The Street Called Straight Part 8

She was making it so hard for him that he kissed her hastily and went away. Her further enlightenment was one more detail that he must leave, as he had left so much else, to fate or G.o.d to take care of. For the present he himself had all he could attend to.

Half-way to the gate he turned to take what might prove his last look at the old house. It stood on the summit of a low, rounded hill, on the site made historic as the country residence of Governor Rodney. Governor Rodney's "Mansion" having been sacked in the Revolution by his fellow-townsmen, the neighborhood fell for a time into disrepute under the contemptuous nickname of Tory Hill. On the restoration of order the property, pa.s.sed by purchase to the Guions, in whose hands, with a continuity not customary in America, it had remained. The present house, built by Andrew Guion, on the foundations of the Rodney Mansion, in the early nineteenth century, was old enough according to New England standards to be venerable; and, though most of the ground originally about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to give an impression of ample outdoor s.p.a.ce. Against the blue of the October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was not without a certain stateliness--rectangular, three-storied, mellow, with buff walls, buff chimneys, white doorways, white cas.e.m.e.nts, white verandas, a white bal.u.s.trade around the top, and a white urn at each of the four corners. Where, as over the verandas, there was a bit of inclined roof, russet-red tiles gave a warmer touch of color. From the borders of the lawn, edged with a line of shrubs, the town of Waverton, merging into Cambridge, just now a stretch of crimson-and-orange woodland, where gables, spires, and towers peeped above the trees, sloped gently to the ribbon of the Charles. Far away, and dim in the morning haze, the roofed and steepled crest of Beacon Hill rose in successive ridges, to cast up from its highest point the gilded dome of the State House as culmination to the sky-line. Guion looked long and hard, first at the house, then at the prospect. He walked on only when he remembered that he must reserve his forces for the day's possibilities, that he must not drain himself of emotion in advance. If what he expected were to come to pa.s.s, the first essential to his playing the man at all would lie in his keeping cool.

So, on reaching his office, he brought all his knowledge of the world into play, to appear without undue self-consciousness before his stenographer, his bookkeeper, and his clerks. The ordeal was the more severe because of his belief that they were conversant with the state of his affairs. At least they knew enough to be sorry for him--of that he was sure; though there was nothing on this particular morning to display the sympathy, unless it was the stenographer's smile as he pa.s.sed her in the anteroom, and the three small yellow chrysanthemums she had placed in a gla.s.s on his desk. In the nods of greeting between him and the men there was, or there seemed to be, a studied effort to show nothing at all.

Once safely in his own office, he shut the door with a sense of relief in the seclusion. It crossed his mind that he should feel something of the same sort when locked in the privacy of his cell after the hideous publicity of the trial. From habit as well as from anxiety he went straight to a mirror and surveyed himself again. Decidedly he had changed since yesterday. It was not so much that he was older or more care-worn--he was different. Perhaps he was ill. He felt well enough, except for being tired, desperately tired; but that could be accounted for by the way in which he had spent the night. He noticed chiefly the ashy tint of his skin, the dullness of his eyes, and--notwithstanding the fact that his clothes were of his usual fastidiousness--a curious effect of being badly dressed more startling to him than pain. He was careful to brush his beard and twist his long mustache into its usual upward, French-looking curve, so as to regain as much as possible the air of his old self, before seating himself at his desk to look over his correspondence. There was a pile of letters, of which he read the addresses slowly without opening any of them.

What was the use? He could do nothing. He had come to the end. He had exhausted all the possibilities of the situation. Besides, his spirit was broken. He could feel it. Something snapped last night within him that would never be whole, never even be mended, again. It was not only the material resources under his control that he had overtaxed, but the spring of energy within himself, leaving him no more power of resilience.

An hour may have pa.s.sed in this condition of dull suspense, when he was startled by the tinkle of his desk telephone. It was with some effort that he leaned forward to answer the call. Not that he was afraid--now; he only shrank from the necessity of doing anything.

"Mr. Davenant would like to see you," came the voice of the stenographer from the anteroom.

There was nothing to reply but, "Ask Mr. Davenant to come in." He uttered the words mechanically. He had not thought of Davenant since he talked with Olivia on the stairs--a conversation that now seemed a curiously long time ago.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Guion," the visitor said, apologetically, with a glance at the letters on the desk.

"Not at all, my dear fellow," Guion said, cordially, from force of habit, offering his hand without rising from the revolving chair. "Sit down. Have a cigar. It's rather a sharp morning for the time of year."

The use of the conventional phrases of welcome helped him to emerge somewhat from his state of apathy. Davenant declined the cigar, but seated himself near the desk, in one of the round-backed office chairs.

Not being a man easily embarra.s.sed by silences, he did not begin to speak at once, and during the minute his hesitation lasted Guion bethought him of Olivia's remark, "That sort of Saxon-giant type is always good-looking." Davenant _was_ good-looking, in a clear-skinned, clear-eyed way. Everything about him spoke of straight-forwardness and strength, tempered perhaps by the boyish quality inseparable from fair hair, a clean, healthily ruddy complexion, and a direct blue glance that rested on men and things with a kind of pensive wondering. All the same, the heavy-browed face on a big, tense neck had a frowning, perhaps a lowering expression that reminded Guion of a young bull before he begins to charge. The lips beneath the fair mustache might be too tightly and too severely compressed, but the smile into which they broke over regular white teeth was the franker and the more engaging because of the unexpected light. If there was any physical awkwardness about him, it was in the management of his long legs; but that difficulty was overcome by his simplicity. It was characteristic of Guion to notice, even at such a time as this, that Davenant was carefully and correctly dressed, like a man respectful of social usages.

"I came in to see you, Mr. Guion," he began, apparently with some hesitation, "about what we were talking of last night."

