he had ever told him, so that the way to speak ou». would be cleared in advance; and as for the man of the name of Davenant — probably Tom Davenant's adopted son, who was said to have pulled off some good things a few years ago — there would be, in humbling himself before one so success- ful, a morbid joy of the kind the devotee may get in being crushed by an idol. In this he was not mistaken. While they were there he was able to draw from his own speeches, covert or open, the relief that comes to a man in pain from moaning. Now that they were gone, however, the last extraneous incident that could possibly stand between him and the beginning of the end had passed. The moment he had foreseen, as one foresees death, was on him; so, raising his head from the woodwork of the doorway, he braced him- self, and said, "Now I" At almost the same Instant he heard the rustle of his daughter's skirts as she came from the drawing- room on her way up-stairs. She advanced slowly down the broad hall, the lights striking iridescent rays from the trimmings of her dress. The long ^r^ain, adding to her height, enhanced her graceful- ness. Only that curious deadness of sensation of which he had been aware all day — the inability to feel any more that comes from too much suffenng — 53 M- THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT enabled him to keep his ground before her. He did keep it, advancing from the doorway two or three steps toward her, till they met at the foot of the stairway. "Have you enjoyed your evening?" were the words he found himself saying, though they were far from those he had at heart. He felt that his smile was ghastly; but, as she seemed not to perceive it, he drew the conclusion that the ghastliness was within. She answered languidly. "Yes, so so. It might have been pleasanter if it hadn't been for that awful man." "Who.? Young Davenant.? I don't see anything awful about him." "I dare say there isn't, really — in his pla> He may be only prosy. However," she added, more brightly, "it doesn't matter for once. Good night, papa dear. You look tired. You ought to go to bed. I've seen to the windows in the drawing-room, but I haven't put out the lights." Having kissed him and patted him on the cheek, she turned to go up the stairway. He allowed her to ascend a step or two. It was the minute to speak. "I'm sorry you feel that way about young Dave- nant. I rather like him." He had not chosen the words. They came out automatically. To discuss Davenant offered an excuse for detaining her, while postponing the blow for a few minutes more. "Oh, men would," she said, indifferently, without turning round. "He's their style." 54 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "Which is to his discredit?" , "Not to his discredit, but to his disadvantage, I've noticed that what they call a man's man is generally something of a bore." "Davenant isn't a bore." "Isn't he? Well, I really didn't notice in par- ticular. I only remember that he used to be about here years ago — and I didn't like him. I suppose Drusilla has to be civil to him because he was Cousin Rodney's ward." She had paused on the landing at the angle of the staircase. "He's good-looking," Guion said, in continued effort to interpose the trivial between himself and what he had still to tell her. "Oh, that sort of Saxon giant type is always good- looking. Of course. And dull too." "I dare say he isn't as dull as )'ou think." "He might be that, and still remain pretty dull, after the allowances had been made. I know the type. It's awful— especially in the form of the American man of business." "I'm an American man of business myself." "Yes; by misadventure. You're the business man rnade, but not born. By nature you're a boulevar- dier, or what the newspapers call a 'clubman.' I admire you more than I can sav — everybody admires you — for making such a success of a work that must always have been uncongenial at the least." The opening was obvious. Nothing could have been more opportune. Two or three beginnings pre- sented themselves, and as he hesitated, choosing be- 55 i I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT tween them, he moistened his Hps and wiped the cold perspiration from his brow. After all, the blessed apathy within him was giving way and going to play him false! He had a minute of feeling as the condemned man must feel when he catches sight of the guillotine. Before his parched tongue could formulate syl- lables she mounted another step or two of the stair- case, and turned again, leaning on the banister and looking over. He noticed — by a common trick of the perceptive powers at crises of anguish — how the slender white pilasters, carved and twisted in sets of four, in the fashion of Georgian houses like Tory Hill, made quaint, graceful lines up and down the front of her black gown. "It's really true — what I say about business, papa," she pursued. "I'm very much in earnest, and so is Rupert. I do wish you'd think of that place near Heneage. It will be so lovely for me to feel you're there; and there can't be any reason for your going on working any longer." "No; there's no reason for that," he managed to say. "Well then ?"shedemanded, with an air of triumph. "It's just as I said. You owe it to every one, you owe it to me, you owe it to yourself above all, to give up. It might have been better if you'd done it long ago." "I couldn't," he declared, in a tone that sounded to his own ears as a cry. " I tried to, . . . but things were so involved . . . almost from the first. . . ." "Well, as long as they're not involved now there's 56 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT no reason why it shouldn't be better late than never." "But they are involved now," he said, with an intensity so poignant that he was surprised she didn't notice it. "Then straighten them out. Isn't that what we've been saying all along. Cousin Rodney and I ? Take a partner ; take two partners. Cousin Rodney says you should have done it when Mr. Maxwell died, or before — " "I couldn't. . . . Things weren't shipshape enough . . . not even then." "I'm sure it could be managed," she asserted, confidently; "and if you don't do it now, papa, when I'm being married and going away for good, you'll never do it at all. That's my fear. I don't want to live over there without you, papa; and I'm afraid that's what you're going to let me in for." She moved from the banister, and continued her way up- ward, speaking over her shoulder as she ascended. "In the mean time, you really must go to bed. You look tired and rather pale — ^just as I do after a dull party. Good night; and dont stay up." She reached the floor above, and went toward her room. He felt strangled, speechless. There was a sense of terror too in the thought that his nerve, the nerve on which he had counted so much, was going to fail him. "Olivia!" His voice was so sharp that she hurried back to the top of the stairs. "What is it, papa? Aren't you well?" It was the sight of her face, anxious and sud- 57 TH E STREET CALLED STRAIGHT denly white, peering down through the half-Hght of the hall that finally unmanned him. With a heart- sick feeling he turned away from the stairway. "Yes; I'm all right. I only wanted you to know . . . that . . . that . . .1 shall be working rather late. You mustn't be disturbed . . . if you hear me moving about." He would have upbraided himself more bitterly for his cowardice had he not found an excuse in the thought that, after all, there would be time in the morning. It was best that she should have the refreshment of the night. The one thing important was that she should not have the shock of learning from others on the morrow that he was not coming back — that he was going to Singville. Should he go there at all, he was determined to stay. Since he had no fight to put up, it was better that his going should be once for all. The thought of weeks, of months, perhaps, of quasi-freedom, during which he should be parading himself "on bail," was far more terrible to him than that of prison. He must pre- pare her for the beginning of his doom at all costs to himself; but, he reasoned, she would be more ca- pable of taking the information calmly in the daylight of the morning thannow,at a few minutes of midnight. It was another short reprieve, enabling him to givt' all his attention to the tasks before him. If he was not to come back to Tory Hill he must leave his private papers there, his more intimate treasures, in good order. Certain things wouM have to be put awav, others rearranged, others destroyed. For the most part they were in the library, the room he n8 ■.<%/>. riiE STR I': F/r calle d straight spt-cially claimed as his own. Before setting him- self to the work there he walked through some of the other rooms, turning out the hghts. In doing so he was consciously taking a farewell. He had heen horn in this house; in it he had spent his hoyhood; to it he had come back as a young mar- ried man. He had lived in it till his wife and he had set up their more ambitious establishment in Boston, an extravagance from which, perhaps, all the sub- sequent misfortunes could be dated. He had known at the time that his father, had he lived, would have condemned the step; but he himself was a believer in fortunate chances. Besides, it was preposterous for a young couple of fashion to continue living in a rambling old house that belonged to neither town nor country, at a time when the whole trend of life was cityward. They had discussed the move, with its large increase of expenditure, from every point of view, and found it one from which, in their social position, there was no escape. It was a matter about which they had hardly any choice. So, too, a few years later, with the taking of the cottage at Newport. It was forced on them. When all their friends were doing something of the sort it seemed absurd to hesitate because of a mere matter oi means — especially when by hook or by crook the means could be procured. Similar reasoning had at- tended their various residences abroad— in London, Paris, Rome. Country-houses in England or villas on the Riviera became matters of necessity, accord- ing to the demands of Olivia's entry into the world of fashion or Mrs. Guion's health. 59 aHira*^Ber'SjT0s-:£'P«5™r*' fir-«ar-»i . THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT It was not till the death of the latter, some seven years ago, that Guion, obliged to pause, was able to take cognizance of the degree to which he had imperiled himself in the years of effort to maintain their way of Hfe. It could not be said that at the time he regretted what he had done, but he allowed it to frighten him into some ineffectual economies. He exchanged the cottage at Newport for one at Lenox, and, giving up the house in Boston, with- drew to Tory Hill. Ceasing himself to go into society, he sent his daughter abroad for a large portion of her time, either in the care of Madame de Melcourt or, in London, under the wing of some of the American ladies prominent in EngHsh life. Having taken these steps, with no small pride in his capacity for sacrifice, Guion set himself seriously to reconstruct his own fortune and to repair the in- roads he had made on those in his trust. It was a matter in which he had but few misgivings as to his capacity. The making of money, he often said, was an easy thing, as could be proved by the intellectual grade of the men who made it. One had only to look about one to see that they were men in whom the average of ability was by no means high, men who achieved their successes largely by a kind of rule of thumb. They got the knack of investment — and they invested. He preferred the word in- vestment to another which might have challenged comment. They bought in a low market and sold in a high one — and the trick was done. Some in- stinct — a flair, he called it — was required in order to recognize, more or less at sight, those properties 60 ~ iT'fi raMMTii' ' i^MiiJiirgii'"rii — ^n— ■ht ri^m^maE'''if%ts^ii£*Tm^A::Atsa^ I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT which would quickly and surely appreciate in value; and he believed he possessed it. Given the control of a few thousands as a point of departure, and the financial ebb and flow, a man must be a born fool, he said, not to be able to make a reasonable fortune with reasonable speed. Within the office of Guion, Maxwell & Guion cir- cumstances favored the accession to power of the younger partner, who had hitherto played an acquiescent rather than an active part. Mr. Max- well was old and ailing, though neither so ailing nor so old as to be blind to the need of new blood, new money, and new influence in the fine old firm. His weakness was that he hated beginning all over again with new men; so that when Smith and Jones were proposed as possible partners he easily admitted whatever objections Guion raised to them, and the matter was postponed. It was postponed again. It slipped into a chronic condition of postponement; and Mr. Maxwell died. The situation calling then fo adroitness on Guion's part, the fact that he was able to meet it to the satisfaction of all the parties concerned, increased his confidence in his own astuteness. True, it re- quired some manipulation, some throwing of dust into people's eyes, some making of explanations to one person that could not be reconciled with those made to another; but here again the circumstances helped him. His clients were for the most part widows and old maids, many of them resident abroad, for whom Guion, Maxwell & Guion had so long stood, in the matter of income, for the embodiment of 6i THE ST REET CALLED STRA IGHT paternal care that they were ready to believe any- thing and say anything' and sign anything they were told to. With the legal authorities to whom he owed account he had the advantage of the house's high repute, making it possible to cover with for- malities anything that might, strictly speaking, have called for investigation. Whatever had to be con- sidered shifty he excused to himself on the ground of its being temporary; while it was clearly, in his opinion, to the ultimate advantage of the Clay heirs and the Rodman heirs and the Compton heirs and all the other heirs for whom Guion, Maxwell & Ciuion were in loco parentis^ that he should have a free hand. The sequel astonished rather than disillusioned him. It wrought in him disappointment with the human race, especially as represented by the Stock Exchange, without diminishing his confidence in his own judgment. Through all his wild efforts not to sink he was upborne by the knowledge that it was not his calculations that were wrong, but the work- ings of a system more obscure than that of chance and more capricious than the weather. He grew to consider it the fault of the blind forces that make up the social, financial, and commercial worlds, and not his own, when he was reduced to a frantic fiinging of t^ood inonev after bad as ofiering the sole chance of working out his redemption. And, now that it was all over, he was glad his wife had not hved to see the <;nd. That, at least, had been spared him. fie stood before her portrait in the drawing-ioom -the much-admu'd portrait bv Caro- bz ss-*2sr-^.j«5''^Ase:.' fitT^'i^ai- i'i^ riiK STRiU'/r (:yiLLEi)_srRyii(;iir lus l)ur;in :iu<| tnld Imt so. She was so living as she looked down on hjin »f refined 1 NUf^f^estion ab()ur th(; lips and eyes Kivin^ personality to the delicate oval of the Hmv that he felt himself talk- inn to her as they had Inen wont to talk together ever since their youth. In his way he had stood in awe of her. The; assumption of prerogative an endowment of manner or of temperament, he was never <|uite sure which inherited by Olivia in turn, had been the dominating influence in their domestic life. He had not b(;en ruled by her — the term would have been grotesiiue he had only made it his pleas- ure to carry out her wishes. That her wishes led him on to spending money not his own was due to the fact, ever to be regretted, that his father had not bequeathed him money so much as the means of earning it. She could not be held responsible for that, while she was the type of woman to whom it was something like an outrage not to offer the things befitting to her station. There was no reproach in the look he lifted on her now nothing but a kind of dogged, perverse thankfulness that she should have had the way of life she craved, without ever knowing the price he was about to pay for it. In withdrawing his glance from hers he turned it about on the various objects in the room. Many of them had stood in their places since before he was born; others he had acquired at occasional sales of Guion property, so that, as the dift'erent branches of the family became extinct or disappeared, whatever could be called "ancestral" might have a place at Tory Hill; others he had collected abroad. All of m ':j-daatf^^:* THE STREET CHILLED STR.IIGIIT them, in these moments of anguish — the five K'ang- hsi vases on the mantelpiece, brought home by some seafaring Guion of Colonial days, the armorial "Lowestoft" in the cabinets, the Copley portraits of remote connections on the walls, the bits of Chippen- dale and Hepplewhite that had belonged to the grandfather who built Tory Hill — all of them took on now a kind of personality, as with living look and utterance. He had loved them and been proud of them; and as he turned out the lights, leaving them to darkness, eyes could not have been more appealing nor lips more eloquent than they in thei. mute farewell. Returning to the library, he busied himself with his main undertaking. He was anxious that nothing should be left behind that could give Olivia addi- tional pain, while whatever she might care to have, her mother's letters to himself or other family documents, might be ready to her hand. It was the kind of detail to which he could easily give his atten- tion. He worked methodically and phlegmatically, steeling himself to a grim suppression of regret. He was almost sorry to finish the task, since it forced his mind to come again face to face with facts. The clock struck two as he closed the last drawer and knew that that part of his preparation was com- pleted. In reading the old letters with their echoes of old incidents, old joys, old jokes, old days in Paris, Rome, or England, he had been so wafted back to another time that on pushing in the drawer, which closed with a certain click of finality, the realization 64 rilE STREET CALLED STRAIGII T of the present rolled back on his soul with a curious effect of amazement. For a few minutes it was as if he had never understood it, never thought of it, before, fhey were going to make him, Henry Cjuion, a prisoner, a criminal, a convict! They were gomg to clip his hair, and shave his beard, and dress him in a hideous garb, and shut him in a cell ! They were going to give him degrading work to do and degrading rules to keep, and degrading associates to live with, as far as such existence- could be called living with any one at all. They were going to do this for year upon year, all the rest of his life, since he never could survive it. He was to have nothing any more to come in between him and his own thoughts— his thoughts of Olivia brought to dis- grace, of the Clay heirs brought to want, of the Rodman heirs and the Compton heirs deprived of half their livelihood! He had called it that evening the Strange Ride with Morrowby Jukes to the Land ot the Living' Dead, but it was to be worse than that It was to be worse than Macbeth with his visions of remorse; it was to be worse than Vathek with the flame burning in his heart; it was to be worse than Judas— who at least could hang himself. He got up and went to a mirror in the corner of the room. The mere sight of himself made the im- possible seem more impossible. He was so fine a specimen— he could not but know it! -so much the tree man, the !ionorable man, the man of the world' He tried to sec himself with his hair cHpped and his beard shaven and the white cravat and waistcoat replaced by the harle(iuin costume of the jailbird. 5 65 ':'=♦ 3-'> : ^^T ■WflS^ Til E ^ZMKLJkUjltMl\JiLM 'SjJH He tried to see hitikself making his own hixl, and scrubbiiig his own floor, and standing a; his cell door with a tin pot in his hand, waiting for his skilly. It was so absurd, so out of the question, that he nearly laughed outright. He was in a dream— in a nightmare! He shook himself, he pinched himself, in order to wake up. He was ready in sudden rage to curse the handsome, familiar room for the per- s'Jtence of its reality, because the rows of books and the Baxter prints and the desks and chairs and elec- tric lights refused to melt away like things in a troubled sleep. It was then that for the first time he began to taste the real measure of his impotence. He was in the hand of the law. He was in the grip of the sternest avenging forces human society could set in motion against him; and, quibbles, shifts, and subterfuges swept aside, no one knew better than himself that his punishment would be just. It was a strange feeling, the feeling of having put himself outside the scope of mercy. But there he was! There could never be a word spoken in his defense, nor in any one's heart a throb of sympathy toward him. He had forfeited everything. He could expect nothing from any man, and from his daugh- ter least of all. The utmost he could ask for her was that she should marry, go away, and school herself as nearly as might be to renounce him. That she should do it utterly would not be possible: but sorne- thing would be accomplished if pride or humilia- tion or resentment gave her the spirit to carry her head high and ignore his existence. rM^m %m TM^AT^J^F'F' T CALLED STRAIGHT It was incredible to think that at that vciy in- stant she was sleeping quietly, without a suspicion of what was awaiting her. Everything was in- credible—incredible and impossible. As he looked around the room, in which every book, every photo- graph, every pen and pencil, was a part of him, he found himself once more t»^raining for a hope, catch- in*- at straws. He took a shoet of paper, and down at his desk began again, for the ten dth time, to balance feverishly his meagn' gainst his overwhelming liabilities. He ^ ' .nd subtracted and multiplied and divided • : ; sort of frenzy, as though by dint of sheer ' 'i i - the figures he could make them respond ro ! vill. ;. . Idenly, with a gesture of mingled anger and ;..pciessness, he swept the scribbled sheets and all the writing paraphernalia with a crash to the floor, and, burying his face in his bands, gave utterance to a smothered groan. It was a cry,not of surrender, but of protest— of infinite, exasperated protest, of protest against fate and law and judgment and the eternal principles of right and wrong, and against himself most of all. With his head pressed down on the bare polished wood of his desk, he hurled himself mentally at an earth of adamant and a heaven of brass, hurled himself ferociously, repeatedly, with a kind of doggedness, as though he would either break them down or dash his own soul to pieces. "OGod! OGod!" It was an involuntary moan, stifled in his fear of becoming hystcricr.!, but its s) tables arrested 67 3S«*-. PP«H r ! Bi' THE STREET CALLED STRA : GHT his attention. They were the syllables of primal articulation, of primal need, condensing the appeal and the aspiration of the world. He repeated them: "O God! O God!" He repeated them again. He raised his head, as if listening to a voice. "O God! O God!" He continued to sit thus, as if listening. It was a strange, an astounding thought to him that he might pray. Though the earth of adamant were unyielding, the heaven of brass might give way! He dragged himself to his feet. He believed in God— vaguely. That is, it had always been a matter of good form with him to go to church and to call for the offices of religion on occa- sions of death or marriage. He had assisted at the saying of prayers and assented to their contents. He had even joined in them himself, since a liturgical service was a principle in the church to which he "belonged." AH this, however, had seemed re- mote from his personal affairs, his life-and-death struggles — till now. Now, all at once, queerly, it offered him something — he knew not what. It might be nothing better than any of the straws he had been clutching at. It might be no more than the effort he bar" just been making to compel two to balance v^n. He stood in the middle of the room under the cluster of electric lights and tried to recollect what he knew, what he had heard, of this Power that could still act when human strength had reached its 68 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT limitations. It was nothing very definite. It con- sisted chiefly of great phrases, imperfectly under- stood: " Father Almighty," " Saviour of the World," "Divme Compassion "and such like. He did not reason about them, or try to formulate what he actually believed. It was instinctively, almost un- consciously, that he began to speak; it was brokenly and with a kind of inward, spiritual hoarseness. He scarcely knew what he was doing when he found himself saying, mentally: "Save me! . . . . I'm helpless! .... I'm desper- ate! .... Save me! ... . Work a miracle! .... Father! .... Christ! Christ! Save my daugh- ter! .... We have no one — but — but You! .... Work a miracle! Work a miracle! .... I'm a thief and a liar and a traitor — but save me! I might do something yet— something that might re.ider me — worth salvation— but then— I might not Any- how, save me! ... . OGod! Father Almighty! Almighty! That means that You can do anything! .... Even now — You can do — anything! .... Save us! ... . Save us all! ... . Christ! Christ! Christ!'* He knew neither when nor how he ceased, any more than when or how he began. His most clearly defined impression was that of his spirit coming back from a long \yay oflF to take perception of the fact that he was still standing under the cluster of electric lights and the clock was striking three. He was breathless, exhausted. His most urgent physical need was that of air. He strode to the window- 09 -tf.^-r-^ .am THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT door leading out to the terraced lawn, and, throwing it open, passed out into the darkness. There was no mist at this height above the Charles. The night was still, and the moon westering. The light had a glimmering, metallic essence, as from a cosmic mirror in the firmament. Long shadows of trees and shrubbery lay across the grass. Clear in the moonlit foreground stood an elm, the pride of Tory Hill — springing as a single shaft for twice the measure of a man — springing and spreading there into four giant branches, each of which sprang and spread higher into eight — so springing and spread- ing, springing and spreading still — rounded, symme- trical, superb — till the long outermost shoots fell pendulous, like spray from a fountain of verdure. Th*^ silence held the suggestion of mighty spiritual things astir. At least the heaven was not of brass, if the earth continued to be of adamant. On the con- trary, the sky was high, soft, dim, star-bestrewn, ineffable. It was spacious; it was free; it was the home of glorious things; it was the medium of the eternal. He was not reassured; he was not even comforted; what relief he got came only from a feeling — a fancy, perhaps— that the weight had been eased, that he was freed for a minute from the crushing pressure of the inevituble. It would return again and break him down, but for the moment it was lifted, giving him room and power to breathe. He did breathe — long deep draughts of the cool night air that brought refreshment and something Hke strength to struggle on. 70 THE STREET CALLED ST RAIGHT He came back into the room. His pens and papers were scattered on the floor, and ink from the over- turned inkstand was running out on the Oriental rug. It was the kind of detail that before this even- mg would have shocked him; but nothing mattered now. He was too indifferent to Hft his hand and put the inkstand back into its place. Instead, he threw himself on a couch, turning his face to the still open wmdow and drinking in with thirsty gasps the blessed, revivifying air. is^r^ ^OSi^U^ON awoke in a chill, gray light, t j""n find himself covered with a rug, and hi ML to is daughter, wrapped in a white dressing- gown, bending above him. Over her shoulder peered the scared face of a maid. His first sensation was that he was cold, his first act to pull the rug more closely about him. His struggle back to waking con- sciousness was the more confused because of the familiar surroundings of the library. "Oh, papa, what's the matter?" He threw the coverlet from him and dragged him- self to a sitting posture. "What time is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. " I must have dropped off to sleep. Is dinner ready ?" "It's half-past six in the morning, papa dear. Katie found you here when she came in to dust the room. The window was wide open and all these things strewn about the floor. She put the rug on you and came to wake me. What is it? What's happened? Let me send for the doctor." With his elbow on his knee, he rested his forehead on his hand. The incidents of the night came back to him. Olivia seated herself on the couch beside him, an arm across his shoulder. 72 TIIEJ^TREET CALLED STRAIGHT <( I'm cold," was all he said. " Katie, j^o and mix something hot — some whisky or brandy and hot water—anything! And you, papa dear, go to bed. I'll call Reynolds and he'll help you." "I'm cold," he said again. Rising, he crawled to the mirror into which he had l()oked last night, shuddering at sight of his own face. The mere fact that he was still in his evening clothes, the white waistcoat wrinkled and the cravat awry, shocked him inexpressibly. "I'm cold," he said for the third time. But when he had bathed, dressed, and begun his breakfast, the chill left him. He regained the mastery of his thoughts and the understanding of his position. A certain exaltation of sutFering which had upheld him during the previous night failed him, however, now, leaving nothing but a sense of flat, commonplace misery. Thrown into relief by the daylight, the facts were more relentless — not easier of acceptance. As he drank his coffee and trie<' to eat he could feel his daughter watching him riom the other end of the table. Now and then he screened himself from her gaze by pretending to skim the morning paper. Once he was startled. Reflected in the glass of a picture hanging on the opposite wall he caught tiie image of a man in a blue uniform, who mounted the steps and rang the door-bell. "Who's that.'" he asked, sharply. He dared not turn round to see. "It's only the postman, papa darling. Who else should it be.'" 7i I THE STREET CALLED STR AIGH T "'Yes; of course." He breathed again. "You mustn't mind me, dear. I'm nervous. I'm — I'm not very well." "I see you're not, papa. -I saw it last night. I knew something was wrong." "There's something — very wrong." "What is it? Tell me." Leaning on the table, with clasped hands up- lifted, the loose white lace sleeves falling away from her slender wrists, she looked at him pleadingly. "We've — that is, I've — lost a great deal of money." "Oh!" The sound was just above her breath. Then, after long silence, she asked: "Is it much.?" He waited before replying, seeking, for the last time, some mitigation of what he had to tell her. "It's all we have." "Oh!" It was the same sound as before, just audible — a sound with a little surprise in it, a hint of something awed, but without dismay. He forced himself to take a few sips of coffee and crumble a bit of toast. "I don't mind, papa. If that's what's troubling you so much, don't let it any longer. Worse things have happened than that." He gulped down more coffee, not because he wanted it, but to counteract the rising in his throat. "Shall we have to lose Tory Hill.'" she asked, after another silence. He nodded an affirmative, with his head down. "Then you mean me to understand what you said just now — quite literally. We've lost all we have." "When everything is settled," he explained, with an effort, "we shall have nothing at all. It will be 74 THE STR EET_CJ JJ^ED STRAIGHT worse than that, since I sha'n't be able to pay all I owe." "Yes; that is worse," she assented, quietly. Another silence was broken by his saying, hoarsely: "You'll get married -" "That will have to be reconsidered." "Do you mean — on your part?" "I suppose I mean — on everybody's part.?" "Do you think he would want to—jou must excuse the crudity of the question— do you think he would want to back out?" "I don't know that I could answer that. It isn't quite to the point. Backing out, as you call it, wouldn't be the process— whatever happened." He interrupted her nervously. "If this should fall through, dear, you must write to your Aunt Vic. You must eat humble pie. You were too toplofty with her as it was. She'll take you." ^ "Take me, papa ? Why shouldn't I stay with you ? I'd much rather." He tried to explain. It was clearly the moment at which to do it. "I don't think you understand, dear, how en- tirely evenrthing has gone to smash. I shall probably— I may say, certainly— I shall have to— to go— " "I do understand that. But it often happens— especially in this country— that things go to smash, and then the people begin again. There was Lulu Sentner's father. They lost everything they had —and she and her sisters did dressmaking. But he borrowed money, and started in from the be- 75 I i I r//£ STREET CALLED STRAIG HT ginning, and now they're very well off once more. It's the kind of thing one hears of constantly— in this country." "You couldn't hear of it in my case, dear, because —well, because I've done all that. I've begun again, and begun again. I've used up all my credit —all my chances. The things I counted on didn't come off. You know that that happens some- times, don't you? — ^without any one being to blame at all?" She nodded. " I think I've heard so." "And now," he went on, eager that she should begin to see what he was leading her up to— -"and now I couldn't borrow a thousand dollars in all Boston, unless it was from some one who gave it to me as a charity. I've borrowed from every one — every penny for which I could offer security — and I owe — I owe hundreds of thousands. Do you see now how bad it is?" "I do see how bad it is, papa. I admit it's worse than I thought. But all the same I know that when people have high reputations other people trust them and help them through. Banks do it, don't they? Isn't that partly what they're for? It was Pierpoint & Hargous who helped Lulu Sentner's father. They stood behind him. She told me so. I'm positive that with your name they'd do as much for you. You take a gloomy outlook because you're ill. But there's no one in Boston — no one in New England — more esteemed or trusted. When one can say, 'All is lost save honor,' then, relatively speaking, there's very little lost at all." 76 'isi TH E STREET CALLED STRAIGHT ffe got up from the table and went to his room. After these words it was physically impossible for him to tell her anything more. He had thought of a means which might bring the fact home to her through the day by a process of suggestion. Pack- ing a small bag with toilet articles and other neces- saries, he left it in a conspicuous place. "I want Reynolds to give it to my messenger in case I send for it," he explained to her, when he had descended to the dining-room again. She was still sitting where he left her, at the head of the table, pale, pensive, but not otherwise dis- turbed. "Does that mean that you're not coming home to-night.?" "I— I don't know. Things may happen to— to prevent me." "Where should you go.?