IV

Bolton-Brown did something that evening toward disseminating the news:

he told it to the first people he met socially after leaving Chester

Street; and this although he had to do himself a certain violence in

speaking. He would have preferred to hold his peace; therefore if he

resisted his inclination it was for an urgent purpose. This purpose was

to prove to himself that he didn't mind. A perfect indifference could be

for him the only result of any understanding Mary Gosselin might arrive

at with anyone, and he wanted to be more and more conscious of his

indifference. He was aware indeed that it required demonstration, and

this was why he was almost feverishly active. He could mentally concede

at least that he had been surprised, for he had suspected nothing at

Bosco. When a fellow was attentive in America everyone knew it, and

judged by this standard Lord Beaupré made no show: how otherwise should

_he_ have achieved that sweet accompanied ramble? Everything at any rate

was lucid now, except perhaps a certain ambiguity in Hugh Gosselin, who

on coming into the drawing-room with his mother had looked flushed and

grave and had stayed only long enough to kiss Mary and go out again.

There had been nothing effusive in the scene; but then there was nothing

effusive in any English scene. This helped to explain why Miss Gosselin

had been so blank during the minutes she spent with him before her

mother came back.

He himself wanted to cultivate tranquillity, and he felt that he did so

the next day in not going again to Chester Street. He went instead to

the British Museum, where he sat quite like an elderly gentleman, with

his hands crossed on the top of his stick and his eyes fixed on an

Assyrian bull. When he came away, however, it was with the resolution to

move briskly; so that he walked westward the whole length of Oxford

Street and arrived at the Marble Arch. He stared for some minutes at

this monument, as in the national collection he had stared at even less

intelligible ones; then brushing away the apprehension that he should

meet two persons riding together, he passed into the park. He didn't

care a straw whom he met. He got upon the grass and made his way to the

southern expanse, and when he reached the Row he dropped into a chair,

rather tired, to watch the capering procession of riders. He watched it

with a lustreless eye, for what he seemed mainly to extract from it was

a vivification of his disappointment. He had had a hope that he should

not be forced to leave London without inducing Mary Gosselin to ride

with him; but that prospect failed, for what he had accomplished in the

British Museum was the determination to go to Paris. He tried to think

of the attractions supposed to be evoked by that name, and while he was

so engaged he recognised that a gentleman on horseback, close to the

barrier of the Row, was making a sign to him. The gentleman was Lord

Beaupré, who had pulled up his horse and whose sign the young American

lost no time in obeying. He went forward to speak to his late host, but

during the instant of the transit he was able both to observe that Mary

Gosselin was not in sight and to ask himself why she was not. She rode

with her brother; why then didn't she ride with her future husband? It

was singular at such a moment to see her future husband disporting

himself alone. This personage conversed a few moments with Bolton-Brown,

said it was too hot to ride, but that he ought to be mounted (_he_ would

give him a mount if he liked) and was on the point of turning away when

his interlocutor succumbed to the temptation to put his modesty to the

test.

"Good-bye, but let me congratulate you first," said Bolton-Brown.

"Congratulate me? On what?" His look, his tone were very much what Mary

Gosselin's had been.

"Why, on your engagement. Haven't you heard of it?"

Lord Beaupré stared a moment while his horse shifted uneasily. Then he

laughed and said: "Which of them do you mean?"

"There's only one I know anything about. To Miss Gosselin," Brown added,

after a puzzled pause.

"Oh yes, I see--thanks so much!" With this, letting his horse go, Lord

Beaupré broke off, while Bolton-Brown stood looking after him and

saying to himself that perhaps he _didn't_ know! The chapter of English

oddities was long.

But on the morrow the announcement was in "The Morning Post," and that

surely made it authentic. It was doubtless only superficially singular

that Guy Firminger should have found himself unable to achieve a call in

Chester Street until this journal had been for several hours in

circulation. He appeared there just before luncheon, and the first

person who received him was Mrs. Gosselin. He had always liked her,

finding her infallible on the question of behaviour; but he was on this

occasion more than ever struck with her ripe astuteness, her independent

wisdom.

"I knew what you wanted, I knew what you needed, I knew the subject on

which you had pressed her," the good lady said; "and after Sunday I

found myself really haunted with your dangers. There was danger in the

air at Bosco, in your own defended house; it seemed to me too monstrous.

I said to myself 'We _can_ help him, poor dear, and we _must_. It's the

least one can do for so old and so good a friend.' I decided what to do:

I simply put this other story about. In London that always answers. I

knew that Mary pitied you really as much as I do, and that what she saw

at Bosco had been a revelation--had at any rate brought your situation

home to her. Yet of course she would be shy about saying out for

herself: 'Here I am--I'll do what you want.' The thing was for me to say

it _for_ her; so I said it first to that chattering American. He

repeated it to several others, and there you are! I just forced her hand

a little, but it's all right. All she has to do is not to contradict it.

It won't be any trouble and you'll be comfortable. That will be our

reward!" smiled Mrs. Gosselin.

