"It isn't the most important thing in the world for her," he whispered to himself, "to marry—the man she cares for."
There was a renewal of his blind fury against Ashley, while at the same time he found himself groaning, inwardly: "I wish to God the man she cares for wasn't such a—such a—trump!"
XVIII
hen the colonel of the Sussex Rangers woke on the following morning the Umfraville element in him, fatigued doubtless with the demands of the previous day, still slept on. That strain in him which had made his maternal ancestors gentlemen-adventurers in Tudor times, and cavaliers in the days of Charles the First, and Jacobites with James the Second, and roysterers with George the Fourth—loyal, swashbuckling, and impractical, daring, dashing, lovable, absurd, bound to come to grief one day or another, as they had come—that strain lying dormant, Ashley was free to wake in the spirit of the manufacturer of brushes. In other words he woke in alarm. It was very real alarm. It was alarm not unlike that of the gambler who realizes in the cold stare of morning that for a night's excitement he has thrown away a fortune.
The feeling was so dreadful that, as he lay for a few minutes with his eyes closed, he could say without exaggeration that he had never felt anything so sickening in his life. It was worse than the blue funk that attended the reveille for his first battle—worse than the bluer remorse that had come with the dawn after some of his more youthful sprees. The only parallel to it he could find was in the desolation of poor creatures he had seen, chiefly in India, reduced suddenly by fire, flood, or earthquake to the skin they stood in and a lodging on the ground. His swaggering promises of yesterday had brought him as near as possible to that.
Fortunately, when he had sprung out of bed the feeling became less poignant. By the time he had had his bath and his breakfast it had got itself within the limits of what could be expressed in the statement: "I've been a jolly ass."
Though there was no denying this fact, he could nevertheless use the reproach in its precise signification. He was not a jolly ass because he had remained true to Olivia Guion, but because of the extravagant methods of his faithfulness. No one but an Umfraville, he declared, would have hesitated to accept the status quo. Considering that in spite of everything he was still eager to give Olivia the shelter of his name and the advantages of his position, his insistence on doing more fell short of the grotesque.
Nevertheless he had insisted on it, and it was too late to shrink from making good his offer. No doubt, if he did so shrink, Olivia would commend him; but it would be a commendation not inconsistent with a fall in her esteem. His nerves still tingled with the joy of hearing her say, as she had said yesterday: "You're the noblest man in the world; I never dreamed there could be any one like you." She was so sparing with her words that these meant more from her than from another. If she used them, it was because she thought he was the noblest man in the world and because he did surpass her dreams. This was setting up the standard in a way that permitted no falling short of it. He must be Rupert Ashley at his best even if the world went to pieces while he made the attempt. Moreover, if he failed, there was always Peter Davenant ready to loom up above him. "I must keep higher than him," he said to himself, "whatever it costs me." So, little by little, the Umfraville in him also woke, with its daredevil chivalry. It might be said to have urged him on, while the Ashley prudence held him back, when from his room in the hotel he communicated by telephone with Olivia, begging her to arrange an interview between Guion and himself about eleven o'clock.