— to New York?" "No; not to New York." He half hoped she would press the question, but when she spoke it was only to say: "I hope you'll try to come home, because I'm sure you're not well. Of course I understand it, now I know you've had so much to upset you. But I wish you'd see Dr. Scott. And, papa," she added, rising, "don't have me on your mind- please don't. I'm quite capable of facing the world without money. You mayn't believe it, but I am. I could do it— somehow. I'm like you. I've a great deal of self-reliance, and a great deal of something else— I don't quite know what— that has never been taxed or called on. It may be pride, 77 THE S TREET CALLED STRJ^fCriT but it isn't only pride. Whatever it is, I'm strong enough to hear a lot of trouble. I don't want you to think of me at all in any way that will worry you." J She was making it so hard for him that he kissed her hastily and went away. Her further enlighten- ment was one more detail that he must leave, as he had left so much else, to fate or God to take care of. For the present he himself had all he could attend to. Half-way to the gate he turned to take what might prove his last look at the old house. It stood on the summit of a low, rounded hill, on tlie site made historic as the country residence of Gover- nor Rodney. Governor Rodney's "Mansion" hav- ing been sacked in the Revohition by his fellow- townsmen, the neighborhood fell for a time into disrepute under the contemptuous nickname of Tory Hill. On the restoration of order the property passed by purchase to the Guions, in whose hands, with a continuity not customary in America, it had remained. The present house, built by Andrew Guion, on the foundations of the Rodney Mansion, in the early nineteenth century, was old enoug'i ac- cording to New England standards to be vener- able; and, though most of the ground originaMv about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to give an impression of ample outdoor space. Against the blue of the October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was not without :i certain statelincss— rec- tangular, tlucc-siorivil, mellow, with buff walls, i^md f 77/ A' Ji'l[REE r Jl^L L ED SiTR AJGlI T huff chimneys, white doorways, white casx-ments. white verandas, a white balustrade ar/)und the ton and a white urn at each of the four corners. Where! as over the verandas, there was a hit f>f inclined roof, russet-red tdes gave a warmer touch of color. From the borders of the lawn, cdfied with a line of shrubs, the town of Wa verton, mersing into Cambridge, jui>t now a stretch of cnmson-and-oranRe woodland, where gables, spires, and towers peeped above the trees sloped gently to the ribbon of the Charles. Far away' and dim in the mormng haze, the roofed and steepled crest of lieacon Hill rose in successive ridges, to cast up from Its highest point the gilded dome of the State House as culmination to the sky-line. Guion looked long and hard, first at the house, then at the prospect He walked on only when he remembered that he must reserve his forces for the day's possibilities, that he must not drain himself of emotion in advance U what he expected were to come to pass, the first essential to his playing the man at all would lie m his keeping cool. So, on reaching his office, he brought all his knowl- edge of the world into play, to appear without undue selt-consciousness before his stenographer, his book- keeper and his clerks. The ordeal was the more severe because of his belief that they were conversant' with the state of his affairs. At least they knew enough to be sorry for him-of that he was sure- though there was nothing on this particular morn- ing to display the sympathy, unless it was the stenog- rapher s smile as he passed her in the anteroom, and the three small yellow chrysanthemums she 7^) i.^.idi '^': MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 I.I 1^ 12.8 |50 ""■" III 2-5 lllll^^ M^ iT 1^ ^ US, m i.8 1.25 1.4 ^^ :653 East Ma.n Slrest :^a Rochester. Ne. yorW 14609 USA J^ (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone aSg (716) 288 - 5989 - fax THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT had placed in a glass on his desk. In the nods of greeting between him and the men there was, or there seemed to be, a studied effort to show nothmg at all. Once safely in his own office, he shut the door with a sense of relief in the seclusion. It crossed his mind that he should feel something of the same sort when locked in the privacy of his cell after the hideous publicity of the trial. From habit as well as from anxiety he went straight to a mirror and surveyed himself again. -Decidedly he had changed since yesterday. It was not so much that he was older or more care-worn — he was different. Perhaps he was ill. He felt well enough, except for being tired, desperately tired; but that could be accounted for by the way in which he had spent, the night. He noticed chiefly the ashy tint of his skin, the dull- ness of his eyes, and— notwithstanding the fact that his clothes were of his usual fastidiousness — a curious eflfect of being badly dressed more startling to him than pain. He was careful to brush his beard and twist his long mustache nto its usual upward, French-looking curve, so as to regain as much as possible the air of his old self, before seating himself at his desk to look over his correspondence. There was a pile of letters, of which he read the addresses slowly without opening any of them. What was the use? He could do nothing. He had come to the end. He had exhausted all the possibilities of the situation. Besides, his spirit was broken. He could feel it. Something had snapped last night within him that would never 80 THE STREE T_C ALLED STRAIGH T be whole, never even be mended, again. It was not only the material resources under his control that he had overtaxed, but the spring of energy within himself, leavmg him no more power of resilience. An hour may have passed in this condition of dull suspense, when he was startled by the tinkle ot his desk telephone. It was with some effort that he leaned forward to answer the call. Not that he was afraid-now; he only shrank from the necessity ot doing anything. "Mr. Davenant would like to see you," came the voice of the stenographer from the anteroom. Ihere was nothing to reply but, "Ask Mr. Dave- nant to come in." He uttered the words mechan- u^'^ f if."^.""^ thought of Davenant since he talked with Ohvia on the stairs— a conversation that now seemed a curiously long time ago. "I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Guion," the visitor said apologetically, with a glance at the letters on the desk. "Not at all, my dear fellow," Guion said, cordially, from force of habit, offering his hand without rising from the^ revolving chair. "Sit down. Have a cigar It s rather a sharp morning for the time of year. The use of the conventional phrases of welcome helped him to emerge somewhat from his state of apathy Davenant declined the cigar, but seated hmiself near the desk, in one of the round-backed office chairs Not being a man easily embarrassed by silences, he did not begin to speak at once, and during the minute his hesitation lasted Guion be- 6 8i l-r ! I I : THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT thought him of Olivia's remark, "That sortof fixon- giant type is always good-looking." Davenant was good-looking, in a clear-skinned, clear-eyed way. Everything about him spoke of straight-forwardness and strength, tempered perhaps by the boyish quality inseparable from fair hair, a clean, healthily ruddy complexion, and a direct blue glance that rested on men and things with a kind of pensive wondering. All the same, the heavy-browed face on a big, tense neck had a frowning, perhaps a lowering ex- pression that reminded Guion of a young bull before he begins to charge. The lips beneath the fair mustache might be too tightly and too severely compressed, but the smile into which they broke over regular white teeth was the franker and the more engaging because of the unexpected light. If there was any physical awkwardness about him, it was in the management of his long legs; but that difficulty was overcome by his simplicity. It was characteristic of Guion to notice, even at such a time as this, that Davenant was carefully and correctly dressed, like a man respectful of social usages. "I came in to see you, Mr. Guion," he began, apparently with some hesitation, "about what we were talking of last night." Guion pulled himself together. His handsome eyebrows arched themselves, and he half smiled. "Last night? What were we talking of?" "We weren't talking of it, exactly. You only told us." "Only told you — ^what?" The necessity to do a 82 THE STREE T_a^4LrjRri_^7^^j^^ little fencing brought some of his old powers into play. "That you wanted to borrow half a million dollars I ve come in to-to lend you that sum- if you II take it. For a few seconds Guion sat rigidly still, looking at his man. The import and bearing of the words were too much for him to grasp at once. Ail his mind was prepared to deal with on the spur of the moment was the fact of this offer, ignoring its applica- tion and Its consequences as things which for the moment lay outside his range of thought. As far as he was able to reflect, it was to assume that there was more here than met the eye. Dave- nant was too practised as a player of "the game" to pay a big price for a broken potsherd, unless he was tolerably sure m advance that within the potsherd or under it there lay more than its value. It was not easy to surmise the form of the treasure nor the spot where it was hidden, but that it was there— in kind satisfactory to Davenant himself— Guion had no doubt. It was his part, therefore, to be astute and wary, not to lose the chance of selHng, and yet not to allow himself to be overreached If Davenant was playing a deep game, he must play a deeper. He was sorry his head ached and that he telt in such poor trim for making the effort "I must look sharp," he said to himself; "and yet I must be square and courteous. That's the line for me to take." He tried to get some inspiration for the spurt in tJling himself that in spite of everything he was still a man of business. When at last he Pi T lit i THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT began to speak, it was with something of the feel- ing of the broken-down prize-fighter dragging him- self bleeding and breathless into the ring for the last round with a young and still unspent opponent. "I didn't suppose you were in — in a position — to do that." "I am." Davenant nodded with some emphasis. "Did you think that that was what I meant when I — I opened my heart to you last night?" "No. I know it wasn't. My offer is inspired by nothing but what I feel." "Good!" It was some minutes before Guion spoke again. "If I remember rightly," he observed then, "I said I would sell my soul for half a million dollars. I didn't say I wanted to borrow that amount." "You may put it in any way you Hke," Davenant smiled. "I've come with the offer of the money. I want you to have it. The terms on which you'd take it don't matter to me." " But they do to me. Don't you see ? I'd borrow the money if I could. I couldn't accept it in any other way. And I can't borrow it. I couldn't pay the interest on it if I did. But I've exhausted my credit. I can't borrow any more." "You can borrow what I'm wilHng to lend, can't you?" "No; because Tory Hill is mortgaged for all it will stand. I've nothing else to offer as collateral — " "I'm not asking for collateral. I'm ready to hand you over the money on any terms you like or on no terms at all." ■ I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT i'm WILLING TO PAY THE PENALTY " ^m ^sm f 8 » I i THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "Do you mean that you'd be willing to— to— to give It to mtV "I mean, sir," he explained, reddening a httle, "that I want you to have the money to use — now. We could talk about the conditions afterward and call them what you please. If I understood you cor- rectly last night, you're in a tight place— a con- foundedly tight place — " "I am; but— don't be offended!— it seems to me you'd put me in a tighter." "How's that?" "It's a little difficult to explam.' He leaned forward, with one of his nervous, jerky movements, and fingered the glass containing the three chrysan- themums, but without taking his eyes from Dave- nant. So far he was quite satisfied with himself. "You see, it's this way. I've done wrong— very wrong. We needn't go into that, because you know it as well as I. But I'm willing to pay the penalty. That is, I'm ready to pay the penalty. I've made up my mind to it. I've had to — of course. But if I accepted your offer, you'd be pay- ing it, not I." . , , 1 . "Well, why shouldn't I ? I've paid other people s debts before now— once or twice— when I didn't want to. Why shouldn't I pay yours, when I should hke the job?" Davenant attempted, by taking something like a jovial tone, to carry the thing off lightly. "There's no reason why you shouldn't do it; there's only a reason why I shouldn't let you." "I don't see why you shouldn't let me. It 85 i f r - THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT mayn't be just what you'd like, but it's surely better than — than what you wouldn't Hke at all." Taking in the significance of these words, Guion colored, not with the healthy young flush that came so readily to Davenant's face, but in dabbled, hectic spots. His hand trembled, too, so that some of the water from the vase he was holding spilled over on the desk. It was probably this small accident, making him forget the importance of his role, that caused him to jump up nervously and begin pacing about the room. Davenant noticed then what he had not yet had time for— the change that had taken place in Guion in less than twenty hours. It could not be defined as looking older or haggard or ill. It could hardly be said to be a difference in complexion or feature or anything outward. As far as Davenant was able to judge, it was probably due, not to the loss of self- respect, but to the loss of the pretense at self-respect; it was due to that desolation of the personality that comes when the soul has no more reason to keep up its defenses against the world outside it, when the Beautiful Gate is battered down and the Veil of the Temple rent, while the Holy of Holies lies open for any eye to rifle. It was probably because this was so that Guion, on coming back to his seat, began at once to be more explanatory than there was any need for. "I haven't tried to thank you for your kind sug- gestion, but we'll come to that when I see more clearly just what you want." 86 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "I've told you that. I'm not asking for anything else." "So far you haven't asked for anything at all; but I don't imagine you'll be content with that. In any case," he hurried on, a^ Davenant seemed about to speak, "I don't want you to be under any mis- apprehension about the affair. There's nothing extenuating in it whatever— that is, nothing but the mtention to 'put it back' that goes with practically every instance of"— he hesitated long— "every instance of embezzlement," he finished, bravely. "It began this way — " "I don't want to know how it began," Davenant said, hastily. "I'm satisfied with knowing the situation as it is." "But I want to tell you. In proportion as I'm open with you I shall expect you to be frank with me," "I don't promise to be frank with you." "Anyhow, I mean to set j'ou the example." He went on to speak rapidly, feverishly, with that half-hysterical impulse toward confession from the signs of which Davenant had shrunk on the previous evening. As Guion himself had forewarned, there was nothing new or unusual in the tale. The situations were entirely the conventional ones in the drama of this kind of unfaithfulness. The only element to make it appealing, an element forcibly present to Davenant 's protective instincts, was the contrast between what Guion had been and what he was to-day. "And so," Guion concluded, "I don't see how I ■ THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT could accept this money from you. Any honorable man — that is," he corrected, in some confusion, "any sane man — would tell you as much." "I've already considered what the sane man and the honorable man would tell me. I guess I can let them stick to their opinion so long as I have my own." "And what is your opinion.? Do you mind tell- ing me? You understand that what you're propos- ing is immoral, don't you.?" "Yes — in a way." Guion frowned. He had hoped for some pre- tense at contradiction. "I didn't know whether you'd thought of that." "Oh yes, I've thought of it. That is, I see what you mean." "It's compounding a felony and outwitting the ends of justice and — " "I guess I'll do it just the same. It doesn't seem to be my special job to look after the ends of justice; and as for compounding a felony — well, it'll be some- thing new." Guion made a show of looking at him sharply. The effort, or the pretended effort, to see through Da enant's game disguised for the moment his sense of humiliation at this prompt acceptance of his own statement of the case. "All the same," he observed, trying to take a detached, judicial tone, "your offer is so amazing that I presume you wouldn't make it unless you had some unusual reason." "I don't know that I have. In fact, I know I haven't." 88 )\V in IM_ST REET CALLED ^ RAlC.JiT "Well, whatever its nature, I should like to kn( what It IS. "Ij' that necessary?" "Doesn't it strike you that it would bt.~m order? If I were to let you do this for me you'd be rendering me :in extraordinary service We're both men of business, men of the world; and ue know Hrie'""''' ^"'' "''^'''"^ '' "°^ according to Davenant looked at him pensively. "That is you want to know what I should be pulling off for myself ? "That's about it." "I don't see why that should worrv you If you get the money—" "J/ri! ^^^}^f '"^"ey I put myself in your power." What of that? Isn't it just as well to be in mv power as in the power of other people?" Again Guion winced inwardly, but kept his self- control. He was not yet accustomed to doing without tne formulas of respect from those whom he considered his inferiors. "Possibly," he said, not caring to conceal a cer- tain irritation; "but even so I should like to know m case I were in your power what you'd expect or mp ' or me right away. I the dark than I can answer that question shouldn't expect anything at all." "Then you leave me more in ever." Davenant still eyed him pensively. "Do I derstand you to be suspicious of my motives?" 89 un- THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "Suspicious might not be the right word. Sup- pose we said curious." Davenant reflected. Perhaps it was his mastery of the situation that gave him unconsciously a rock- like air of nonchalance. When he spoke it was with a little smile, which Guion took to be one of con- descension. Condescension in the circumstances was synonymous with insolence. "Well, sir, suppose I allowed you to remain curious? What then.^" They were the wrong words. It was the wrong manner. Guion looked up with a start. His next words were uttered in the blind instinct of t.ie haughty-headed gentleman who thinks highly of himself to save the moment's dignity. "In that case I think we must call the barp^ain off." Davenant shot out of his seat. He, too, was not without a current of hot blood. "All right, sir. It's for you to decide. Only, I'm sorry. Good-by!" He held out his hand, which Guion, who was now leaning forward, toying with the pens and pencils on the desk, affected not to see. A certain lack of ease that often came over Davenant at moments of leave-taking or greeting kept him on the spot. "I hoped," he stammered, "that I might have been of some use to you, and that Miss Guion — " Guion looked up sharply. "Has she got anything to do with it?" "Nothing," Davenant said, quickly, "nothing whatever." ()0 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "I didn't see how she could have—" Guion was going on, when Davenant interrupted. She has nothing to do with it whatever," he re- peated 'I was only going to say that I hoped she might have got through her wedding without hear- ing anything about— all this— all this fuss." In uttering the last words he had moved toward the door. His hand was on the knob and he was about to make some repetition of his farewells when Ouion spoke again. He was leaning once more over the desk, his fingers playing nervously with the pens and pencils He made no further effort to keep up his role of keen-sighted man of business. His head was bent, so that Davenant could scarcely see his face, and when he spoke his words were muffled and sullen. A ''^'^'^^,?^»^''0" would be too much. Four hun- f.^f"'^ ""^ thousand would cover everything " Ihat would be all the same to me," Davenant said, in a matter-of-fact tone. But he went back to the desk and took his seat again. VI f t RAVING watched through the window her father pass down the avenue on his way to town, Miss Guion reseated her- self mechanically in her place at the breakfast-table in order to think. Not that her thought could be active or coherent as yet; but a certain absorption of the facts was possible by the simple process of sitting still and letting them sink in. As the minutes went by, it became with her a matter of sensation rather than of mental effort — of odd, dream-l»ke sensation, in which all the protecting walls and clearly defined boundary-lines of life and conduct appeared to be melting away, leaving an immeasurable outlook on vacancy. To pass abruptly from the command of means, dignity, and consideration out into a state in which she could claim nothing at all was not un- like what she had often supposed it might be to go from the pomp and circumstance of earth as a dis- embodied spirit into space. The analogy was ren- dered the more exact by her sense, stunned and yet conscious, ' 1 the survival of her own personality amid what seemed a universal wreckage. This persistence of the ego in conditions so vast and v.i^ue and empt}'^ as to be almost no conditions at all was 92 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGH T the one point on which she could concentrate her faculties. It was, too, the one point on which she could form an articulated thought. She was Olivia Guion still' In this slipping of the world from beneath her feet she got a certain assurance from the affirmation of her identity. She was still that character, com- pounded of many elements, which recognized as Its most active energies insistence of will and tenacity of pride. She could still call these resources to her aid to render her indestructible. Sitting slightly crouched, her hands clasped between her knees, her face drawn and momentarily older, her lips set, her eyes tracing absently the arabesques chased on the coffee-urn, she was inwardly urging her spirit to the buoyancy that cannot sink, to the vitality that rides on chaos. She was not actively or con- sciously doing this; in the strictest sense she was not doing It at all; it was doing itself, obscurely and spontaneously, by the operation of subliminal forces of which she knew almost nothing, and to which her personality bore no more thantfhe relation of a moun- tain range to unrecordable volcanic fusions deep down in the earth. When, after long withdrawal within herself, she changed her position, sighed, and glanced about her, she had a curious feeling of having traveled far, of looking back on the old familiar things from a long wa> off. The richly wrought silver, the cheerful Minton, the splendidly toned mahogany, the Goya etchings on the walls, things of no great value, but long ago acquired, treasured, loved, had suddenly 93 ■'::>. t.'-.'jT^''.:, m^m THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT become useless and irrelevant. She had not lost Tory Hill so much as passed beyond it — out into a condition where nothing that preceded it could count, and in which, so far as she was concerned, existence would have to be a new creai jn, called afresh out of that which was without form and void. She experienced the same sensation, if it was a sensation, when, a half-hour later, she found herself roaming dreamily rather than restlessly about the house. She was not anticipating her farewell of it; it had only ceased to be a background, to have a meaning; it was like the scenery, painted and set, after the play is done. She herself had been re- moved elsewhere, projected into a sphere where the signs and seasons were so different from anything she had ever known as to afford no indications — where day did not necessarily induce light, nor night darkness, nor past experience knowledge. In the confounding of the perceptive powers and the reeling of the judgment which the new circumstances produced, she clung to her capacity to survive and dominate like a staggered man to a stanchion. In the mean time she was not positively suffering from either shock or sorrow. From her personal point of view the loss of money was not of itself an overpowering calamity. It might entail the dis- ruption c" r ' )ng habits, but she was young enough not to be auaid of that. In spite of a way of living that might be said to have given her the best of everything, she had always known that her father's income was a small one for his position in the world. As a family they had been in the habit of associating 94 on both sides of the Atlantic, with people whose revenu^ were twice and thrice and ten times their own Ihe obligation to keep the pace set by their equals had been recognized as a domestic hardship ever since she could remember, though it was a mitigatmg circumstance that in one way or another the money had always been found. Guion, Maxwell & Guion was a well which, while often threatening to run dry, had never failed to respond to a sufficiently energetic pumping. She had known the thought however-fugitive, speculatory, not dwelt upon Is a real possibihty-that a day might come when it would do so no more. It was a thought that went as quickly as it came its only importance being that it never caused her a shudder. If It sometimes brought matter for re- Hection it was in showing her to herself in a light in which, she was tolerably sure, she never appeared to anybody else-as the true child of the line of truga torebears, of sea-scouring men and cheese- parir ? women, who, during nearly two hundred years ot thrift, had put penny to penny to save the Guion competence. Standing in the cheerful "Colonial" hall which their stinting of themselves had made it possible to build, and which was still furnished chiefly with the objects-a settle, a pair of cup- boards, a Copley portrait, a few chairs, some old decorative pottery— they had lived with, it afforded one more steadying element for her bewilderment to grasp at, to feel herself their daughter. There was, indeed, in the very type of her beauty a hint of a carefully calculated, unwasteful adapta- 95 I rr^ THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT tion of means to ends quite in the spirit of their sparing ways. It was a beauty achieved by nature apparently with the surest, and yet with the sHghtest, expenditure of energy— a beauty of poise, of Une, of delicacy, of reserve— with nothing of the super- fluous, and little even of color, beyond a gleam of chrysoprase in fine, gray eyes and a coppery, me- tallic luster in hair that otherwise would have passed as chestnut brown. It was a beauty that came as much from repose in inaction as from grace in move- ment, but of which a noticeable trait was that it required no more to produce it in the way of effort than in that of artifice. Through the transparent whiteness of the skin the blue of each clearly artic- ulated vein and the rose of each hurrying flush counted for its utmost in the general economy of values. It was in keeping with this restraint that in all her ways, her manners, her dress, her speech, her pride, there should be a meticulous simplicity. It was not the simplicity of the hedge-row any more than of the hothouse; it was rather that of some classic flower, lavender or crown-imperial, growing from an ancient stock in some dignified, long-tended garden. It was thus a simplicity closely allied to sturdintsr —the inner sturdiness not inconsistent with an outward semblance of fragility — the tenacity of strength by which the lavender scents the summer and the crown-imperial adorns the spring, after the severest srows. It was doubtless this vitality, drawn from deep down in her native soil, that braced her now, to simply 96 holding fast intuitively and almost blindlv till the first force of the shock should have so snLt t . If that the normal working of the faculties ^ b ^^^n snoTen /\-^%^he something of which she h d u t spoken to her father-the something that micht he pnde but that was not wholly pride, which hXe vc been taxed nor called on. She could not have d fined .t m a more positive degree; but even now, when s LrofT/b"" ^f ^integration, she wTs con- resources. '"^ '''"'' '" ""^°"^^^^ treasure of In what it supplied her with, however, there was no answer to the question that had been s lenX makmg .tse If urgent from the first word of ht father s revelations: What was to happen wkh re gard to her wedding.? It took the nrW ? of dealino- w.VK «.u practical form ot deahng with the mere outward paraphernalia- ^e service, the bridesmaids, the guests^ the feast Would It be reasonable, would it be deceit to carrv out rich and elaborate plans in a ruined houS Further than that she dared not inquire hough she DrusilTa F.nY ' ""^ "^l '''''''' ^^^he morning, timidv^h K^' '^ ''^ ^''' OJ'^'^ broached i rtLf^ay^hVp'^ ^^"'"^"•°" ''^^^'^ '^^ ^-le v.^ts°Ti"^ ^" '^' ^"r ''^^^"^'^ the gossip of ser- vants, Drusilla felt the necessitr of being on her Suard. She accepted Olivia's information'that he father had met wiih losses as so much news and gave utterance to sentiments of svmpathyTnd en couragement. Beyond that she could not' go Sl^L" 97 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT was obliged to cast her condolences in the form of bald generalities, since she could make but a limited use of the name of Rupert Ashley as a source of com- fort. More clearly than any one in their little group she could see what marriage with Olivia in her new conditions — the horrible, tragic conditions that would arise if Peter could do nothing — ^would mean for him. She weighed her words, therefore, with an exactness such as she had not displayed since her early days among the Sussex Rangers, measuring the little more and the little less as in an apothecary's balances. "You see," Olivia said, trying to sound her friend's ideas, "from one point of view I scarcely know him." "You know him well enough to be in love with him." Drusilla felt that that committed her to nothing. "That doesn't imply much — not necessarily, that is. jC^on can be in love with people and scarcely know them at all^- And it often happens that if .