I
Some reference had been made to Northerley, which was within an easy
drive, and Firminger described how he had dined there the night before
and had found a lot of people. Mrs. Ashbury, one of the two visitors,
inquired who these people might be, and he mentioned half-a-dozen names,
among which was that of young Raddle, which had been a good deal on
people's lips, and even in the newspapers, on the occasion, still
recent, of his stepping into the fortune, exceptionally vast even as the
product of a patent-glue, left him by a father whose ugly name on all
the vacant spaces of the world had exasperated generations of men.
"Oh, is he there?" asked Mrs. Ashbury, in a tone which might have been
taken as a vocal rendering of the act of pricking up one's ears. She
didn't hand on the information to her daughter, who was talking--if a
beauty of so few phrases could have been said to talk--with Mary
Gosselin, but in the course of a few moments she put down her teacup
with a failure of suavity and, getting up, gave the girl a poke with her
parasol. "Come, Maud, we must be stirring."
"You pay us a very short visit," said Mrs. Gosselin, intensely demure
over the fine web of her knitting. Mrs. Ashbury looked hard for an
instant into her bland eyes, then she gave poor Maud another poke. She
alluded to a reason and expressed regrets; but she got her daughter into
motion, and Guy Firminger passed through the garden with the two ladies
to put them into their carriage. Mrs. Ashbury protested particularly
against any further escort. While he was absent the other parent and
child, sitting together on their pretty lawn in the yellow light of the
August afternoon, talked of the frightful way Maud Ashbury had "gone
off," and of something else as to which there was more to say when their
third visitor came back.
"Don't think me grossly inquisitive if I ask you where they told the
coachman to drive," said Mary Gosselin as the young man dropped, near
her, into a low wicker chair, stretching his long legs as if he had been
one of the family.
Firminger stared. "Upon my word I didn't particularly notice, but I
think the old lady said 'Home'."
"There, mamma dear!" the girl exclaimed triumphantly.
But Mrs. Gosselin only knitted on, persisting in profundity. She replied
that "Home" was a feint, that Mrs. Ashbury would already have given
another order, and that it was her wish to hurry off to Northerley that
had made her keep them from going with her to the carriage, in which
they would have seen her take a suspected direction. Mary explained to
Guy Firminger that her mother had perceived poor Mrs. Ashbury to be
frantic to reach the house at which she had heard that Mr. Raddle was
staying. The young man stared again and wanted to know what she desired
to do with Mr. Raddle. Mary replied that her mother would tell him what
Mrs. Ashbury desired to do with poor Maud.
"What all Christian mothers desire," said Mrs. Gosselin. "Only she
doesn't know how."
"To marry the dear child to Mr. Raddle," Mary added, smiling.
Firminger's vagueness expanded with the subject. "Do you mean you want
to marry _your_ dear child to that little cad?" he asked of the elder
lady.
"I speak of the general duty--not of the particular case," said Mrs.
Gosselin.
"Mamma _does_ know how," Mary went on.
"Then why ain't you married?"
"Because we're not acting, like the Ashburys, with injudicious
precipitation. Is that correct?" the girl demanded, laughing, of her
mother.
"Laugh at me, my dear, as much as you like--it's very lucky you've got
me," Mrs. Gosselin declared.
"She means I can't manage for myself," said Mary to the visitor.
"What nonsense you talk!" Mrs. Gosselin murmured, counting stitches.
"I can't, mamma, I can't; I admit it," Mary continued.
"But injudicious precipitation and--what's the other thing?--creeping
prudence, seem to come out in very much the same place," the young man
objected.
"Do you mean since I too wither on the tree?"
"It only comes back to saying how hard it is nowadays to marry one's
daughters," said the lucid Mrs. Gosselin, saving Firminger, however, the
trouble of an ingenious answer. "I don't contend that, at the best, it's
easy."
But Guy Firminger would not have struck you as capable of much
conversational effort as he lounged there in the summer softness, with
ironic familiarities, like one of the old friends who rarely deviate
into sincerity. He was a robust but loose-limbed young man, with a
well-shaped head and a face smooth, fair and kind. He was in
knickerbockers, and his clothes, which had seen service, were composed
of articles that didn't match. His laced boots were dusty--he had
evidently walked a certain distance; an indication confirmed by the
lingering, sociable way in which, in his basket-seat, he tilted himself
towards Mary Gosselin. It pointed to a pleasant reason for a long walk.
This young lady, of five-and-twenty, had black hair and blue eyes; a
combination often associated with the effect of beauty. The beauty in
this case, however, was dim and latent, not vulgarly obvious; and if her
height and slenderness gave that impression of length of line which, as
we know, is the fashion, Mary Gosselin had on the other hand too much
expression to be generally admired. Every one thought her intellectual;
a few of the most simple-minded even thought her plain. What Guy
Firminger thought--or rather what he took for granted, for he was not
built up on depths of reflection--will probably appear from this
narrative.
"Yes indeed; things have come to a pass that's awful for _us_" the girl
announced.
"For _us_, you mean," said Firminger. "We're hunted like the ostrich;
we're trapped and stalked and run to earth. We go in fear--I assure you
we do."
"Are _you_ hunted, Guy?" Mrs. Gosselin asked with an inflection of her
own.
