The Street Called Straight | Page 5

in a partner or two, and gradually
shift his business into their hands. That wouldn't take more than a
couple of years at longest. Then he's going to retire, and come to live
near me in England. Rupert says there's a small place close to Heneage
that would just suit him. Papa has always liked the English hunting
country, and so--"
"And so everything will be for the best," Rodney Temple finished.
"There's nothing like a fresh young mind, like a young lady's, for
settling business affairs. It would have taken you or me a long time to
work that plan out, wouldn't it, Henry? We should be worried over the
effect on our trusteeships and the big estates we've had the care of--"
"What about the big estates?"
Davenant noticed the tone in which Guion brought out this question,
though it was an hour later before he understood its significance. It was
a sharp tone, the tone of a man who catches an irritating word or two
among remarks he has scarcely followed. Temple apparently had meant
to call it forth, since he answered, with the slightest possible air of
intention:
"Oh, nothing--except what I hear."
While Miss Guion and Mrs. Fane chatted of their own affairs Davenant
remarked the way in which Henry Guion paused, his knife and fork
fixed in the chicken wing on his plate, and gazed at his old friend. He
bent slightly forward, too, looking, with his superb head and bust
slightly French in style, very handsome and imposing.
"Then you've been--hearing--things?"
Rodney Temple lowered his eyes in a way that confirmed
Davenant--who knew his former guardian's tricks of manner--in his
suppositions. He was so open in countenance that anything
momentarily veiled on his part, either in speech or in address, could
reasonably be attributed to stress of circumstances. The broad forehead,
straight-forward eyes, and large mouth imperfectly hidden by a shaggy

beard and mustache, were of the kind that lend themselves to lucidity
and candor. Externally he was the scholar, as distinct from the
professional man or the "divine." His figure--tall, large-boned, and
loose-jointed--had the slight stoop traditionally associated with study,
while the profile was thrust forward as though he were peering at
something just out of sight. A courtly touch in his style was probably a
matter of inheritance, as was also his capacity for looking suitably
attired while obviously neglectful of appearances. His thick, lank,
sandy hair, fading to white, and long, narrow, stringy beard of the same
transitional hue were not well cared for; and yet they helped to give
him a little of the air of a Titian or Velasquez nobleman. In answer to
Guion now, he spoke without lifting his eyes from his plate.
"Have I been hearing things? N-no; only that the care of big estates is a
matter of great responsibility--and anxiety."
"That's what I tell papa," Miss Guion said, warmly, catching the
concluding words. "It's a great responsibility and anxiety. He ought to
be free from it. I tell him my marriage is a providential hint to him to
give up work."
"Perhaps I sha'n't get the chance. Work may give up--me."
"I wish it would, papa. Then everything would be settled."
"Some things would be settled. Others might be opened--for
discussion."
If Rodney Temple had not lifted his eyes in another significant look
toward Guion, Davenant would have let these sentences pass unheeded.
As it was, his attention was directed to possible things, or impossible
things, left unsaid. For a second or two he was aware of an odd
suspicion, but he brushed it away as absurd, in view of the
self-assurance with which Guion roused himself at last to enter into the
conversation, which began immediately to turn on persons of whom
Davenant had no knowledge.
The inability to follow closely gave him time to make a few superficial

observations regarding his host. In spite of the fact that Guion had been
a familiar figure to him ever since his boyhood, he now saw him at
really close range for the first time in years.
What struck him most was the degree to which Guion conserved his
quality of Adonis. Long ago renowned, in that section of American
society that clings to the cities and seaboard between Maine and
Maryland, as a fine specimen of manhood, he was perhaps handsomer
now, with his noble, regular features, his well-trimmed, iron-gray beard,
and his splendid head of iron-gray hair, than he had been in his youth.
Reckoning roughly, Davenant judged him to be sixty. He had been a
personage prominently in view in the group of cities formed by Boston,
Cambridge, and Waverton, ever since Davenant could remember him.
Nature having created Guion an ornament to his kind, fate had been
equally beneficent in ordaining that he