• you knew them better you wouldn't be in love with j •' them." "And you know him well enough to be sure that he'll want to do everything right." "Oh yes; I'm quite sure of that. I'm only un- certain that — everything right — would satisfy me." Drusilla reflected. " I see what you mean. And, of course, you want to do — everything right — ^your- self." Olivia glanced up obliquely under her lashes. "I see what you mean, too." 98 THE STREET CALLE D STRAWnT "You mustn't see too much." Drusilla spoke hastily. She waited in some anxiety to see just what significance Olivia had taken from her words; but when the latter spoke it was to pass on to another pomt. "You see, he didn't want to marry an American, m the first place." "Well, no one forced him into that. That's one thing he did with his eyes open, at any "His doing it was a sort of— concession." Drusilla looked at her with big, indignant eyes. "Concession to what, for pity's sake?" "Concession to his own heart, I suppose." Olivia smiled, faintly. "You see, all other things being equal, he would have preferred to marry one of his own countrywomen." "It's six of one and half a dozen of the other. If he'd married one of his own countr\'women, the other things wouldn't have been equal. So there you are." "But the other things aren't equal now. Don't you see.? They're changed." "You're not changed." Drusilla felt these words to be dangerous. It was a relief to her that Olivia should contradict them promptly. "Oh yes, I am. I'm changed— in value. With papa's troubles there's a depreciation in every- thing we are." Drusilla repeated these words to her father and mother at table when she went home to luncheon. It she feels like that now," she commented, "what 99 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT -uhU she say when she knows all? — if she ever has to know it." ** Hut she hasn't changed," Mrs. Temple argued. "It doesn't make any ditt'erence in her.'' Drusilla shook her head. "Yes, it does, mother dear. You don't know anything about it." "I know enough about it," Mrs. Temple de- clared, with some asperity, "to see that she will be the same Olivia Guion after her father has gone to prison as she was in the days of her happiness. If there's any change, it will be to make her a better and nobler character. She's just the type to be — to be perfected through suffering." "Y-y-es," Drusilla admitted, her head inclined to one side. "That might be quite true in one way; but it wouldn't help Rupert Ashley to keep his place in the Sussex Rangers." "Do you mean to say they'd make him give it up?" "They wouldn't make him, mother dear. He'd only have to." "Well, I never did! If that's the British army — " "The British army is a very complicated institu- tion. It fills a lot of different functions, and it's a lot of different things. It's one thing from the point of view of the regiment, and another from that of the War Office. It's one thing on the official side, and another on the military, and another on the social. You can't decide anything about it in an abstract, offhand way. Rupert Ashley might be a capital officer, and every one might say he'd done the honorable thing in standing by Olivia; and yet he'd find it impossible to go on as colonel of the Rangers when his father-in-law was in penal ser- vitude, rhere it is in a nutshell. You can't argue about It, because that's the way it is." Rodney Temple said nothing; but he probablv had these words m h.s mind when he, too, early in the afternoon made h.s way to Tory H.ll. Olivia spoke to h.m of her father s losses, though her allusions to Colonel Ashley were necessarily more veiled than they had been with Mrs. Fane. "The future may be quite different from what I expected. I can t tell yet for sure. I must see how thmgs — work out." rZ^^^^AA ^^'\ P""^ i"^^^' "^y ^^^'■'" ^^^ o'd man commended. It's a large part of knowledge to know how to leave well enough alone ^ ^ine times make it^'" ^ °"^ ^^"^^ ^^ '''^" '^" ^^ ^^" "I know I've got to feel my way," she said, meanmg to agree with him." "I don't see why." She raised her eyebrows in some surprise. "You don t see — V ''No, I don't Why should you feel your way.? I ou re not bhnd. ^ ''I feel my way because I don't see it." Oh yes, you do— all you need to see." fusion/' '^°"'' '^^ ''"^' ^ ^''"'^ ^"" '^'^ ^" ^«"- — tor the next step. "I don't know what you mean by the next step " lOI THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "I suppose the next step would be -well, let us say what you've got to do to-day. That's about as much ground as any one can cover with a stride. You see that, don't you.? You've got to cat your dinner, and go to bed. That's all you've got to settle for the moment." Her lips relaxed in a pale smile. "I'm afraid I must look a little farther ahead than that." **VVhat for.? What goci will it do.? You won't sec anything straight. It's no use trying to see daylight two hours before dawn. People are foolish enough sometimcj to make the attempt, but they only strain their eyesight. For every step you've got to take there'll be something to show you the line to follow." "What?" She asked the question chiefly for the sake of humoring him. She was not susceptible to this kind of comfort, nor did she feel the need of it. "W-well," the old man answered, slowly, "it isn't easy to tell you in any language you'd under- stand." "I can understand plain English, if that would do." "You can make it do, hut it doesn't do very well. It's really one of those things that require what the primitive Christians called an unknown tongue. Since we haven't got that as a means of communica- tion — " He broke off, stroking his long beard with a big handsome hand, but presently began again. "Some people call it a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Some People have described it by other figures of speech. The description isn't of importance — it's the Thing." 1 02 She waited a minute, before saying in a tone that had some awe m it, as well as some impatience: Uh, but I ve never seen anything like that I never expect to." "That's a pity; because it's there." "There.? Where.?" "Just where one would look for it-if one looked at all. When it moves," he went on, his hand suitmg the action to the word, on a level with his eyes, when it moves, you follow it, and when it rests, you wait. It's possible-I don't know-I merely throw out the suggestion-no one can reallv know but yourself, because no one but yourself can see it-b- K's possible that at this moment-for you— Its s nding still." "I don't know what I gain either by its moving or Its standing still, so long as I don't see it " ;;No neither do I." he assented, promptly. Well, then.?" she questioned. "Shall I tell you a little story.?" He smiled at her behind his stringy, sandy beard, wh'ie his kind old eyes blinked wistfully. "If you like. I shall be happy to hear it " She was not enthusiastic. She was too deeply engrossed with pressing, practical questions to find his mys- ticism greatly to the point. He took a turn around the drawing-room before beginning, stopping to caress the glaze of one of the i^ ang-hsi vases on the mantelpiece, while he ar- ranged his thoughts. "There was once a little people," he began turning round to where she sat in the corner of a sofa' 103 '* THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT I ■ i •ir her hands clasped in her lap— "there was once a little people — a mere handful, who afterward be- came a race — who saw the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and followed it. That is to say, some of them certainly saw it, enough of them to lead the others on. For a generation or two they were Httle more than a band of nomads; but at last they came to a land where they fought and conquered and settled down." "Yes.'' I seem to have heard of them. Please go on." "It was a little land, rather curiously situated between the Orit.it and the West, between the desert and the sea. It had grea. advantages both for se- clusion within itself and communication with the world outside. If a divine power had wanted to nourish a tender shoot, till it grew strong enough to ripen seed that would blow readily into every corner of the globe, it probably couldn't have done better than to have planted it just there." She nodded, to show that she followed him. " But this little land had also the dangers attendant on its advantages. To the north of it there develop- ed a great power; to the south of it another. Each turned greedy eyes on the little buffer state. And the little buffer state began to be very wise and politic and energetic. It said, If we don't begin to take active measures, the Assyrian, or the Egyptian, whoever gets here first, will eat us up. But if we buy off the one, he will protect us against the other.'" " That seems reasonable." "Yes; quite reasonable: too reasonable. They 104 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGdT forgot that a power that could lead them by fire and cloud could protect them even against conscript troops and modern methods of fighring. They for- got that if so much trouble had been i^hen to put them where they were, it was not that— assuming that they behaved themselves— it was not that they might be easily rooted out. Instead of having con- fidence within they looked for an ally from without, and chose Egypt. Very clever; very diplomadc! 1 here was only one criricism to be made on the course taken— that it was all wrong. There was a man on the spot to tell them so — one of those fel- lows whom we should call pessimists if we hadn't been taught to speak of them as prophets. 'You are carrying your riches,' he cried to them, 'on the shoulders of young asses, and your treasures on the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit you. For the Egyprians shall help in vain, and to no purpose. Your strength is— /o /zV .-/z7/./"' Ashe stood looking down at her his kindly eyes blinked for a minute longer, before he added, "Do you see the point?" She smiled and nodded. "Yes. It isn't very obscure. Otherwise expressed it might be, When in doubt, do nothing." "Exactly; do nothing— rill the pillar of cloud begms to move." Out of the old man's parable she extracted just one hmt that she considered useful. In the letter which she proceeded to write Rupert Ashley as soon as she was alone, a letter that would meet him on his arrival in New York, she gave a statement of such 105 -i ;-■ THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT facts as had come to her knowledge, hut abstained from comments of her own, and from suggestions. She had intended to make both. She had thought it at first her duty to t?.ke the initiative in pointing out the gulf of difficulties that had suddenly opened up between her lover and herself. It occurred to her now that she might possibly discern the leading of the pillar of cloud from self-betrayal on his part. She would note carefully his acts, his words, the expressions of his face. She had little doubt of being able to read m them some indication of her duty. This in itself was a relief. It was like being able to learr a language instead of having to invent one. Nevertheless, as she finished her letter she was im- pelled to add: "We have asked some three hundred people to the church for the 28th. Many of them will not be in town, as the season is still so early; but I think it wisest to withdraw all invitations without consulting you further. This will leave us free to do as we think best after you arrive. We can then talk over everything from the beginning." With the hint thus conveyed she felt her letter to be discreetly worded. By the time she had slipped down the driveway to the box at the gate and posted it with her own hands her father had returned. She had ordered tea in the little oval sitting-room they used when quite alone, and told the maid to say she was not receiving if anybody called. She knew her father would be tired, but she hoped that if they were undisturbed he would talk to her of hii, 106 . i«iifaK-.ift. ^|»^^f:i..M.':'%.^^, ^^1^._ A^M T CALLED ST RA I Gil T affairs. There was so much in them that was mys- terious to her. Notwithstanding her partial re- covery from the shock of the morning, she still felt herself transported to a world in which the needs were new to her, and the chain of cause and effect had a bewildering inconsequence. For this reason it seemed to her quite in the order of things— the curiously inverted order now established, in which one thing was as likely as another— that her father should stretch himself in a comfortable arm-chair and say nothing at all till after he had finished his second cup of tea. Even then he might not have spoken if her own patience had held out. "So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to observe. "No, I didn't." "Sha'n't you have to go?" There was an instant's hesitation. "Perhaps not. In fact— I may almost definitely say — not. I should like another cup of tea." "That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake.''" "Nothing will keep me awake to-night." The tone caused her to look at him more closely as she took the cup he handed back to her. She noticed that his eyes glittered and that in either cheek, above the line of the beard, there was a hectic spot. She adjusted the spirit-lamp, and, lifting the cover of the kettle, looked inside. "Has anj^thing happened.^" she asked, doing her best to give the question a casual intonation. "A great deal has happened." He allowed that 107 THE STREET CALLED STR AIGHT statement to sink in before continuing. "I think" —he paused long— "I think I'm going to get the money." She held herself well in hand, though at the words the old familiar landmarks of her former world seemed to rise again, rosily, mistily, like the walls of Troy to the sound of Apollo's lute. She looked into the kettle again to see if the water was yet boil- mg, taking longer than necessary to peer into the quiet depth. "I'm so glad. " She spoke as if he had told her he had shaken hands -with an old friend. "I thought you would." "Ah, but you never thought of anything like this." "I knew it would be something pretty good. With your name, there wasn't the slightest doubt of it." Had he been a wise man he wouK' have let it go at that. He was not, however, a wise man. The shallow, brimming reservoir of his nature was of the kind that spills over at a splash. "The most extraordinary thing has happened," he went on. "A man came to my office to-day and offered to lend me— no, not to lend— piactically to give me— enough money to pull me through." She held a lump of sugar poised above his cup with the sugar-tongs. Her astonishment was so great that she kept it there. The walls of the city which just now had seemed to be rising magically faded awaj again, leaving the same unbounded vacancy mto which she had been looking out all day 1 08 TH ^ STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "What do you mean by— practically to give you "The man said lend. But my name is good for even more than you supposed, since he knows, and I know, that I can offer him no security." "How can he tell, then, that you'll ever pay it back?" "He can't tell. That's just it." "And can you tell.?" She let the lump of sugar faU with a circle of tiny eddies into the cup of tea. "I can tell— up to a point." His tone indicated some abatement of enthusiasm. "Up to what point?" "Up to the point that I'll pay it back— if I can. That's all he asks. As a matter of fact, he doesn't seem to care." She handed him his cup. " Isn't that a very queer way to lend money?" "Of course it's queer. That's why I'm teUing you. That's what makes it so remarkable— such a— tribute— to me, I dare say that sounds fatuous, but— "It doesn't sound fatuous so much as — " "So much as what?" The distress gathering in her eyes prepared him for her next words before she uttered them. "Papa, I shouldn't think you'd take it." He stared at her dully. Her perspicacity discon- certed him. He had expected to bolster up the ruins of his honor by her delighted acquiescence. He had not known till now how much he had been count- ing on the justification of her relief. It was a proof, 109 THE STREET CALLED S TRAJGHT however, of the degree to which his own initiative had failed him that he cowered before her judgment, with Httle or no protest. "I haven't said I'd take it— positively." "Naturally. Of course you haven't." He dabbled the spoon uneasily in his tea, looking downcast. "I don't quite see that," he objected, trying to rally his pluck, "why it should be - naturally." "Oh, don't you.? To me it's self-evident. We may have lost money, but we're still not— recipients of alms." "This wasn't alms. It was four hundred and fifty thousand dollars." She was plainly awe-struck. "That's a great deal; but I supposed it would be something large. And yet the riagnitude of the sum only makes it the more impossible to accept." "Y-es; of course — if you look at it in that way." He put back his cup on the table untasted. "Surely it's the only way to look at it.? Aren't you going to drink your tea.?" "No, I think not. I've had enough. I've— I've had enough — of everything." He sank back wearily into the depths of his arm- chair. The gHtter had passed from his eyes; he looked ill. He had clearly not enough courage to make a stand for what he wanted. She could see how cruelly he was disappointed. After all, he might have accepted the money and told her nothing about it! He had taken her into his confidence because ot that need of expansion that had often led him to no '^^^AA TAEET CALLED STRA^tGHT "give away" what a more crafty man would have kept to himself. She was profiting by his indiscre- tion to make what was already so hard for him still harder. Sipping her tea slowly, she turned the sub- ject over and over in her mind, seeking some ground on which to agree with him. She did this the moie conscientiously, since she had often reproached herself with a fixity of principle that might with some show of reason be called too inflexible. Between right and wrong other people, especially the people of her "world," were able to see an infimtude of shadings she had never been able to distinguish. She half accepted the criticism often made of her in Paris and London that her Puritan inheritance had given an inartistic rigidity to her moral prospect. It inclined her to see the paths of life as ruled and numbered like the checker-board plan of an American city, instead of twisting and winding, quaintly and picturesquely, with round- about evasions and astonishing short-cuts, amusing to explore, whether for the finding or the losing of the way, as in any of the capitals long trodden by the teet of men. Between the straight, broad avenues of conduct, well lighted and well defined, there lay apparently whole regions of byways, in which those who could not easily do right could wander vaguely without precisely doing wrong, following a line that might be termed permissible. Into this tortuous maze her spirit now tried to penetrate, as occasional- ly, to visit some historic monument, she had pluneed into the slums of a medieval town. It was an exercise that brought her nothing but III sai* s»?S' .^si ^KrrriiawiraK-i-ejjssert'-UB!:- THE STREET CALLED STRJ/CJ / T a feeling of bewilderment. Having no sense of locality for this kind of labyrinth, she could only turn round and round confusedly. All she could do, when from the drooping of her father's lids she feared he was falling off to sleep, leaving the (juestion un- settled, was to say, helplessly: "I suppose you'll be sorry now for having told me." He lifted his long lashes, that were like a girl's, and looked at her. The minutes that had passed had altered his expression. There was again a sparkle of resolve, perhaps of relief, in his glance. Without changing his position, he spoke drowsily, and yet reassuringly, like a man with a large and easy grasp of the situation. She was not sure whether it was a renewal of confidence on his part or a bit of acting, "No, dear, no. I wanted to get your point of view. It's always interesting to me^ I see your objections— of course. I may say that I even shared some of them— till— " She allowed him a minute in which to resume, but, as he kept silence, she ventured to ask: "Does that mean that you don't share them now?" "I see what there is to be said— all round. It isn't to be expected, dear, that vou, as a woman, not used to business—" "Oh, but I didn't understand that this ^aas busi- ness I hat's just the point. To borrow money might be business— to borrow it on security, you kni)w, or whatever else is the usual way— but' not to take it as a present." He jerked himself up into a forward posture. 1X2 ■Mm ^M^mJm^^SMMM^^>mM r When he replied to her, it was with didactic ex- planatory irritation. ' "When I said that, I was leRitimatelv usinir language that might be called exaggerated. ' Hyper! bole .si believe, tne term grammarians use for' . d.dn t expect you dear, to take me up so litcrallv nsn t like you. You generally have n'ore imag n : of a' lo^n 1''^'"'' ""'' Davenant's offer was that ''Oh! So it was— that man.?" loan. I myself interpreted it as a gift simply to em- phasize Its extraordinary generosity. I thought you d appreciate that. Do you see?" "'°"g"f "Perfectly, papa; and it's the extraordinary generosity that seems to me just what makes it im- to us.-' What does he expect to gain.?" 1 had that out with him. He said he didn't expect to gain anything." ^ II And you believed him.?" "Partly; though I suppose he has something up his sleeve^ It wasn't my policy to question him too concern. 1 need the money " papa^r ^°" "^""'^ "''^ '^' money-in that way, << 'I need it in any way. ;■• Davenant will let me burto'tltTrt"""^ ™ ""' '"■■-^'•™ "" '••''o^' THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT IS IS "Pff! What's that got to do with it? Thi business." "No, papa. It's not business. It's a great deal more — or a great deal less~I don't know which." "You don't know anything about it at all, dear. You may take that from me. This is a man's affair. You really must leave it to me to deal with it." Once more he fell back into the depth of his arm-chair and closed his eyes. "If you don't mind, I think I should like a little nap. What have you got so especially against Davenant, anyhow?" "I've nothing against him — except that I've never liked him." "What do you know about him? When did you ever see him?" "I haven t seen him for years — not since Drusilla used to bring him to dances, when we were young girls. She didn't like it particularly, but she had to do it because he was her father's ward and had gone to live with them. He was uncouth — aggressive. Wasn't he a foundling, or a street Arab, or some- thing like that ? He certainly seemed so. He wasn't a bit — civilized. And once he — he said something — he almost insulted me. You wouldn't take his money now, papa?" There was no answer. He breathed gently. She spoke more forcibly. "Papa, you wouldn't let a stranger pay your debts?" He continued to breathe gently, his eyes closed, the long black lashes curling on his cheek. "Papa, darling," she cried, "I'll help you. I'll 114 TnE_^TREET CALLED STRJrnirr take everything on myself. I'll find a way-some- how. Only, don'i do this." He stirred, and murmured sleepily. "You attend to your wedding, dear. That 'II be quite enough for you to look after " ' I3ut I can't have a wedding if Mr. Dav.^nant has o pay for It. Don t you see.? I can't be married at an. When he made no response to this shot, she un- demood finally that he meant to let the subject immP 'ic^'^^'ibM FT* tl VII ^T was in the nature of a k :f to Olivia Guion when, on the following day, her father was too ill to go to his office. A cold, caused by the exposure of two nights previous, and accompanied by a rising temperature, kept him confined to his room, though not to bed. The occurrence, by maintaining the situation where it was, rendered ;t impossible to take any irretrievable step that day. This was so much gain. She had slept little; she had passed most of the night in active and, as it seemed to her, lucid think- ing. Among the points clearest to Iicr , - .s the degree to which she herself was involved in the present business. In a measure, the transfer of a large sum of money from Peter Davenant to her father would be an incident more vital to her than to any one else, since she more than any one else must inherit its moral effects. While she was at a loss to see what the man could claim from them in return for his generosity, she was convinced that his exactions would be not unconnected with herself. If, on the other hand, he demanded nothing, then the life- long obligation in the way of gratitude that must thus be imposed on her would be the most intolerable ii6 1% m^S^^^.%^?m:iW^l TnA_STRE ET CALLED STRAIGHT thing of all. Better any privation than the incur- ring of such a debt— a debt that would cover every- thing she was or could become. Its magnitude would fill her horizon; she must live henceforth in the world it made, her very personality would turn into a thing of confused origin, sprung, it -vas true, from Henry and Carlotta Guion in the first place, but taking a second lease of life from the man whose beneficence started her afresh. She would date back to him, as barbarous women date to their marriage or Mohammedans to the Flight. It was a relation she could not have endured toward a man even if she loved him; still less was it sufFerable with one whom she had always regarded with an inde- finable disdain, when she had not ignored him The very possibility that he might purchase a hold on her inspired a frantic feeling, like that of the ermine at pollution. Throughout the morning she was obliged to con- ceal from her fnther this intense opposition— or, at least to refrain from speaking of it. When she made the attenipt he grew so feverish that the doctor advised the postponement of distressing topics till he should be better able to discuss them. She could only make him as comfortable as might be, ponder- ing while she covered him up in the chaise-longue, putting his books and his cigars within easy reach, how she could best convert him to her point of view It was inconceivable to her that he would persist in the scheme when he realized how it would affect her. She had gone down to the small ov;.l siitincr room "7 ^sSiU^?i-iJ .'.i .yiLM » jJ 5esHaigie- I! li THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT commanding the driveway, thinking it probable that Drusilla Fane might come to see her. Watch- ing for her approach, she threw open the French win- dow set in the rounded end of the room and leading out to the Corinthian-columned portico that adorned what had once been the garden side of the house. There was no garden now, only a stretch of eln:- shaded lawn, with a few dahlias and zinnias making gorgeous clusters , against the already gorgeous autumn-tinted shrubbery. On the wall of a neigh- boring brick house, Virginia creeper and ampelopsis added fuel to the fire of surrounding color, while a maple in the middle distance blazed with all the hues that might have flamed in Mojes's burning bush. It was one of those days of the American autumn when the air is shot with gold, when there is gold in the light, gold on the foliage, gold on the grass, gold on all surfaces, gold in all shadows, and a gold sheen in the sky itself. Red gold like a rich lacquer overlay the t unks of the occasional pines, and pale-yellow gold, beaten and thin, shimmered along the pendulous garlands of the American elms, where they caught the sun. It was a windless morn- ing and a silent one; the sound of a hammer or of a motorist'r horn, coming up from the slope of splendid woodland that was really the town, ac- centuated rather than disturbed the immediate stillness. J o 0!i-ia Guion this quiet ecstasy of nature was uplitting. Its rich, rejoicing quality restored as by a tonic her habitual confidence in her ability to carry the strongholds of life with a high and graceful ns THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT hand. Difficulties that had been paramount, over- powering, fell all at once into perspective, becoming heights be scaled rather than barriers defying pass. ^;t . 1 or niv- first time in the twenty-four hours sinc( th ■ previous morning's revelations, she thought of ht. IwNcr as bringing comfort rather than as creat- ing compile? r ions. Up to this minute he had seemed to withdraw from her, to elude her. As a matter of fact, th-ugh she spoke of him rarely and always with 3 ^^arposely prosaic touch, he was so romantic a fig. in her dreams that the approach of the sordid and the ugly had dispelled his image. It was quite true, as she had said to Drusilla Fane, thit from one point of view she didn't know him very well. She might have oJid that she didn't know him at all on any of those planes where rents and the price of beef are factors. He had come into her life with much the same sort of appeal as the wandering knight of the days of chivalry made to the damsel in the family fortress. Up to his appearing she had thought her- self too sophisticated and too old to be caught by this kind of fancy, especially as it was not the first time she had been exposed to it. In the person of Rupert Ashley, however, it presented itself with the requisite hmitations and accompaniments. He was neither so young nor so rich nor of such high rank as to bring a disproportionate element into their romance, while at the same time he had all the endowments of looks, birth, and legendary courage that the heroine craves m the hero. When he was not actually under her eye.s her imagination embodied him most easily in 119 THE STREET CALLED S TRAIGHT the svdte elegance of the King Arthur beside Maxi- milian's tomb at Innspruck. Their acquaintance had been brief, but iMuminat- ing — one of those friendships that can afford to transcend the knowledge of mere outward personal facts to leap to the things of the heart and the spirit. It was one of the commonplaces of their intimate speech together that they "seemed to have known each other always"; but now that it was necessary for her to possess some practical measure of his cl aracter, she saw, with a sinking of the heart, that they had never passed beyond the stage of the poetic and pictorial. Speculating as to what he would say when he received her letter telling of her father's misfortunes, she was obliged to confess that she "had not the remotest idea." Matters of this sort belonged to a world on which the\- had deliberately turned their backs. That is to say, she had turned her back on it deliberately, though by training knowing its im- portance, fearing that to him it would seem mundane, inappropriate, American. This course had been well enough during the period of a high-bred court- ship, almost too fastidiously disdainful of the com- monplace; but now that the Fairy Princess had be- come a beggar-maid, while Prince Charming was Prince Charming still, it was natural that the former should recognize its insufficiency. She had recog- nized it fully yesterday; but this morning, in the optimistic brightness of the golden atmosphere, romance came suddenly to life again and confidence grew strong. Drusilla had said that she, OHvia, IZQ '■*fe>.W'^l&-.T^':- ''■rf:U-?^k^: mmm^^^. THE STRI'lET C/tLLED STR^fCJIT ' knew him well enough ro \n- sure rliat In- would want to Jo ivcrvthinK rinhr. Thty would do tvcry- thiMfr riKhr -toKcrlKT. I'hey would save her father whom she loved so tenderly, from making rash mis- takes, and -who knew? find a way, perhaps, to rescue him m his troubles and shelter his old age. She was so sure of herself to-day, and so nearly sure of Ashley, that even the shock of seeing Peter Davenant coming up the driveway, between the clumps of shrubbery, brought her no dismay. She was quick in reading the situation. It was after eleven o clock; he had had time to go t, Boston, ai.d, learning that her father was not at his office, had come to seek him at home. She made her arrangements promptly. With- drawing from the window before he could see her she bade the maid say that, Mr. Guion being ill,' Miss Gmon would be glad to see Mr. Davenant, if he would have the kindness to come in. To give an air of greater naturalness to the mise-en-schw, she took a bit of embroidery from her work-basket, and began to stitch at it, seating herself near the open wmdow She was not without a slight, half-amused sense of lying in ambush, as if some Biblical voice were saying to her, "Up! for the Lord hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand." "My father isn't well," she explained to Dave- nant, when she had .haken hands with him and begged h.m to sit down. "I dare say he may not be able to go out for two or three days to come." ai?^W^^i^Mi THE STREET CALLED STnAIGIlT "So they told me at his office. I vas sorry to hear it." "You've been to his office, then? He told me you were there yesterday. That's partly the reason why I've ventured to ask you to come in." She went on with her stitching, turninj^ the canvas first on one side and then on the other, sticking tfie needle in with very precise care. He fancied she was waiting for him to "give himself away" by saying something, no matter what. Having, however, a talent for silence without embarrassment, he made use of it, knowing that by means of it he could force her to resume. He was not at ease; he was not without misgiving. It had been far from his expectation to see her on this errand, or, for the matter of that, on any errand at all. It had never occurred to him that Guion could speak to her of a transaction so private, so secret, as that proposed between them. Since, then, his partner in the undertaking had been foolish, Davenant felt the necessity on his side of being doubly discreet. Moreover, he was intuitive enough to feel her antipathy toward him on purely general grounds. "I'm not her sort," was the summing-up of her sentiments he made for himself. He could not wholly see why he excited her dislike since, be- \t)nd a moment of idiotic presumption long ago, he iiad never done her any harm. He fancied that his personal appearance, as much as anything, was displeasing to her fastidiousness. He was so big, so awkward; his hands and feet were so clunis\'. \ little more and he would have been 122 riih: sTREF/r caij.ed ^traiciit uiiKiiinly; pcih.ips sho con,si(len;d him unK^iinly as It w.-is. II,: had Mi,(l ro negative his defects hy spetKhn^ a unat deal of money on his clothes and bemj^ as parricular as a fiirl about his nails; but he felt that with all his efforts he was but a bumpkin compared with certain other nen Rodney Tern ^ .e, for example who never took any pains at all.' Looking at her now, her pure, exquisite profile bent over her piece of work, while the sun struck coppery gleams from her masses of brown hair, he felt as he had often felt in rooms filled with fragile specimens of art -flower-like cups of ancient glass, dainty groups m Meissen, mystic lovelinesses wrought in amber, ivory, or jade -as if his big, gross personality ought to shrmk into itself and he should walk on tiptoe. "1 understand from my father," she said, when she found herself obliged to break the silence, "that you've^ ofl^ered to help him in his difficulties. I couldn't let the occasion pass without telling you how much I appreciate your generosity." She spoke without looKing up; words and tone were gently courteous, but they afl^ected him like an April zephyr, that ought to bri:ig the balm of spring, and yet has the chill of ice in it. "Haven't vou noticed," he said, slowlv, choosing his words with care, "that generosity consists large- ly in the point of view of the other party.!* You may give away an old cloak, for the sake of gettin;:; nd of it; but the person who receives it thinks you kind." "I see that," she admitted, going on with her 123 ^i^r^&wmafT^samm. 'liir^ . \ . ■*=(•' ■• '^Ai'ii?