“Oh, no!” said May. “They won’t do that—but they may write or telegraph.” But May did not feel sure what Mme. Polacca de Valska might or might not do.
“At all events,” said she, “I think our engagement had better not come out until after the 14th of August.” And May felt constrained to admit that this was best.
“And I do not think that you had better see me until then.”
“What?” cried Austin.
But Miss Rutherford was firm. She would not have him with her every day unless she could tell people that they were engaged. What was she to say to the world if, after that 14th of August, he were to be engaged to Mrs. Dehon, for instance? This she delicately hinted; but, moreover, she told him she had promised to visit the Larneds, at Pomfret, and the Charles Mt. Vernons, at Beverly, and to spend three weeks with the Breezes, at Mount Desert, in August. He could not trail about after her; and it was only three months, after all. So May had consented, with an ill grace; and when she left, two days later, he found nothing better than to join VanKnyper on a yachting cruise. Then he had gone up on the Restigouche, salmon-fishing; and on the 12th of August he was in the Maine woods.
II.
THE IDYL OF ANTEROS.
In the 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 an extension 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 for the 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.