The Street Called Straight | Page 9

much longer. I got the impression at dinner that you'd heard something already."
"Nothing but gossip, Henry."
Guion smiled, but with a wince. "I've noticed," he said, "that there's a certain kind of gossip that rarely gets about unless there's some cause for it--on the principle of no smoke without fire. If you've heard anything, it's probably true."
"I was afraid it might be. But in that case I wonder you allowed Olivia to go ahead."
"I had to let fate take charge of that. When a man gets himself so entangled in a coil of barbed wire that he trips whichever way he turns, his only resource is to stand still. That's my case." He poured himself out another glass of cognac, and tasted it before continuing. "Olivia goes over to England, and gets herself engaged to a man I never heard of. Good! She fixes her wedding-day without consulting me and irrespective of my affairs. Good again! She's old enough to do it, and quite competent. Meanwhile I lose control of the machine, so to speak. I see myself racing on to something, and can't stop. I can only lie back and watch, to see what happens. I've got to leave that to fate, or God, or whatever it is that directs our affairs when we can no longer manage them ourselves." He took another sip of cognac, and pulled for a minute nervously at his cigar. "I thought at first that Olivia might be married and get, off before anything happened. Now, it looks to me as if there was going to be a smash. Rupert Ashley arrives in three or four days' time, and then--"
"You don't think he'd want to back out, do you?"
"I haven't the remotest idea. From Olivia's description he seems like a decent sort; and yet--"
Davenant got to, his feet. "Shouldn't you like me to go back to the ladies? You want to talk to the professor--"
"No, no," Guion said, easily, pushing Davenant into his seat again. "There's no reason why you shouldn't hear anything I have to say. The whole town will know it soon. You can't conceal a burning house; and Tory Hill is on fire. I may be spending my last night under its roof."
"They'll not rush things like that," Temple said, tying to speak reassuringly.
"They haven't rushed things as it is. I've come to the end of a very long tether. I only want you to know that by this time to-morrow night I may have taken Kipling's Strange Ride with Morrowby Jukes to the Land of the Living Dead. If I do, I sha'n't come back--accept bail, or that sort of thing. I can't imagine anything more ghastly than for a man to be hanging around among his old friends, waiting for a--for a"--he balked at the word--"for a trial," he said at last, "that can have only one ending. No! I'm ready to ride away when they call for me--but they won't find me pining for freedom."
"Can't anything be done?"
"Not for me, Rodney. If Rupert Ashley will only look after Olivia, I shan't mind what happens next. Men have been broken on the wheel before now. I think I can go through it as well as another. But if Ashley should fail us--and of course that's possible--well, you see why I feel as I do about her falling out with the old Marquise. Aunt Vic has always made much of her--and she's very well off--"
"Is there nothing to be expected in that quarter for yourself?"
Guion shook his head. "I couldn't ask her--not at the worst. In the natural course of things Olivia and I would be her heirs--that is, if she didn't do something else with her money--but she's still in the early seventies, and may easily go on for a long time yet. Any help there is very far in the future, so that--"
"Ashley, I take it, is a man of some means?"
"Of comfortable means--no more. He has an entailed property in the Midlands and his pay. As he has a mother and two sisters to pension off, Olivia begged to have no settlements made upon herself. He wanted to do it, after the English fashion, but I think she showed good feeling in declining it. Naturally, I approved of her doing it, knowing how many chances there were that I mightn't be able to--to play up--myself."
After this conversation Davenant could not but marvel at the ease with which their host passed the cigars again and urged him personally to have another glass of Chartreuse. "Then suppose we join the ladies," he added, when further hospitality was declined.
Guion took the time to fleck a few specks of cigar-ash from his shirt-bosom and waistcoat, thus allowing Rodney Temple to pass out first. When alone with Davenant he laid his hand upon