Part 28 (1/2)
XV
Meanwhile, down on the lawn, Drusilla and Ashley were talking things over from their own points of view. There had been a second of embarra.s.sment when they were first left alone, which Drusilla got over by pointing with her parasol to an indistinguishable spot in the stretch of tree-tops, spires, and gables sloping from the gate, saying:
”That's our house--the one with the little white cupola.”
He made no pretense to listen or to look. ”She says she doesn't want to marry me.”
He made the statement dispa.s.sionately, as though laying down a subject for academic discussion.
It was some little time before she could think what to say.
”Well, that doesn't surprise me,” she risked at last.
”Doesn't surprise you?”
She shook her head. ”On the contrary, I should be very much astonished if she did--now. I should be astonished at any woman in her position wanting to marry a man in yours.”
”I don't care a hang for my position.”
”Oh yes, you do. And even if you didn't, it wouldn't matter. It's naturally a case in which you and she have to see from different angles.
With you it's a point of honor to stand by her; with her it's the same thing not to let you.”
”In honor it's the positive, not the negative, that takes precedence, and the positive happens to be mine.”
”I don't think you can argue that way, you know. What takes precedence of everything else is--common sense.”
”And do you mean to say that common sense requires that she shall give me up?”
”I shouldn't go so far as to a.s.sert that. But I shouldn't mind saying that if she did give you up there'd be a lot of common sense in her doing it.”
”On whose account? Mine?”
”Yes; and hers. Perhaps chiefly on hers. You can hardly realize the number of things she has to take care of--and you'd be one more.”
”I confess I don't seize your drift.”
”It's not very abstruse, however. Just think. It isn't as if Cousin Henry had fallen ill, or had died, or had gone to pieces in any of the ordinary ways. Except for his own discomfort, he might just as well have been tried and sentenced and sent to prison. He's been as good as there.
Every one knows it's only a special providence that he didn't go. But if he's escaped that by the skin of his teeth, he hasn't escaped a lot of other things. He hasn't escaped being without a penny in the world. He hasn't escaped having his house sold over his head 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 suppose 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. You 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 sc.r.a.pe as Cousin Henry's--which isn'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 circ.u.mstances you couldn't possibly blend with. It would be worse than singing one tune to an orchestra playing another.
She'd go mad with the attempt.”
”Possibly; except for one factor which you've overlooked.”