The Street Called Straight Part 17

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 interference 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?"

"Human nature being human nature, Olivia, you can hardly expect people not to talk. But you're in for that, you know, whatever happens now."

"Oh, of course."

"So that the thing to do is to keep them from going to the church next Thursday fortnight, and from pestering you with presents in the mean while. When you've headed them off on that you'll feel more free to--to give your mind to other things."

The suggestion was so sensible that Olivia fell in with it at once. She accepted, too, Drusilla's friendly offer to help in the writing of the cards, of which it would be necessary to send out some two hundred.

There being no time to lose, they set themselves immediately to the task, Drusilla at the desk, and Olivia writing on a blotting-pad at a table. They worked for twenty minutes or half an hour in silence.

"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October 28th."

"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October 28th."

"Miss Guion's marriage to Colonel Ashley will not take place on October 28th."

The words, which to Olivia had at first sounded something like a knell, presently became, from the monotony of repet.i.tion, nothing but a sing-song. She went on writing them mechanically, but her thoughts began to busy themselves otherwise.

"Drusilla, do you remember Jack Berrington?"

The question slipped out before she saw its significance. She might not have perceived it so quickly 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 embarra.s.sment with which this monosyllable was uttered 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. Without relaxing the speed with which she went on scribbling 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 earthquake. 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 they were a mark for idle tongues, then so much the better, since in that way they were already contributing some few pence toward quenching the debt.

"I should feel worse about it," Drusilla explained, after a silence of some minutes, "if I didn't think that Peter Davenant was trying to do something to--to help Cousin Henry out."

Olivia wrote energetically. "What's he doing?"

"Oh, the kind of thing men do. They seem to have wonderful ways of raising money."

"How do you know he's trying it?"

"I don't know for certain; I've only an idea. I rather gather it by the queer way he comes and goes. The minute a thing is in Peter's hands--"

"Have you such a lot of confidence in him?"

"For 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 mines, or something, and sold them again. Bought 'em for nothing, and sold 'em for thousands and thousands."

"Did I ever tell you that he once asked me to marry him?"

Drusilla wheeled round in her chair and stared, open-mouthed, at her friend's back.

"_No_!"

"Oh, it was years ago. I dare say he's forgotten it."

"I'll bet you ten to one he hasn't."

Olivia took another card and wrote rapidly. "Do you suppose," she said, trying to speak casually, "that his wanting to help papa out has anything to do with that?"

"I shouldn't wonder. I shouldn't wonder at all."

"What _could_ 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 liked to be answered were she in a similar position. That an old admirer should come to her aid like a G.o.d from the machine would have struck her as the most touching thing 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 remark:

"And now poor, dear old mother is manoeuvering 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 sha'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 sick of everything--and so I might do anything. 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 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 pride. At least, I've got the pride, but there's something in me stronger than pride that makes me a kind of craven. I'm like a dog that doesn't mind being kicked so long as he can hang about under the dining-room table to sniff up crumbs. With my 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'll be the ruin of him, and yet goes on drinking."

"I suppose you're not in love with any one over there?"