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 liabilities."
"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."
"Why? What has he to do with her?"
"Nothing, except that I suppose she must feel very grateful."
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."
"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 ent.i.tled to know _them_."
"So I should have said. Are there many more? I"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 Olivia found it difficult to speak of, and so I"m doing it for her."
"Why should she find it difficult to speak of? It"s a mere matter of business, I suppose."
"If it"s business to give Cousin Henry what would be nearly a hundred thousand pounds in English money, with no prospect that any one can see of his ever getting it back--that is, not unless old Madame de Melcourt--"
"Oh, I say! Then he"s one of your beastly millionaires, by Jove!--grind the noses off the poor, and that sort of thing, to play Haroun-al-Raschid with the cash."
"Not in the least. He never ground the nose off any one; and as for being a millionaire, father says that what he"s done for Cousin Henry will pretty well clean him out."
"All the same, he"s probably done it with a jolly sharp eye to the main chance."
"Oh, I dare say his motives weren"t altogether altruistic. Only it"s a little difficult to see where the main chance comes in."
"Then what the deuce is he up to?"
"I"m afraid I can"t tell you that. I repeat that I"m only giving you the facts. You must interpret them for yourself."
He looked thoughtful. Drusilla plucked a scarlet dahlia and fastened it in her dress, after which they strolled back slowly to the middle of the lawn. Here Ashley said:
"Has all this got anything to do with Olivia? I wish you wouldn"t make mysteries."
"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 drawing them yourself."
They wandered on a few yards, when he stopped again. "Look here," he said, with a sort of appealing 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 it not been for her fixed, steady smile.
"Have I ever been anything else with you?"
"No. You"ve been straight as a die. I"ll say that for you. You"ve been a good pal--a devilish good pal! But over here--in America--everything seems to go by enigmas--and puzzles--and surprises--"
"I"ll explain what I can to you," she said, with a heightened color, "but it won"t be so very easy. There are lots of people who, feeling as I do--toward Olivia--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!"
"But it isn"t so very easy," she repeated, pretending to rearrange the dahlia in her laces, so as to find a pretext for not looking him in the eyes. "It isn"t so very easy; and if--later on--in after years perhaps--when everything is long over--it ever strikes you that I didn"t play fair--it"ll be because I played _so_ fair that I laid myself open to that imputation. One can, you know. I only ask you to remember it.
That"s all."
Ashley was bewildered. He could follow little more than half of what she said. "More mysteries," he was sighing to himself as she spoke. "And such a color! That"s her strong point. Pity it only comes by fits and flashes. But, good Lord, what a country! Always something queer and new."
"Good-by," she said, offering her hand before he had time to emerge from his meditations. "We shall see you to-morrow evening. And, by the way, we dine at half-past seven. We"re country people here, and primitive.
No; don"t come to the gate. Olivia must be wondering where you are."
He looked after her as she tripped over the lawn toward the roadway, still holding her long-handled, beribboned, eighteenth-century sunshade with the daintiness of a Watteau shepherdess holding a crook.
"She"s a good "un," he said to himself. "Straight as a die, she is--and true as steel."
None the less he was glad when she left him.
XVI
Ashley wanted to be alone. He needed solitude in order to face the stupendous bit of information Mrs. Fane had given him. Everything else he had heard during the past twenty-four hours he had felt himself more or less competent to meet. True, his meeting it would be at a sacrifice and the probable loss of some of the best things he had hoped and worked for; but he should have the satisfaction that comes to every man of honor when he has done a brave thing well. There would be something, too, in giving the lie to people who accused him of having no thought but for his own advancement. He had been sensitive to that charge, because of the strain of truth in it, and yet had seen no means of counteracting it. Very well; he should counteract it now.
Since there was no way out of the situation he had found in America--that is, no way consistent with self-respect--it was characteristic of him, both as diplomatist and master of tactics, to review what was still in his favor. He called himself to witness that he had wasted no time in repining. He had risen to the circ.u.mstances as fast as nature would permit, and adapted himself right on the spur of the moment to an entirely new outlook on the future. Moreover, he had been able to detach Olivia herself from the degrading facts surrounding her, seeing her, as he had seen her from the first, holy and stainless, untouched by conditions through which few women could pa.s.s without some personal deterioration. In his admiration and loyalty he had not wavered for a second. On the contrary, he was sure that he should love her the more intensely, in spite of, and perhaps because of, her misfortunes.
He felt free, therefore, to resent this new revelation so fantastically out of proportion to the harmony of life. It was the most staggering thing he had ever heard of. An act such as that with which Drusilla credited Davenant brought into daily existence a feature too prodigious to find room there. Or, rather, having found the room through sheer force of its own bulk, it dwarfed everything else into insignificance.
It hid all objects and blocked all ways. You could get neither round it nor over it nor through it. You could not even turn back and ignore it.