I know not whether it was this danger--that of appearing to be moved to
extremes--that weighed with Mary Gosselin; at any rate when the day
arrived she had decided to be perfectly colourless and take her share of
Lord Beaupré's hospitality. On perceiving that the house, when with her
companions she reached it, was full of visitors, she consoled herself
with the sense that such a share would be of the smallest. She even
wondered whether its smallness might not be caused in some degree by the
sufficiently startling presence, in this stronghold of the single life,
of Maud Ashbury and her mother. It was true that during the Saturday
evening she never saw their host address an observation to them; but she
was struck, as she had been struck before, with the girl's cold and
magnificent beauty. It was very well to say she had "gone off"; she was
still handsomer than anyone else. She had failed in everything she had
tried; the campaign undertaken with so much energy against young Raddle
had been conspicuously disastrous. Young Raddle had married his
grandmother, or a person who might have filled such an office, and Maud
was a year older, a year more disappointed and a year more ridiculous.
Nevertheless one could scarcely believe that a creature with such
advantages would always fail, though indeed the poor girl was stupid
enough to be a warning. Perhaps it would be at Bosco, or with the master
of Bosco, that fate had appointed her to succeed. Except Mary herself
she was the only young unmarried woman on the scene, and Mary glowed
with the generous sense of not being a competitor. She felt as much out
of the question as the blooming wives, the heavy matrons, who formed the
rest of the female contingent. Before the evening closed, however, her
host, who, she saw, was delightful in his own house, mentioned to her
that he had a couple of guests who had not been invited.
"Not invited?"
"They drove up to my door as they might have done to an inn. They asked
for rooms and complained of those that were given them. Don't pretend
not to know who they are."
"Do you mean the Ashburys? How amusing!"
"Don't laugh; it freezes my blood."
"Do you really mean you're afraid of them?"
"I tremble like a leaf. Some monstrous ineluctable fate seems to look at
me out of their eyes."
"That's because you secretly admire Maud. How can you help it? She's
extremely good-looking, and if you get rid of her mother she'll become
a very nice girl."
"It's an odious thing, no doubt, to say about a young person under one's
own roof, but I don't think I ever saw any one who happened to be less
to my taste," said Guy Firminger. "I don't know why I don't turn them
out even now."
Mary persisted in sarcasm. "Perhaps you can make her have a worse time
by letting her stay."
"_Please_ don't laugh," her interlocutor repeated. "Such a fact as I
have mentioned to you seems to me to speak volumes--to show you what my
life is."
"Oh, your life, your life!" Mary Gosselin murmured, with her mocking
note.
"Don't you agree that at such a rate it may easily become impossible?"
"Many people would change with you. I don't see what there is for you to
do but to bear your cross!"
"That's easy talk!" Lord Beaupré sighed.
"Especially from me, do you mean? How do you know I don't bear mine?"
"Yours?" he asked vaguely.
"How do you know that _I_'m not persecuted, that _my_ footsteps are not
dogged, that _my_ life isn't a burden?"
They were walking in the old gardens, the proprietor of which, at this,
stopped short. "Do you mean by fellows who want to marry you?"
His tone produced on his companion's part an irrepressible peal of
hilarity; but she walked on as she exclaimed: "You speak as if there
couldn't _be_ such madmen!"
"Of course such a charming girl must be made up to," Guy Firminger
conceded as he overtook her.
"I don't speak of it; I keep quiet about it."
"You realise then, at any rate, that it's all horrid when you don't care
for them."
"I suffer in silence, because I know there are worse tribulations. It
seems to me you ought to remember that," Mary continued. "Your cross is
small compared with your crown. You've everything in the world that most
people most desire, and I'm bound to say I think your life is made very
comfortable for you. If you're oppressed by the quantity of interest and
affection you inspire you ought simply to make up your mind to bear up
and be cheerful under it."
Lord Beaupré received this admonition with perfect good humour; he
professed himself able to do it full justice. He remarked that he would
gladly give up some of his material advantages to be a little less
badgered, and that he had been quite content with his former
insignificance. No doubt, however, such annoyances were the essential
drawbacks of ponderous promotions; one had to pay for everything. Mary
was quite right to rebuke him; her own attitude, as a young woman much
admired, was a lesson to his irritability. She cut this appreciation
short, speaking of something else; but a few minutes later he broke out
irrelevantly: "Why, if you are hunted as well as I, that dodge I
proposed to you would be just the thing for us _both_!" He had evidently
been reasoning it out.
