Last Pages. Oscar Mandel

nothing.”

      “So you babbled about swimming and accomplished nothing.”

      “Oh, I don’t know.” Madeleine paused and then took her plunge. “Nicholas Mayhew proposed to me.”

      Aimée stared. Was she—No! she was serious!

      “Nick Mayhew proposed to you? What—what made him…?”

      She felt too late that the question was less than flattering, but Madeleine took no notice.

      “I suppose because he likes me. He likes my noble lineage too.”

      “A miracle has happened! Suddenly the girl’s an expert! Come here, Madelon!” and she hugged her daughter. “You’ll make your fortune after all. I take back the marshmallow. Tell me all about it, and don’t leave out the erotic details, you naughty baggage!”

      “Well, he wants to marry me. We talked for a long time. He was very wild, very eloquent, but of course my rank made him keep his distance—most of the time.”

      “If he talked so much, he must have given you what we require to deliver him and his uncle to Gage.”

      “He did not, mother; he talked of other things altogether. I can tell you that Mr. Mayhew is a man with a very large future.”

      “A firing squad is not a future.”

      “I’m not so sure about the firing squad. He has a very keen mind for business, mother. I wish you’d been there to listen to his projects. A brigantine under his command; an estate at Concord; huge tracts of land in the West; a chocolate mill; shiny slaves; bankers urging loans and credits upon him—I tell you my head was spinning. I kept thinking how much you’d have enjoyed it.”

      “And why was he giving you this inventory?”

      “To convince the daughter of the Marquise de Tourville that she wouldn’t be taking a dreadful tumble down the social ladder.”

      “He may have been bragging.”

      “Such details, such confirmations! No, he was extremely not bragging.”

      This prompted Aimée to go to the door, open it, look about on landing and staircase, shut the door again, pull Madeleine down into an armchair, and continue in a voice gone much lower.

      “Madeleine,’ she said, “this is serious. Stupendously serious. I am ready to forestall that British bully of a sergeant and strike. But which way? Aren’t we blinding ourselves to the wider landscape? To hear Sergeant Cuff talk, the Yankees are not the sheep we’ve been told they are. And the Mayhew men prove him right. There must be thousands of these sturdy rogues arming up and down the continent. Providence may have placed the uncle and nephew in our path to show us we were about to commit a terrible sin. If you married Nicholas….”

      “You would betray Tom Gage, your employer, your…whatever? Is that quite correct, my dear mother?”

      “Quite correct. Tom Gage is a man of the world. And I need to provide for you.”

      “Thank you, mother. Yet I don’t want to marry Mr. Mayhew.”

      “Why in heaven not? Handsome, rich, a hero, a rebel!”

      “A rebel, mother, whom you intend to deliver to a firing squad?”

      “A rebel with a ship of his own, and land in the West, and confirmations, is no rebel until I’ve made up my mind.”

      “You’re a whirlwind, mother! One moment we’re arresting Nicholas and the next we’re marrying him. I say let’s leave the island. No plots, no machinations this time, no marriage, no wretched five hundred. Please, mother. General Gage will have other work for you wherever we go.”

      “There is nothing wretched about five hundred pounds. Yet I may let them go. Tell me, did he go too far, was he gross, is that what troubles you?”

      Madeleine smiled. “Far from it. He remained a true gentleman.”

      “Then I may be obliged to make you change your mind. Or not. I need time to think. To think profoundly.”

      Whereupon she rose and rang the bell for dinner.

      Afterward Aimée took her wonted nap—it was good for one’s complexion, she said—and Madeleine wrote a note she intended to give Colonel Mayhew. She recalled Nicholas mentioning, during their excursion round the island, and a propos of—she could not remember what, that his uncle liked to sit and read, afternoons, by the Brant Point lighthouse, weather permitting. She would give herself a little more time to steady her resolve and then find the Colonel.

      The note she wrote was a short one. At ease with her conscience, Madeleine returned to a serene reading of Athalie, where she had reached the third act and made little pencil notes of her very own in the margins. For her dream was to be modest Mademoiselle Pichot teaching school in Lyon some day not too far in the future.

      12

      AT THE MAYHEW residence, the midday meal in the dining room, cooked by Ruth and served by Priscilla, was shared with Cottle and Wallace, and the conversation, discreetly alluding to the imminent departure of the principals of the house, concerned itself chiefly with the business duties of the two others. There was talk of timber and whale oil and pitch and tar and tobacco, orders to fill, merchandise to receive, accounts to settle, customers to please. The Colonel’s probity was universally known, and he meant his house to maintain its reputation, as well as its efficiency, during their absence.

      After coffee, Cottle and Wallace withdrew for an hour’s leisure, and Nicholas, saying he had something particular to impart to his uncle, took the latter to his sitting-room upstairs, inviting the Colonel to make himself comfortable. He looked unusually grave. Mayhew lit his pipe.

      “Nothing suddenly amiss, I hope,” he said.

      “Oh no! Perhaps on the contrary. At least I hope so. I must tell you, my dear uncle, that this morning I spoke at length with Madeleine. I—I am in love with her.”

      The Colonel smiled paternally.

      “You cannot be blamed for that, my fine fellow. Who wouldn’t be? You told her so?”

      “I did. And I proposed to her.”

      “That was a tremendous next step. She was delighted?”

      “I think so.”

      “And you will be married when the—what shall we call the thing?—when the troubles are over?”

      “I hope so. Perhaps before. However, she did not quite give her consent, I mean, not in so many words.”

      “Perhaps a little maidenly reserve.”

      “I don’t think so. Uncle, she is an aristocrat.”

      “Ah, I see. And we are but commoners. I see.”

      “Yet at heart she is ardently with us.”

      “As is her mother; so that is good. And then?”

      “This is the difficult part, my dear uncle. I found myself obliged to speak to her at length about our…our means…our wealth…our standing…our prospects…persuade her that, commoners though we may be, we are not nothing.”

      “I cannot blame you, nephew.”

      “And then—I swore her to secrecy. But I needed to say more. It was necessary to tell her everything. She swore—”

      Mayhew interrupted, pipe aloft in alarmed surprise.

      “You told her about our leap to the mainland?”

      “I needed to. The call that has come for us. The important call. Your rank. That was important. She was in rapture.”

      Mayhew puffed at his pipe. Nicholas went on.

      “She will not even tell her mother. ‘Your secret