II.THE IDYL OF ANTEROS.
Inthe leisure of the forest, Austin May reflected—for the first time comprehensively—upon his conduct of life. It seemed to him that the only sensible action of many wasted years was his getting engaged to Georgiana Rutherford; and yet, for the moment, it rather added to his perplexities. He felt convinced that Tom Leigh would say it put him in a greater hole than ever. Here was he engaged to three women at once, and all the engagements matured upon the fourteenth day of August proximo. Why is it that there is not such a thing as the making an assignment for the benefit of one’s heart’s creditors? He might then place himself in the hands of some respectable chaperone as assignee, and pay each of the contracting parties thirty-three per cent. Or he might even get a composition, or anextension at long time. Possibly the other two would assign their claims to Georgiana. If she were the sole creditor, he fancied that they might effect an arrangement. She certainly had the only lien on the few remaining assets of his hard-worked ventricles.
Georgiana Rutherford! What a perfectly civilized creature she was. How well she would look at the end of the state dining-table in the Brookline house, with the épergne in front of her. Then how gracefully she would sweep out, at the head of the procession of ladies—Brookline ladies, with a guest or two from Boston or Jamaica Plains—and leave him and his friends to their bachelor-talk and cigars. But first, after being married, he had promised to take her up the Nile. May had already been up the Nile.
May slipped off the rock into the rushing river. He had got to thinking, in the absence of salmon, and forgotten his whereabouts. It was clumsy of him, he reflected, as his boots queaked soddenly campward. He was getting heavy, and slow, and middle-aged. And suddenly he felt a yearning forthe wilds, for wilder wilds even than Aroostook County. He had been now for six years in high civilizations—Japan, India, England, or, at worst, the States. There were several dreams of his scheming-time not yet effected. Among others, a trip from Hudson’s Bay, in canoes, through the Great Slave lake to the Pacific. He was almost on the ground, with good guides and an outfit; why not start at once? But there was the fourteenth of August next to come, he reflected.
A strange wagon was in the camp when he got back; a single buckboard from the nearest settlement, and it bore a pretty girl. May had conversation with her. A veritable Lady of the Aroostook was she; not over-idealized, like the heroine of Mr. Howells. Really, she had a certain rudimentary charm. Suppose, thought May, I were to make her my dusky bride? For dusky, read freckled.
By Jove, thought May—an idea indeed. If he gave it out as such? If, in consideration of a trip to Boston, new bonnets, and a junket of quite Merovingian dimensions, she were to consent to go to Brookline andpersonate his bride, for that day only? How natural that he, at the very end of his eleven years, should have plunged into nature and married la première venue. It was just the thing, he felt assured his friends would say, that he was certain to do. Why, even the heroes of the Lady of Aroostook did as much. And even the Comtesse Polacca dei Cascadegli de Valska could have nothing to reply to such a living argument as this Maine girl would present. My wife—Mrs. Austin May. Gladys Dehon would scorn, but believe. And then, having nobly earned her reward, his salvatress might retire to her primitive forest decked with new fal-lals to astound the rustic breast.
But now, confound it, here as always, the cursed conventions rose in his way. The proprieties were ever his fatality, a very ghost of Banquo at the feast of life. Why had he been born in Boston? True, they had once saved him from the countess; but now they were to offer him a humble sacrifice to her unlovely years. For she came first chronologically, and she was certain to come first in fact.
May had no further ideas; and he had toleave his river at the height of the salmon season.
We have told how, on the 14th of August, he arrived at Brookline, true to his appointment with all three. He got to Boston late in the evening before, went to his club, passed a sleepless night, and took an early morning train for Brookline, as we have seen.
And, perhaps, as we have also seen, a much more awkward thing than this had happened. Austin May was there, ready to meet any one of them. The period of probation required by the will had elapsed.
But as May travelled up to the city in that hot weather, he had been wondering to himself which and how many of them he should see, and it had become very clear to him that he did not feel the least desire to see any one of the three.
His uncle’s will had well been justified. With shocked shamefacedness he thought of the countess, that Trouville heroine that he believed to be little better than an adventuress, a gambler, tracked by the police. And Mrs. Dehon—well, if Mrs. Dehon were to ride madly up that quiet Boston lawn,May felt sure that he should flee in terror. And Georgiana Rutherford—now that it came to the point, and after his three months’ consideration, May did not feel that he wished to marry even Georgiana Rutherford.
He gave little thought to his impending doom, still less thought of escaping it. He was as one who had been released eleven years upon parole, and must now give himself up to be shot. He even gave himself little curiosity as to whose the fatal bullet would prove to be. A man ordered out with a file of soldiers to be executed looks upon the levelled row of muzzles with an absolute impartiality. He was in the position of the celebrated d’Artagnan, who, having three duels in the Pré aux Clercs, and certain of being killed by Athos at 12, gave himself little anxiety about Porthos, who was to follow at 12.15, or Aramis, who was only due at 12.30.
But, as the day wore on, and the reaction followed the artificial strength given by many cigars, his state of mind had approximated to an abject and unreasoning terror. And in this mood he was, late in theafternoon, when he turned and saw, stationary before his front door, that carriage, with its footman in livery.
His one instinct was to conceal himself. Nervously he grabbed the heavy “Burton’s Anatomy;” the secret door swung open; the fountain in the lake began to play, and in a score of seconds May was hiding in its cool and watery depths.