The Street Called Straight

The Street Called Straight, by
Basil King

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Title: The Street Called Straight
Author: Basil King
Release Date: December 20, 2004 [EBook #14394]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT
A NOVEL

BY
BASIL KING
AUTHOR OF THE INNER SHRINE, THE WILD OLIVE, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY ORSON LOWELL
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
1911, 1912. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED MAY, 1912
"By the Street Called Straight we come to the House called Beautiful"
--New England Saying

THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT

I
As a matter of fact, Davenant was under no illusions concerning the
quality of the welcome his hostess was according him, though he found
a certain pleasure in being once more in her company. It was not a keen
pleasure, but neither was it an embarrassing one; it was exactly what he
supposed it would be in case they ever met again--a blending on his
part of curiosity, admiration, and reminiscent suffering out of which
time and experience had taken the sting. He retained the memory of a
minute of intense astonishment once upon a time, followed by some
weeks, some months perhaps, of angry humiliation; but the years
between twenty-four and thirty-three are long and varied, generating in
healthy natures plenty of saving common sense. Work, travel, and a
widened knowledge of men and manners had so ripened Davenant's
mind that he was able to see his proposal now as Miss Guion must have

seen it then, as something so incongruous and absurd as not only to
need no consideration, but to call for no reply. Nevertheless, it was the
refusal on her part of a reply, of the mere laconic No which was all that,
in his heart of hearts, he had ever expected, that rankled in him longest;
but even that mortification had passed, as far as he knew, into the limbo
of extinct regrets. For her present superb air of having no recollection
of his blunder he had nothing but commendation. It was as becoming to
the spirited grace of its wearer as a royal mantle to a queen. Carrying it
as she did, with an easy, preoccupied affability that enabled her to look
round him and over him and through him, to greet him and converse
with him, without seeming positively to take in the fact of his existence,
he was permitted to suppose the incident of their previous acquaintance,
once so vital to himself, to have been forgotten. If this were so, it
would be nothing very strange, since a woman of twenty-seven, who
has had much social experience, may be permitted to lose sight of the
more negligible of the conquests she has made as a girl of eighteen. She
had asked him to dinner, and placed him honorably at her right; but
words could not have made it plainer than it was that he was but an
accident to the occasion.
He was there, in short, because he was staying with Mr. and Mrs.
Temple. After a two years' absence from New England he had arrived
in Waverton that day, "Oh, bother! bring him along," had been the
formula in which Miss Guion had conveyed his invitation, the dinner
being but an informal, neighborly affair. Two or three wedding gifts
having arrived from various quarters of the world, it was natural that
Miss Guion should want to show them confidentially to her dear friend
and distant relative, Drusilla Fane. Mrs. Fane had every right to this
privileged inspection, since she had not only timed her yearly visit to
her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Temple, so that it should synchronize with
the wedding, but had introduced Olivia to Colonel Ashley, in the first
place. Indeed, there had been a rumor at Southsea, right up to the time
of Miss Guion's visit to the pretty little house on the Marine Parade,
that the colonel's calls and attentions there had been not unconnected
with Mrs. Fane herself; but rumor in British naval and military stations
is notoriously overactive, especially in matters of the heart. Certain it is,
however, that when the fashionable London papers announced that a

marriage had been arranged, and would shortly take place, between
Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Ashley, of the Sussex Rangers, and of
Heneage