Mary Gosselin was silent at first; she only paused gradually in their
walk at a point where four long alleys met. In the centre of the circle,
on a massive pedestal, rose in Italian bronze a florid, complicated
image, so that the place made a charming old-world picture. The grounds
of Bosco were stately without stiffness and full of marble terraces and
misty avenues. The fountains in particular were royal. The girl had told
her mother in London that she disliked this fine residence, but she now
looked round her with a vague pleased sigh, holding up her glass (she
had been condemned to wear one, with a long handle, since she was
fifteen), to consider the weather-stained garden group. "What a perfect
place of its kind!" she musingly exclaimed.
"Wouldn't it really be just the thing?" Lord Beaupré went on, with the
eagerness of his idea.
"Wouldn't what be just the thing?"
"Why, the defensive alliance we've already talked of. You wanted to know
the good it would do _you_. Now you see the good it would do you!"
"I don't like practical jokes," said Mary. "The remedy's worse than the
disease," she added; and she began to follow one of the paths that took
the direction of the house.
Poor Lord Beaupré was absurdly in love with his invention; he had all
an inventor's importunity. He kept up his attempt to place his "dodge"
in a favourable light, in spite of a further objection from his
companion, who assured him that it was one of those contrivances which
break down in practice in just the proportion in which they make a
figure in theory. At last she said: "I was not sincere just now when I
told you I'm worried. I'm not worried!"
"They _don't_ buzz about you?" Guy Firminger asked.
She hesitated an instant. "They buzz about me; but at bottom it's
flattering and I don't mind it. Now please drop the subject."
He dropped the subject, though not without congratulating her on the
fact that, unlike his infirm self, she could keep her head and her
temper. His infirmity found a trap laid for it before they had proceeded
twenty yards, as was proved by his sudden exclamation of horror. "Good
Heavens--if there isn't Lottie!"
Mary perceived, in effect, in the distance a female figure coming
towards them over a stretch of lawn, and she simultaneously saw, as a
gentleman passed from behind a clump of shrubbery, that it was not
unattended. She recognized Charlotte Firminger, and she also
distinguished the gentleman. She was moved to larger mirth at the dismay
expressed by poor Firminger, but she was able to articulate: "Walking
with Mr. Brown."
Lord Beaupré stopped again before they were joined by the pair. "Does
_he_ buzz about you?"
"Mercy, what questions you ask!" his companion exclaimed.
"Does he--_please_?" the young man repeated with odd intensity.
Mary looked at him an instant; she was puzzled by the deep annoyance
that had flushed through the essential good-humour of his face. Then she
saw that this annoyance had exclusive reference to poor Charlotte; so
that it left her free to reply, with another laugh: "Well, yes--he does.
But you know I like it!"
"I don't, then!" Before she could have asked him, even had she wished
to, in what manner such a circumstance concerned him, he added with his
droll agitation: "I never invited _her_, either! Don't let her get at
me!"
"What can I do?" Mary demanded as the others advanced.
"Please take her away; keep her yourself! I'll take the American, I'll
keep _him_," he murmured, inconsequently, as a bribe.
"But I don't object to him."
"Do you like him so much?"
"Very much indeed," the girl replied.
The reply was perhaps lost upon her interlocutor, whose eye now fixed
itself gloomily on the dauntless Charlotte. As Miss Firminger came
nearer he exclaimed almost loud enough for her to hear: "I think I shall
_murder_ her some day!"
Mary Gosselin's first impression had been that, in his panic, under the
empire of that fixed idea to which he confessed himself subject, he
attributed to his kinswoman machinations and aggressions of which she
was incapable; an impression that might have been confirmed by this
young lady's decorous placidity, her passionless eyes, her
expressionless cheeks and colourless tones. She was ugly, yet she was
orthodox; she was not what writers of books called intense. But after
Mary, to oblige their host, had tried, successfully enough, to be
crafty, had drawn her on to stroll a little in advance of the two
gentlemen, she became promptly aware, by the mystical influence of
propinquity, that Miss Firminger was indeed full of views, of a purpose
single, simple and strong, which gave her the effect of a person
carrying with a stiff, steady hand, with eyes fixed and lips compressed,
a cup charged to the brim. She had driven over to lunch, driven from
somewhere in the neighbourhood; she had picked up some weak woman as an
escort. Mary, though she knew the neighbourhood, failed to recognize her
base of operations, and, as Charlotte was not specific, ended by
suspecting that, far from being entertained by friends, she had put up
at an inn and hired a fly. This suspicion startled her; it gave her for
the first time something of the measure of the passions engaged, and she
wondered to what the insecurity complained of by Guy might lead.