-^ ^'>:ii THE STREET CALLED STRJIC H T work, "and yet there are people to whom I shouldn't offer an old cloak, even if I had one to give away." He colored promptly. "You mean that if they needed anything 3'ou'd offer them the hestyou had." "I wonder if you'd understand that I'm not speaking ungraciously if I said that — I shouldn't ofl[^"er them anything at all?" He put up his hand and stroked his long, fair mustache. It was the sort of rebuke to which he- was sen^iitive. It seemed to relegate him to another land, another world, another species of being from those to which she belonged. It was a second or two before he could decide what to say. "No, Miss Guion," he answered then; "I don't understand that point of view." "I'm sorrv. I hoped vou would." "Why?" ' She lifted her clear gray eyes on him for the briefest possible look. "Need I explain?" The question gave him an advantage he was quick to seize. "Not at all. Miss Guion. You've a right to your own judgments. I don't ask to know them." "But I thinK you ought. When you enter into \vhat is distinctly our private family affair, I've a right to give my opinion." "You don't think I question that?" "I'm afraid I do. I imagine you're capable of carrying your point, regardless of what I feel." "But I've no point to carry. I find Mr. Guion wanting to borrow a sum of money that I'm prepared to lend. It's a common situation in business." "Ah, but this is not business. It's charity." 124 ■f^JKl^k : f-i'SM^it ^^- ^iri_ iJ^^i dirf!2iBti^ jg^MJ^iiB^f^a2S!Siiif^it^s^avssr^^.':2iei^^-^;sugr3i>^^:s£. TIIR S TRE E r CAL L KIljn^RAIGIl T "Did Mr. (miiom rdl ymi so?" "He (lid. He fold me all about ir. My father has no secrets from me." "Did he use the word charity.?" "Almost He said you offered him a loan, but th: tit really was a Kift." His first impulse was to repudiate this point of view but a rnmute's reflection decided him in favor of plam speakmg. "Well," he .said, slowly, "sup- pose It u'as a gift Would there be any harm in it '" Ihere wouldn't be any harm, perhaps; there wou d only be an--,mpossibility." She worked very bus.Iy and spoke in a low voice, without looking up A gift implies two conditions -on the one side the right to offer, and on the other the freedom to t^.ke ' liut I should say that those conditions existed —between Mr. Guion and me." Tu''^^ "o^ between you and me. Don't you see? ihat s the point. To any such transaction as this J^have to be, in many ways, the most important Again he was tempted to reject this interpretation- but, once more, on second thought, he allowed it to go uncontested. When l.e spoke it was to pass to anotfier order of question. "I wonder how much you know?" ''About my father's affairs.? I know everything " t-very thing.?" ^^ "Yes; everything. He told me yesterday I didn t expect him to come home last night at all- osed " ''^"'^""^"'^ '°^^ "^^ ^hat you had pro- i2S ~rr-'T"r-rr-™ri — rrrri ^r'-— 'iTriirfTWM-i["irii — ^••niT~iiTrTriwriTirrmnrrairrT H Tir i »Ti ^ iii i ii i- v -"t F » 1 A THE STRE ET C ALLED S T RAJ Gil T "^'ou understood, then," Davenant stammtrt-d, "that hi' ini cnsid.r s,.„„„slv ,h, „„. ^ou tee." " " ""■ ■'""'''"" ''^■''"'"■'^- ' I"'.- "Isn't it conc(Mvablo," he ncrsistcd "^^M^ ""^!t:: t^ "T °--" '• 4. w-;l;;,;"^':: W 'hout askiriK for an equivalent In return' loss,bly But ,n thi. ca.,e it would „„i; ^X\, harder for me, ^ "ukc it "How so?" . "By putting me under an overwhelming' ohh.r.. t.on to a total stranger -an ohhgat.on Z^L^^ bear wh.le st.ll less could I do away with it." 1 don t see, he reasoned, "that you'd he under "At present," she corrected, "we're not under an pbl,Bat.on to any one. My father and I are c nand iniiruairTk?""^^ "'■"= ""' -«<■"« f^"or;l? inaividuals. 1 know we owe money -a great de-.l °^?;°f y-fo a good many people -" ^ "' ^ VVhr are total strangers, just like me " ers whom \ r' •"l'"^'"'^' ''^^'>'"" buttotalstrang- about and rt '^"^^"'.^"^ d'^"'^ l^now anvthu'g numb;rs '' "'"^' '"^P^^"^"^' ^^-" ^^^- v ^°'"'"'"^?' '^ ^-'^ not b^ wh'olly a disaster if it summoned her to yield Having come to this conclusion, he had time to ner back to him. It was to consider himself for- view ot all the circumstances, it was a great thine to ave passed through that phase and' come ouf ot it. He had read somewhere that a man is never he could fairly believe himself immune as after J wo"rh'"^°' r^'- '' '' -- "- fo h h would have found in her hostility to his efforts and ^JTTulr '"' ''"^°" ^ ^em^ptation-a temp't" - tion to which he was specially liable in regard to 129 w^s^^^ssm^s:amiiSi'ri^'¥mm^Ksii]ii2Si THE STREET CJ L LED STRAIGIl T living thinns to feci that it was his ri^lit to curb the spirit and tame the rcbclhon of whatever was restive to his control. There was somethinf; in this hauj;htv , I'li^h-strung creature, poising herself in silence to stand upright in the face of fate, that would have called forth his impulse to dominate her will, to sub- due her lips to his own, if he had really cared. For- tunately, he didn't care, and so could seek her wel- fare with detachment. Turning slowly, she stood grasping the back of the chair from which she had risen. He always remem- bered afterward that it was a chair of which the flow- ing curves and rich interlacings of design contrasted with her subtly emphasizx'd simplicity. He had once had the morbid curiosity to watch, in an Eng- lish law-court, the face and attitude of a woman - a surgeon's wife — standing in the dock to be sentenced to death. It seemed to him now that Olivia Guion stood like her — with the same resoluteness, not so much desperate as slightly dazed. "Wasn't it for something of that kind — some- thing wrong with estates — that Jack Berrington was sent to prison?" The question took him unawares. "I — I don't remember." " I do. I should think you would. The trial was in all the papers. It was the Gray estate. He was Mrs. Gray's trustee. He ruined the whole Gray family." "Possibly." He did his best to speak airily. " In the matter of estates there are all sorts of hitches that can happen. Some are worse than others, of course — " 150 "I've seen his wife, Ada lierrinKton, once or twice, when I ve been m Paris. She lives there, waiting for h,m t(, come out of SinRville. She avoids her old triends when she can— but I've seen her." "I think I remember hearing about "them," he said, for the sake of saying something; "but—" I should like to go and talk with my father Would you mmd waiting?" She made as though she would pass him, but he managed to bar her war. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Miss Guion. U he s not well ,t 11 only upset him. Why not let every thmg be just as it is.? You won't regret it a year hence-bel.eve me. In nine things out of ten you d know better than I; but this is the tenth thing, m which I know better than you. Why not trust "i<;/-ana 'ct me have a free hand.?" "I'm afraid I must go to my father. If you'll be kmd enough to wait, I'll come back and tell you what he says. Then we shall know. Will you please let me pass.?" ^ He moved to one side. He thought again of the woman m the Enghsh law-court. It was like this that she walked from the dock-erect, unflinching graceful, with eyes hxed straight before her, as though she saw somethmg in the air. He watched her cross the hall to the foot of the sta.rcase^ 1 here she paused pensively. In a minute or two she came back to the sitting-room door. If .t should be like -like jack Herrington," she •sa.d, from the thresh„Id, with a kind of concen;rated qu.et m her manner, "then -what you sun- 131 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT gested — won M be more ouv: of the question than ever I don't see that," he returned, adopting her own tone. "I should think it would be just the other way. She shook her head. **There are a lot of points of view that you haven't seen yet," he persisted. "I could put some of them before you if you'd give me time." "It would be no use doing that. I should never believe anything but that we, my father and I, should bear the responsibilities of our own acts." "You'll think difFereutly," he began, "when you've looked at the thing all round; and then — " But before ^e could complete his sentence she had gone. Having seen her go up-stairs, he waited in some uncertainty. When fifteen or twenty minutes had gone by and she did not return, he decided to wait no longer. Picking up his hat and stick from the chair on which he had laid them, he went out by the French window, making his way to the gate across the lawn. VIII PDING the door of her father's room :tjar, Miss Guion pushed it open and went in. Wearing a richly quilted dressing- gown, with cuffs and rolled collar of lavender silk, he lay asleep in the chaise- longue a tan-colored rug across his feet. On a table at his left stood a silver box containing cigars, a silver l'"T' ' "'"'/■ "^^^-h-box, and a^mall Mlver lamp burning with a tiny flame. Each piece was engraved with his initials and a coat-of-arms. Un his right there was an adjustable reading-stand, ol h^ T T'" ?P^ ^^ " ^'""^ English review! se^l rin K T^ T''^ ^" elaborately emblazoned sea -ring, hung heavily toward the floor; a cigar that had gone out was still between the fingers. His head, resting on a cushion of violet brocade, had fallen slightly to one side. She sat down beside him, to wait till he woke up scoting Above the woodwork it was papered in pale yellow. On the walls there were water-colors prints photographs, and painted porcelain plaques! tionll '^' t' ^^^«^^^i^e rather than devo- tional purposes, hung an old French ivory crucifix ^3 * THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT i i^ ,: while lower down was a silver holy-water stoup of Venetian make, that was oftenest used for matches. It had been the late Mrs. Guion's room, and expressed her taste. It contained too many ornaments, too many knickknacks, too many mirrors, too many wardrobes, too many easy-chairs, too much embossed silver on the dressing-table, too much old porcelain, wherever there was a place for it. Everything was costly, from the lace coverlet on the bed <-o the Per- sian rugs on the floor. Olivia looked vaguely about the room, as on an apartment she had never before seen. She found herself speculating as to the amount these elaborate furnishings would fetch if sold. She recalled the fact, forgotten till now, that when the Berringtons' belongings, purchased with reckless extravagance, passed under the hammer, they had gone for a song. She made the same forecast regarding the contents of Tory Hill. Much money had been spent on them, but, with the exception perhaps of some of the old portraits, there was little of real intrinsic value. She made the reflection coldly, drearily, as bearing on things that had no connection with herself. Her eyes traveled back to her father. With the muscles of the face relaxe ^ in sleep, he looked old and jaded. The mustache, which had not been waxed or curled that day, sagged at the corners, the mouth sagging under it. Above the line of the beard the skin was mottled and puffy. The lashes rested on his cheeks with the luxuriance of a girl's, and the splendid eyebrows had all their fullness; but the lids twitched and quivered like 134 T HE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT those of a child that has fallen asleep during a fit of weeping. t- & ui It was this twitching that softened her, that com- pelled her to judge him from the most merciful point ot view. There was something piteous about him, something that silenced reproaches, that disarmed severity. She had come up-stairs staggered, in- credulous-^ncredulous and yet convinced-A)ut- raged, terrified; but now the appeal of that fagged face and those quivering lids was too strong for her It wrought m her not so much sympathy as com- prehension, an understanding of him such as she had never before arrived at. In his capacity of father she had loved him i-restrainedly, but ad- mired him with reserves. It was impossible not to love a parent so handsome, so genial, so kind, so generally admired; it was equally impossible not to criticize, however gently, a man with such a love of luxury, of unwarranted princeliness, and of florid display. She was indulgent to his tastes in the degree to which a new and enlightened generation hn? u IT"" °? ""^^ ^'■'■°" °f ^^^f preceding it, but she could not ignore the fact that the value he set on things-m morals, society, or art-depended on heir power to strike the eye. She had smiled U:« ql'^'u 7°"'^''^;"^ which, after all, was harm- less, bhe had smiled, too, when he offered to him- K .f" u''' ^'^' ^''°' •' ^^^ f« be admitted-the bes of whatever could be had, since, presumably, he could afford it; though, as far as she was concerned^ she would have been happier with simpler standards and a less ambitious mode of life. In following the ^35 ^m ■4 •I I I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT path her parents had marked out for her, and to some extent beaten in advance, she had acquiesced in their plans rather than developed wishes of her own. Having grown tired of her annual round of American and English country-houses, with inter- ludes for Paris, Biarritz, or Cannes, she had gone on chiefly because, as far as she could see, there was nothing else to do. Looking at him now, it came over her for the first time that she must be a disappointment to him. He had never given her reason to suspect it, and yet it must be so. First among the aims for which he had been striving, and to attain to which he had hazarded so much, there must have been the hope that she should make a brilliant match. That, and that alone, would have given them as a family the sure inter- national position he had coveted, and which plenty of other Americans were successful in securing. It was only of late years, with the growth of her own independent social judgment, that she could look back over the past and see the Guions as in the van of that movement of the New World back upon the Old of which the force was forever augmenting. As Drusilla Fane v/as fond of saying, it was a mani- festation of the nomadic, or perhaps the predatory, spirit characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. It was part of that impulse to expand, annex, ap- propriate, which had urged the Angles to descend on the shores of Kent and the Normans to cross from Dives to Hastings. Later, it had driven their de- scendants over the Atlantic, as individuals, as house- holds, or as "churches"; and now, from their rich, 1^6 ^niA^LMiLSAlLED_STRAIGHT comfortable commonplace homes in New England lift up their eye., and see how much there was to be de red m the lands their ancestors had left behind tair parks stately manors, picturesque chateaux sonorous titles, and varied, dignified ways of I ving' To a people with the habit of compassing sea and land to get whatever was good to have the voyage back was nothing, especially in the days of easv money and steam. The Guions had been among Z first to make It. They had been among theVrst Americans to descend on the shores of Europe with he mtention-more or less obscure, more orTss acknowledged, as the case might be-of acquiring and enjoying the treasures of tradition by associa? tion or alliance or any other means that mTght oTHelv Or'^^- ?'^1:"'' «"-"• S'-'lf™' ot Henry Guion, found the way to cut a da^h \r. t e Pansof the early Second ErJipire and to '^ r ; Melcoln 'f '"T' ^"T' ^^ '^' Marquis de view of h.. H^"" '^AA ""^P'" ^'"^"^^^ P''"^ of view of that day and date ,t was a dazzhng match long talked of by the naive press of New York Boston, and Philadelphia. ' By the more ambitious members of the Guion house .t was considered as the beginning of a g io" nous epoch; but, looking back now, Olivfa could see bHHir'r "'^ "^"'^^ ^^' ^^^"- ^^-- those day a bnll ant American society had sprung up on the their roo,, t T ^'"'"" ^'^"'^ gladly have struck their roots mto that sturdy trunk, they lacked the m THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT i- f ■ i .'If money essential to parasitic growth. As for Vic- toria Guion, French life, especially the old royalist phase of it, which offers no crevices on its creaseless bark in which a foreign seed can germinate, absorbed her within its tough old blossom as a pitcher-plant sucks in a fly. Henceforth the utmost she could do for her kith and kin was to force open the trap from time to time, so that Olivia, if she liked, could be swallowed, too. In that task the old lady was not only industrious but generous, offering to subscribe handsomely toward the dot, as well as giving it to be understood that the bride-elect would figure in the end as her residuary legatee. Owing to this pros- pect Olivia had been compelled to decline a comte and a vicomte of crusading ancestry, procured at some pains by Madame de Melcourt; but when she also refused the eminently eligible Due de Berteuil, whose terms in the way of dowry were reasonable, while he offered her a splendidly historic name and background, the Marquise not unnaturally lost her temper and declared that she washed her hands of her grandniece once for all. Not till this minute had Olivia ever considered that this reluctance on her part to be "well establish- ed" must have been something like a grief to her father, for he had never betrayed a sign of it. On the contrary, he had seemed to approve her decisions, and had even agreed with her in preferring the mistle- toe to the pitcher-plant. He welcomed her back to Tory Hill, where her residences were longer, now that she ceased to be much with Madame de Mel- court, and yet was always ready with money and his 138 \i I abroad. On her engagement to Rupert Ashlev he expressed complete satisfaction, and said in so manu words that .t was a more appropriate match foT he^ han any trench aihance, however distinguished H.S tenderness m this respect came over her now as pecuharly touchmg, unseahng the fount of fili" pitv at a moment when other motives might have made for indignation and revolt "Hallo! What are you lookins at mc for '" an if^p'carior:/^;,""'"'™'' '" ^'"•- '-"^ ■" ■' He gazed at her without moving a muscle or changmg a shade. She only fancied that in the Ion, look w,eh wh.ch he regarded her there was a recedin / "What makes you ask that?" The intonation was expressionless, and yet it seemed to her, a httle wary. ^ ' ^ JI ask chiefly because-well, because I think they ^^ HHooked at her for a minute more, perhaps for "Well, then— you're right " yeft!rt;^'o?^l'^*^ ".T'"?' ^^'"''-^^ ^" J^- -"- he whilf 'h '^'''^'^ r''"^' ^" P'^'^-^^ around her while her own personality survived. When she ^39 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGH T spoke, her voice sounded as if it came out of the wildness of a surging wreck. "Then that's what you meant in saying yester- day that when everything was settled you still wouldn't be able to pay all you owed." "That's what I meant — exactly." He lay perfectly still, except that he raised his hand and puffed at his extinct cigar. She looked down at the pattern on the Persian rug beside his couch — a symmetrical scroll of old rose, on a black ground sown with multicolored flowerets. "I suppose it's the Clay heirs and the Rodman heirs you owe the money to?" "And the Compton heirs, and old Miss Burnaby, and the two Misses Brown, and — " "Haven't they anything left.?" "Oh yes. It isn't all gone, by any means." Then he added, as if to make a clean breast of the affair and be done with it: "The personal property — what you may call the cash — is mostly gone! Those that have owned real estate — like the Rodmans and Fanny Burnaby — well, they've got that still." "I see." She continued to sit looking medita- tively down at the rug. " I suppose," she ventured, after long thinking, "that that's the money we've been living on all these years?" "Yes; in the main." He felt it useless to quibble or to try to extenuate the facts. "How many years would that be?" "I'm not very sure; on and off, it's about ten since I began using some of their money to — help out my income. Latterly — you may as well know it — 140 ^te. IM^TREEL_CALLED_STRAIGIl T any real income of my own at I haven't had all." all'^F^^s.'' '' ""'" '"""'^ ^""^ ^'^'^ P^>''"K f«r-for . Her hands made a confused little gesture indic;,r Z to'r'' "' ''^ ^— ' appoLr;;"and"f He shrugged his shoulders and arched his eve brows m a k.nd of protest, which was nevertheless" not denial. '«W-well! If you choose toTut it peevishness, for going so terribly into detail " I don t see how it can be helped. It's so aueer wt re."^-'° '"'"^ ''^ ^"^ - -cVtrt "tha^t Mr"°n '''^ '"¥"Vr '^•" 'he interrupted, tnat Mr. Davenant shou d nav for It Tfc,, / to me to male it even worse Zn-than before""'"^ plained "If L''h'" '"""T '^°? "'"''" ^e com- '"Wouldn^ytth^r-"'" ' ^° " ^'"«^"''" "Wo'.ld'yot.."'""" """^ '■"'° ' ^'"'"^ P°«"-- I 5'",j'''' r°' '"^''"''^ ■" her reply. "Yes nan;. I woa« rather-if I were you." ^ ^ 141 i !■ THE STREET CHILLED STRAIGHT " But since you're not me — since you are yourself — would you still rather that I went to SinRviiie?" There was a little lift to her chin, a faint color in her face as she replied: "I'd rather pay— however I did it. I'd rather pay — in any way — than ask sonu- one else to do it." He fell back on the cushion of violet brocade. "So would I — if I had only myself to think of. We're alike in that." " Do you mean that you'd rather do it if it wasn't for me?" "I've got to take everything into consideration. It's no use for me to make bad worse by refusing a good offer. I must try to make the best of a bad business for every one's sake. I don't want to take Davenant's money. It's about as pleasant for me as swallowing a knife. But I'd swallow a knife if we could only hush the thing up long enough for you to be married — and for me to settle some other things. I shouldn't care what happened after that. They might take me and chuck me into any hole they pleased," "But I couldn't be married in that way, papa dear. I couldn't be married at all to — to one man — when another man had a claim on me." "Had a claim on you? How do you mean?" "He'll have that— if he pays for everything — pays for everything for years and years back. Don't you see ?" "A claim on you for what, pray?" "That's what I don't know. But whatever it is, I shall feel that I'm in his debt." tltai. I call that morbid. Ft /J "Nonsense, morbid," I i3t f*"*' ^'","'""''. '''*^ ^''^'^ ''^•■'^ ^"•'^'"R for? open tT. ft "^ ""'■ "^"•'^^ ^'" 'f ^'f'' ""•■ ^y'-s open to the consequences. Ashley would alnimr certamly throw you over - " *^ ;;No; because that possibility couldn't arise" ^^^ Ami, you II have to be prepared for th^ dis- pavinf 'l""',M '^ "" '^ '' ^''^«^-<'^- - "luch as - Paymg. It w,ll be paymg for what we've had if we sha'n'; b f ^T""^ '^"^ ^^'^^ ourselves; - Wk . '■ ^""'""^ '' "^ "" «"ni^' one else " ^^ Why do you say we.?" "Well, won't it be we^* F ^h-.!! k.,, • . alt- my sh:ti: i '^'-"^ '"" ""•"'•'• ■■"' ' ""«'" "■> i^ tha^we should K '^"=""™- ^y whole point mac we should be actinR toRether." 1 hey can t put you in SinRville." the wails I ^rif'"'' '''"" r ^'"^ ""'"K ""t^iJ^' with7n rJnt'f" "'^"' •" *' ">"• P-P-. if you're -or from ,„ i "^ '" 'V""'' -lyself from you didn't in wT 7* L^""''-' "-sponsible for. I "y I Vhou7;"g:t'':"ii -; - i'T"™- ' ''""''"'' shouldn't youith: t:tprt^ro;i:4ii'; ■'•ii THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT every day we suffered, and evcrv night we slept through or wept through, and every hit of humiha- tion and dishonor, was so much contributed to the great work of — paying up. Isn't that the way you'd take it?" "That's all very hne now, dear, when you're — what shall I say?— a little bit cxaltrr; but how do you think you'll feel when they've — when they've" — he continued to speak with his eyes shut con- vulsively — "when they've arrested me and tried me and sentenced me and locked mc up for ten or fifteen years?" " I shall feel as if the bitterness of death were past. But I should feci worse than that — I should feel as if the bitterness of both death and hell were still to come if we didn't make an effort to shoulder our own responsibilities." There was more in the same vein. He listened for the greater part of the time with his eyes closed. He was too unutterably tiretl to argue or to contest her point of view. Beyond sugj^esting ihat there were sides to the question she hadn't >et considered, he felt helpless. He was restrained, too, from setting; them forth by a certain hesitation in demanding from her anything she did not concede of her own accord. That she would ultimately see for her- self he had little doubt. In any case he was more or less indifferent from sheer spiritual exhaustion. He had ceased to direct, or try to direct, his own affairs or those of any one else. In his present condition he could only lie still and let come what might. Fate or God would arrange things either 144 '%fe.: 1'. •"<"'?; in the way of ■■^^imim^,^r^^r^^'i^^^^~~^^ interference on his part. "unout So as he lay an^'itie, a spirit ot neveToturred - h " ^""""-"'"™' 'his "ne had never occurred to him; and yet, now that he saw it fr^mT'1'' " "' '"" "••" ^'^ "-'Rl" have expect d from the almost too rigid rectitude and decKv too uncompromising pride that made up her cCac rf a gZ^ t "=^'' r ""' -''-"ed. mos v^ordiy is^«i:/n%^sTh:^LTa:-^Se;:;:^b7Csira^ in Tmttrg^ lr:''ir^;^s;re'd''"i'^• "V""""'' because for ?he res! yh,^".'°rhe tu™t 01""'^ ■n a humiliating moral situa ,n. flT: u dnthte wor^tr°wr;,i::i^" '™^^"''"« f- --^ - much This was so;«tg:kTd„ri.'''i-.roTtt '45 ' il li ' 1 r THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT measure in which he had agreed with her heroic views of "paying," he returned to that thought after she had kissed him and gone away. During the conversation with him Olivia had so completely forgotten Davenant that when she de- scended to the oval sitting-room she was scarcely sur- prised to find that he had left and that Drusilla Fane was waiting in his place. "You see, Olivia," Mrs. Fane reasoned, in her sympathetic, practical way, "that if you're not going to have your wedding on the 28th, you've got to do something about it now." "What would you do?" Olivia brought her mind back with some efFort from the consideration of the greater issues to fix it on the smaller ones. In its way Drusilla's inter- ference was a welcome diversion, since the point she raised was important enough to distract Olivia's attention from decisions too poignant to dwell on long.^ "I've thought that over," Drusilla explained — "mother and I together. If we were you we'd simply scribble a few lines on your card and send it round by post." "Yes? And what would you scribble?" "We'd say — ^you see, it wouldn't commit you to anything too pointed — we'd say, simply, 'Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October 28th.' There you'd have nothing but the statement, and they could make of it what they liked." "Which would be a good deal, wouldn't it?" 146 "So that the thing to do is to keen fh««, r for r.ti„f -t -- ^•'-X -„^x/3 while. Vh „^„Z hrded'thr'V'" '^ ">'"" feel .ore free to'-„ g'r.'ottrd^lThl^.LC " friendly offer to heTo in ,1, "''•''''' ?°' °™»'"=''» which it woul7be „^ecLt/to''"^°' "'^ "'•'''' °f hundred. There be" ngTo V-e to l^"' T' '™ -.wor..rr„rjn^-s^;'Lt^- not^E^ro'^oTt&rh-"?*"^' ^^^''- -■» somethi:°tet'tneir ^r""^ ^1" «^« ^-''ed n^onotony' o^^J^^'^^ "-7. f-m the .tuZrheTanttVthir-Y"-^^^^^^^ : Drusillaf do ^^'re^LtbT Icl Btr/on .■ might not have perceived it so quicth- ^47 wB THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT even then had it not been for the second of hesitation before Drusilla answered and the quaver in her voice when she did. "Y-es." The amount of information contained in the em- barrassment with which this monosyllable was ut- tered caused Olivia to feel faint. It implied that Drusilla had been better posted than herself; and if Drusilla, why not others.' "Do you know what makes me think of him?" Again there was a second of hesitation. With- out relaxing the speed with which she went on scrib- bling the same oft-repeated sentence, Olivia knew that her companion stayed her pen and half turned round. "I can guess." Olivia kept on writing. "How long have you known?" Drusilla threw back the answer while blotting with unnecessary force the card she had just written: "A couple of days." "Has it got about — generally?" "Generally might be too much to say. Some people have got wind of it; and, of course, a thing of 'that kind spreads." "Of course." After all, she reflected, perhaps it was just as well that the story should have come out. It was no more possible to keep it quiet than to calm an earth- quake. She had said just now to her father that she would regard publicity less as disgrace than as part of the process of paying up. Very well! If thev 148 THE STREET CALLED STRAIG HT were a mark for idle tongues, then so much the better, smce m that way they were already con- tnbutmg some few pence toward quenching the afteJf.T''^ ^""l '^''"' ^■^°"' '''" ^"-"^^"^ explained, after a silence of some mmutes, "if I didn't think tha hdrCouTHe^n;^^ ^° '^ -^^^-^ — Ohvia wrote energetically. "What's he doing?" h.v. ' A r'?"^ °^ '•''"« '""" ^°- I'hey seem to have wonderful ways of raising money." How do you know he's trying it?" rJr! "^""'u ^-T ^°.'' ^^'■'^•"' I'^^ only an idea. I rather gather ,t by the queer way he comes and goes The mmute a thmg is in Peter's hands-" Have you such a lot of confidence in him.?" l^or this sort of thing-yes. He's terribly able so they say, financially. For the matter of that' you can see it by the way he's made all that money Bought mmes, or somethmg, and sold them again' rnTtLrnd^''""''"^' ^"' -'' '- '- ^^— ^^' mar?;'hi!nF" "" "°" ''^^ '^ °"^^ ^^^^^ -^ to Drusilla wheeled round in her chair and stared open-mouthed, at her friend's back. ' No: ;;0h, it was years ago. I dare say he's forgotten It "I'll bet you ten to one he hasn't " ^ Uhvia took another card and wrote rapidlv Do you suppose," she said, trying to speak casually," 149 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "that his wanting to help papa out has anything to do with that?" "I shouldn't wonder. I shouldn't wonder at all." "What fOM/i it have?" "Oh, don't ask me! How should I know? Men are so queer. He's getting some sort of satisfaction out of it, you may depend." Drusilla answered as she would have Hked to be answered were she in a similar position. That an old admirer should come to her aid like a god from the machine would 1 ave struck her as the most touching thl.^g in the world. As she wheeled round again to her task it was not without a pang of wholly impersonal envy at so beautiful a tribute. She had written two or three cards before she let fall the remaik: "And now poor, dear oldmother is manceuvering to have me marry him." The idea was not new to Olivia, so she said, simply, "And are you going to?" "Oh, I don't know." Drusilla sighed wearily, then added: "I iha'n't if I can help it." "Does that mean that you'll take him if you can't do better?" "It means that I don't know what I shall do at all. I'm rather s,ck of everything— and so I might do anythmg. I don't want to come back to live in America, and yet I feel an alien over there, now that I haven't Gerald to give me a raison d'etre. They're awfully nice to me— at Southsea— at Silchester— everywhere— and yet they really don't want me. I r fr\ THE STREET CALLED STRAIG HT can see that as plainly as I can see your name on this card. But I can t keep away from them. I've no pnde. At least, I've got the pride, but there's something m me stronger than pride that makes me a kmd of craven I m ike a dog that doesn't mind bemg kicked so long as he can hang about under the dmmg-room table to sniff up crumbs. With mv temperament it's perfectly humiliating, but I can't help It. I ve got the taste for that English life as a Frenchman gets a taste for absinthe-knows that it 11 be the rum of him, and yet goes on drinking." there .?'"