Part 46 (1/2)
Drusilla went on counting. ”Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. That's all of that set. What a lot of silver you've got! And some of it must have been in the family for thousands of years. Yes,” she added, in another tone, ”yes, he did. He said he wasn't.”
Olivia laid down the ladle she was holding with infinite precaution. She had got the stab she was looking for. It seemed for a minute as if she was free--gloatingly free. He hadn't cared anything about her after all, and had said so! She steadied herself by holding to the edge of the sideboard.
Drusilla stooped to the basket of silver standing on the floor, in a seemingly pa.s.sionate desire for more forks. By the time she had straightened herself again, Olivia was able to say: ”I'm so glad of that. You know what his kindness in helping papa has made people think, don't you?”
But Mrs. Fane astonished her by throwing down her handful of silver with unnecessary violence of clang and saying: ”Look here, Olivia, I'd rather not talk about it any more. I've reasons. I can't take a hand in your affairs without being afraid that perhaps--perhaps--I--I--sha'n't play the game.”
Olivia was silent, but she had much to think of.
It was a few days later still that she found herself in Rodney Temple's little office in the Gallery of Fine Arts. She had come ostensibly to tell him that everything had been arranged for the sale.
”Lemon and Company think that early in December would be the best time, as people are beginning then to spend money for Christmas. Mr. Lemon seems to think we've got a good many things the smaller connoisseurs will want. The servants are to go next Tuesday, so that if you and Cousin Cherry could take papa then--I'm to stay with Lulu Sentner; and I shall go from her house to be married--some day, when everything else is settled. Did you know that before Mr. Davenant went away he left a small bank account for papa?--two or three thousand dollars--so that we have money to go on with. Rupert wants to spend a week or two in New York and Was.h.i.+ngton, after which we shall come back here and pick up papa. He's not very keen on coming with us, but I simply couldn't--”
He nodded at the various points in her recital, blinking at her searchingly out of his kind old eyes.
”You look pale,” he said, ”and old. You look forty.”
She surprised him by saying, with a sudden outburst: ”Cousin Rodney, do you think it's any harm for a woman to marry one man when she's in love with another?” Before he had time to recover himself, she followed this question with a second. ”Do you think it's possible for a person to be in love with two people at the same time?”
He understood now the real motive of her visit.
”I'm not a very good judge of love affairs,” he said, after a minute's reflection. ”But one thing I know, and it's this--that when we do our duty we don't have to bother with the question as to whether it's any harm or not.”
”We may do our duty, and still make people unhappy.”
”No; not unless we do it in the wrong way.”
”So that if I feel that to go on and keep my word is the right thing--or rather the only thing--?”
”That settles it, dearie. The right thing _is_ the only thing--and it makes for everybody's happiness.”
”Even if it seems that it--it _couldn't_?”
”I'm only uttering plat.i.tudes, dearie, when I say that happiness is the flower of right. No other plant can grow it; and that plant can't grow any other flower. When you've done the thing you feel you're called to do--the thing you couldn't refuse while still keeping your self-respect--well, then, you needn't be afraid that any one will suffer in the long run--and yourself least of all.”
”In the long run! That means--”
”Oh, there may be a short run. I'm not denying that. But no one worth his salt would be afraid of it. And that, dearie,” he added, blinking, ”is all I know about love affairs.”
There being no one in the gallery on which the office opened, she kissed him as she thanked him and went away. She walked homeward, taking the more retired streets through Cambridge and into Waverton, so as to be the more free for thinking. It was a relief to her to have spoken out. Oddly enough, she felt her heart lighter toward Davenant from the mere fact of having told some one, or having partially told some one, that she loved him.
When, on turning in at the gate of Tory Hill, she saw a taxicab standing below the steps of the main entrance, she was not surprised, since Ashley occasionally took one to run out from town. But when a little lady in furs and an extravagant hat stepped out to pay the chauffeur Olivia stopped to get her breath. If it hadn't been impossible she would have said--
But the taxicab whizzed away, and the little lady tripped up the steps.
Olivia felt herself unable to move. The motor throbbed past her, and out the gate, but she still stood incapable of going farther. It seemed long before the pent-up emotions of the last month or two, controlled, repressed, unacknowledged, as they had been, found utterance in one loud cry: ”Aunt Vic!”
Not till that minute had she guessed her need of a woman, a Guion, one of her very own, a mother, on whose breast to lay her head and weep her cares out.