Charlotte, on arriving, had gone through a part of the house in quest of
its master (the servants being unable to tell her where he was), and she
had finally come upon Mr. Bolton-Brown, who was looking at old books in
the library. He had placed himself at her service, as if he had been
trained immediately to recognize in such a case his duty, and informing
her that he believed Lord Beaupré to be in the grounds, had come out
with her to help to find him. Lottie Firminger questioned her companion
about this accommodating person; she intimated that he was rather odd
but rather nice. Mary mentioned to her that Lord Beaupré thought highly
of him; she believed they were going somewhere together. At this Miss
Firminger turned round to look for them, but they had already
disappeared, and the girl became ominously dumb.
Mary wondered afterwards what profit she could hope to derive from such
proceedings; they struck her own sense, naturally, as disreputable and
desperate. She was equally unable to discover the compensation they
offered, in another variety, to poor Maud Ashbury, whom Lord Beaupré,
the greater part of the day, neglected as conscientiously as he
neglected his cousin. She asked herself if he should be blamed, and
replied that the others should be blamed first. He got rid of Charlotte
somehow after tea; she had to fall back to her mysterious lines. Mary
knew this method would have been detestable to him--he hated to force
his friendly nature; she was sorry for him and wished to lose sight of
him. She wished not to be mixed up even indirectly with his
tribulations, and the fevered faces of the Ashburys were particularly
dreadful to her. She spent as much of the long summer afternoon as
possible out of the house, which indeed on such an occasion emptied
itself of most of its inmates. Mary Gosselin asked her brother to join
her in a devious ramble; she might have had other society, but she was
in a mood to prefer his. These two were "great chums," and they had been
separated so long that they had arrears of talk to make up. They had
been at Bosco more than once, and though Hugh Gosselin said that the
land of the free (which he had assured his sister was even more enslaved
than dear old England) made one forget there were such spots on earth,
they both remembered, a couple of miles away, a little ancient church to
which the walk across the fields would be the right thing. They talked
of other things as they went, and among them they talked of Mr.
Bolton-Brown, in regard to whom Hugh, as scantily addicted to enthusiasm
as to bursts of song (he was determined not to be taken in), became, in
commendation, almost lyrical. Mary asked what he had done with his
paragon, and he replied that he believed him to have gone out stealthily
to sketch: they might come across him. He was extraordinarily clever at
water-colours, but haunted with the fear that the public practice of
such an art on Sunday was viewed with disfavour in England. Mary
exclaimed that this was the respectable fact, and when her brother
ridiculed the idea she told him she had already noticed he had lost all
sense of things at home, so that Mr. Bolton-Brown was apparently a
better Englishman than he. "He is indeed--he's awfully artificial!" Hugh
returned; but it must be added that in spite of this rigour their
American friend, when they reached the goal of their walk, was to be
perceived in an irregular attitude in the very churchyard. He was
perched on an old flat tomb, with a box of colours beside him and a
sketch half completed. Hugh asserted that this exercise was the only
thing that Mr. Bolton-Brown really cared for, but the young man
protested against the imputation in the face of an achievement so
modest. He showed his sketch to Mary however, and it consoled her for
not having kept up her own experiments; she never could make her trees
so leafy. He had found a lovely bit on the other side of the hill, a bit
he should like to come back to, and he offered to show it to his
friends. They were on the point of starting with him to look at it when
Hugh Gosselin, taking out his watch, remembered the hour at which he had
promised to be at the house again to give his mother, who wanted a
little mild exercise, his arm. His sister, at this, said she would go
back with him; but Bolton-Brown interposed an earnest inquiry. Mightn't
she let Hugh keep his appointment and let _him_ take her over the hill
and bring her home?
"Happy thought--_do_ that!" said Hugh, with a crudity that showed the
girl how completely he had lost his English sense. He perceived however
in an instant that she was embarrassed, whereupon he went on: "My dear
child, I've walked with girls so often in America that we really ought
to let poor Brown walk with one in England." I know not if it was the
effect of this plea or that of some further eloquence of their friend;
at any rate Mary Gosselin in the course of another minute had accepted
the accident of Hugh's secession, had seen him depart with an injunction
to her to render it clear to poor Brown that he had made quite a
monstrous request. As she went over the hill with her companion she
reflected that since she had granted the request it was not in her
interest to pretend she had gone out of her way. She wondered moreover
whether her brother had wished to throw them together: it suddenly
occurred to her that the whole incident might have been prearranged. The
idea made her a little angry with Hugh; it led her however to entertain
no resentment against the other party (if party Mr. Brown had been) to
the transaction. He told her all the delight that certain sweet old
corners of rural England excited in his mind, and she liked him for
hovering near some of her own secrets.
