The Street Called Straight Part 39

"Would you tell me if--if you were?"

"What would be the use of telling you a thing that would make you unhappy and that I couldn't help?"

"Am I to understand, then, that you _are_ half in love with him?"

She continued the effort to write.

"I think I've a right to press that question," he resumed. "Am I, or am I not, to understand--"

She turned slowly. Her face was flushed, her eyes were misty.

"You may understand this," she said, keeping her voice as much under control as possible, "you may understand this, that I don't know whom I'm in love with, or whether or not I'm in love with any one. That's the best I can say. I'm sorry, Rupert--but I don't think it's altogether my fault. Papa's troubles seem to have transported me into a world where they neither marry nor are given in marriage--where the whole subject is alien to--"

"But you said," he protested, bitterly, "no longer ago than yesterday that you--_loved_ me."

"And I suppose I do. I did in Southsea. I did--right up to the minute when I learned what papa--and I--had been doing all these years--and that if the law had been put in force--You see, that's made me feel as if I were benumbed--as if I were frozen--or dead. You mustn't blame me too much--"

"My darling, I'm not blaming you. I'm not such a duffer but that I can understand how you feel. It'll be all right. You'll come round. This is like an illness, by Jove!--that's what it's like. But you'll get better, dear. After we're married--if you'll _only_ marry me--"

"I said I'd do that, Rupert--I said it yesterday--if you'd give up--what I understand you _have_ given up--"

He was on his guard against admitting this. "I haven't given it up.

They've made it impossible for me to do it; that's all. It's their action, not mine."

"It comes to the same thing. I'm ready to keep my promise."

"You don't say it with much enthusiasm."

"Perhaps I say it with something better. I think I do. At the same time I wish--"

"You wish what?"

"I wish I had attached another condition to it."

"It mayn't be too late for that even now. Let's have it."

"If I had thought of it," she said, with a faint, uncertain smile, "I should have exacted a promise that you and he should be--friends."

He spoke sharply. "Who? Me? That's a good 'un, by Jove! You may as well understand me, dear, once and for all. I don't make friends of cow-punchers of that sort."

"I do," she said, coldly, turning again to her note-book.

It was not strange that Ashley should pa.s.s the remainder of the day in a state of irritation against what he called "this American way of doing things." Neither was it strange that when, after dinner in the evening, Davenant kept close to him as they were leaving Rodney Temple's house, the act should have struck the Englishman as a bit of odious presumption. Having tried vainly to shake his companion off, he was obliged to submit to walking along the Embankment with him, side by side.

He had not found the dinner an entertaining event. Drusilla talked a great deal, but was uneasy and distraite. Rodney Temple seemed to him "a queer old cove," while Mrs. Temple made no impression on him at all.

Olivia had urged her inability to leave her father as an excuse for not coming. Davenant said little beyond giving the information that he was taking leave of his host and hostess to sleep that night in his old quarters in Boston and proceed next day to Stoughton, Michigan. This fact gave him a pretext for saying good night when Ashley did and leaving the house in his company.

"We're going the same way, aren't we?" he asked, as soon as they were outside.

"No," Ashley said, promptly; "you're taking the tram, and I shall walk."

"I should like to walk, too, Colonel, if you don't mind."

Since silence raised the most telling objection, Ashley made no reply.

Taking out his cigarette-case, he lit a cigarette, without offering one to his companion. The discourtesy was significant, but Davenant ignored it, commenting on the extraordinary mildness of the October night and giving items of information as to the normal behavior of American autumn weather. As Ashley expressed no appreciation of these data, the subject was dropped. There was a long silence before Davenant nerved himself to begin on the topic he had sought this opportunity to broach.

"You said yesterday, Colonel, that you'd like to pay me back the money I've advanced to Mr. Guion. I'd just as soon you wouldn't, you know."

Ashley deigned no answer. The tramp went on in silence broken only by distant voices or a s.n.a.t.c.h of song from a students' club-house near the river. Somewhere in the direction of Brookline a locomotive kept up a puffing like the beating of a pulse.