^''°'^ ^""^ '^ "''^ '" ^''''^ ^'^^ ^">^ °"^ ^^^^ There was no curiosity in this question. Olivia th^^ n'~n ' '°"^^ T'^'^y ^^" ^^y- She noticed ha?f turned "'T't ^T^^ ^^^•" ^"^ «"« "^^re hall turned round, though it was not till long after- ward that she attached significance to the fact. Who on earth should I be in love with? What put that into your head.?" " n.n.?' V"^""' *'"°'^- ^"■^"S"'" ^^'"g^ have hap. pened. You see a great many men—" So they went skimming over the surface of con- hdence, knowing that beneath what they said there Tb ^Xll ''''"" ^'^'^' '^'''' '^^y ^^-d not dis! turb. All the same, ,t was some relief to both when lunchrn '""' '" '^" ^°'' '" ''"'"'"«" '^'"^ ^« IX TURING the next day and the next Guion continued ill, so ill that his daughter had all she could attend to in the small tasks of nursing. The lull in events, however, gave her the more time for thinking, and in her thoughts two things struck her as specially strange. Of these, the first and more remarkable was the degree to which she identified herself with her father's wrong- doing. The knowledge that she had for so many years been profiting by his misdeeds produced in her a curious sense of having shared them. Though she took pains to remind herself that she was morally guiltless, there was something within her— an imag- inative quality perhaps— that rejected the acquittal. Pity, too, counted in her mental condition, as did also that yearning instinct called maternal, which keeps women faithful to the weak and the fallen among those they love. To have washed her own hands and said, "See here! I am innocent!" would have seemed to her much like desertion of a broken old man who had no one but her to stand by him. Even while she made attempts to reason herself out of it, the promptings to the vicarious acceptance of guilt, more or less native to the exceptionally strong 152 T HE STREET C AU .En_^T^^j^j^ and loyal, was so potent in her that she found hcr- h "J";^' 'Vr^''^"^^ '^"°' •" ^*''-^«' "Inasmuch as he d.d ,t, d.d .t, too." It was not a purposely adopted stand on her part; it was not even clear to her why she was impelled to take it; she took it only because obeymg the dictates of her nature, she could do nothmg else. Nevertheless it occasioned her some surprise whenever she had time to think of it, to note he' speed with wh.ch she had adapted herself to the facts Once revealed, she seemed to have always known hem-to have shared that first embarrassment Z ready money that had induced her father to borrow from funds so temptingly under his control, and to have gone on w.th him, step by step, through the subsequentyearsofstruggle and disaster. They were years over wh.ch the sun was already darkened and the moon turned mto blood, so that, looking back on them, .t was almost impossible to recapture the memory of the light-heartedness with whi h Z thl r tTu^^ '^''"- ^' ^^^ ■"^••^^•^^'- to her now that they had been years of traveling and visiting and dancmg and hunting and motoring and yachtin^of fojlowmg fashion and seeking pleasure in wh "clef self, some pale, secondary, astral self, must have crossed and recrossed tl.. Atlantic and been a guest in great houses and become a favorite- in London Pans, Biarntz Florida. Scotland, Rome! ScC other self must have been sought out for her soci ^y admired for her style, and privileged to refuse- eligible suitors! Some other self must have met iS3 i i It THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT Rupert Ashley in the little house at Southsea and promised to become his wife! From the standpoint of the present it seemed to her as if an unreal life had ended in an unreal romance that was bringing to her, within a day or two, an unreal hero. She was forced again face to face with that fact that the man who was coming to marry her was, for all practical knowledge that she had of him, a stranger. In proportion as calamity encompassed her he re- ceded, taking his place once more in that dim world she should never have frequented and in which she had no longer lot nor part. She should never have frequented it for the simple reason that for all she had brought to it or got from it some one else had to pay. The knowledge in- duced a sense of shame which no consciousness of committed crime could have exceeded. She would have been less humiHated had she plotted and schemed to win flattery and homage for herself than she was in discovering that people had been tricked into giving them spontaneously. To drop the mask, to tear asunder the robe of pretense, to cry the truth from the housetops, and, like some Scriptural woman taken in adultery, lie down, groaning and stunned, under the pelting of the stones of those who had not sinned, became to her, as the hours dragged on, an atonement more and more imperative. But the second odd fact she had to contemplate was the difficulty of getting a new mode of life into operation. Notwithstanding all her eagerness to pay, rhe days were still passing in gentle routine 154 somewhat quietly because of her father's indisposi- tion, but with the usual household dignity fhel was a clock-work smoothness about hfe at Toll H.ll, due to the most competent service secured a^ he greatest expense Old servants, and plenty of hem kept the wheels going noiselessly even while they followed with passionate interest the drama bemg played m the other part of the house To break m on the course of their duties, to d sturb them, or put a stop to them, was to Ova lik an s S' ?h;°kn""" t 'r ^'^^^ -^"'-' ^H^ sunrise, bhe knew neither how to set abni.f .i- nor where to begin. There was something ^oign'an m the irony of these unobtrusive services from the minute when her maid woke her in tk. • till she helped her to chante'htrd "^s tr™"™? and yet there was nothing for it but to go th "S the customary daily round. When it became fo^thr 'L''" '''' "<""™ "'" 'he p parat o™ for the weddmg must be stopped and that the that the food they brought her choked her and the rnajd s touch on her person was like fire, wh"le she t l^^h d ^^^^^^^.^^^''g^d to submit to hlse ong estabhshed attentions ^ THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT the course o^ legal action. Most of the men with whom it lay to set the law in moti'^n, notably Dixon, the District-Attorney, were old friends of his, who would hesitate to drag him from a sick-room to face indictment. He had had long interviews with Dixon about tlie case already, and knew how re- luctant that official was to move in the matter, any- how; but as soon as he, Guion, was out and about again, all kindly scruples would have to yield. "You'll find," he explained to her, "that the ques- tion as to breaking camp will settle itself then. And besides," he added, "it '11 be better to wait till Ashley comes and you know what he's likelv to do for you." With the last consideration she could not but agree, though she shrank from his way of putting it. It was some satisfaction at least to know that, since the two hundred cards she had sent out had reached their recipients, the process of public penance must in some measure have been started. She had seen no one who could tell her what the effect had been; her bridesmaids evidently knew enough to consider silence the better part of sympathy; not even Drusilla Fane had looked in or called her on the telephone during the last day or two; but she could imagine pretty well the course that comment and speculation must be taking through the town. There would be plenty of blame, some jubilation, and, she felt sure, not a little sympathy withal. \ here was among her acquaintance a local American pride that had always been jealous of her European preferences and which would take the opportunity 156 THE STREET CALL ED STRJIGR T would be kLdi'/^Tr"^'' ^"^ •" «^"-^' opinion r f I. 1 ^ ^' ^^'''^ ""^""^ ^" afternoon when she felt the des.re to go forth to face it, to taJher first impressions of the world in her new rtlanon sh.p toward it She had not been beyond hdr own gate sin. the altered conditions had begun to ^nTA u ^^u ^^^ "'^^ °^ '^' ^^^^h air; she had need to find her beanngs; she had need of a few minutes' intercourse with some one besides her farh^^ cel'tlv'T'' 'V^'r'^' 'y ^-^nt ^in! land rhl^^ ^'" 't ^^'' ^"P^^^ Ashley would land that night or the next morning. In fortv-eiZ hours he would probably be in Boston it was prudent she reflected, to be as well poised and as su^^of herself as possible before his Trdlal Tn'th: h.,"r/^'^!.' ""^^ '^'^^'^y ^^''^'- He could leave c^ulSli^'"^' r'Pf^-^ •" ^'^ ^'«'-^ dressing-gown luxunv!? °" r^' chaise-longue, surrounded 1,yThe' luxurious comforts that were a matter of couL to Jm smHetharh'' '^'" ^""^ ^' observedTi^h a flmos h ar so h"' ''T n^ ^'^ " P'^>^- "^ <^o"'d Tscrape. "' "°"'' '' ' '"^^^ -' -^ «f She had come, dressed for the street rn ,.lf i,- had?' "'"'V"l.''°™ '" "'^ Ten^. 'tr. e wh™ IS7 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT He looked at her with an approval that gradually merged into a sense of comfort. She had chosen the simplest dress and hat in her wardrobe, as significnt of a chastened soul; but simplicity more than anything else emphasized her distinction. "She'll be a'' right," he said, consolingly, to him- self. "Whatever happens she'a the kind to come out on top. Rupert Ashley would be a fool to throw over a superb, high-spinred creature like that. He'll not do it. Of that I feel sure." The conviction helped him to settle more luxuri- ously into the depths of his couch and to relish the flavor of his cigar. He was quite sincere in the feeling that if she were but safe he should be more or less indifferent to the deluge overwhelming him- self. "Papa," she ventured at last, watching carefully the action of the little silver button-hook, as she buttoned her gloves, "if that Mr. Davenant came while I'm gone, you wouldn't change your mind, would you?" "I don't think he's in the least likely to turn up." "Butif he did.?" "Well, I suppose you'll be back before long. We couldn't settle anything without talking it over, in any case." Forced to be content with that, she kissed him and turned away. She found a comfort in getting into the open air, into the friendly streets, under the shade of the familiar trees, that surprised her. The absence of 158 \\ )r!(l I)-, f hi. iv smfck'teth^'fi "^ ''"• ^^^"«^ ^---n town be the firs^tng t"n^.vrf community would invitation to the'sp! .":r dax '"n'th "l '"f'^' cleaning she saw a , „- ,. ^^ Th ^'"T '-"^ "^'.'^'1 that, perfection ^ 1 erniitted to rub . -vnich in Colonial ■ days had lee * had long ago civic authorii. It still retained tli-: h village street. Eln, 'arity of a Gothic vat. THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT by a newer still. To Olivia the consoling thought was precisely in this state of transition, to which rapid vicissitude, for better or for worse, was some- thing like a law. It made the downfall of her own family less exceptional, less bitter, when viewed as part of a huge impermanency, shifting from phase to phase, with no rule to govern it but the necessities of its own development. Until this minute it was the very element in American life she had found most distasteful. Her inclinations, carefully fostered by her parents, had always been for the solid, the well-ordered, the assured, evolved from precedent to precedent till its conventions were fixed and its doings regulated as by a code of etiquette. Now, all of a sudden, she perceived that life in shirt-sleeves possessed cer- tain advantages over a well-bred existence in full dress. It allowed the strictly human qualities an easier sort of play. Where there was no pretense at turning to the world a smooth, impeccable social front, toil and suffering, misfortune and disgrace, became things to be less ashamed of. Practically every one in these unpretentious, tree-shaded houses knew what it was to struggle upward, with many a slip backward in the process and sometimes a crashing fall from the top. These accidents were understood. The result was the creatior of a living atmosphere, not perhaps highly civil. ..ed, but highly sympathetic, charged with the comprehension of human frailty, into which one could carry one's dishonor, not wholly with equanimity, but at least with the knowledge that such burdens were not i6o b rsi^?2J:*^V5;^{f •'?:,,rv:;5?s^ LJiCKSHSKo before whl" 'shTru d I'Tve'T' '""'"'"' a fellow-feeling with her ca"e. "'"'"' """"eh 1 his consciousness helped her fn K« fi . B:::de7r:L'^s.t"i-H'^^"f^-^^ an unusually tall Ce "^ » '"'' ^"" ""'>' "» gray felt hat. He was' aunL""""""^ «7^ ^"" ="<• => toward her stonn^nrn """'"'"8 '" a leisurely way beautiful ^Ji^TnTnl h^s^ t'of^" ''"'"'■ ^T weeds, or a group of h.K; ^[.water-rats in the or a ha,f.na\:7u°nder;rrar uLT f '''''^' serpentme reaches of the river ir a ?„l. °"^ "" cleavmg the waters with the predsion of ^^' "^'"^ 'o a long, rhythmic swing of cLht s^m h J"" "T' ow, b„ef grunt of command^'"it?^°'"'^="^- hght strikine silver,/ »J 7- . "'^" -- the rim of autumnal h^fu 'u' ''"" "f "■''^ f™"- It touched up wTh sof d„ ' '''"'"" ''O"^""- shades of green and n. f °™:8^=>'. ■" which were ran,shackle'w™d;n /ah i;'' ,''" T" ^' ""P-"''"!, rr.^:^S8?s??iiE5?' THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT unkempt marshes, stretching away into shimmering distances, where factory windows blazed as if from inner conflagration and steam and smoke became roseate or iridescent. The tall stranger, so much better dressed than the men who usually strolled on the embankment at this hour of a week-day afternoon, fixed her atten- tion to such a degree as to make her forget that she herself was probably a subject of curiosity and speculation among the passers-by. It was with a little disappo.ntment that as she came nearer she said to herself, " It's only— that man." Common fairness, however, obliged her ro add that he seemtd "more like a gentleman" than she had supposed. That he was good-looking, in a big, blond, Scotch or Scan- dinavian way, she had acknowledged from the first. On recognizing Davenant ner impulse was to pass him with the slightest recognition, but on second thoughts it seemed best to her to end the affair impending between them once for all. "I'm sorry you didn't wait for me to come down- stairs the other day," she said, after they had ex- changed greetings, "because I could have told you that my father agreed with me — that it wouldn't be possible for us to accept your kind help." "I hope he's better," was Davenant's only answer. "Much better, thank you. When he's able to see you I know he will want to express his gratitude more fully than I can." "I hoped he'd be able to see me to-day. I was on my way to Tory Hill." 162 '-" —V ■>«=•-- IM^STMIL__CJLLED_STRAIGH T She was annoyed both by his persiste^i^^^TiiTb^ the coolness of h,s manner, as, leaning on his stick he stood looking down at her. He looked down in a way that obliged her to look up. She had not reahzed t.ll now how big and tall he was She noticed, too the squareness of his jaw, the force of his chm, and the compression of his traight th.n I.ps beneath the long curve of his mustache " that h,s fa.r skm was subject to little flushes of em- barrassment or shyness, like a girl's. As she wasTn a mood to cnncze, she called this absurd and sa of h,s blue eyes, restmg on her with a pensive direct ness, as though he were studying her from n Ion way off that they were hard. Deep-set andTavenef under heavy, overhanging brows, they moJe than any other feature imparted to his face the frowning and farouche effect by which she judged him H.H It not been for that, her hostility to evernhin. hf sa.d and did might not have beenVp oi^'^t f h, he was working to get her into his power became more than ever a conviction the minute she looked mto what she called that lowering gaze AJI the same, the moment was one for diplomatic action rather than for force. She allowed a I a f Tm !^ to come to her lips, and her voice to take a one in wHe^^XX^-S--l^:,i"^Portant 163 I, vf^^ ■r* THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "There's a good deal to be done if we choose to do it; but \ye must choose at once. The Benn crowd is getting restive." "That doesn't make any difference to us. My father has decided to take the consequences of his acts." "You say that so serenely that I guess you don't understand yet just what they'd be." "I do— I do, perfectly. My father and I have talked it all over. We know it will be terrible; and yet it would be more terrible still to let some one else pay our debts. I dare say you think me mon- strous, but — " "I think you mistaken. I don't want to say more than that. If I find Mr. Guion of the same opinion — " "I see. You don't consider my word sufficient." "Your word is all right. Miss Guion," he tried to laugh. "What you lack is authority. My dealings are with your father. I can't settle anything with— a substitute." She colored swiftly. "I don't presume to settle anything. I only thought I might give you some necessary information. I hoped, too, to save you a little trouble in sparing you the walk to Tory Hill." He looked away from her, his eyes wandering up the reach of the river, over which the long, thin, many-oared college craft shot like insects across a pool. "Why should you be so bent on seeing your father follow Jack Berrington, when it could be avoided?" 164 THE STREET C J r r^Pn_^Tpjjj^ "Why should you care? What difference does it make to you? If you'd only explain thatl" It explains itself. If I saw a woman leap into the nver there I shou d pull her out. The more tt Tsllt h^r.' ""' '"""^'' ^^^ "^°- ' ^^-l" "But, you see, I'm not leaping into a river On the contrary, I'm getting out of one. It leems to me that you'd be only forcing me back and mTkin° my last state worse than the first " ^ It took h.m a minute to grasp the force of this That would depend, of course, on the do nt of rvTnoth^r r 1/"^' ''' something witTwVh 1 ve nothmg to do. It concerns you, and it concerns Mr. Gu.on, but ,t doesn't concern me. For rSe tihe whole thmg ,s very simple. I've offered triend ^rtolZ: ' i7t'%--^r- It's for him to take and if'reloesn't^yut^^^^^^ ' ^'^^'"'^ '' *"^^^^ You'd let him have it, just the same?" wt course. Why not?" fee'ir '""' "^ =■" ''"^ '^'"^ -^ to what I should If lUr r,.' i I ,P^^^ that It isn t my affa r wishe s-w^r .1 "'■* ""'I' "^y '•'='" -g^-in" your She was some minutes silent, her eves ran.,;n„ over the nver and the marshes, like hifown^"^ .hinkh"J^d"trf,!r-''->"^hesaidatlast,"I ■65 '&gft ii: 5 ! i: i. THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "Then so much the better, from my point of view." "Precisely; but then your point of view is a mys- tery. Not that it makes any difference," she has- tened to add. "If my father accepts your loan, It will be for me to pay it back, in one way or another — if I ever can." "We could talk of that," he smiled, trying to be reassurmg, "after more important things had been settled." "There wouldn't be anything more important— for me." "Oh, you wouldn't find me an importunate cred- itor." "That wouldn't help matters— so long as I owed the debt. After all, we belong to that old-fashioned, rather narrow-mmded class of New England people to whom debt of any kind is the source of something like anguish. At least," she corrected herself, "/ belong to that class." It was on his lips to remind her that in her case there could be no present release from indebtedness, there could only be a change of creditors; but he de- cided to express himself more gracefully. "Wouldn't it be possible," he asked, "to put the boot on the other foot, and to consider me as the person to whom the favor is shown in being allowed to do something useful.''" She lifted her chin scornfully. "That would be childish. It would be a mere quibbling with words " 'Uur It would be true. It's the way I should take It. 166 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT lool'^s^ *"" Wh°"r'^ ^'"^ ^'^^ °"^ °^ ^^' imperious In the monosyllable there was a demand for com- plete explanation, but he met it with one of his frank smiles. ''Couldn't you let me keep that as my secret?" So that you would be acting in the daylight and we m the dark. ''You might be in the dark, and still have nothing to be afraid of. ^ She shook her head. "I iAot^W be afraid. It was in the dark according to the old story, that the ante- lope escaped a hon by faUing into a hunter's trap." Do I look hke that kind of a hunter?" He smiled again at the absurdity of her comparison. You can't tell anything from looks-with men. With men a woman has only one principle to guide her—to keep on the safe side." "I hope you won't think me uncivil, Miss Guion, It 1 pomt out that, at present, you haven't got a safe side to keep on. That's what I want to offer "I might ask you why again, only that we should be gomg round in a circle. Since you don't mean to tell me, 1 must go without knowing; but I'm sure you can understand that to some natures the lion is less to be feared than the hunter." "lie doesn't feel so." He nodded his head in the direction of Tory Hill. ;; He y^^/^ so. He's only a little-wavering." Guion if ^"' f ^'f'^ ^ ''"'^ wavering, too, Miss Uuion, if you d only own up to it " 167 ti ■^^.: THE STREET CALLED RTR^iry M-r He watched her straighten her shght figure while her dehcate features hardened to an expression of severity. I m not wavering on the principle, nor because of anything I should have to face myself. If I have any hesitation, it's only because of what it would mean for papa." He allowed an instant to pass while he looked down at her gravely. "And he's not the only one, you know, he said, with all the significance he could put into his tone. His hint, however, was thrown away, since she was intent on her own line of thought. With a slight nod of the head, dignified rather than dis- courteous she departed, leaving him, to the great tal? t f ^^'^'''-^y^ '--"i"g on his stick^nd staring after her. M mmmm-'-^\m'^:?^m^m,s¥pm^ ti^s^KSisi^-?; jgp^^' :^-^ Pn*^.'"'"'^™"""^'' on her way toward f Rodney Temple's she was able^oTkl fort" im-^TK '^'' ^ '^''i'f ■•«»" for her d.slike of Davenant sprang from h,s .mmovabihty. There was Cm" ~. u ^"'^ '"S ^''™f him like a eiant roct ^L Maying tha "rrt aTul '^^'a.'L?/ t^'^' almost startled A wnmon k I ^°'^'^' ^'^^ ^^s her; she knew thar buT. '"^ ^°"^^V"^" ^'^''^^^^ was diffieultTo tl'rp'r" LTenrntrbearin"t ^" ':? her manv other wav T.-, """^^^.^ Deanng toward were no c^onSsir ;<. fea elT Krel"-' n.ent in the situar on U ^.'"^ '•"' P"^""^' ''e- Itchallentd her'tevr'"''' '"fu "'"" '"^ «h"- time it gfve Daventn, ' '"'' ''™ which sh^e was'^rfZ ^iZ^:::-^:'- ''- 169 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT Rodney Temple's house, which was really within the borders of Cambridge, built about 1840 by some Harvard professor in easy circumstances, had original- ly resembled a square brick box. In the course of seventy years it had passed through the hands of several owners, each of whom had built on an addi- tional box according to his needs. To the north a rectangular wing of one story had been thrown out as a drawing-room; to the south a similar projection formed the library and study. A smaller square crowned the edifice as a cupola, while cubes of varying dimensions were half visible at the back. Against the warm, red brick a Wren portico in white- painted wood, together with the white facings of the windows, produced an effect of vivid spotless- ness, tempered by the variegated foliage of climbing vines. The limitations of the open lawn were marked by nothing but a line of shrubs. Having arrived at the door, it was a relief to Olivia, rather than the contrary, to learn that the ladies were not at home, but that Mr. Temple him- self would be glad to see her if she would come in. He had, in fact, espied her approach from his study window and had come out into the hall to insist on her staying. Within a minute or two she found herself sitting in one of his big, shabby arm-chairs saying things preliminary to confidence. It was a large room, with windows on three sides, through which the light poured in to find itself refracted by a hundred lustrous surfaces. The first impression received on entering what Rodney Temple called his work-room was that of color 170 ::>!«> 4 Riaze, or decoration. Of Zierican of h' " '^'P"' everything we call art T.r f beginning of .In a handicraft that took the dust of th. .u earl" , Lefs XoaTr'f "'''""™.\ °"""8 ^Is ■Sevres interested hfm u"""!' S^ ""«'" ^"J I-ouvre! ™ '"°" ''"'" '•« Zw."ger and the strtl'^ZtldtE""'^ ""'■^"''^^ -«' <«"^ from some lost t^r ^"f"P™" '^'"«. bringing oit which the '«„ of th';"" "°^ '"c ^"'''^ '■'' i" green of the oasis intensified the blue of ^^^^W.- I'-'i.i-. Mictocorr rcsowtion tist chart (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) ■ 50 Hi ■iUu 1 4.0 |Z5 1 2.2 2.0 1.8 ^ /1PPLIED IIVMGE 1653 East Main Street Rochester, Ne« york 14609 JSA (716) 482 - 0500 - Plione (716) 288 - 5989 - Fox I ii it l; *■ iU ■il THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT the desert sky; now a Persian bowl of hues that changed with a turn of the head or a quiver of the lids; now a Spanish plaque gleaming with metallic, opalescent colors, too indefinable to name, too fugitive for the eye to transmit to memory. Later he picked up strange examples which, like meteoric stones from another sphere, had found their myste- rious way from Chinese palaces to his grimy haunts in London, Amsterdam, or Florence, as the case might be — a blue-and-white jar of Chia-ching, or a Han ceremonial vessel in emerald green, incrusted from long burial, or a celadon bowl that resembled a cup of jade, or some gorgeously decorated bit of Famille Verte. He knew at first little or nothing of the nature and history of these precious "finds." He saw only that they were rare and lovely and that through beauty as a means of grace he entered into communion with men who had neither epoch nor ideals in common with himself. In the end he became an authority on ceramic art by the simple process of knowing more about it than anybody else. When the trustees of the Harvard Gallery of Fine Arts awoke to that fact, he was an assistant professor of Greek in the Uni- versity. Under his care, in the new position they offered him, a collection was formed of great celeb- rity and value; but nothing in it was ever quite so dear to him as the modest treasures he had ac- quired for himself in the days of his young en- thusiasm, when his fellow-countrymen as yet cared for none of these things. As Olivia sat and talked her eye traveled absently from barbaric Rouen cornu- 172 THE STREET CALLED STRAI-'HT copias and cockatoos to the incrusted snails and serpents of Bernard Palissy, resting long on a flowered jardiniere by Veuve Perrin, of Marseilles. She had little technical knowledge of the objects sur- rounding her, but she submitted to the strange and soothing charm they never failed to work on her— the charm of stillness, of peace, as of things which, made for common homely uses, had passed beyond that stage into an existence of serenity and love- liness. "When you spoke the other day," she said, after the conversation had turned directly on her father's affairs — "when you spoke the other day about a pillar of cloud, I suppose you meant what one might call — an overruling sense of right." "That might do as one definition." " Because in that case you may Hke to know that I think I've seen it." "I thought you would if you looked for it." "I didn't look for it. It was just — there!" "It's always there; only, as in the case of the two disciples on the Emmaus road, our eyes are holden so that we don't see it." "I should have seen it easily enough; but if you hadn't told me, I shouldn't have known what it was. I didn't s..ppose that we got that kind of guidance nowadays." "The light is always shining in darkness, dea~ie; only the darkness comprehendeth it not. That's all there is to it." He sat at his desk, overlooking the embankment and the curves of the Charles. It was a wide desk 173 I: i! I IN tfe I- THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT littered with papers, but with space, too, for some of the favorite small possessions that served him as paper-weights — a Chinese dragon in blue-green enamel, a quaintly decorated cow in polychrome Delft, a dancing satyr in biscuit de Sevres. On the side remote from where he sat was a Hfe-size bust of Christ in fifteenth-century Italian terra-cotta — the face noble, dignified, strongly sympathetic — once painted, but now worn to its natural tint, except where gleams of scarlet or azure showed in the folds of the vesture. While the old man talked, and chiefly while he listened, the fingers of his large, delicately articulated hand stroked mechanically the surfaces of a grotesque Chinese figure carved in apple-green jade. It was some minutes before Olivia made any response to his last words. "Things are very dark to me," she confessed, "and yet this light seems to me absolutely positive. I've had to make a decision that would be too fright- ful if something didn't seem to be leading me into the Street called Straight, as papa says. Did you know Mr. Davenant had offered to pay our debts?" He shook his head. "Of course I couldn't let him do it." "Couldn't you?" "Do you think I could?" "Not if you think difl^erently. You're the only judge." " But if I don't, you know, papa will have to go — " She hesitated. "You know what would happen, don't you?" "I suppose I do." 174 TH E STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "And I could prevent it, you see, if I let papa take this money. I have to assume the responsibility of Its refusal It puts me in a position that I'm begmnmg to feel— well, rather terrible." "Does it?" "You don»t seem very much interested. Cousin Rodney. I hoped you'd give me some advice " Uh, I never give advice. Besides, if you've got mto the Street called Straight, I don't see why you need advice from any one " wdi! buV"^' ^''''' ''"'^ ^^'^'^^' '' ^" ^^^y 'Then you're not so sure, after all." I m sure in a way. If it weren't for papa I shouldn t have any doubt whatever. But it seems rri ^7^^"' '" ^"^^ ^'"^ '"^° -hat I don't think he d do of h,s own accord." She went on to ex- plain Davenant's ofFer in detail. "So you see," she concluded, "that papa's state of mind is pe uliar! ^ot \T."V'f ""' '^^' '^' ^'Sher thing would be not to take the money; and yet if I gave him the slightest encouragement he would." ''And you're not going to?" "How could I, Cousin Rodney? How could I "He could probably afford it " "Is he so very rich?" There was a hint of curiosity m the tone. Rodney Temple shrugged his shoulders. "Oh but Zn^t ^' ^?!;'^. P'"^">^ -^^' ^^-^» him out but, then, that would do him good." 175 \U\ i >5^,; I; 1 it: i i ; r THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "Do him good — how?" "He's spoiling for work, that fellow is. Since he's had all that money he's been of no use to himself or to anybody else. He's like good capital tied up in a stocking instead of being profitably invested." "And yet we ould hardly put ourselves in a humihating situation just to furnish Mr. Davenant with an incentive for occupation, could we. Cousin Rodney.^" "I dare say not." "And he isn't offering us the money merely for the sake of getting rid of it, do you think.?" "Then what is he offering it to you for.?" "That's exactly what I want to know. Haven't you any idea.?" "Haven't you?" She waited a minute before deciding to speak openly. "I suppose you never heard that he once asked me to marry him?" He betrayed his surprise by the way in which he put down the little Chinese figure and wheeled round more directly toward her "Who? Peter?" She nodded. "What the dickens made him do that?" She opened her eyes innocently. "I'm sure I can't imagine." "It isn't a bit like him. You must have led him on." "I didn't," she declared, indignantly. '"I never took any notice of him at iill. Nothing could have astonished me more than his— his presumption." 176 hil'e"rtr^" *'' ^°" "^ •" W'^^TDidT^T^ nJ 7f T"^ r"u''''.l"'' '''"'' P'^'y tl"^ 'rouble now I feel as if he'd been nursing a grudge against me all these years-and was paying it " ^ In that case he's got you on the hip, hasn't he = It _s a lovely turning of the tables. " ''"'"'"'■ You see that, Cousin Rodney, don't you' f couJJn < let a man like'that get the upper hand rfme '' Of course you couldn't, dearie. I'd sit on him the deuce" '"'' *^'°""''=' C'-r 8° to She looked at him wonderingly. "Let— wh,v_ go to the deuce.'" ' viho— "I said Delia Rodman and Clorinda Clav T m,ght have mcluded Fanny Burnaby and thel^wn bn doing a lot of""' "'""''''■ J ^"PP^^ 3-°"'™ Deen domg a lot of worrymg on their account." though! of S'^t ar- """"""''■ "' '---•' on;i!:':h'atr"'";UeI thC^PuTt?" '^^" ''"- your father's hands-or^hTnCh Teo^prTu"" mlf' V^Tr'^u'' ""''' '^"^ chances'^ S th m n" ''""^ ">"•. ^°"'t' n»t responsible fo of war If l"?°V'i'"K ''fl ="■' f°^ 'he fortune own lookout Oh I h ^u "1' """ '''="■» 'heir mind for a minute'" "'''"' ''"^ "'^"' °" "->- strt'g^" "" """^'i '° -^P-t him of ruse or .77 THE STREET CALLED S TRAIGJl T^ "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 passed 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 sup- pose 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 piaqus 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— any- thing 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 178 s THE STREET CJJ^ rFn_^7-o^jcnT from Peking That's not real jade you've got at lory Hill. It's jadeite." got at " Is it ?" She took the httle mandarin in her hand but without exammmg him. "I've no doubt you've I rnear^'' ^ worried about them-papa's dients^ 1 7^uf~^ little-or, rather, not at all. That is 1 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 S "n^%' ?"^f°«3ble feeling about me." Uh, i have That '11 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 caH them- 1 don t say I should myself-but there are legions o mighty influences appointed to wait on just such brave steps as you're about to take." ^ ^^ Ihat IS, if I take them!" "Oh, you'll take 'em all right, dearie Y,^..'II ought to be. In a certain sense they'll take you as that bit of jade '—he took the carving from h/ r„f al'hf^h""'' ''''' ■■'"•'-"- -felyastha of T- itt "is^: -':^t:;^s. "t. vlr tj ">.-LsXe. !;•: pt:j" h--hTe t:sr:i U9 w THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT 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 'II 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 min 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 passed 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 1 80 A THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT it would have been a comfort to have the moun- tains fall on her and the rocks cover her from the gaze of men. She upbraided herself for her bhnd- ness to the most obviously important aspect of the situation. Now that she saw it, her zeal to "pay " by doing penance in public, became tragir and farcical at once The absurdity of making satis- faction to Mrs Rodman and Mrs. Clay, to Fanny 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 ner humiliation. She walked swiftly, seeing nothing of the cheerful stir around her, lashed along by the fear that Peter Davenant might have left 'lory Hill. She was too intent on her purpose to perceive any change in her mental attitude toward him. She was aware of saying to herself that everything concerning him niust be postponed; but beyond that she scarcely thought of hinri 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. Cooing up the stairs toward her father's room, the sound of voices reassured her. Davenant was there still. 1 hat was so much relief. She was able to collect herself, to put on something like her habitual anVenTe'd '"''' '''°" ^'^ ^"^'^' ^^^ '^^ ^°- Guion was lying on the couch with the rug thrown over him. Davenant stood b;- the fireplace, en- ^1 I i If f- daiiKerinK with his elbow a dainrv Clu-lsca .slu.pkTTl- ess on the mantelpiece. He was smoking one f Cnuon s c.gars, which he threw into an ash-tray Uhvia came m. ^ Conversation stoppe ! abruptly on her appearance She herself walked straight to the round tible in t u' muidle of the room, and fc:r a second or two, wh eemed much longer in space of time, stood silen the tips of her fingers ust touching a packet of pamr strapped w.th rubber bands, which The gues eS th^ Davenant must have brought. Through her down cas lashes she could see, thrown carekssly „n .he 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 m her breath-"! only want to say, papa that ,f . . Mr. Davenant will . . . lend you the 'noney . . . I shall be ... I shall be. . . very glad '' Guion said nothmg. His eyes, regarding her aslant, had m them the curious receding light she had noticed once before. With a convulsive clutch! mg of the fingers he pulled the rug up about his when ?'"'"'"'