Guion pulled himself together. His handsome eyebrows arched themselves, and he half smiled.

"Last night? What _were_ we talking of?"

"We weren't talking of it, exactly. You only told us."

"Only told you--what?" The necessity to do a little fencing brought some of his old powers into play.

"That you wanted to borrow half a million dollars. I've come in to--to lend you that sum--if you'll take it."

For a few seconds Guion sat rigidly still, looking at this man. The import and bearing of the words were too much for him to grasp at once.

All his mind was prepared to deal with on the spur of the moment was the fact of this offer, ignoring its application and its consequences as things which for the moment lay outside his range of thought.

As far as he was able to reflect, it was to a.s.sume that there was more here than met the eye. Davenant was too practised as a player of "the game" to pay a big price for a broken potsherd, unless he was tolerably sure in advance that within the potsherd or under it there lay more than its value. It was not easy to surmise the form of the treasure nor the spot where it was hidden, but that it was there--in kind satisfactory to Davenant himself--Guion had no doubt. It was his part, therefore, to be astute and wary, not to lose the chance of selling, and yet not to allow himself to be overreached. If Davenant was playing a deep game, he must play a deeper. He was sorry his head ached and that he felt in such poor trim for making the effort. "I must look sharp," he said to himself; "and yet I must be square and courteous. That's the line for me to take." He tried to get some inspiration for the spurt in telling himself that in spite of everything he was still a man of business. When at last he began to speak, it was with something of the feeling of the broken-down prize-fighter dragging himself bleeding and breathless into the ring for the last round with a young and still unspent opponent.

"I didn't suppose you were in--in a position--to do that."

"I am." Davenant nodded with some emphasis.

"Did you think that that was what I meant when I--I opened my heart to you last night?"

"No. I know it wasn't. My offer is inspired by nothing but what I feel."

"Good!" It was some minutes before Guion spoke again. "If I remember rightly," he observed then, "I said I would sell my soul for half a million dollars. I didn't say I wanted to borrow that amount."

"You may put it in any way you like," Davenant smiled. "I've come with the offer of the money. I want you to have it. The terms on which you'd take it don't matter to me."

"But they do to me. Don't you see? I'd borrow the money if I could. I couldn't accept it in any other way. And I can't borrow it. I couldn't pay the interest on it if I did. But I've exhausted my credit. I can't borrow any more."

"You can borrow what I'm willing to lend, can't you?"

"No; because Tory Hill is mortgaged for all it will stand. I've nothing else to offer as collateral--"

"I'm not asking for collateral. I'm ready to hand you over the money on any terms you like or on no terms at all."

"Do you mean that you'd be willing to--to--to _give_ it to me?"

"I mean, sir," he explained, reddening a little, "that I want you to have the money to _use_--now. We could talk about the conditions afterward and call them what you please. If I understood you correctly last night, you're in a tight place--a confoundedly tight place--"

"I am; but--don't be offended!--it seems to me you'd put me in a tighter."

"How's that?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I'VE DONE WRONG, BUT I'M WILLING TO PAY THE PENALTY"]

"It's a little difficult to explain." He leaned forward, with one of his nervous, jerky movements, and fingered the gla.s.s containing the three chrysanthemums, but without taking his eyes from Davenant. So far he was quite satisfied with himself. "You see, it's this way. I've done wrong--very wrong. We needn't go into that, because you know it as well as I. But I'm willing to pay the penalty. That is, I'm _ready_ to pay the penalty. I've made up my mind to it. I've had to--of course. But if I accepted your offer, you'd be paying it, not I."

"Well, why shouldn't I? I've paid other people's debts before now--once or twice--when I didn't want to. Why shouldn't I pay yours, when I should like the job?"

Davenant attempted, by taking something like a jovial tone, to carry the thing off lightly.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't do it; there's only a reason why I shouldn't let you."

"I don't see why you shouldn't let me. It mayn't be just what you'd like, but it's surely better than--than what you wouldn't like at all."

Taking in the significance of these words, Guion colored, not with the healthy young flush that came so readily to Davenant's face, but in dabbled, hectic spots. His hand trembled, too, so that some of the water from the vase he was holding spilled over on the desk. It was probably this small accident, making him forget the importance of his role, that caused him to jump up nervously and begin pacing about the room.

Davenant noticed then what he had not yet had time for--the change that had taken place in Guion in less than twenty hours. It could not be defined as looking older or haggard or ill. It could hardly be said to be a difference in complexion or feature or anything outward. As far as Davenant was able to judge, it was probably due, not to the loss of self-respect, but to the loss of the pretense at self-respect; it was due to that desolation of the personality that comes when the soul has no more reason to keep up its defenses against the world outside it, when the Beautiful Gate is battered down and the Veil of the Temple rent, while the Holy of Holies lies open for any eye to rifle. It was probably because this was so that Guion, on coming back to his seat, began at once to be more explanatory than there was any need for.

"I haven't tried to thank you for your kind suggestion, but we'll come to that when I see more clearly just what you want."

"I've told you that. I'm not asking for anything else."

"So far you haven't asked for anything at all; but I don't imagine you'll be content with that. In any case," he hurried on, as Davenant seemed about to speak, "I don't want you to be under any misapprehension about the affair. There's nothing extenuating in it whatever--that is, nothing but the intention to 'put it back' that goes with practically every instance of"--he hesitated long--"every instance of embezzlement,"

he finished, bravely. "It began this way--"

"I don't want to know how it began," Davenant said, hastily. "I'm satisfied with knowing the situation as it is."

"But I want to tell you. In proportion as I'm open with you I shall expect you to be frank with me."

"I don't promise to be frank with you."

"Anyhow, I mean to set you the example."