"I don't need that money," Davenant began again. "There's more where it came from. I shall be out after it--from to-morrow on."

Ashley's silence was less from rudeness than from self-restraint. All his nerves were taut with the need to visit his troubles on some one's head. A soldiering life had not accustomed him to indefinite repression of his irritable impulses, and now after two or three days of it he was at the limit of his powers. It was partly because he knew his patience to be nearly at an end that he wanted to be alone. It was also because he was afraid of the blind fury with which Davenant's mere presence inspired him. While he expressed this fury to himself in epithets of scorn, he was aware, too, that there were shades of animosity in it for which he had no ready supply of terms. Such exclamatory fragments as forced themselves up through the troubled incoherence of his thoughts were of the nature of "d.a.m.ned American," "vulgar Yankee," "insolent bounder," rendering but inadequately the sentiments of a certain kind of Englishman toward his fancied typical American, a crafty Colossus who accomplishes everything by money and brutal strength. Had there been nothing whatever to create a special antagonism between them, Ashley's feeling toward Davenant would still have been that of a civilized Jack-the-Giant-Killer toward a stupendous, uncouth foe. It would have had elements in it of fear, jealousy, even of admiration, making at its best for suspicion and neutrality, and at its worst for.... But Davenant spoke again.

"I'd a great deal rather, Colonel, that--"

The very sound of his voice, with its harsh consonants and its absurd repet.i.tions of the military t.i.tle, grated insufferably on Ashley's ear.

He was beyond himself although he seemed cool.

"My good fellow, I don't care a hang what you'd a great deal rather."

Ashley lit a fresh cigarette with the end of the old one, throwing the stump into the river almost across Davenant's face, as the latter walked the nearer to the railing.

The American turned slightly and looked down. The action, taken in conjunction with his height and size and his refusal to be moved, intensified Ashley's rage, which began now to round on himself. Even the monotonous tramp-tramp of their footsteps, as the Embankment became more deserted, got on his nerves. It was long before Davenant made a new attempt to fulfil his mission.

"In saying what I said just now," he began, in what he tried to make a reasonable tone, "I've no ax to grind for myself. If Miss Guion--"

"We'll leave that name out," Ashley cried, sharply. "Only a d.a.m.ned cad would introduce it."

Though the movement with which Davenant swung his left arm through the darkness and with the back of his left hand struck Ashley on the mouth was so sudden as to surprise no one more than himself, it came with all the c.u.mulative effect of twenty-four hours' brooding. The same might be said of the spring with which Ashley bounded on his adversary. It had the agility and strength of a leopard's. Before Davenant had time to realize what he had done he found himself staggering--hurled against the iron railing, which threatened to give way beneath his weight. He had not taken breath when he was flung again. In the dim light of the electrics he could see the glare in Ashley's eyes and hear him panting.

Davenant, too, panted, but his wrath that had flared up like a rocket had already come down like a stick.

"Look here," he stammered; "we--we--c-can't do this sort of thing."

Ashley fell back. He, too, seemed to realize quickly the folly of the situation. When he spoke it was less in anger than in protest.

"By G.o.d, you struck me!"

"I didn't know it, Colonel. If I did, we're quits on it--because--because you insulted me. Perhaps you didn't know _that_.

I'm willing to think you didn't--if you'll only believe that the whole thing has been a mistake--a d.a.m.ned, idiotic, tom-fool mistake."

The words had their effect. Ashley fell back still farther. There was a sinking of his head and a shrinking of his figure that told of reaction from the moment of physical excess.

A roadside bench was visible beneath an arc-lamp but a few yards away.

"Come and sit down," Davenant said, hoa.r.s.ely. He found it difficult to speak.

Ashley stumbled along. He sat down heavily, like a man spent with fatigue or drink. With his elbows on his knees, he hid his face in his hands, while his body rocked.