human
Well, that doesn't surprise me,
gpt
Doesn't surprise you?
human
On the contrary, I should be very much astonished if she did--now. I should be astonished at any woman in her position wanting to marry a man in yours.
gpt
I don't care a hang for my position.
human
Oh yes, you do. And even if you didn't, it wouldn't matter. It's naturally a case in which you and she have to see from different angles. With you it's a point of honor to stand by her; with her it's the same thing not to let you.
gpt
In honor it's the positive, not the negative, that takes precedence, and the positive happens to be mine.
human
I don't think you can argue that way, you know. What takes precedence of everything else is--common sense.
gpt
And do you mean to say that common sense requires that she shall give me up?
human
I shouldn't go so far as to assert that. But I shouldn't mind saying that if she did give you up there'd be a lot of common sense in her doing it.
gpt
On whose account? Mine?
human
Yes; and hers. Perhaps chiefly on hers. You can hardly realize the number of things she has to take care of--and you'd be one more.
gpt
I confess I don't seize your drift.
human
It's not very abstruse, however. Just think. It isn't as if Cousin Henry had fallen ill, or had died, or had gone to pieces in any of the ordinary ways. Except for his own discomfort, he might just as well have been tried and sentenced and sent to prison. He's been as good as there. Every one knows it's only a special providence that he didn't go. But if he's escaped that by the skin of his teeth, he hasn't escaped a lot of other things. He hasn't escaped being without a penny in the world. He hasn't escaped having his house sold over his head and being turned out into the streets. He hasn't escaped reaching a perfectly impotent old age, with not a soul on this earth to turn to but Olivia.
gpt
What about me?
human
Would _you_ take him?
gpt
I shouldn't _take_ him exactly. If he was my father-in-law --he made a little grimace--
human
I suppose I could pension him off somewhere, or board him out, like an old horse. One couldn't have him round.
gpt
H'm! I dare say that would do--but I doubt it. If you'd ever been a daughter you might feel that you couldn't dispose of a poor, old, broken-down father quite so easily. After all, he's not a horse. You might more or less forsake him when all was going well, and yet want to stick to him through thick and thin if he came a cropper. Look at me! I go off and leave my poor old dad for a year and more at a time--because he's a saint; but if he wasn't--especially if he'd got into any such scrape as Cousin Henry's--which isn't thinkable--but if he did--I'd never leave him again. That's my temperament. It's every girl's temperament. It's Olivia's. But all that is neither here nor there. If she married you, her whole life would be given up to trying to make you blend with a set of circumstances you couldn't possibly blend with. It would be worse than singing one tune to an orchestra playing another. She'd go mad with the attempt.
human
Possibly; except for one factor which you've overlooked.
gpt
Oh, love! Yes, yes. I thought you'd say that. Drusilla tossed her hands impatiently.
human
Love will do a lot, but it won't do everything. You can't count on it to work miracles in a sophisticated company like the Sussex Rangers. They've passed the age of faith for that sort of thing.
gpt
I don't see, he said, speaking very slowly,
human
Do you mean that you'd--send in your papers?
gpt
Only in the sense that if my wife wasn't happy in the Service we could get out of it.
human
Then you're really so much in love that you'd be willing to throw up everything on account of it?
gpt
Willing or unwilling isn't to the point. Surely you see that as far as public opinion goes I'm dished either way. The more I think of it the plainer it becomes. If I marry Olivia I let myself in for connection with a low-down scandal; if I don't, then they'll say I left her in the lurch. As for the effect on any possible promotion there might be in store for me, it would be six of one and half a dozen of the other. If I married her, and there was something good to be had, and old Bannockburn, let us say, was at the Horse Guards, then Lady Ban wouldn't have Olivia; and if I didn't marry her, and there was the same situation with old Englemere in command, then he wouldn't have me. There it is in a nutshell--simply nothing to choose.
human
I can quite see how it looks from your point of view--
gpt
No, you can't, he interrupted, sharply,