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 and personate 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 to leave 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 the afternoon, 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.