The Street Called Straight | Page 7

now that it was a field on which he never could have won. Within
"the best Boston society" he might have had a chance, though even
there it must have been a poor one; but out here in the open, so to speak,
where the prowess and chivalry of Christendom furnished his
competitors, he had been as little in the running as a mortal at a contest
of the gods. That he was no longer in love with her he had known years
ago; but it palliated somewhat his old humiliation, it made the word
failure easier to swallow down, to perceive that his love, when it
existed, had been doomed, from the nature of things and in advance, to
end in nothing, like that of the nightingale for the moon.
* * * * *
By dwelling too pensively on these thoughts he found he had missed
some of the turns of the talk, his attention awakening to hear Henry
Guion say:
"That's all very fine, but a man doesn't risk everything he holds dear in
the world to go cheating at cards just for the fun of it. You may depend
upon it he had a reason."
"Oh, he had a reason," Mrs. Fane agreed--"the reason of being hard up.
The trouble lay in its not being good enough."

"I imagine it was good enough for him, poor devil."
"But not for any one else. He was drummed out. There wasn't a soul in
the regiment to speak to him. We heard that he took another name and
went abroad. Anyhow, he disappeared. It was all he could do. He was
lucky to get off with that; wasn't he, Peter? wasn't he, father?"
"What he got off with," said Guion, "was a quality of tragic interest
which never pertains to the people who stick to the Street called
Straight."
"Oh, certainly," Mrs. Fane assented, dryly. "He did acquire that. But
I'm surprised to hear you commend it; aren't you, father? aren't you,
Peter?"
"I'm not commending it," Guion asserted; "I only feel its force. I've a
great deal of sympathy with any poor beggar in his--downfall."
"Since when?"
The look with which Rodney Temple accompanied the question once
more affected Davenant oddly. It probably made the same impression
on Guion, since he replied with a calmness that seemed studied:
"Since--lately. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, for no reason. It only strikes me as curious that your sympathy
should take that turn."
"Precisely," Miss Guion chimed in. "It's not a bit like you, papa. You
used to be harder on dishonorable things than any one."
"Well, I'm not now."
It was clear to Davenant by this time that in these words Guion was not
so much making a statement as flinging a challenge. He made that
evident by the way in which he sat upright, squared his shoulders, and
rested a large, white fist clenched upon the table. His eyes, too, shone,
glittered rather, with a light quite other than that which a host usually

turns upon his guests. To Davenant, as to Mrs. Temple, it seemed as if
he had "something on his mind"--something of which he had a
persistent desire to talk covertly, in the way in which an undetected
felon will risk discovery to talk about the crime.
No one else apparently at the table shared this impression. Rodney
Temple, with eyes pensively downcast, toyed with the seeds of a pear,
while Miss Guion and Mrs. Fane began speaking of some other
incident of what to them was above everything else, "the Service." A
minute or two later Olivia rose.
"Come, Cousin Cherry. Come, Drusilla," she said, with her easy,
authoritative manner. Then, apparently with an attempt to make up for
her neglect of Davenant, she said, as she held the door open for the
ladies to pass: "Don't let them keep you here forever. We shall be
terribly dull till you join us."
He was not too dense to comprehend that the words were conventional,
as the smile she flung him was perfunctory. Nevertheless, the little
attention pleased him.

II
The three men being left together, Davenant's conviction of inner
excitement on the part of his host was deepened. It was as if, on the
withdrawal of the ladies, Guion had less intention of concealing it. Not
that at first he said anything directly or acted otherwise than as a man
with guests to entertain. It was only that he threw into the task of
offering liqueurs and passing cigars a something febrile that caused his
two companions to watch him quietly. Once or twice Davenant caught
Temple's eye; but with a common impulse each hastily looked
elsewhere.
"So, Mr. Davenant, you've come back to us. Got here only this
afternoon, didn't you? I wonder why