• ^r^ ^^ ^' ^^^ »>-" 'tanding Piece Wh^r i"' .' \T ''T^ ^" '^^ --'^tel' p ece. When she looked at him with one hastv glance, she noticed that he reddened hotly ' 1 ve changed my .nind," she went on, impelled by the sience of the other two to say ^ome'thmg more I ve changed my mind. It's because of papa s chents-the Miss Rodmans and the others- that Ive done it. I couldn't help it. I never thought of them till this afternoon. I don't know 182 ft f THE STREET CALL ED_HTRyljcn T 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 evtrythinR 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 yc j've got your hand on-and the checks make up the sum total. By an instinctive movement she snatched her hngers away; but, recovering herself, she tw>k the package dehberately into her hands and stood holding It. "I've been explaining to Davenant," Guion said, in a muffled voice, "that things aren't quite so hope- less as they seem. If we ever come into Aunt Vic's money — ]|But there's no certainty of that, papa." ISo certainty, but a good deal of probability bhes always given us to understand that the money wouldn t go out of her own family; and there's 183 ' I I .1 i. 51 i THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT f It should come to us, there'd be more than enough to-to square everything. You'd do it, dear wouldn't you ,f Aunt V,c were to leave the whole thmg to you? I think she's as likely to do that t . "Mr. Davenant must know already that I shall &.ve my whole life to trying to pay our debt If there's anythmg I could sign at once-" Davenant moved from the fireside. "There's nothmg to sign Miss Guion," he said, briefly. "The matter^is ended as far as I'm concerned. Mr. Guion pressing embarrassments. That's all I care about Jiir tT "T "^^ "^ ^'^^"'^ -- speak oTlt agajn. If you 11 excuse me now— " strfvh'Tl'^ 'T'"^ '^" '°""^ ""''^ ^^' hand out- stretched but dunng the minute or two in which drawn the rug oyer his face. Beneath it there was a convulsive shaking, from which the younger man turned away. \^ith a nod of comprehension to Olivia he tiptoed softly from the room. As he dd o he could see her kneel beside the couch and kiss the hand that lay outside the coverlet She overtook him, however, when he was down- sta^r^s picking up his hat and stick from th'Tall on^XlT'''^ T- '"^^Ir"'' ""P «f '^^ stairs, leaning on the low white pillar that finished the balustrade He was obliged to pass her on his way to the door' Ihe minute was the more awkward for'^him owing to i8<|. •'5 I lM.^TMEET_CJLL£D_^rRjIGHT tt lt"oW^V\^'"^ "°' "''' ""^ '"'"•"'« in carry, ng ir off. On the contrary, she made it harder bv towa^Vt;1'lm'i;!:;i?;'''';.'i?-''^"n'e.tan<«ng Xj^:I^Sii[4-="ant^"r ^^i^^ r;;LS ?it?tt '"'^f f-— right wav bv J.1^' ^^T '^^^ °"^ o"^>^ finds the Jht way by makmg two or three plunges into wrong "Do you think I've found it now?" not aXtTe VuThf "k" ^"'^"' '" '^' ^"^^^^on, and fervor "I'm ' '^^l '"^""^^ ^'ni to say with ier\or, 1 m very sure of it " ^ 185' 1. i ^ •>', i I i 111 ■i! THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT you! It.' 'And you?" she asked. "Is it the right way for 'Yes; and it's the first time I've ever struck She shook her head slowly. " I don't know. I'm a little bewildered.^ This morning everything seemed so clear, and now — I understand," she went on, "that we shall be taking all you have." "Who told you that?" he asked, sharply. "It doesn't matter who told me; but it's very important if we are. Are we?" He threw his head back in a way that, notwith- standing her preoccupation, she could not but admire. "No; because I've still got my credit. When a man has that — " "But you'll have to begin all over again, sha'n't you?" "Only as a man who has won one battle begins all over again when he fights another. It's nothing but fun when you're fond of war." "Didn't I do something very rude to you — once — a long time ago?" The question took him so entirely unawares that, in the slight, involuntary movement he made, he seemed to himself to stagger backward. He was aware of looking blank, while unable to control his features to a non-committal expression. He had the feeling that minutes had gone by before he was able to say: "It was really of no consequence — " "Don't say that. It was of great consequence. Any one can see that — now. I was insolent. I 1 86 m THE STREET CALLED ^TRj jnrrr knew I had been. You must have been perfectly aware of it all these years; and-I will say it'-I M say itl-you're taking your revenge - very He was about to utter something in protest, but she turned away abruptly and sp«d up the stairs. Un the first landing she paused for the briefest in- stant and looked down. "Good-by," she faltered. "I must go back to papa. He'll need me. I can't talk any more just now. I m too bewildered-about everything. Col- onel Ashley will arrive in a day or t^o, and after I ve seen him I shall be a little clearer as to what I think; and-and then— I shall see you again " He continued to stand gazing up the stai'rway long after he had heard her close the door of Guion's room behind her. t XI :^-!i I '■ JT was not difficult for Davenant to ascribe his lightness of heart, on leaving Tory Hill, to satisfaction in getting rid of his superfluous money, since he had some reason to fear that the pos- I session of it was no great bles^-ing. To a man with little instinct for luxury and no spending tastes, twenty or thirty thousand dollars • a year was an income far outstripping his needs. It was not, however, in excess of his desires, for he would gladly have set up an establishment and cut a dash if he had known how. He admired the grand style in living, not so much as a matter of display, because presumably it stood for all sorts of mys- terious retinements for which he possessed the yearning without the initiation. The highest flight he could take by his own unaided efl^orts was in en- gaging the best suite of rooms in the best hotel, when he was quite content with his dingy old lodg- ings; in driving in taxi )., when the tram-car would have suited him ju». as well, and ordering champagne, when he would have preferred some commoner beverage. Fully aware of the insuf- ficiency of this method of reaching a higher standard, he practised it only because it offered the readiest i88 li a\\ THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT means he could find of straining upward. He was to iLh f.^''*^ X""'^' ^^° ^"^^ ^^^ ^«« of elegance to lead the way h.s scent for following would be keen enough; but between him and the acquisition of this treasure there lay the memory of the haZtv young creature who had, in the met^a^>hor with wS he was most famil.ar, "turned him down " But It was not the fact that he had more monev than he needed of which he was afraid; iTwasTathe^ the perception that the possibihty of induTg ng ht Tf d;;^v"in do"''^ "^'' ^' ^°"^^'^^^ '- '-- tnd ot duty n domg it — was sapping his vigor AM through the second year of his holidfy he had noticed in himself the tendency of the big, strong-fibered animal to be indolent and overfed. On the princinle laid do.n by Emerson that every man s af azy t he dares to be he got into the way of sleepingTate of lounging m the pubHc places of hotels, andlmok: ing too many cigars. Wvh a littie encouragement he could have contracte i the incessant cocktai Xat°ri:?;^"'-^°'^ '-'''' '' -- ^' '^^ -^ ion, Why should I try to make more money when 1 ve got enough already.?" to which th^ onZ i was in that va^ue hone of "L" r , "'^ *"^P'>' SDired Kv k; • • ^, ^ ^°'"S a httie good," in- spired by his visit to the scene of his parents' work 189 i! 1 » fr TH^E S TREET C ALLED_STRAIGIIT^ ai Hankow. In this direction, however, his apti- tudes were no more spontaneous than they were for the hfe of cultivated taste. Henry Guion's need struck him, therefore, as an opportunity. If he took other views of it besides, if it made to him an appeal totally different from the altruistic, he was able to conceal the fact— from himself, at any rate- in the depths of a soul where much that was vital to the man was always held in subliminal darkness. It disturbed him, then, to have Drusilla Fane rifle this sanctuary with irreverent persistency, dragging to light what he had kept scrupulously hidden away. Haying found her alone in the drawing-room drinking her tea, he told her at once what he had accomplished in the way of averting the worst phase of the danger hanging over the master of Tory Hill. He told her, too, with some amount of elation, which he explained as his glee in getting himself down to "hard-pan." Drusilla allowed the ex- planation to pass till she had thanked him ecstatically for what he had done. "Really, Peter, men are fine! The minute I heard Cousin Henry's wretched story I knew the worst couldn't come to the worst, with you here. I only wish you could realize what it means to have a big, strong man like yoi to lean on." Davenant looked pleased; he was in the mood to be pleased with anything. He had had so little of women's appreciation in his life that Drusilla's enthusiasm was not only agreeable but new. He noticed, too, that in speaking Drusilla herself was at her best. She had never been pretty. Her 190 « -Jl mouth was too large her cheek-bones too high, and her skm too sallow for that; but she had the charm of frankness and intelligence. Davenant said what was necessary in depreciation of h.s act. gomg on to explain the benefit he wodd reap by be.ng obhged to go to work again. He en- larged on h.s plans for taking his old rooms and h"s old office and informed her that he knew a fellow an old pal, who had already let him into a good tS m the way of a copper-mine in the region of L kf Supenor. Drusilla listened with interest till she found an opportunity to say: "I'm so glad that is your reason for helping Cousin -r;^her'""^ '"'"" ' ^'' ""''''' ^^-' -gh" b^ He stopped abruptly, looking dashed Unac fe^Tt took t^'^ T^'°'^ of'attack and del ^nse, It took him a few seconds to see Drusilla's "You thought I might be-in love?" bhe nodded. J2^^^^' ^"eer," he went on, "because I'd got the same impression about you " It was Drusilla's turn to be aghast. She was a little surprised at not being offended, too. What made you think that?" she managed rn ask, after getting command of herself. ^ '° heconceder-rd'"' '^'T^ ""^^^'"S' however," u^J^,' ^ 'lare say I'm wrong." Ihats a very good conclusion to come tn T advise you to keep to it." * ^ "I will if you'll do the same about me " 191 I' .1, % i u? if II r^£ STREET CALLED STRAIGHT She seized the opening to carry the attack back in his direction. "I can't make a bargain of that kind, Peter. The scientific mind bases its conclusions on — observed phenomena." "Which I guess is the reason why the scientific mind is so often wrong. I've had a good deal to do with it in the copper-mine business. It's always barking up the wrong tree. I've often heard it said that the clever scientist is generally a poor reasoner." "Well, perhaps he is. But I wasn't reasoning. I was merely going by instinct when I thought you might have a special motive for helping Cousin Henry. If you had, you know, it wouldn't be any harm." "It mightn't be any harm; but would it be any good .'"' "Well, that might depend a good deal— on you." "On me.? How so? I don't know what you're driving at." "I'm^ not driving at anything. I'm only speculat- mg. I'm wondering what I should do if I were in your place— with all your advantages." "Rot, Drusilla!" "If I were a man and had a rival," Drusilla per- sisted, "I should be awfully honorable in the stand I d take toward him— just like you. But if anything miscarried — " "You don't expect anything to miscarry?" She shook her head. "No; I don't expect it. But It might be a fortunate thing if it did." 192 !# * h i "You don't mean to infer that this man Ashlev mightn't come up to the scratch ?" ^ "Colonel Ashley has come up to a good manr scratches m h.s t.me. He's not likely toTil in ^ one .3''"'.''"'"' "''^' '"""' 's 'liere to it»" I here s a good deal more. There are thine, "And you mean that your Colonel Ashley would be hrave enough to walk up and have ^.^iTead ct^ was\K?;. B"ut!;i^th^rsj„z^r^[rt£: a pity It should have to fall." ^ ^^ ;;But I don't understand why it should." the Raneers it m.rrl,^ i ^"^' ^^^^^ '" ference^xceotTif; ^o^^P^ratively little dif- uncomf^^abir' On IV'^u^''" ^^'^'^ ^°"'^ ^^^I the Horse Guard^r^ "^ ^" ^'^ mentioned at they'd remember ,ht rT" "^^"'"''"^ ^^"^"^^"^ -so^methinrshlV^^U r^i his name would be passed over.'' ^' ^"'^ 13 193 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT He nodded thoughtfully. "I sec." "Oh no, you don't. It's much too intricate for ' you to see. You couldn't begin to understand how poignant it might become, especially for her, without knowing their ways and traditions -" He jumped to his feet. "Their ways and tradi- tions be — !" "Yes; that's all very fine. But they're very good ways, Peter. They've got to keep the honor of the Service up to a very high standard. Their ways are all right. But that doesn't keep them from being terrible forces to come up against, especially for a proud thing like her. And now that the postponing of the wedding has got into the pa- pers — " "Yes; I've seen *em. Got it pretty straight, too, all things considered." "And that sort of thing simply flies. It will be in the New York papers to-morrow, and in the London ones the day after. We always get those things cabled over there. We know about the elope- ments and the queer things that happen in America when we don't hear of anything else. Within forty- eight hours they'll be talking of it at the Rangers' depot in Sussex— and at Heneage— and all through his county— and at the Horse Guards. You see if they aren't! You've no idea how people have their eye on him. And when they hear the wedding has been put off for a scandal they'll have at their heels all the men who've hated him— and all the women who've envied her — " He leaned his shoulders against the mantelpiece, 194 THE STREET CALLED ^TRAJCJIT "Pooh! That sort of 4 his hands behind his back. doR can only bark." "No; that's where you're wron^, Peter. In Enir- land It can bite. It can raise a to-do around their name that will put a dead stop to his promotion- that is, the best kind of promotion, such as he's on the way to. "The deuce take his promotion! Let's think of — her. "That's just what I thought you'd do, Peter; and with all your advantages—" "Drop tliat, Drusiila," he commanded. "You know you don't mean it. You know as well as I k k''t^ T'" \.^ chance-even if I wanted one- which I don t You're not thinking of me-or of her. You re thinking of him-and how to get him out of a match that won't tend to his advancement." 1 m thinking of every one. Peter-of every one but myself that is. I'm thinking of him, and her, and you— ' ^JJhen you'll do me a favor \{ you leave me slim :nd';^"fsh" '" '^"' '^-^ ''"'^ «^- '-^'"^ "I can't leav. you out, Peter, when you're the Hamlet of the piece. That's nonsense. I'm not plotting or planning on any one's behalf. It isn't rny temperament. I only say that if this-this atfair-didn t come ofF-though I suppose it will- I feel sure it will-yet ^i it didn't-then, with all >our advantages-and after what you've done for SI I' >J I f ! 1 1 ( 5 I-. H, " { - ■ ■ THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT He strode forward, almost upsetting the tea-table beside which she stood. "Look here, Drusilla. You may as well understand me once for all. I wouldn't marry a girl who took me because of what I'd done for her, not if she was the last woman in the world." " But you would if she was the first, Peter. And I'm convinced that for you she is the first — " "Now, now!" he warned her, "that '11 do! I've been generous enough not to say anything as to who's first with you, though you don't take much pains to hide it. Why not — ?" "You're all first with me," she protested. "I don't know which of you I'm the most sorry for." "Don't waste your pity on me. I'm perfectly happy. There's only one of the lot who needs any consideration whatever. And, by God! if he's not true to her, I'll — " "Your intervention won't be called for, Peter," she assured him, making her way toward the door. "You're greatly mistaken if you think I've asked for it." "Then for Heaven's sake what have you asked for? / don't see." She was in the hall, but she turned and spoke through the doorway. "I've only asked you not to be an idiot. I merely beg, for all our sakes, that if something precious is flung down at your feet you'll have the common sense to stoop and pick it up. "I'll consider that," he called after her, as she sped up the stairs, "when I see it lying there." 196 ; ;ii i.ii XII ••I may be admitted at once that, on arriving at Tory Hill and hearing from Olivia's lips the tale of her father's downfall, Colonel Rupert Ashley re- ceived the first perceptible check in a !very distinguished career. Up to this point the sobriquet of "Lucky Asm. ,' by which he was often spoken of in the Rai.gers, had been justified by more than one spectacular success. He had fulfilled so many special missions to un- civilized and half-civilized and queerly civilized tribes that he had come to feel as if he habitually went on his way with the might of the British Em- pire to back him. It was he who in South Africa brought the M'popos to order without shedding a drop of blood; it was he who in the eastern Soudan induced the followers of the Black Prophet to throw in their lot with the English, securing by this move the safety of Upper Egypt; it was he who in the Malay 1 eninsula intimidated the Sultan of Surak into accepting the British protectorate, thus re- moving a menace to the peace of the Straits Settle- ments. Even if he had had no other exploits to his credit, these alone would have assured his favor with the home authorities. It had become some- 197 W ; THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT thing like a habit, at the Colonial Office or the War Office or the Foreign Office, as the case might be, whenever there was trouble on one of the Empire's vague outer frontiers, to ask, "Where's Ashley?" Wherever he wr.s, at Gibraltar or Simla or Cairo or at the Rangrrs' depot in Sussex, he was sent for and consulted. Once having gained a reputation for skill in handling barbaric potentates, he knew how to make the most of it, both abroad and in Whitehall. On rejoining his regiment, too, after some of his triumphant expeditions, he was cartful to bear himself with a modesty lat took the point from detraction, assuring, as it did, his brother- officers that they would have done as well as he, had they enjoyed the same chances. He was not without a policy in this, since from the day of receiving his commission he had combined a genuine love of his profession with a quite laudable mtention to "get on." He cherished this ambition more naturally, perhaps, than most of his com- r-des, who took the profession of arms lightly, for the reason that the instinv c for it might be said to be in his blood. The Ashleys were not an old coun- ty family. Indeed, it was only a generation or so since they had achieved county rank. It was a fact not generally remembered at the present day that the grandfather of the colonel of the Sussex Rangers had been a successful and estimable manu- facturer of brushes. In the early days of Queen Victoria he^ owned a much -frequented emporium in Regent Street, at which you could get anything in the line from a tooth-brush to a currycomb. ig8 :ll' THE STREET CALL E D STRAIGHT Retiring from business in the fifties, with a consider- able fortune for the time, this Mr. Ashley had pup. chased Heneage from the impoverished representa- tjves of the Umfravilles. As luck would have it the new owners found a not unattractive Miss Umfraville almost gomg with the place, since she hved m select but mexpenrive lodgings in the village Her manner, bemg as gentle as her blood, and her face even gentler than either, if such a thing could rL A T^" '"^^P'"^ ^/^h the spirit that had borne Y Ir f M^ '° '°°^ "P°" ^^' ^' ^n opportunity Young Mr. Ashley, to whom his father had been able to give the advantages of Oxford, knew at a glance that with th.s lady at his side recognition by ?he county would be assured. Being indifferent to recognition by the county except in so far as it expressed a phase of advancement, and superior to calculation as a motive for the matrimonial state yo^r Ashley proceeded with all due formali y to to tli?. 'rV' r f'""'" '^' P^^^i°" incidental to this episode that Lucky Ashley was born. All this had happened so long ago, according to modern methods of reckoning, that^the county Ld already forgotten what it was the original Ashley had manufacture , or that he had nanufa'ctured anything tl at H.n^ ''^^^^^"g^'- generation it was assumed t a Heneage had passed to the Ashley familv hrough intermarriage with the Umfravilles Cer- ta.n jt was that the Ashleys maintained the Um- Wl v'.^'''"" ""^ "^'^^ ^he Umfraville arms What chiefly survived of the spirit that had mTde the manufacture of brushes so lucrative a trade was 199 •I I THE STRE ET C ALLED STRAIGH T the intention young Rupert Ashley took with him into the army — to get on. He had got on. Every one spoke of him nowadays as a commg man. It was conceded that when gen- erals like Lord Englemere or Lord Bannockburn passed away, it would be to such men as Rupert Ashley— the number of them could be counted on tne fingers of your two hands!— that the country would look for its defenders. They were young men, comparatively, as yet; but they were waiting qnd in training. It was a national asset to know that they were there. It was natural, then, that Ashley's eyes should be turning in the direction of the great appointments. He had won so much distinction in the Jakh War and the Dargal War that there was nothing to which with time, he could not aspire. True, he had rivals; true, there were men who could supplant him with- out putting any great strain upon their powers; true, there were others with more family influence especially of that petticoat influence which had been known to carry so much weight in high and au- thoritative quarters; but he had confidence in him- self, in his ability, his star— the last named of which had the merit of always seeming to move forward Everything began to point, therefore, to his marrying. In a measure it was prrt of his qualifica- tion for high command. He had reached that stage m his development, both private and professional, at which the co-operation of a good and graceful wife would double his capacity for public service, besides giving him that domestic consolation of 300 'Mf^'tmii^M&B THE STREET ^C JU^Rn_^DjjcHT which he began to feel the need. There were posts he could thmk of-posts that would naturally be vacant before many years were past-in which the fact of h.s being unmarried would be a serious draw- back if his name were to come up. Better to be unmarried than to be saddled with a wife who from any dehciency of birth or manner was below the level of her station! Of course! He had seen more than one man, splendidly quahfied otherwise, passed over because of that mischance. But with a wife who go tar. Who could venture to say how far? In this respect he was fortunate in knowing exactly what he wanted. That is, he had seen enough of the duties of high position to be critica" of the ladies who performed them. Experience en abled him to create his ideal by a process'of elimi^a- tion. Many a time, as he watched some great general s wife-Lady Englemere, let us say'r Lady B nnockburn-receive her guests, he said to him- ^h J, ij '' ?^"'^ ^^^"^ "^y ^'fe shall not be " She should not be a military intrigante liVe the one like \'\^! "^"'"^^ 'l\^^ -'-' --- - gaX; like a third, nor a snob like a fourth, nor a fool By"d nfoT'f "'; ^'^^ r-'^' ^^ -"'^ think of t5y dmt of fastidious observation and careful re jection of the qualities of which he disapproved t vision rose before him of the woman who would be the complement of himself. He saw her clever wTtht'ertt'^ V ^'°"^^" ^^ ^^^ worltfatX; language besides her mother-tongue. In dress she 20I ■'^ '\-m.t '-Kir I «f ! i| W i^ : ■) .' -V i ■-: ml THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT should be exquisite, in conversation tactful, in man- ner sympathetic. As mistress of the house she should be thorough; as a hostess, full of charm; as a mother — but his imagination hardly went into that. That she should be a perfect mother he took for granted, just as he took it for granted that she should be beautiful. A woman who had the quali- fications he desired could not be less than beautiful from the sheer operation of the soul. Considering how definite his ideas were— and moderate, on the whole— it surprised him to find no one to embody them. It sometimes seemed to him that the traditional race of Englishwomen had become extinct. Those he met were either brilliant and hard, or handsome and horsey, or athletic and weedy, or smart and selfish, or pretty and silly, or sweet and provincial, or good and grotesque. With the best will in the world to fall in love, he found little or no temptation. Indeed, he had begun to think that the type of woman on whom he had set his heart was, like some article of an antiquated fashion, no longer produced when unexpectedly he saw her. He saw her unexpectedly, because it was at church; and whatever his motives on that bright Sunday morning in May in attending the old garrison chapel in Southsea, the hope of seeing his virion realized was not one. If, apart from the reasons for which people are supposed to go to church, he had any special thought, it was that of meeting Mrs. Fane. It had happened two or thr.a times already that, having perceived her at the service, he had joined 202 -jg her on the Common afterward, and she had asked h,m home to lunch. They had been pleasant little luncheons-so pleasant that he almost regretted the fact that she was an American. He had noth „s agamst Amencans .n themselves. He knew a num? n„"f T rr" ^^'' '■="' """"'^ i"« one arm or another of the Service with conspicuous advanTaae to the,r husbands. That, in fact, was part of "he Z h'-| Au' ^^"^ ? "■='">' of them nowadays that he had begun to feel vaguely that where there ^stlyThaHn" hf '*'' T"'""-^"'' "^^ "^"P"^ ™"- stly that m his case there was distinctly question "'wvTTK'V' '™^ ''■e principle was be"nTes tabhshed of England for the English NeTeftht less, he had got so far in his consideration of Drus.'h. tane as to ask himself whether she was not, as he widow of a Bntish officer, an Enghshwoma^ to all of hTlaw' ?f7°"?/^ "'" '^ '" '•'^ "rict fette? • It t '^".could not say that he was in love with her; but neither could he say that one of the™ ■ceTairlvr''' T '" ", ""' -" were it would than'thaT " '''°"" ''^ "'^^ °" "° "'"-t i™"nd Such criticism as he had to make to her dls.,d van a he could form there and then I the chapel t^^^'^r' ""^'"^ 't' '^^^°"^ <" Chan i^g tTe on-'th:- othe: :-dV:? ^he'tl'-^TheV™" "'''"'' 203 »: - v^ilm »1. i1 1"' ii ••5 r//Jg STREET CALLED STRAIGHT see who was behind her or at the other end of the pew; she rarely found the places in the prayer-book or knew just when to kneel down; when she did kneel down she sank into an awkward Httle bunch; every now and then she stifled, or did not stifle, a yawn. Ashley had a theory that manner in church is the supreme test of the proprieties. He knew plenty of women who could charm at a dinner or dazzle at a dance, but who displayed their weaknesses at prayer. All unwitting to herself, poor Drusilla was inviting his final— or almost final— judgment on her future, so far at least as he was concerned, for the simple reason that she twitched and sighed and forgot to say the Amens. And just then his eyes traveled to her neighbor —a tall young lady, dressed in white, with no color in her costume but a sash of hues trembling between sea-green and lilac. She was slender and graceful, with that air at once exquisite and unassuming that he had seen in the Englishwoman of his dreams. Though he could get no more than a side glimpse of her face, he divined that it was pure and that it must be thrown into relief by the heavy coil of cop- pcr\'-brown hair. But what he noticed in her first was that which he thought of concerning other women last— a something holy and withdrawn, a quality of devotion without which he had no conception of real womanhood. It seemed to be a matter of high courtesy with her not to perceive that the choir- boys sang out of tune or that the sermon was prosy. In the matter of kneeling he had seen only one woman 204 ..m* ^^^^^ml^^M^^W^: ■rfpfi ■^k V I I in his life-and she the highest in d^H^i^d^i^irdid It with this marvelous grace at once dignified and humb e. "It takes old England," he said to hm^ -^i7'^' ^° "^'^ '^" ^'^^ that-.imp,e and But on the Common after service, and at lun-heon after that, and during the three or four weeks that ensued, he had much to do in reforming his opinions There were several facts about Olivia Guion that chs- o lentated his points of view and set him looking for new ones Though he was not wholly successful in hnd,np them he managed, nevertheless, toTusi; himself for falling m love in violation of his prin^ ciples. He admitted that he would have preferred to marry a compatriot of his own, and some one above the rank of a solicitor's daughter; but, sTnce he had discovered the loveliest and noble t crea "re in 'he world. It was idle to cavil because one hnd Z one situation in life rather than another had produced deck the English crown because some were found in Tibetan mountains and others in Indian seas. The " are treasures, he argued, so precious as to transcend dTr^fcrx """"r ^' "^^''"^ ^^^ " m O ivi r J u T '^'"S '° "^^ P°'"^ was that in Ulivia Gu.on he had won the human counterpart ;[e[nhe.!;."'° -"^'^ -fl-^ his qualities and'cl" He had been so proud that the blow on receiving Ohvia s letter in New York was a cruel one TC?1 - told him nothing but that her fatter hadTosta,! 205 rl - t i" » 3t I I I I ^ia -'A •■¥ ■I I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT his money and that the invitations to the wedding had been withdrawn, this in itself was immeasurably distressing to a man with a taste for calling pubHc attention to his movements and who liked to see what concerned him march with a certain pomp. His marriage being an event worthy to take place in sight of the world, he had not only found ways of making it a topic of interest before leaving England, but he had summoned to it such friends of distinc- tion as he possessed on the American side of the water. Though he had not succeeded in getting the British Ambassador, Benyon, the military attache at Washington, was to come with his wife, and Lord Woolwich, who was aide-de-camp at Ottawa, had promised to act as best man. His humiliation on speculating as to what they must have said when they received Olivia's card announcing that the marriage was not to take place on the 28th was such that he fell to wondering whether it wouldn't have been better to bluff the loss of money. They might have carried out their plans in spite of it. Indeed he felt the feasibility of this course the more strongly after he had actually seen Olivia and she had given him the outlines of her tale. Watching his countenance closely, she saw that he blanched. Otherwise he betrayed no sign of flinching. His manner of sitting rigid and upright in his corner of the rustic seat was a perfectly nat- ural way of listening to a story that affected him so closely. What distressed her chiefly was the incongruity between his personality and the sordid drama in which she was inviting him to take part. 206 He was even more distinguished-looting ,!,,„ u appeared in .l,e photographs it 3hed or in' the v,s,on she had retained in her memory Wi.h Xi^-f^^t-spira'n/:d-15 Tt iiici- «-u« • L • ^ "•'^ ' ''^ ^^^^ on nis shoulders UTa "^t' -P^'^" ^°^ command. The S budged nose, mhented from the Umfravilles wa^ o^ the kmd commonly considered to show 'W^' Ihe eyes had the sharpness and ^k« I- i- . mouth the inflexibility f hi? l ^ thm-hpped quick decisions VVht he wfs Z ' ""'"^^ '°^ mufti as in his uniform the trir . '"^ '1"^''""^ '" -..hathispreser;a,t^-.L^-^^^^^^^^ meet him when she sawlnm tZ. ht'tataTaTth" en ounter miX'°tat° "? '" °"" "'" ""- «"' the windowTof thl „ ■ t^- °r°"«"-»- With people sittr„g on verandS""^ ^™^" °P™ =•"<< the road, they couU 1 h P'"'"* "P ="'' ''o™ conventi;nal greetinl st"'' '"'."""' '''='" ^"""^ on the ground of ,h!- «'°"'d assume nothing other. He se °ed ,n "'"■ """^'"S '"ward each formaht/^fZCrand's '""^ "'"''''^' '" ""^ Happdy for both, commonplace words were given THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT ci- thern — questions and answers as to his voyage, his landing, his hotel. He came to her relief, too, as w they sauntered toward the house, by commenting on its dignity and Georgian air, as well as by turning once or twice to look at the view. Nearing the steps she swerved from the graveled driveway and began ' to cross the lawn. "We won't go in just yet," she explained. " Papa . is there. He felt he ought to dress and come down- stairs to receive you. ile's very far from well. I hope you'll do your best not to — to think of him too harshly." "I shouldn't think harshly of any one simply be- cause he'd had business .bad luck." "He has had business bad luck — but that isn't all. We'll sit here." Taking one corner of a long garden-seat that stood in the shade of an elm, she signed to him to take the other. On the left they had the Corinthian-col- umned portico of the garden front of the house; in the distance, the multicolored slopes of the town. Olivia, at least, felt the stimulating effect of the golden forenoon sunshine. As for Ashley, in spite of his outward self-posses- sion, he was too bewildered to feel anything at all. Having rushed on from New York by night, he was now getting his first daylight glimpse of America; and, though, owing to more urgent subjects for thought, he was not consciously giving his attention to things outward, he had an oppressive sense of immensity and strangeness. The arch of the sky was so sweeping, the prospect before them so gor- 208 I geous, the sunliftht so haXTI^Td^T'^h^i^";, clear! tor the first time in his life a new continen aroused ,n h.m an odd sense of antagonism. He ha" never had .t m Afnca or Asia or in the isles of the Southern Sea. Ihe-. he had always gone with a sense of power w.th the instinct of the conqueror wh.le here . . . Hut Olivia was speaking. saymgEs' too appalhng for immediate comprehension ^ certain TnV'f ^'"''" cl^ "^^■"' '^"^ '^^^^ ^'th a ctrtam kmd of ease. She appeared to rehearse somethmg already learned by heart ^^"*=arst So, you see he didn't merelv lose his own money; he lost theirs-the money'of his clients wh.ch was m h.s trust. I hadn't heard of it when I wrote you m New York, otherwise I should hTve told you. But now that you know it-" be in t^^lr^-:^'' J^">' '-^^y -t to "c in tngiand, he said, trvinu nnr t,. o,..