Hugh Gosselin meanwhile, at Bosco, strolling on the terrace with his
mother, who preferred walks that were as slow as conspiracies and had
had much to say to him about his extraordinary indiscretion, repeated
over and over (it ended by irritating her), that as he himself had been
out for hours with American girls it was only fair to let their friend
have a turn with an English one.
"Pay as much as you like, but don't pay with your sister!" Mrs. Gosselin
replied; while Hugh submitted that it was just his sister who was
required to make the payment _his_. She turned his logic to easy scorn
and she waited on the terrace till she had seen the two explorers
reappear. When the ladies went to dress for dinner she expressed to her
daughter her extreme disapproval of such conduct, and Mary did nothing
more to justify herself than to exclaim at first "Poor dear man!" and
then to say "I was afraid you wouldn't like it." There were reservations
in her silence that made Mrs. Gosselin uneasy, and she was glad that at
dinner Mr. Bolton-Brown had to take in Mrs. Ashbury: it served him so
right. This arrangement had in Mrs. Gosselin's eyes the added merit of
serving Mrs. Ashbury right. She was more uneasy than ever when after
dinner, in the drawing-room, she saw Mary sit for a period on the same
small sofa with the culpable American. This young couple leaned back
together familiarly, and their conversation had the air of being
desultory without being in the least difficult. At last she quitted her
place and went over to them, remarking to Mr. Bolton-Brown that she
wanted him to come and talk a bit to _her_. She conducted him to another
part of the room, which was vast and animated by scattered groups, and
held him there very persuasively, quite maternally, till the approach of
the hour at which the ladies would exchange looks and murmur
good-nights. She made him talk about America, though he wanted to talk
about England, and she judged that she gave him an impression of the
kindest attention, though she was really thinking, in alternation, of
three important things. One of these was a circumstance of which she had
become conscious only just after sitting down with him--the prolonged
absence of Lord Beaupré from the drawing-room; the second was the
absence, equally marked (to her imagination) of Maud Ashbury; the third
was a matter different altogether. "England gives one such a sense of
immemorial continuity, something that drops like a plummet-line into the
past," said the young American, ingeniously exerting himself while Mrs.
Gosselin, rigidly contemporaneous, strayed into deserts of conjecture.
Had the fact that their host was out of the room any connection with the
fact that the most beautiful, even though the most suicidal, of his
satellites had quitted it? Yet if poor Guy was taking a turn by
starlight on the terrace with the misguided girl, what had he done with
his resentment at her invasion and by what inspiration of despair had
Maud achieved such a triumph? The good lady studied Mrs. Ashbury's face
across the room; she decided that triumph, accompanied perhaps with a
shade of nervousness, looked out of her insincere eyes. An intelligent
consciousness of ridicule was at any rate less present in them than
ever. While Mrs. Gosselin had her infallible finger on the pulse of the
occasion one of the doors opened to readmit Lord Beaupré, who struck
her as pale and who immediately approached Mrs. Ashbury with a remark
evidently intended for herself alone. It led this lady to rise with a
movement of dismay and, after a question or two, leave the room. Lord
Beaupré left it again in her company. Mr. Bolton-Brown had also noticed
the incident; his conversation languished and he asked Mrs. Gosselin if
she supposed anything had happened. She turned it over a moment and then
she said: "Yes, something will have happened to Miss Ashbury."
"What do you suppose? Is she ill?"
"I don't know; we shall see. They're capable of anything."
"Capable of anything?"
"I've guessed it,--she wants to have a grievance."
"A grievance?" Mr. Bolton-Brown was mystified.
"Of course you don't understand; how should you? Moreover it doesn't
signify. But I'm so vexed with them (he's a very old friend of ours)
that really, though I dare say I'm indiscreet, I can't speak civilly of
them."
"Miss Ashbury's a wonderful type," said the young American.
This remark appeared to irritate his companion. "I see perfectly what
has happened; she has made a scene."
"A scene?" Mr. Bolton-Brown was terribly out of it.
"She has tried to be injured--to provoke him, I mean, to some act of
impatience, to some failure of temper, of courtesy. She has asked him if
he wishes her to leave the house at midnight, and he may have
answered----But no, he wouldn't!" Mrs. Gosselin suppressed the wild
supposition.
"How you read it! She looks so quiet."
"Her mother has coached her, and (I won't pretend to say _exactly_ what
has happened) they've done, somehow, what they wanted; they've got him
to do something to them that he'll have to make up for."
"What an evolution of ingenuity!" the young man laughed.
"It often answers."
"Will it in this case?"