Part 45 (1/2)

”Oh, I have. A woman's eye sees those little things, don't you think?

Men have so much on their hands--the great things of the world--but the little things, they often count, don't you think? But I tell dear Olivia not to worry. Everything will come right. Things do come right--very often. I'm more pessimistic than Rodney--that I must say. But still I think things have a way of coming right when we least expect it. I tell dear Olivia that Peter will send a line just when we're not looking for it. It's the watched pot that never boils, you know, and so I tell her to stop watching for the postman. That's fatal to getting a letter--watching for the postman. How snug you two look here together!

Well, I'll run up and take off my things. No; no more tea, dear. I won't say good-by, Colonel Ashley, because you'll be here when I come down.”

Mrs. Temple was a good woman who would have been astonished to hear herself accused of falsehood but, as a matter of fact, her account of the conversation with Olivia bore little relation to the conversation itself. What she had actually said was:

”Poor Peter! I suppose he doesn't write because he's trying to forget.”

The challenge here being so direct, Olivia felt it her duty to take it up. The ladies were engaged in sorting the linen in preparation for the sale.

”Forget what?”

”Forget Drusilla, I suppose. Hasn't it struck you--how much he was in love with her?”

Olivia held a table-cloth carefully to the light. ”Is this Irish linen or German? I know mamma did get some at Dresden--”

Mrs. Temple pointed out the characteristic of the Belfast weave and pressed her question. ”Haven't you noticed it--about Peter?”

Olivia tried to keep her voice steady as she said: ”I've no doubt I should have seen it if I hadn't been so preoccupied.”

”Some people think--Rodney, for instance--that he'd lost his head about you, dear; but we mothers have an insight--”

”Of course! There seems to be one missing from the dozen of this pattern.”

”Oh, it'll turn up. It's probably in the pile over there. I thought I'd speak about it, dear,” she went on, ”because it must be a relief to you not to have that complication. Things are so complicated already, don't you think? But if you haven't Peter on your mind, why, that's one thing the less to worry about. If you thought he was in love with you, dear--in your situation--going to be married to some one else--But you needn't be afraid of that at all. I never saw a young man more in love with any one than he is with Drusilla--and I think she must have refused him. If she hadn't he would never have shot off in that way, like a bolt from the blue--But what's the matter, dear? You look white. You're not ill?”

”It's the smell of lavender,” Olivia gasped, weakly. ”I never could endure it. I'll just run into the air a minute--”

This was all that pa.s.sed between Olivia and Mrs. Temple on the subject.

If the latter reported it with suppressions and amplifications it was doubtless due to her knowledge of what could be omitted as well as of what would have been said had the topic been pursued. In any case it caused her to sigh and mumble as she went on with her task of folding and unfolding and of examining textures and designs:

”Oh, how mixy! Such sixes and sevens! Everything the wrong way round! My poor Drusilla!--my poor little girlie! And such a good position! Just what she's capable of filling!--as well as Olivia--better, with all her experience of their army. ”Tis better to have loved and lost,' dear Tennyson says; but I don't know. Besides, she's done that already--with poor Gerald--and now, to have to face it all a second time--my poor little girlie!”

As for Olivia, she felt an overpowering desire to flee away. Speeding through the house, where workmen were nailing up cases or sacking rugs, she felt that she was fleeing--fleeing anywhere--anywhere--to hide herself. As a matter of fact, the flight was inward, for there was nowhere to go but to her room. Her way was down the short staircase from the attic and along a hall; but it seemed to her that she lived through a succession of emotional stages in the two or three minutes it took to cover it. Her first wild cry ”It isn't true! It isn't true!” was followed by the question ”Why shouldn't it be true?” to end with her asking herself: ”What difference does it make to me?”

”What difference _can_ it make to me?”

She had reached that form of the query by the time she took up her station at the window of her room, to stare blankly at the November landscape. She saw herself face to face now with the question which, during the past month, ever since Davenant's sudden disappearance, she had used all her resources to evade. That it would one day force itself upon her she knew well enough; but she hoped, too, that before there was time for that she would have p.r.o.nounced her marriage vows, and so burned her bridges behind her. Amid the requirements of duty, which seemed to s.h.i.+ft from week to week, the one thing stable was the necessity on her part to keep her promise to the man who had stood by her so n.o.bly. If once it had seemed to her that Davenant's demands--whatever they might prove to be--would override all others, it was now quite clear that Ashley's claim on her stood first of all. He had been so loyal, so true, so indifferent to his own interests! Besides, he loved her. It was now quite another love from that of the romantic knight who had wooed a gracious lady in the little house at Southsea. That tapestry-tale had ended on the day of his arrival at Tory Hill. In its place there had risen the tested devotion of a man for a woman in great trouble, compelled to deal with the most sordid things in life. He had refused to be spared any of the details she would have saved him from or to turn away from any of the problems she was obliged to face. His very revolt against it, that repugnance to the necessity for doing it which he was not at all times able to conceal, made his self-command in bringing himself to it the more worthy of her esteem. He had the defects of his qualities and the prejudices of his cla.s.s and profession; but over and above these pardonable failings he had the marks of a hero.

And now there was this thing!

She had descried it from afar. She had had a suspicion of it before Davenant went away. It had not created a fear; it was too strange and improbable for that; but it had brought with it a sense of wonder. She remembered the first time she had felt it, this sense of wonder, this sense of something enchanted, outside life and the earth's atmosphere.

It was at that moment on the lawn when, after the unsuccessful meeting between Ashley and Davenant, she had turned with the latter to go into the house. That there was a protective, intimate element in her feeling she had known on the instant; but what she hadn't known on the instant, but was perfectly aware of now, was that her whole subconscious being, had been crying out even then: ”My own! My own!”

With the exaggeration of this thought she was able to get herself in hand. She was able to debate so absurd a suggestion, to argue it down, and turn it into ridicule. But she yielded again as the Voice that talked with her urged the plea: ”I didn't say you knew it consciously.

You couldn't cry 'My own! My own!' to a man whom up to that point you had treated with disdain. But your subliminal being had begun to know him, to recognize him as--”

To elude this fancy she set herself to recapitulating his weak points.