„ stunned a= he felt. "There that sort .f.K "' very seriou.-" """ "' '"""S '" ^ "Offence," she hastened to say. "Oh so It U here. I must tell you quite plainly that if the monev hadn t come papa would have had to go tc^' "^ But the money did come=" the mone'.'^W?'"' "^ ""''""'"S I"- ^'^"t'^nce. "If go tonr^on v' T" "'"^ T'"''' ^^-^ ^-^ " go to prison Y es the money did come. A friend be7n Lr/"" "'■"'t "'•"'i"^ ''-advanced it. t" '3o tht™f^,: n[:,::l'r- -- '- -aw. •• 14 209 i If L THE STREET CALLED STRAIGin She continued to talk on gently, evenly, giving him the facts unsparingly. It was the only way Her very statements, so it seemed to her, implied that as marriage between them was no longer possible their engagement was at an end. She was not surprised that he scarcely noticed when, having said all she had to say, she ceased speaking. Taking it for granted that he was think- ing out the most merciful way of putting his verdict into words, she, too, remained silent. She was not impatient, nor uneasy, nor alarmed. The fact that the business of telling him was no longer ahead of lier, that she had got it over, brought so much relief that she felt able to await his pleasure. She mistook, however, the nature of his thoughts. Once he had grasped the gist of her information, he paid Httle attention to its details. The impor- tant thing was his own conduct. Amid circum- stances overwhelmingly difficult he must act so that every one, friend or rival, relative, county magnate or brother officer, the man in his regiment or the member of his club, the critic in England or the on- looker in America, should say he had done precisel} the right thing. He used the words "precisely the right thinj;" because they formed a ruling phrase in his career. tor twenty-odd years they had been written on the tablets of his heart and worn as frontlets between his brows. They had first been used in connecrion with him by a great dowager countess now deceased. She had said to his mother, apropos of some forgot- ten bit of courtliness on his part, "You can always be 2IO if ^v :w^ THE STREET C ^ r r jn^_j^rir[n!T sure that Rup«t will do preci^the ,ight thine " rhough he was but a lad at Eton at the time he had been so proud of this opinion, expresseu w^h alU dowager countess's authority, that from the moment device It had kept h,m out of more scrapes than he could reckon up, and had even inspired7he act that would make his name glorious a, l„n„ ,1 ,1, were annals of the Victoria Cross ^ '''"' He had long been persuaded that had the dowai-er countess not thus given the note ,« w!, ?°^^f'" his record would never have been wn, "'?" roll of heroes. "I shouW ha've^^nked't'" "w"/ h" way of putting It by which he meant that' he wlu Id iTof^tattltlte^htTn^ t:'^:tf^ Y"'-' ^- u"„lrt^app':er fro;h^e:;:/4''r^,''rf-— ^^^^ hi; wX' ■■\™™"raged by a sympathetic public -• htfet;ry'yf;:eTit^^^^^^ .hat he was at his L^tThl-^cTull^t XX .t: 'o7y„irg~e.;':h: '°r\"^ '^^ p"- itude might i^t::^:^t:;^z^ . It was undoubtedly because he felr fh?T ;S;x":ig'ht^Sr ^™ ^^'^ ^o ^- Cross/He 'co-ited*" i;:it:""himfelf'"Hj"°"^ fessed it often— everv t.r,,^ • r """fe"- He con- a difficult pasrgiiTrjif:::^^;;^^^^^^.":;^: ^m: «'■ THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT his inspiration. He confessed it now. If he sat silent while Olivia Guion waited till it seemed good to him to speak, it was only that he might remind himself of the advantages of doing the right thing, however hard. He had tested those advantages time and time again. The very memories they raised were a rebuke to weakness and hesitation. If he ever had duties he was inclined to shirk, he thought of that half-hour which had forever set the seal upon his reputation as a British soldier. He thought of it now. He saw himself again looking up at the bpstling cliffs that were to be rushed, whence the Afridis were pouring their deadly fire. He saw himself measuring with his eye the saddle of precipitous slope that had to be crossed, devoid of cover and sti^wn with the bodies of dead Ghurkas. Of the actual crossing, with sixty Rang- ers behind him, he had little or no recollection. He had passed under the hail of bullets as through perils in a dream. As in i dream, too, he reme.nbered see- ing his men, when he turned to cheer them on, go down like nine-pinr— throwing up their arms and staggering, or twisting themselves up like convul- sive cats. It was grotesque rather than horrible; lie felt himself g/inning inwardly, as at something hellishly comic, when he reached the group of Ghurkas huddled under the cavernous shelter of the clifF. Then, just as he threw himself on the ground, panting like a spent dog an ! feeling his body all over to know whether or not he had been wounded, he saw poor Private Vickerson out in the open, thirty } ards from the protection of the wall of rock. While 212 ■m^immf^s^^ Trrfi' •-.'^■kV-'^'V'"- sat TH E STREET CJLLED^ RTP^jrijrr the other Rangers to a man were lying still, on the back with the knees drawn up, or face downward with the arms outstretched, >. rolled or: he side as though they were in bed, ^ c! erson wa ; rising on his hands and dragging himst." .M-vv.rd. It was one ot Ashley s most vivid recollections that Vickerson's movements were like a seal's. They had the drol- lery of a bit of infernal mimicry. It was also a vivid recollection that when he ran out to the sol- dier s aid he had his first sensation of fear The bullets wnizzed so thick about him that he ran back again. It was an involuntary running back, as involuntary as snatching his fingers out of a fire He could remember standing under the ro^k, and, as Vickerson did not move, half ..oping he were dead. Ihat would put an end to any further attempts to save him. But the soldier stirred again, propping himself with both hands and pulling his body on- ward .or a few inches more. Again Ashley ran out into a tempest of iron and fire and over ground shppery with blood. He could still feel himself hopping back, as a barefooted boy who has ventured no a snow-storm hops back into che house. A third time he ran out, and a fourth. At the fourth he distinctly worded the thought which had b en Tt g thl v'c f T'""S ''''■ '^^'""'"S' "^ ^^^' worrhv! '^u' ."" '"^'^ ^° ''^"'sh the un- worthy suggestion, but it was too strong for him upon him in'v ' ''? ^'^' '^'' "?^^^" ^y^' °f E"gl-"d upon h m, inciting him to such a valor that at the fafth attempt he dragged in his man. 213 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT He came out of this reverie, which, after all, was brief, to find the gentle tones in which OHvia had made her astounding revelations still in his ears, while she herself sat expectant and resigned. He knew she was expectant and resigned and that she had braced her courage for the worst. With many men, with most men, to do so would have been need- ful. In the confusion of his rapid summaries and calculations it was a pleasurable thought that she should learn from him, and through him and in him, that It was not so with all. The silence which at first was inadvertent now became deliberate as— while he noted with satisfaction that he had not overstated to himself the exquisite, restrained beauty of her features, her eyes, her hair, her hands, and of the very texture and fashion of her clothing- he prolonged the suspense which was to be the pre- lude to his justifying once again the lowager coun- tess s good opinion. It was to his credit as a brave man that he could nerve himself for this with his eyes wide open— wider open than even Mis. Fane's —to the consequences that might be in store tor him. &, Kf^^ ti -S it .a. .if XIII W}fX ^^^- '^"^ .'^^'' 'P''""g of his iinghsh instinct for moderation, not to express his good intentions too directly. He preferred to let them hlter out through a seemingly casual Nli.u ;^1"^""^' °^ '^'"""S them for granted ^r nfn ' -T""?' ^" ^'^S"'^^ ^^e fact fhat the strangeness incidental to meeting agai- in trvin! conditions and under another sky', cfe 't^d bet;' en' himself and Olivia a kind of moral distance across which they could draw together only by degrees It was a comfort to her that he did not try to bridge Jt by annhing m the way of forced tenderness He was willing to talk over the situation siZlvand quietly until, in the course of an hour o Z^ the sense of separation began to wear away. ' to her ?T"'^ .''" i"^' P^''^ °f presenting Ashley Iv thn '"^ °^"'"^ ^'"^ 1""<^'^ »>-4ht into play those social resources that were as sprnn^ nature to all three. It was difficult to thinkth bottom could be out of life while going tl rou,^^^^^ pointed tI \ ^^^ meticulously well ap- took refu J in .r '^' ''T "^ '^''' ^'^"^^'O" 'hfy refuge m the topics that came readiest, the :.«-^'3i.vr^.7,:^it: ""'irTTrnTTTri"irT¥ir~riwTrnriiiili iiiMri»iiiiiii— 1 1 f"' I ii B *l ' I: If 11 .1! THE STREET CALLED STRA IGJTV novelty to Ashley of the outward aspect of Amer- ican thinj^s keeping them on safe groiuul till the meal was done. It was a relief to both men that CJuion coidd make his indisposition an excuse for retiring again to his room. It was a relief to Olivia, too. For the first time m her life she had to recognize her father as insup- portable to any one but herself and Peter Davenant. Ashley did his best to conceal his repulsion; she was sure of that; he only betrayed it negatively in a tendency to ignore him. He neither spoke nor hstened to hmi any more than he could help. Bv keepmg his eves on Olivia he avoided looking toward him. The fact that Guion took this aver- sion humbly, his head hanging and his attention given to his plate, did not make it the less poicn- ant. ^ All the same, as soon as they were alone in the dining-room the old sense of intimacy, of belonging to each other, suddenly returned. It returned apropos of nothing and with the exchange of a glance. There was a flash in his eyes, a look of wonder in hers— and he had taken her, or she had slipped, into his arms. And yet when a little later he reverted to the topic of the morning and said, "As things are now, I really don't see why we shouldn't be married on the 28th— privately, you know," her answer was, What did you think of papa.?" Though he raised his eyebrows in surprise that she should introduce the subject, he managed to sav, He seems pretty game." 2l6 sm iv^li h^ Wr_ ^s^y^i' ^^mf^^mM i I -:? I I m THE STREET CALLED STRj jrynr "He does; but I dare say he isn't as game as he looks. ] here s a good deal before him still " "If we're married on the 28th he'd have one care the less. "Because I should be taken off his hands. I'm afraid that s not the way to look at it ihe real fact IS that he'd have nobody to help him " "I've two months' leave. You could do a lot for him m that time." She bent over her piece of work. It was the sofa- cushion she had laid aside on the day when she learned from Davenant that her father's troubles were like Jack Berrington's. They had come back for coffee to the rustic seat on the lawn. For the cups and coffee service a small table had been brought our beside which she sat. Ashley had so far recovered his sang-froid as to be able to enjoy a cigar. Would you be very much hurt," she asked without raising her head, "if I begged you to go back to England w-ithout our being married at all?" vJh, but I say! The protest was not over-strong. He was neither shocked nor surprised. A well-bred woman, find- offer him "' "''^ ^T^^^ ^^ ^^"' ^-"J^ -turalt otter him some way of escape from it. cated y^" '^u ""'r' °"' "^'^'"^s are so compli- cated already that if we got married we should -^totn '" T".- I^^"'^ '^° '"-^ ^« be done the kin/TiT""'^ ^^'\ house-and the future-of Thi' °f;h'ng you don't know anvthing about They re sordid things, too, that you'd be wasted on if you tried to learn them." 217 Ci&M^;^«&». i|,. i :' r h "-i i !■. ji THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT He smiied indulgently. "And so you're asking me -a soldier!— to run away." .k'I^t"' '"^ r' '"^.'^" ''• ^''•'' -"^'"^ impossible that I can t face it. "Oh, nonsense!" He spoke with kindlv im- patience. Don t you love me.? You said just now— m the dmmg-room— when— " '•Yes, I know; I did say that. Hut, you see - we must consider it-love can't be the most important thing in the world for either you or me." "I understand. You mean to say it's duty Very good. In tha. case, my duty is as plain as'a piicestatt. ''Your duty to stand by mc.?" "I •'hould be a hound if I didn't do it " "And I should feel myself a common adventuress \i 1 were to let you." "Oh-I say!'"' His protest this time was more emphatic. There was even a pleading note in it. In the course of two or three hours he had got back much of the feeling he had had m England that she war more than an exquisite lady, that she was the other part of him- self. It seemed suf, -rfluous on her part to flini: open the way of retreat for him too wide She smiled at his exclamation. "Yes, I dare sav that s how ,t strikes you. But it's very serious to me. Isn t it serious to you, too, to feel that vou must clJ^T '° p'^.'~'"'^ ""^"^^ me-after all that's come to pass.? "One doesn't think that way-or speak that way — ot marrying the woman one— adores " 218 >jj^jf ■"»»,•»-. ^M ^ri^^^m^ ^^i^vas^. 1^3^ un- just THE^STR EET C A L L E Jl^TRjjnirr "Men have been known to marry the women thev adored, and still regret the consequences thev had to meet. ^ "She's right," he said to himself. ous 'It is scri- fhere could be no question as to her wisdom in askmg h.m to pause. At his age and in his position, and with h.s merely normal capacity for passion, i would be absurd to call the world well lost for love Notwithstanding his zeal to do the right thinu' there was something due to himself, and it was ini- perative tnat he should consider it. Dropping the stump of his cigar into his empty cofFee-cup, he got up and strode away. The emotion of the'minu'le, ar in excess of the restrained phrases convention taught them to use, offered an excuse for his un- ceremoniousness. He walked to the other side of the lawn, then down to the gate, then round to the front ^f the house. To a chance passer-by he was merely in- specting the premises. What he saw, however was not the spectacular foliage, nor the mdlow GeorJan d..lling but himself going on his familiar victorious way, freed from a dogging scandal that would make he wheels of his triumphal car drive heavily. He aw h.mself advancing, as he had advanced hither! rL """^ J'T""""" '" promotion, from command to ThTtife ' "y ""'T'' '''' ^'"-' -^ ^hen with a wife-a wife who was not Olivia Guion misty and undefined; the road became dark, the triumphal car jolted and fell to pieces; there was re! 219 i| llll"' [^■mi III I I illlllll I 11 III II I ,'\iifii'uJa»ir^i3ijVSS«K9arii:i«^il«Wi^ • i THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT proach in the air and discomfort in his sensations. He recognized the familiar warnings that he was not domg precisely the right thing. He saw Olivia Guion sitting as he had left her four or five minutes before, her head bent over her stitching. He saw her there deserted, alone. He saw the eyes of Eng- and on him, as he drove away in his triumphal car. eaving her to her fate. His compunction was in' tense, h.s pity overwhelming. Merely at turning his back on her to stroll around the lawn he felt guilty of a cowardly abandonment. And he felt something else-he felt the clinging of her arms around his neck; he felt the throb of her bosom against his own as she let herself break down just h/d "'uiVu' ^""l " '°^- ^' ^^^'"^d 'o him that he should feel that throb forever. He hurried back to where he had left her "It's no use he said to himself; "I'm in for it, by Jove I simply can't leave her in the lurch." ' ^ -^ ^^ Ihere was no formal correctness about Ashley's ablfenrci'afior " ''"•""'°" '' ^'^ "'^P' ^^- henin' i^ \"'u^'. ^''' ^^.^"^^roidery rest idly in before^her "^ " ^'' ^^^'''^'^- "^ "^^^ assZod^ ""d^^^tand." he asked, with a roughness- assumed to conceal his agitation, "that you're ottering me my hberty?" ;]No; that I'm asking you for mine." On what grounds.?" She arched her. eyebrows, looking round about her 220 1 comprehensively "I should think that wTd^ On th > grounds of— of everything " "That's not enough. So long as you can't sav that you don't-don't care about me any more^" ^ There was that possibility. It was very faint but If she made use of it he should conside^ it del csive. Doing precisely the right thing would be- come quite another course of action ff her heart rejected hrni. But she spoke promptly. '" imporSnt^'' ^^ ^'"^ '" ' ^^" '^^ ---^'"g -re I s"h!'n"?'^'''^ ^'■'"'^- "^"^^^ ^^"'-^ it, by Jove I Shan t give you up. There's no reason for k* So long as we love each other—" "Our loving each other wouldn't make your re fusa any the less hard for me. As your wife f should be trying to fill a position for which Pm n longer quahfied and in whfch I should le a fa ,ure '' delibtZn^t c :idt^;kf tt' ^"^ ""^ you felt abk to fill ° '^' P°''''°" ^nyx}^^n^ She considered thi*: "TK^- • -llt""""''^ ■" '''~^'"« '''"''^" yo"^ "rear be; and you'd ° J; K f" ""'" ' '"'PPy' ' ™"'-"r different Service To hide the renewal of his dismay he pooh-poohed this possibihty. ''As a mere nine days'^wonder '' oast Ton '"""' r '^r"? ^"'^^" '^^ "'"^ ^^y^ are past Long after they've ceased speaking of it they'll remember—" H^dKiii^ or it I jZd'you' '"''"''"''' ''' '"^^^^"P^^^' fi-^'-J^' "that She colored hotly. "That you-what?" nrise' r T ' ''^' J^' ^^''^^ ^^^^ ^s much a sur- prise to him as to her. He had never thought of his view of the case till she herself summoned un %V:Tw Y k""'^ ^"' ^"^-'^ discuslg'th^ alta.r in big leather arm-chairs in big, ponderous rooms in Piccadilly or St. James's Squire It was what they would say, of course. It'was wim he 223 :■!) * H if '^msm^^.w^^k''-:^w}^,¥iwsmmn'^^sm i. =f i i r ('1 I '^ I. i ~^^^^IMET_CALLED_STRAWl himself would have said of any one else H. I, a renewed feeling .hat retreat was cu off ' '' -it's wha77h ■"""■"'-i.f I 8° home without y, |t s what II be on everybody's lips." -^ «asp " """ ' ■" ""'•" 'l-^ ^aid. with a lit, ,^^Hjaughed. "That won't matter. It's how "Oh, looks!" "It's what we 're talking about isn'f.VJ T.' i. makes the difference. I'shall figu" 3 a c d "'^ covery. She was inexpressibly shocked. tosay''butsh:s"aidt'"'V' ""• ^" ^^^ ^"'^ fi- y out She said it with conviction. He laughed again. "You'll spp Tk » —not my best fripn^c ^ ^^^^ ^ "» ""t sisters-who won' h r"°' T "^^^^er-not my Si-x£rrF-— -^^^^^^^ the^SrL''l'';td=' '"'' °' ''' «"«"»' --■'' sh"mov*v;™ or'tr:'", "t ^'•'f""'' «-''-• head went h^heT cTn '^^ T'^SI^' 't h« vo,ce trembled with indignatio^,Vut'she^rnf;' '•They couldn't believe it long." am4is,rws j:r„^:jLt: anoidirr^^^rr^""- a chap .„ our regiment who ,i|trd't"!ce giri^t Z He had you a littk how It t's what ad." ing dis- ild find no one ot mv and I ve b ut suited ashej er spoke only ^v me otten was '^,H - ',? V'i I'i • ( -III; if. II ii.- • I. there's no one WHO won't relieve BbT T.lAT I— THREW YOU OVER " l\ '''ft ' 'I * I >,1 ^ f ■ ' I I II ," 'II il ! 1 'V . !?' ^ ■-1:1 i •41 THE STREET C^r.t.Kn STRAIGHT Cape — sailed for home only before secretly rne weaamg. He paused to 1.. ner 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' It:::)! bX:?^ °^ "^^ '^ -- ^--^ English T;he flagrancy of the case gave her an advantage take ;ou.''' '' '^'' ^•"'^ °^^^^^ ^°"'^ -^" "The fate that can overtake me easily enough is that as long as I hve they'll say I chucked a gi because she'd had bad luck." She was about to reply when the click of the latch a tt ndef t n"''' '" ^"^•'^^•°"- ^' ^i"- F-^ attended by Davenant, was coming up the hill Seemg Ohv.a and Ashley at the end of^he lawn Drusilla deflected her course across the grass Dave' advalted-'"nei.h"'^''"'''°';'" '^' '^"^hed, as she lion T K u .^[ '' '' "^"'fi^^ curiosity to see the en; n. U^""' ^"^' ^°"^^ ^' ^» if "mother hadn't sent me with a message." Wearing a large hat a la Princcsse de Lamballe Saittn^lik' ' ^"^■'^-^l^d -n^hade whidrshfheM On 1 lY ^^"^^" shepherdess holding a crook daT Ki^ •'" r °'u"'"^^' eighteenth-century some poignant bit of conversation, she proceeded to t ke command, stepping up to OHvia with a has ^ ^^>>s-^ Hello, you dear thing!" Turning to Ashley^ 225 ),( Mil THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT she surveyed him an instant before offering her hand. "So you ye 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 w» 'come 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 pronounced 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 exu- berant bumpkin 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 rebuflF. ^ 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 din- ner to-morrow evening. That's my errand. Just ourselves, you know. It '11 be very quiet." 226 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT Olivia recovered somewhat from the agitation of the previous half-hour as well as from the move- ment 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, "anrf 1 11 come if I can leave papa. I'll run up now and see how he is and take Mr. Davenant with me " XIV n .1 HERE was dignity in the way in which Davenant both withdrew and stood his ground. He was near the Corin- thian portico of the house as Ohvia approached him. Leaning on his stick, L „ J ^e looked loweringly back at Ashley, who talked to Drusilla without noticing him further Uhvia guessed that in Davenant's heart there was envy tmged with resentment, antipathy, not tem- pered by a certain unwilling admiration. She won- dered what It was that made the difference between the two men, that gave Ashley his very patent air ot superiority. It was a superiority not in looks since Davenant was the taller and the handsomer' nor ia clothes, since Davenant was the better dressed; nor m the moral make-up, since Davenant had given proofs of unlimited generosity. But there It was, a tradition of self-assurance, a habit of com- mand 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 passed away, its place being taken by a teehng that astonished her quite as much. She tried to think it no more than a pang of jealousy at 228 i^^tki. THE STREET C JJA^Fn_jTD^jCHT seeing her own countryman snubbed by a foreigner She was familiar with the sensation from her Euro^ pean, and especially her English, experiences. At an unfriendly criticism it could be roused on behalf of a chance stranger from Colorado or Cahfornia and was generally quite impersonal. She told her- self that It was impersonal now, that she would have had the same impulse of protection, of cham- pionship, for any one. Nevertheless, there was a tone in her voice as she joined hjn. that struck a new note in their ac- quaintanceship. "I'm glad you came when you did. I wanted you to meet CoJonel Ashley. You'll like him when you know him better Just at first he was a little embarrassed. We'd been talking of things-" 1 didn t notice anything-that is, anything dif- ferent from any other Englishman." Yes; that's it, isn't it? Meeting an English- man is often hke the first plunge into a cold batL- chdhng at first, but delightful afterward." He stopped under the portico, to say with a laugh that was not quite spontaneous: "Yes; I dare sav ":w^tHji;;>/kLr^^^^^^ and findVn""*- °^ """" P^">"S ^"^° ^ ^°'d bath again." ^ '° '"^ '^^' '^">^'^^ P^PP^d out chiIiy^'W'^J""^'''?f^'^ ""^"^ ^^° ^'^ sensitive tliiUs. Not men hke you." 229 ml m ^^m-i^m- Il< iili T HE STREET CA U^EJ2__RT^^un^ They entered the house, lingering in the oval sitting-room through which they had to pass. Fortunately," he tried to say, lightly, "it doesn't ma«e^r in this case whether I'm sensitive to chills "What"fo!'?"'''TK ^ '^'"'•^°" "^^ '° ^^ f"^"^^" wnat or The question was so point-blank '^f?,''V^''"'f f?',"^"'' ^"^ ^^^ ignored^hat. On Colonel Ashley's side, for what he'll gain in knowing you; on yours-for something more " the hair^-M'^'^l"' \ '^- ^°°',°^ '^^ ^^^'^'^^^^ in thatr ^^ ask-just what you mean by She hesitated. "It's something that a tactful person wouldn't tell. If I do, it'! only bedu'e 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. Bu after^^whats happened-and after all you've done Po? 7"'^. ,^°"«»' Colonel Ashley—" Tf . r°'? ?"}• Let's see what you mean by— things. n It s visiting round m high society—" He tried to render as scorn his dismay at this touching on his weakness. "I don't mean anything so crude. Visidng round m high society, as you call it, would at best be only the outward and visible sign of an inward-and, perhaps, spiritual-experience of the worid. Isn't that what you ve wanted? You see, if I do marry Colonel Ashley, I could-don't be offended!-! could 231 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "You mean get me into society " ^^17°" "^f^"'^^be so disdainful. I didn't mean that-exactly. But there are peoplejin the world different from those you meet in business-a^d n tnrT.n'^'^Tr'''.\"'''"'"'"e-certainly more pic- turesque. They'd 1 e you if they knew you-and I had an idea that you-rather craved- After all, It s nothmg to be ashamed of. It's only making the world bigger for oneself, and—" ^ Backing away from the stairway, he stood on a rug in the middle of the hall, his head hung like a young bull about to charge. "What made you think of it?" for me-''''"' °'''''°"'- ^^''' ^^"'^" ^°"^ ^° "^^^^ rv^saiaTo'' ^°"^/">'^hing for you. Miss Guion. 1 ve said so a good many times. It wouldn't be nght for me to take payment for what you don't ^^f^,"?;^- . Besides, there's nothing I want." Ihat IS to say, she returned, coldly, "you ore- the httle I might be able to do. I admit that it jsnt much-but it's .o^..^/n,-something wfthin my power, and which I thought you mifht like But since you don't—" ^ "It's no question of liking; it's one of admitting a principle. If you offer me a penny it's Tnvzn payment for a pound, while I say, and say "ga^ that you don't owe me anything. If there'L deb; at all ,t s your father's-and it's not transferable " 232 ■ tf--';'WW "Whether it's transferable or not is a matter th^ rests between my father and me-and, of course Colonel Ashley, if I marry him " ' He looked at her with sudden curiosity. "Whv do you always say that with—an 'if'?" ^ She reflected an instant. "Because," she said slowly, "I can't say it in any other way" ' He straightened himself; he advanced again to the foot of the stairway. ^ "Is that because of any reason of—his?" . It s because of a number of reasons, one of which IS mine. It's this-that I find it difficult 7ot away with one man-when I have to turn my bafk upon the overwhelming debt I owe anothe7 I do owe It— 1 do. The more I try to ienorp if rK» ^ It comes in between me and-" ^ ' '^^ "^"'^ He pressed forward, raising himself on the first step of the stairs, till his face was on a levd wkh '"n ^XF'"" '^^ ^"^ stammered: ^ him? fL ' ^"'°"J you're-you're-in love with She nodded "Yes; but that wouldn't help me leatg^blhfnd.'' '^' '''''' '^ ^^^^^^ '^^y~" ^^s He dropped again to the level of the hall "T Ve dot r Mr a' ""' "IT. " ->■ tHat wha ting iarriedV'^'- ^"'°" ™"''' '"''^ ^o" f™™ e»- "I'm not prepared to say that Cnlnn^I AoUi that- But I II say this much," she beean aMin that youVe made it kard for me to be married " m I ' ; H. THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "How so? I thought it would be all the other way. A uf^ Y°"'!' P"^ yourself in my place-or in Colonel Ashley s plac^-you'II see. Try to think what it means for two people like us to go away— and be happy—and live in a great, fashionable world— and be people of some importance— knowing that some one else— who was nothing to us, as we were nothing to him— had to deprive himself of practically every- thing he had m the world to enable us to do it." ''But if it was a satisfaction to him—" "That wouldn't make any difference to us. The facts would be the same." "Then, as far as I see, I've done more harm than good. "You've helped papa." "But I haven't helped you." ''As I understand it, you didn't want to." "I didn't want to — to do the reverse." "Perhaps it wouldn't be the reverse if you coul 1 condescend to let me do something for you It would be the fair exchange which is no robber;-. 1 hat s why I suggest that if I'm to have that— that life over there-you should profit by its advantages." He shook his head violently. "No, Miss Guion. Please don t think of it. It's out of the question. 1 wish you d let me say once for all that you owe me nothing I shall never accept anything from you — never! ^ "Oh!" It was the protest of one who has been hurt. "I'll take that back," he said, instantly. "There 234 ^.^i is something you can do for me and that I should hke Marry your Englishman, Miss Guion. and Jo ^hat you sa,d just now-go away and be happt liyon want to pve me a reward, I'll take that^ ^' .She surveyed h.m a minute in astonishment You re perfectly extraordinary," she said atlast in a tone of exasperation, "and "-she threw at' h.m a second Iater-"and impossible!" Before he could reply she went grandly up the theTT r '^''\ ^' ^'' ^'''•S^^ to follow her*^ In the hall above she turned on him again Had he not known that he had given her no ca^ue for offence he would have sa.d that her eyes filled with tears uHy. You needn't go out of your way to make them gratuitously cruel " ;;But Miss Guion-" he began to protest. I lease go m," she commanded, throwim? onen as she spoke, the door of her father's rTm.^ ^'"* W' I m XV '^- Hasn^t escaTe'd ^t" , .1^:% "",]"' "l'''- ''j = - o..„-e auld over his head 237 • • i !., i fll ii 'U k ( ' THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT and being turned out into the streets. He hasn't escaped reaching a perfectly impotent old age, with not a soul on this earth to turn to but Olivia " "What about me?" "Would you take him?" "I shouldn't take him exactly. If he was my father-in-law"— he made a little grimace— "I sup- pose I could pension him off somewhere, or board him out, like an old horse. One couldn't have him round." "H'm! I dare say that would do — but I doubt It. If you'd ever been a daughter you might feel that you couldn't dispose of a poor, old, broken-down father quite so easily. After all, he's not a horse, /ou might more or less forsake him when all was going well, and yet want to stick to him through thick and thin if he came a cropper. Look at me! I go off and leave my poor old dad for a year and more at a time — because he's a saint; but if he wasn't— especially if he'd got into any such scrape as Cousin Henry s— which is 't thinkable— but if he did— I'd never leave him again. That's my temperament. It s every girl's temperament. It's Olivia's. But all that IS neither here nor there. If she married you, her whole life would be given up to trying to make you blend with a set of circumstances you couldn t possibly blend with. It would be worse than singing one tune to an orchestra playing an- other. She'd go mad with the attempt." "Possibly; except for one factor which you've overlooked." "Oh, love! Yes, yes. I thought you'd say that." UrusiUa tossed her hands impatiently. "Love will 238 P»y like the Sussex Ran'ers The. 'v'"" -.™^" age of faith for that sort of Sing "^ ™ "'"'^'^ *« ■•,i,L T\^'" '"' "'<'' ''Peking very slowlu that the Rangers need be altogether tTkenTnX; consideration 6^"'ci caKen into ^:£;Ltt;:rM^;v:ronfs-''^-- be wfco%u:'':.rer;tV„" '°™ *^' ^-'o it?" There was som ^ ^^'^^y^.l^'ng on account of wh.h h„4Ch:Xero^&:;„':- -. - either way. The more I thhik oMt tL 1"^ It becomes. If I marrv OKvio t ? ^^, P'^'"^*" connection with a CdL^scanda ' ifTT^^ "u'°^ they'll say I left her in t'elurch A^ L th '' ff '" on any possible promotion there mthtL '" for me, it would be six of one and hl\f a '" f °'^ shel.-.i„p,y nothing :„ chool'f" " « '" » "•"- the U™'"^"''^'' '° «"" "'"J"''/ "P and down THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "I can quite see how it looks from your point of view—" she began. "No, you can't," he interrupted, sharply, "be- cause you lecve out ^he fact that I am— I don't mind saymg it— that is, to you— you've been such a good pal to me!— I shall never forget it!— but I am— head over heels— desperately— in love." Having already heard this confession in what now seemed the far-off days in Southsea, she could h( ir It again with no more than a sense of oppression about the heart. "Yes," she smiled, bravely. "I know you are And between two ills you choose the one that has some compensation attached to it." "Between two ills," he cc .rected, "I'm choosing the only course open to a man of honor. Isn't that There was a wistful inflection on the query It put forth at one and the same time a request for corroboration and a challenge to a contrary opinion It there could be no contrary opinion, he would have been glad of some sign of approval or applause. He wanted to be modest; and yet it was a stimulus to doing precisely the right thing to get a little praise tor It, especially from a woman like Drusilla. In this for once she disappointed him. "Of course you are," she assented, even too promprh- And yet you're advising me," he said, returning to the charge, "to make a bolt for it-and leave Uhvia to shift for herself." "If I remember rightly, the question you raised was not about you, but about her. It wasn't as to 240 whether you should marrv h^r k..* she should marry y"u '^^'m 'no "'." '° '"''"''" point of view, I'^ o'nly /ZJ^:'^ mZT' iT "Indeed? And what are they'" She told them off on her fineers " F' . a^^gentleman, y„n ean't do anyXg els'e'.^'se:! .h:;sitreTre':tsTn:iv''-'''^- advantageous cou^sL Thfrd-lt°o „'™ ""'" *'- words— you're head ov.!- k 7 ? ^^°'^ >'°'"' °«"i It's easy to see hat n„ / ' '" '°"-'' «'«'' her. reasonsl uVp'e^t rn^i^rtiT buT It'" f '""^ to see that none of th*.«, "\"^»na> but it s also easy -Olivia Gur °te tt';:,^, ''"^'"-e appeal infItt''S;;t m^i" T-^f ""• -'^- nothing else to consider" ' "'"'' "'^- ^e've I'veyurthS'^at-an^d'"- ""^ '" ="' ">' '^ings which." she added tak1„T" f "'='">' "o-'e; besides "I suppose she hat' to mfke tT'''-'T'' ""■^• »r another as to whaV T • "^ ?""