"Yes, Mrs. Gosselin, even _moi qui vous parle_, the ordinary male of
commerce, inconceivable as it may appear. I know something about it."
"And of whom do you go in fear?" Mary Gosselin took up an uncut book and
a paper-knife which she had laid down on the advent of the other
visitors.
"My dear child, of Diana and her nymphs, of the spinster at large. She's
always out with her rifle. And it isn't only that; you know there's
always a second gun, a walking arsenal, at her heels. I forget, for the
moment, who Diana's mother was, and the genealogy of the nymphs; but not
only do the old ladies know the younger ones are out, they distinctly go
_with_ them."
"Who was Diana's mother, my dear?" Mrs. Gosselin inquired of her
daughter.
"She was a beautiful old lady with pink ribbons in her cap and a genius
for knitting," the girl replied, cutting her book.
"Oh, I'm not speaking of you two dears; you're not like anyone else;
you're an immense comfort," said Guy Firminger. "But they've reduced it
to a science, and I assure you that if one were any one in particular,
if one were not protected by one's obscurity, one's life would be a
burden. Upon my honour one wouldn't escape. I've seen it, I've watched
them. Look at poor Beaupré--look at little Raddle over there. I object
to him, but I bleed for him."
"Lord Beaupré won't marry again," said Mrs. Gosselin with an air of
conviction.
"So much the worse for him!"
"Come--that's a concession to our charms!" Mary laughed.
But the ruthless young man explained away his concession. "I mean that
to be married's the only protection--or else to be engaged."
"To be permanently engaged,--wouldn't that do?" Mary Gosselin asked.
"Beautifully--I would try it if I were a _parti_."
"And how's the little boy?" Mrs. Gosselin presently inquired.
"What little boy?"
"Your little cousin--Lord Beaupré's child: isn't it a boy?"
"Oh, poor little beggar, he isn't up to much. He was awfully cut up by
scarlet fever."
"You're not the rose indeed, but you're tolerably near it," the elder
lady presently continued.
"What do you call near it? Not even in the same garden--not in any
garden at all, alas!"
"There are three lives--but after all!"
"Dear lady, don't be homicidal!"
"What do you call the 'rose'?" Mary asked of her mother.
"The title," said Mrs. Gosselin, promptly but softly.
Something in her tone made Firminger laugh aloud. "You don't mention the
property."
"Oh, I mean the whole thing."
"Is the property very large?" said Mary Gosselin.
"Fifty thousand a year," her mother responded; at which the young man
laughed out again.
"Take care, mamma, or we shall be thought to be out with our guns!" the
girl interposed; a recommendation that drew from Guy Firminger the just
remark that there would be time enough for this when his prospects
should be worth speaking of. He leaned over to pick up his hat and
stick, as if it were his time to go, but he didn't go for another
quarter of an hour, and during these minutes his prospects received some
frank consideration. He was Lord Beaupré's first cousin, and the three
intervening lives were his lordship's own, that of his little sickly
son, and that of his uncle the Major, who was also Guy's uncle and with
whom the young man was at present staying. It was from homely Trist, the
Major's house, that he had walked over to Mrs. Gosselin's. Frank
Firminger, who had married in youth a woman with something of her own
and eventually left the army, had nothing but girls, but he was only of
middle age and might possibly still have a son. At any rate his life was
a very good one. Beaupré might marry again, and, marry or not, he was
barely thirty-three and might live to a great age. The child moreover,
poor little devil, would doubtless, with the growing consciousness of an
incentive (there was none like feeling you were in people's way),
develop a capacity for duration; so that altogether Guy professed
himself, with the best will in the world, unable to take a rosy view of
the disappearance of obstacles. He treated the subject with a jocularity
that, in view of the remoteness of his chance, was not wholly tasteless,
and the discussion, between old friends and in the light of this
extravagance, was less crude than perhaps it sounds. The young man quite
declined to see any latent brilliancy in his future. They had all been
lashing him up, his poor dear mother, his uncle Frank, and Beaupré as
well, to make that future political; but even if he should get in (he
was nursing--oh, so languidly!--a possible opening), it would only be
into the shallow edge of the stream. He would stand there like a tall
idiot with the water up to his ankles. He didn't know how to swim--in
that element; he didn't know how to do anything.
"I think you're very perverse, my dear," said Mrs. Gosselin. "I'm sure
you have great dispositions."
"For what--except for sitting here and talking with you and Mary? I
revel in this sort of thing, but I scarcely like anything else."
"You'd do very well if you weren't so lazy," Mary said. "I believe
you're the very laziest person in the world."
"So do I--the very laziest in the world," the young man contentedly
replied. "But how can I regret it, when it keeps me so quiet, when (I
might even say) it makes me so amiable?"
"You'll have, one of these days, to get over your quietness, and perhaps
even a little over your amiability," Mrs. Gosselin sagaciously stated.
"I devoutly hope not."
"You'll have to perform the duties of your position."
"Do you mean keep my stump of a broom in order and my crossing
irreproachable?"
"You may say what you like; you will be a _parti_," Mrs. Gosselin
continued.
"Well, then, if the worst comes to the worst I shall do what I said just
now: I shall get some good plausible girl to see me through."
"The proper way to 'get' her will be to marry her. After you're married
you won't be a _parti_."
"Dear mamma, he'll think you're already levelling your rifle!" Mary
Gosselin laughingly wailed.