"Yes, all she has to do is not to contradict it," Lord Beaupré replied,

musing a moment. "It _won't_ be any trouble," he added, "and I _hope_ I

shall be comfortable." He thanked Mrs. Gosselin formally and liberally,

and expressed all his impatience to assure Mary herself of his deep

obligation to her; upon which his hostess promised to send her daughter

to him on the instant: she would go and call her, so that they might be

alone. Before Mrs. Gosselin left him however she touched on one or two

points that had their little importance. Guy Firminger had asked for

Hugh, but Hugh had gone to the City, and his mother mentioned candidly

that he didn't take part in the game. She even disclosed his reason: he

thought there was a want of dignity in it. Lord Beaupré stared at this

and after a moment exclaimed: "Dignity? Dignity be hanged! One must save

one's life!"

"Yes, but the point poor Hugh makes is that one must save it by the use

of one's _own_ wits, or one's _own_ arms and legs. But do you know what

I said to him?" Mrs. Gosselin continued.

"Something very clever, I daresay."

"That if _we_ were drowning you'd be the very first to jump in. And we

may fall overboard yet!" Fidgeting there with his hands in his pockets

Lord Beaupré gave a laugh at this, but assured her that there was

nothing in the world for which they mightn't count upon him. None the

less she just permitted herself another warning, a warning, it is true,

that was in his own interest, a reminder of a peril that he ought

beforehand to look in the face. Wasn't there always the chance--just the

bare chance--that a girl in Mary's position would, in the event, decline

to let him off, decline to release him even on the day he should wish to

marry? She wasn't speaking of Mary, but there were of course girls who

would play him that trick. Guy Firminger considered this contingency;

then he declared that it wasn't a question of 'girls,' it was simply a

question of dear old Mary! If _she_ should wish to hold him, so much the

better: he would do anything in the world that she wanted. "Don't let us

dwell on such vulgarities; but I had it on my conscience!" Mrs. Gosselin

wound up.

She left him, but at the end of three minutes Mary came in, and the

first thing she said was: "Before you speak a word, please understand

this, that it's wholly mamma's doing. I hadn't dreamed of it, but she

suddenly began to tell people."

"It was charming of her, and it's charming of you!" the visitor cried.

"It's not charming of any one, I think," said Mary Gosselin, looking at

the carpet. "It's simply idiotic."

"Don't be nasty about it. It will be tremendous fun."

"I've only consented because mamma says we owe it to you," the girl went

on.

"Never mind your reason--the end justifies the means. I can never

thank you enough nor tell you what a weight it lifts off my shoulders.

Do you know I feel the difference already?--a peace that passeth

understanding!" Mary replied that this was childish; how could such a

feeble fiction last? At the very best it could live but an hour, and

then he would be no better off than before. It would bristle moreover

with difficulties and absurdities; it would be so much more trouble than

it was worth. She reminded him that so ridiculous a service had never

been asked of any girl, and at this he seemed a little struck; he said:

"Ah, well, if it's positively disagreeable to you we'll instantly drop

the idea. But I--I thought you really liked me enough----!" She turned

away impatiently, and he went on to argue imperturbably that she had

always treated him in the kindest way in the world. He added that the

worst was over, the start, they were off: the thing would be in all the

evening papers. Wasn't it much simpler to accept it? That was all they

would have to do; and all _she_ would have to do would be not to gainsay

it and to smile and thank people when she was congratulated. She would

have to _act_ a little, but that would just be part of the fun. Oh, he

hadn't the shadow of a scruple about taking the world in; the world

deserved it richly, and she couldn't deny that this was what she had

felt for him, that she had really been moved to compassion. He grew

eloquent and charged her with having recognised in his predicament a

genuine motive for charity. Their little plot would last what it

could--it would be a part of their amusement to _make_ it last. Even if

it should be but a thing of a day there would have been always so much

gained. But they would be ingenious, they would find ways, they would

have no end of sport.

"_You_ must be ingenious; I can't," said Mary. "If people scarcely ever

see us together they'll guess we're trying to humbug them."

"But they _will_ see us together. We _are_ together. We've been

together--I mean we've seen a lot of each other--all our lives."

"Ah, not _that_ way!"

"Oh, trust me to work it right!" cried the young man, whose imagination

had now evidently begun to glow in the air of their pious fraud.

"You'll find it a dreadful bore," said Mary Gosselin.

"Then I'll drop it, don't you see? And _you_'ll drop it, of course, the

moment _you_'ve had enough," Lord Beaupré punctually added. "But as

soon as you begin to realise what a lot of good you do me you won't

_want_ to drop it. That is if you're what I take you for!" laughed his

lordship.

If a third person had been present at this conversation--and there was

nothing in it surely that might not have been spoken before a trusty

listener--that person would perhaps have thought, from the immediate

expression of Mary Gosselin's face, that she was on the point of

exclaiming "You take me for too big a fool!" No such ungracious words in

fact however passed her lips; she only said after an instant: "What

reason do you propose to give, on the day you need one, for our

rupture?"