<' °"« «ay Davenant." ^' ' S°'"S t" do about Peter jg ' inqjiry. About Peter— who?" 241 I\f ^^p ii. t ..IL THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT Drusilla still affected a casual tone. "Oh ? Hasn't she told you about him?" "Not a word. Who is he?" She nodded in the direction of the house. "He's up-stairs with Cousin Henry." "The big fellow who was here just now.? That — lumpkin.'"' "Yes," she said, dryly, "that— lumpkin. It was he who gave Cousin Henry the money to meet his habilities." "So he's the Fairy Prince.? He certainly doesn't look It. "No; he doesn't look it; but he's as much of a problem to Olivia as if he did." I' Why.? What has he to do with her.?" "Nothing, except that I suppose she must feel very gratefi^l." They reached the edge of the lawn where a hedge of dahlias separated them from the neighboring garden "When you say that," he asked, "do you mean anything in particular.?" "I suppose I mean everything in particular. The situation is one in which all the details count." I' And the bearing of this special detail—" "Oh, don't try to make me explain that. In the first place, I don't know; and in the second, I shouldn't tell you if I did. I'm merely giving you the facts. I think you're entitled to know them:' So I should have said. Are there many more? 1 ve had a lot since I landed. I thought I must have heard pretty well all there was—" "Probably you had, except just that. I imagine 242 Olivia fou^d it difficult to speak of, and so r„, doing "Why should she find it difficul -.^ .„ ^,,5 „„(, ,j dlHlcult to SDealf r.ff Itsamerematterof business, I suppos"""^ of? It It s business to give Cousin h1„ l be nearly a hundred'tro^rj p"oS tlZ" 'h money, „,th no prospect that an/one can see of h rSu^^t-^^^''-'''" '^' "- -'- olVMadat '^^^i^'^' '° p'=- spates any'!ne'and'.!T\ "' "'™^ ground the nose off thTtwh^t he's done S?V """T^"^'' f""-" -^^ well clean him out ^ ^°""" "'"''^ ™" P'«ty ^^;^Kp:':::l'::^^^-->*withaio„y altruil^ic X'^airrr T""'' ="°«"''" main chance comes in." *™'' '° '"" "''■^'» ">e ;;Then what the deuce is he up to?" I'm oi:;;^"!'": thel ^°" %''■ ' -p-^ ^h" them for yourir" "'^ ^'"' ">"" '"'"P^" daMiatdtstrd'It"!; h^'r"'" p^''"' =■ -"'« "rolled back low „; L middT''/^? ^^''^ ''•^>' Ashley said : "'"'^ "'^ '''^ '='»'"• Here I w"H^:''wSdn^^ur„:;u-^ ™- ««"■-' 243 ^ "^mss-^ ^%f [ ) THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "I'm not making mysteries. I'm telling you what s happened just as it occurred. He advanced the money to Cousin Henry, and that's all I know about It. If I draw any inferences—" "Well.?" "I'm just as likely to be wrong as right." "Then you have drawn inferences?" "Who wouldn't? I should think you'd be draw- mg them yourself." They wandered on a few yards, when he stopped agam. Look here," he said, with a sort of appeal- mg roughness, "you're quite straight with me, aren t you.? The rich, surging color came swiftly into her face as wine seen through something dark and transparent! Her black eyes shone like jet. She would have looked tragic had ,t not been for her fixed, steady smile. "M^^^ i^^^*" ^^" anything else with you?" INo. You ve been straight as a die. I'll say that for you You've been a good pal-a devilish good pall But over here-in America-every thine seems to go by enigmas-and puzzles-and sur- prises — "I'll explain what I can to you," she said, with a heightened color, "but it won't be so very easv. There are lots of people who, feeling as I do-toward Ulivia-and-and toward you-would want to beat about the bush. But when all these things began to happen-and you were already on the way-I turned everything over in my mind and decided to speak exactly as I think." "Good!" 244 IMJL^rREET^_CALLED_SrRMGHT "But it isn't so very easy," she repeated nr, tendmg to rearrange the dahlia in her laces, so as to find a pretext for not looking him in the eyes " t .snt so very easy; and if-|ater on-in after years perhaps-when everything is long over-Tt ever strikes you that I didn't play fair-it 'II L k I played .. fair that I laid myself open to th^t'"'' putafon. One can, you know. I o"^'," a°k vouTo" remember it. That's all." ^ ° Ashley was bewildered. He cmiM f«?i r i more than half of what she said.' '"MoVm^er ie"'' a cXI'^xSi'" "T"" " '''' ^P'"'^- "And uch re'sTy SVnd thr^Tod IZ ^°"'^ ""G?od bv'"T --''i-^'-ran'-d t:'.'.^' ' had ri^; , ' ""i' ""^'""S her hand before he had nme to emerge from his meditations "Wo shall see you to-morrow eveninir And h,;!i. we dine at half-past seven. We're coinr^^-^r'!' here and primitive No; don't'c^me T 'he't:? "^ OI,v,a must be wondering where you are " * He looked after her as she tripped over the lawn pttedTn^htn^-;!^^^^ as a die,%"hnia"nd truTa^stl ^"'^- "'"'^^'^ None the less he was glad when she left him. M '*'L ^ii m XVI pHLEY wanted to be alone. He needed Tsditude ,n order to face the stupendou bit of information Mrs. Fane had given dunn. l'"^^''"^ ^'^^ ^^ ^^^ K I h"rA u- P?.' twenty-four hours he to meet T u' ^'""''^^ "^°^^ ^'^ ^^^^ competent he had wasted no ?• '""'^'^ ^° ^'^ness that , wasted no tinp m reninincr H«. u j • 246 the degrading facts su round^g he^'Jeein.T'^^T had seen her from the fir^h^lT "•.''"' •" touched by condTtions thr^ughUicV fe"''"' """ could pass without some personal de«rioS^io7"'?: his admiration and loyaltv he haH „„,?,. " feature too prodigious to find room there O cha^nl^Xfcigalwh^hh'^L" "'^"%'«''ting me- -l^»S.tr:h^;Tind^/-E;ii 247 I" * ,t THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT 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 Amer- ican way of living, with unwalled properties merging into one another, and doors and windows flung wide to every passing 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 pro- vocative. She knew it by slight signs of nervousness in his way of standing before her, one foot on the grass and the other on the first step of the portico. He betrayed himself, too, in an unsuccessful attempt to rnake 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." 248 THE__STR EET CALLED STRAIGHT "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 r, it in time. I did ten you every thmg but his name." "And the circumstances." •'How do you mean— the circumstances?" I got the impression from you this morning that It was some millionaire J hnny 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 be- yond the warrant, in order to rouse her to de- nial, or perhaps to indignation. But she said only: ii?L^ ^'■"^'"^ ">" '^ 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 Vou know him well?" 249 i p T HE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "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 assent. "That is," he hastened to say, in some compunc- tion, "your father took it. We must keep the dis- tinction — " "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 didnt 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." 250 L !^,-. I !"- id now ' :i ' - ■-TV ■••I., ' on !.ci IS- T HE STREET C AU ^EJ^^TRirryrn^ He followed her into the oval room, where they were screened from neighborly observation, while with the French window open, they had the ad- vantage of the air and the rich, wes ring sun shine. Birds hopped about in the t and then a gray squirrel darted act)' "I should think," he said, nervr. had time to begin her explanation who had done that for you v. -.■ mind to the exclusion of everybod ^ Guessing that he hoped for '], part, she was sorry to be unable to • , "Not to their exclusion— but pei to their subordination." He pretended to laugh. "What a pretty di tinction! "You se. . I haven't been able to help it. H'-'s loomed up so tremendouslr 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 ud 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, con- tinued to pace up and down the room, his head bent and his fingers clasped rightly under his jacket bc- 251 I i^aaf^iy,.^--ri#gs:^^:ag^-iiai? .(kMi ii j ggi THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT hind 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 in- tervention in her father's troubles. She spared no detail of her own opposition and eventual capitula- tion. She spoke simply and easily, as though re- peating something learned by heart, just as she had narrated the story of Guion's defaulting in the morn- ing. 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 if. That was the reason." He came to a standstill on the other side of the table, where he could see hei 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. Noth- ing that's right is very hard, you know." "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? Sufl^ering is nothing much 252 THE STREET CALLED^R T^jn^r except, I suppose, the suffering that comes from want. That s tragic. But physical pain-and the thmgs we call tnals-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 hrst place, because you thought the fellow was try- ing 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 vicrim 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, Ihe appeal to his senses and to something beyond his senses made him gasp. It made him tremble. My God what a wife for mer he was saying to aXtn ^''%' ^%V^'- P^"^^ °^ ^ JeannJd'Arc • 'W^i J^ Chrisrian martyr." Well then," she said, in answer to his words— I want to.'" ' '° '"""' '"'° '^^ anibush-unless 253 v\ THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "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 witw me once, I've no absolute reason to think that he is so still." "But supposing he was.? Would it make any dif- ference 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 skil- fully, 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 thc-^e moments which occur from time to time when a man of honor must speak first and reflect afterward— just as at the heights of Uargal he had had to risk his life for Private Vickcr- son's, with( it debating as to which of them, in the general economy of lives, could the more easily be spared. 254 ii@P ^^i^^^^I^^^M^^^^M^S^^^^^^^^WmZ. "lfeP5?^l! ■ "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 saving 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 He was silent so long that she asked, not im- patient.y: It would make what difference, Rupert?" It was clear that she had no idea as to what was passing in his mind. There had been an instanT- doubt'.d k"'''"k ~u° more-when he had almost doubted her, when her strategy in putting him where tr' V.i''''"'^ r ^^^^ ^« ^' '^'^ ^-«"'t of chance -lut, with her pure face turned upward and her hon- est eyes on his, that suspicion couldn't last It would make the difference—" If he paused again, it was only because his hroat swelled with a choking sensation that made It difficult to speak; he felt, too, that his face was loTrit Nevertheless the space, which was not onger than a few seconds by the clock, gave him time to remember that as his mother's and his 255 i Ji' - Hi ■-IW ^ ^ wtirm THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT 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 him^ielf to be— as most English- men are at heart— quixotic, romantic, and even a little mad, when madness can be subHme. 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 Hke 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 English id.„™. The S^h't ?ha t X^t^l^:. done as well was rather sickening. If he had so To counteract it he Wt the need rf^h " '^'"• te;i'n:f n^tr^'-cariTa'-r^t r"i;:tT t .ngs for your father any „ore than for'n,i' "e by ^f:^t^tr-H'^tl!:r:[ttr:rJ}?^^^^^ who means to stay and take possession ° """ _ Uh, but I m not your wife, Rupert." Vou re my wife already," he declared ",„ n S :„"", "-P"-- We've puM-hed'ou°i:" ttntion to become man and wife to the world Neither of us can go back on that. The merrfa« econd""'" T^' ''^^'™'' l'''^" ■""■"bled oTer us " rr/o^hustUIT^'-^ '"" co„s..tutes^;:ty thew^orld' T''^ "°% ^°"''' '•'^ "»'''«' man in could h ''",'•, ' "^^" '*'^=""ed that there -Uouldi;"'-""' '■'' ''"■ "^^ I -"'''"•' let you ^":^^ttt'^!\i^'""^lii '"-^ -n. leaning ■ou only knew h across the tabh '01 ow 17 easy it is- 257 ■h my darling, if 1 »• { ( !'i THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "No, it isn't easy. It can't be easy. I couldn't let you do it for me — " "But what about him? You \et—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 ex- plain. If you were an American you'd understand it." "Oh, American— be blowed!" The accent was all tenderness, the protest all beseeching. "I ( n't explain it," she hurried on, "because you don't nderstand us. It's one of the ways in which ^iishman never can understand us. But the s that money doesn't mean as much to us as to you. I know you think the contrary, but here you make your primary mistake. It's me and light go with most of us, for the sim- 1 th. t money is outside our real life; where- /ou ^ nglish it's the warp and woof of it." "Oh, bos= darling!" "N(., r bosh. In your civilization it's as the blood; n\ mrs it's only as the clothing. That's something iike the difference. In accepting it from Peter Davenant— which is hard enough!— I take only what he can do without; whereas — " "I can do without it, too." "Whereas," she persisted, "if I were to let you do this I should be robbing you of the essence of what you are." He drew back slightly. "You mean that your Yankee is a strong man, while I'm — " an F it th it'.-^ lirnt c ic rt is wit 11 THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "I don't mean anything invidious or unkind. But isn t It self-evident, or nearly, that we're in- dividuals, while you're parts of an intricate social system? The minute you fall out of your place in the system you come to grief; but vicissitudes don't attect us much more than a change of coats " ^^ I don't care a button for my place in the system." But 1 do. I care for it /or you. I should have married you and shared it if I could. But I'd rather not marry you than that you should lose it." 1 hat IS," he said, coldly, "you'd rather use his money than — She withdrew her hands, her brows contracting and her eyes clouding in her effort to make him un- derstand the position from her point of view " You see, it s this way For one thing, we've taken the money already. That's past. We may have taken It temporarily, or for good and all, as things turn out; but m any case it's done. And yet even if it weren t done it would be easier for us to draw on him rather than on you, because he's one of our- selves. "One of yourselves.? I thought that's just what he wasn t. I thought he was a jolly outsider." Vou niean socially. But that again hasn't much significance in a country where socially we're all ol one class. Where there's only one class there cant be any outsiders." "Oh, that's all very fine. But look at you— with your extremes of rich and poor!" Ihat's the most superficial difference among u^- Its the easiest possible thing to transcend 259 .^: THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT I'm transcending it now in feeling that I've a right- yes, a kind of right— to take Peter Davenant's money, because as Americans we've a claim on each other." He threw himself against the straight back of the chair, his arms flung out with a gestuie that brought his hands nearly to the floor. "You're the last peo- ple in the world to feel anything of the kind. Every one knows that you're a set of ruthless, predatory—" I know that's the way it seems; and I'm not de- fending anything that may be wrong. And yet, m spite of all appearances to the contrary, we have a sense of brotherhood— I don't know any other name for it— among ourselves which isn't to be found anywhere else in the world. You English haven't got It. That's why the thing I'm saying seems mere sentiment to you, and even mawkish. You're so afraid of sentiment. But it's true. It may be only a rudimentary sense of brotherhood; and it's cer- tainly not universal, as it ought to be, because we I J »t only among ourselves. We don't really in- clude the foreigner-not at least till he becomes one ot us. 1 m an instance of that limitation myself, because I can t feel it toward you, and I do— " You do feel it toward the big chap," he said, scornfully. ' She made a renewed eff-ort to explain herself. You see, it s something like this. If my aunt de Melcourt, who s very well ofl^, were to come forward and help us, I d let her do it without scruple. Not that there s any particular reason why she should! But if she did-well, you can se .■ for yourself that it wouldn t be a:; if she were a 260 St. nger. WM^W^yW^MM^M. THE STREET CALLED SiTRAin iTT all'SIt''"""^'' ^*'^'' °"^ °^ ^°"'" °'^" P^ople-and "Well he's one of our own people— Mr. Dave- nant. Not to the degree that she is-but the same sort of thing— even if more distant. It's verv dis- tant, I admit—" ' His lip curled. "So distant as to be out' of sight. "No; not for him — or for me." He sprang to his feet. "Look here, Olivia," he cried, nervously holding his chair by the back, jhat does It all mean.? What are you leading up "I'm telling you as plainly as I can " . 'What you aren't telling me as plainly as you can IS which of us you're in love with " She colored. It was one of those blushes that spread up the temples and over the brows and along dawn ^ ^'^^ ^^^ splendor of a stormy "I didn't know the question had been raised," she said, but since apparently it has—" It might have been contrition for a foolish speech, or fear of what she was going to say, that prompted nim to interrupt her hurriedly: .u^ H^IT, P^'"^""- ^^ ^^'^ '^'ot'c of me to say that. 1 didn t mean it. As a matter of fact, I'm jumpy I m not master of myself. So much has been happening—" He came round the table, and, snatching one of her hand:., he kissed it again and again. He even ■sank on one knee beside her, holding her close to 261 Ni- Ill IH 1 1 11 it THE STREET CALLED STRAIGTJ T him. With the hand that remained free she stroked his cnsp, wavy, iron-gray hair as a sign of pardon ^ You re quite wrong about me," he persisted. Lven if youre right about other Englishmen- which I don t admit— you're wrong about me, by Jove! It 1 had to give up everything I had in the world I should have all the compensation a man could desire if I got you." She leaned over him, pressing his head against ner breast, as she whispered: "You couldn't get me that way. You must un- derstand-! must make it as plain to you as I can —that 1 couldn t go to you except as an equal. 1 couldn t go to any man—" He sprang to his feet. "But you came to me as f.V^."^''„ ^^ ^"^f •" tones of exasperation. Ihats all over and done with. It's too late to reconsider the step we've taken— too late for me— much too late!— and equally too late for you " I can t admit that, Rupert. I've still the right to draw back. "The legal right— yes; whether or not you've hono^"' "^""'"^ '^^''^"'^ °" ^°"'" '^"'^ °^ "Of honor.?" "Certainly. There's an honor for you as well as tor me. When I m so true to you it wouldn't be the square thing to play me false." She rose without haste. "Do vou call that a fair way of putting it-to say that I play you false be- cause 1 refuse to involve you in our family disasters? 1 don t think any one could blame me for that." 262 *»?i.T^HS THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "^yhat they could blame you for is this — for backing out of what is practically a marriage, and for deserting me in a way that will make it seem as if I had deserted you. Quite apart from the fact that ife won t be worth anything to me without you, It will mean ruin as a man of honor if I go home alone Every one will szy— every on^— that I funked the thing because your father — " She hastened to speak. "That's a very urgent reason. I admit its force — " She paused because there was a sound of voices overhead. Footsteps came along the upper hall and began to descend the stairs. Presently Dave- nant could be heard saying; •'Then I shall tell Harrington that they may as well foreclose at one time as another." "Just as well." Guion's reply came from the direction of his bedroom door. "I see nothing to be gained by waiting. The sooner it's over the sooner to sleep, what?" "They're talking about the mortgage on the prop- erty, she explained, as Davenant continued to descend. "This house is to be sold— and every- thing in it — " "Which is one more reason why we should be married without delay. I say," he added, in another tone, "let's have him in." "Oh no! What for.?" Before she could object further, Ashley had slipped out mto the hall. "I say! Come along in." His attitude as he stood with hands thrust into his jacket pockets and shoulders squared bespoke 263 aspfs^^irgx^ k _. vr**--^'^;'i. iTi^ MICUOCOPY RESOIUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) ki 1 2.8 lu 13.2 116 1 4.0 "•"2.5 2.2 1.8 ^ APPLIED IIVMGE IB*.^ '653 East Mam SIreel S"^ Rochester. New York M609 USA •^— (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S (716) 288 - 5989 - Fax I ' THE STREET C J LI^D^^TR^nffT conscious superiority to the man whom he was ad- dressmg. Though Davenant was not in her line of vision she could divine his astonishment at this easy, English unceremoniousness, as well as his resent- ment to the tone of command. She heard him mut- tering an excuse which Ashley interrupted with his ofFhand "Oh, come in. Miss Guion would like to see you." She felt it her duty to go forward a .d second this invitation. Davenant, who was standing at the foot of the staircase, murmured something about town and business. "It's too late for town and business at this hour " Ashley objected. "Come in." He withdrew toward the room where Olivia was standing between the portieres of the doorway Davenant yielded, partly because of his ignorance of the small arts of graceful refusal, but more be- cause of his curiosity concerning the man Olivia Cjuion was to marry. He had some interest, too, in observing one who was chosen where he him- self had been rejected. It would afford an answer to the question, "What lack I vet.?" with which he was tormented at all times, th- it could not be a flattering answer was plain to him from the care- less, indefinable graces of Ashley's style. It was a style that Davenant would have scorned to imitate but which nevertheless he envied. In contrast witii Its unstudied ease he could feel his own social meth- ods to be labored and apologetic. Where he was watchful to do the right thing, what Ashley said or did became the right thing because he said or did it. 264 TJil.lIMAI_CAU,ED_JTRAIGH T With the echo of soft English vowels and cle crisp vowel consonants in his ears, his own pronunciations, too were rough with the harshness transmitted from an ancestry to whom the melody of speech had been of no more practical concern than the music of the sphereT . Somethmg of all this Olivia guessed. She guessed n with a feeling of being on his side-on the Amer can side-which a month ago would have astonish d her. She guessed, too, on Davenant's part, that he Old'w"l?'"^T^''^^^ '^' "'- assumptions o the Old World are hkely to create when in contac w. Ji the aggressive unpretentiousness of the New and if need were she was ready to stand by him' All she could say, however, for the moment was: for tYa°" ' '^'' '" '""• ^'^'"'^^P^ ^ ^"g'^^ '- ring She made the latter remark from habit. It was what she was accustomed to think of when on an autumn day the sun went behind the distant rim oval room, as it was gathering now. If she did not ring It was because of her sense of the irony of offer- ing hospita ity in a house where not even a cup of tea was paid for. * ^ She seated herself beside the round table in the ■nward to he room instead of outward to the portico. Ashley backed to the curving wall of the oom while Davenant scarcely advanced beyond terremin'ddl" ^" ^'T ^^"^"' approach\he iatter reminded her somewhat of a big St Bernard dog responding to the summons of a kopard 26; .;?! i'H y 1*1 m '■^i. m ;:•* ^ 1 . .*:. M » p w^rs-j 'i'-n " 1 Vf, )^ !ni ■■.>\}\ !| if THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "Been up to see — ?" Ashley nodded in the direction of what he took to be Guion's room. Davenant, too, nodded, but said nothing. "How did you find papa to-day?" "Pretty fair, Miss Guion; only, perhaps, a little more down on his luck than usual." "The excitement kept him up at first. Now that that's over — " Ashley interrupted her, addressing himself to Davenant. "I understand that it's to you we owe Mr. Guion's relief from the most pressing part of his cares." Davenant's face clouded. It was the thing he was afraid of — Ashley's intrusion into the little domain of helpfulness which for a few days he had made his own. He answered warily: "My business with Mr. Guion, Colonel, has been private. I hope you won't mind if we leave it so," Ashley's manner took on the diplomatic per- suasiveness he used toward restive barbaric po- tentates. "Not a bit, my dear fellow. Of course it's private — only not as regard. Miss Guion and me. You simply must allow us to say how grateful we are for your help, even though it need be no more than temporary." The word produced its effect. Davenant looked from Ashley to Olivia while he echoed it. "Tem- porary .''" Ashley nodded again. "You have no objection, I presume, to that.?" "If Mr. Guion is ever in a position to pay me 266 THE STREET CALLED STRA IGHT back," Davenant said, slowly, in some bewilderment, "of course I'll take it." "Quite so; and I think I may say that with a little time— let us say a year— we shall be able to meet — " "It's a good bit of money," Davenant warned him. "I know that; but if you'll give us a little leeway — as I know you will — " "He means/' Olivia spoke up, "that he'll sell his property— and whatever else he has— and pay you." *|I don't want that," Davenant said, hastily. "But I do. It's a point of honor with me not to let another man shoulder — " ''And it's a point of honor with me, Rupert — " "To stand by me," he broke in, quickly. "I can't see it that way. What you propose is entirely against my judgment. It's fantastic; it's unreal. I want you to understand that if you at- tempted to carry it out I shouldn't marry you. Whatever the consequences either to you or to me — / shouldn't marry you." "And if I didn't attempt it.? Would you marry me then.?" She looked up, then down, then at Davenant, then away from him. Finally she fi.xed her gaze on Ashley. "Yes," she said at last. "If you'll promise to let this wild project drop, I'll marrv you whenever you like. I'll waive all the other difficulties—" Davenant came forward, his hand outstretched. 1 think I must say good-by now, Miss Guion — " 267 m M W m m !* f m i' m t I i in i 1 I ''.. ¥ i -ii •t s i k , 1 1- i» ■ f i ^ I ! 5J1?!' r//£ STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "No; wait," Ashley commanded. "This matter concerns you, by Jove!"; Olivia sprang to her feet. "No; it doesn't, Rupert," she said, hastily. "No; it doesn't," Davenant repeated after her. "It's nor my affair. I decHne to be brought into it. I think I must say good-by now, Miss Guion— " ^^ "Listen, will you!" Ashley said, impatiently. "I'm not going to say anything either of you need be afraid of. I'm only asking you to do mt the justice of trying to see things from my point of view. You may think it forced or artificial or anything you please; but unfortunately, as an officer and a gentle- man, I've got to take it. The position you'd put me in would be this — of playing a game — and a jolly important game at that— in which the loser loses to me on purpose." Ashley found much satisfaction in this way of putting it. Without exposing him to the necessity of giving details, it made clear his perception of what was going on. Moreover, it secured him I,- beau role, which for a few minutes he feared he might have compromised. In the look he caught, as it flashed between Olivia and Davenant, he saw tht signs of that appreciation he found it so hard to do without — the appreciation of Rupert Ashley as the chivalrous Christian gentleman, at once punctilious and daring, who would count all things as loss in order to achieve the highest type of manhood. If in the back of his mind he had the conviction, hardl\- venturing to make itself a thought, "In the lon^^ run it pays,"' it was but little to his discredit, since 268 «5\V I ; lIl^lIMALSdJ^l^^STRJJGIIT he could scarcely have descended from a hne of shrewd far-sighted Anglo-Saxon forefathers with- out making some sucli computation. "If we're going to play a game," he continued, ad- dressmg Davenant, before the latter had time to speak, "for Heaven's sake let us plav it straight- hke men. Let the wmner win and the loser lose—" 1 ve no objection to that. Colonel, when I do play — but at present — " "Look here," Ashley said, with a new inspira- tion; 1 put It to you— I put it to you as a man- simply as a mfl«— without anv highfalutin prin- ciples whatever. Suppose I'd done what you've done— and given my bottom dollar—" "But I haven't." "Well no matter! Suppose I had done what youve done— and you were in my place— would you, as a man— simply as a man, mind you— be willing to go off with the lady whom / had freed from great anxiety— to say the least— and be happv for- ev-er after— and so forth— with nothing but a Ihank-you-sir.^ Come now! Would you.^" It was evident that Davenant was shy of accept- ing this challenge. He colored and looked uneasy —all the more so because Olivia lifted her eyes to him appealingly, as though begging him to come to her support. It was perhaps in the belief that he would do so that she said, earnestly, leaning forward a litJe: j^Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him." "I don't see what it's got to do with me-" Uavenant began to protest, 269 lit m ' .■ ! -I 1: p ■'If Hi ■ t I. fi. I i if I :" V - '* I THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT "It's got everything to do with you," Ashley broke in. "Since you've created the situation you can't shirk its responsibiHties." "Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him," OHvia re- peated. "Would you, or wouH you not?" He looked helplessly from one to the other. "Well, then — I wouldn't," he said, simply. "There you are!" Ashley cried, triumphantly, moving away from the wall and turning toward Olivia. She was plainly disappointed. Davenant could so easily have said, "I would." Nevertheless, she answered quietly, picking up the paper-knife that lay on the table and turning it this way and that as though studying the tints of the mother-of-pearl in the dying Hght: "It doesn't matter to me, Rupert, what other people would do or would not do. If you persist in this attempt — this mad attempt — I shall not marry you." He strode to the table, looking down at her averted face and bent head. "Then we're at a deadlock." She gave him a quick glance. "No; it isn't a deadlock, because — because there's still a way out." He leaned above her, supporting himself with his hand on the table. "And it's a way I shall never take so long as you can't say — what you admitted a little while ago that you couldn't say — " "I can't say it," she murmured, her face still further averted; "but all the same it's cruel of you to make it a condition." 270 re- T HE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT He bent lower till his lips almost touched her hair. "It's cruel of you," he whispered, "to put me in the position where I must." The room and the hall behind it were now so dim that Davenant had no difficulty in slipping between the portieres and getting away. i:'l lii ^1 m -'-i-m 1 •l- f i m -m i XVII M i- I 1 = J jE'S going to squeeze me out." This was Davenant's reflection as he walked back, along the Embankment, to Rodney Temple's house. He made it bitterly, in the light of clarified views, las to the ethics of giving and taking benefits. Up to within the last few days the sub- ject had seemed to him a relatively simple one. If you had money, and wished to give it awa}-, you gave it. If you needed it, and were so lucky as to have it oflfered you, you took it. That was all. That such natural proceedings should create complicated relations and searchings of heart never entered his mind. He could see that they might, however, now that the knowledge was forced upon him. Enlighten- ment came by the easy process of putting himself in Ashley's place. "I wouldn't take my wife as a kind of free gift from another fellow— I'll be hanged if I would! I'd marry her on my own or not at all." And unless Ashley assumed the responsibilities of his future wife's position, he couldn't marry her "on his own." That much was clear. It was also the most proper thing in the world. It was a right —a privilege. He looked upon it chiefly as a privi- ^■7 'J TJIA ^TR EEJUl ^iLLED STRAIGHT IcK*'. Ashley would sell his estate, and, having paid him, Davenant, the money he had advanced, would send him about his business. There would be noth- ing left for him but to disappear. The minute there was no need for him there would be no place for him He had been no more than the man who holds a horse till the owner comes and rides awa\'. Worse than that reflection was the fear that his intervention had been uncalled for in the hrst place. The belief that it was imperative had been his sole excuse for forcing himself on people who fought against his aid and professed themselves able to get along without it. But the event seemed to show that if he had let things alone, Rupert Ashley would have come and taken the burden on himself. As he was apparently able to shoulder it, it would have been better to let him do it. In that cast he, Peter Dave- nant, would not have found himself in a position from which he could not withdraw, while it was a humiliation to be dislodged from it. But, on the other hand, he would have missed his most wonderful experience. There was that side to It, too. He would not have had these mo- ments face to face with Olivia Guion which were to be as food for his sustenance all the rest of his life. During these davs of discussion, of argument, of conflict between his will and hers, he had the entirely conscious sense that he was laving up the treasure on which his heart would live as long as it continued to beat. The fact that she found nitercourse with him more or less distasteful became a secondarv matter. To be in her presence was the thing es- i S'