George Waldeaux took his mother and boy back to the old homestead in
Delaware. They arrived at night, and early the next morning he rowed
away in his bateau to some of his old haunts in the woods on the bay,
and was seen no more that day.
"He is inconsolable!" his mother told some of her old neighbors who
crowded to welcome her. "His heart is in that grave in Vannes." The
women listened in surprise, for Frances was not in the habit of
exploiting her emotions in words.
"We understood," said one of them, with a sympathetic shake of the
head, "that it was a pure love match. Mrs. George Waldeaux, we heard,
was a French artist of remarkable beauty?"
Frances moved uneasily. "I never thought her--but I can't discuss
Lisa!" She was silent a moment. "But as for her social position"--she
drew herself up stiffly, fixing cold defiant eyes on her
questioner--"as for her social position," she went on resolutely, "she
was descended on one side from an excellent American family, and on the
other from one of the noblest houses in Europe."
When they were gone she hugged little Jacques passionately as he lay on
her lap. "That is settled for you!" she said.
When George came back in the evening, he found her walking with the boy
in her arms on the broad piazzas.
"I really think he knows that he has come home, George!" she exclaimed.
"See how he laughs! And he liked the dogs and horses just as Lisa
thought he would. I am glad it is such a beautiful home for him. Look
at that slope to the bay! There is no nobler park in England! And the
house is as big as most of their palaces, and much more comfortable!"
"Give the child to Colette, mother, and listen to me. Now that I have
settled you and him here, I must go and earn your living."
"Yes."
She followed him into the hall.
"I leave you to-morrow. There is no time to be lost."
"You are going back to art, George?"
"No! Never!"
Frances grew pale. She thought she had torn open his gaping wound.
"I did not mean to remind you of--of----"
"No, it isn't that!"
He scowled at the fire. Art meant for him his own countless daubs, and
the sickening smell of oily paints and musk, and soiled silk tea gowns,
and the whole slovenly, disreputable scramble of Bohemian life in Paris.
"I loathe art!" he said, with a furious blow at the smouldering log in
the fireplace, as if he struck these things all down into the ashes
with it.
"Will you go back into the Church, dear?" his mother ventured timidly.
"Most certainly, no!" he said vehemently. "Of all mean frauds the
perfunctory priest is the meanest. If I could be like one of the old
holy gospellers--then indeed!"
He was silent a moment, and then began to stride up and down the long
hall, his head thrown back, his chest inflated.
"I have a message for the world, mother."
"I am sure of it," she interrupted eagerly.
"But I must deliver it in my own way. I have lost two years. I am
going to put in big strokes of work now. In the next two years I
intend to take my proper place in my own country. I will find standing
room for George Waldeaux," with a complacent smile. "And in the
meantime, of course, I must make money enough to support you and the
boy handsomely. So you see, mother," he ended, laughing, "I have no
time to lose."
"No, George!" It was the proudest moment of her life. How heroic and
generous he was!
She filled his pocket-book the next day, when he went to New York to
take the world by the throat. It was really not George Waldeaux's
fault that she filled it.
Nor was it his fault that during the next two years the world was in no
hurry to run to his feet, either to learn of him, or to bring him its
bags of gold. The little man did his best; he put his "message," as he
called it, into poems, into essays, into a novel. Publishers thanked
him effusively for the pleasure of reading them, and--sent them back.
The only word of his which reached the public was a review of the work
of a successful author. It was so personal, so malignant, that George,
when he read it, writhed with shame and humiliation. He tore the paper
into fragments.
"Am I so envious and small as that! Before God, no words of mine shall
ever go into print again!" he said, and he kept his word.
He came down every month or two to his mother.
"Why not try teaching, George?" she said anxiously. "These great
scholars and scientific men have places and reputations which even you
need not despise."
He laughed bitterly. "I tried for a place as tutor in a third-class
school, and could not pass the examinations. I know nothing
accurately. Nothing."
It occurred to him to go into politics and help reform the world by
routing a certain Irish boss. He made a speech at a ward meeting, and
broke down in the middle of it before the storm of gibes and hootings.
"What was the matter?" he asked a friend, whose face was red with
laughter.
"My dear fellow, you shouldn't lecture them! You're not the parson.
They resent your air of enormous superiority. For Heaven's sake, don't
speak again--in this campaign."
It is a wretched story. There is no need of going into the details.
There was no room for him. He tried in desperation to get some
foothold in business. The times were hard that winter, which of course
was against him. Besides, his critical, haughty air naturally did not
prepossess employers in his favor when he came to ask for a job.
At the end of the second year the man broke down.
"The work of the world," he told Frances, "belongs to specialists.
Even a bootblack knows his trade. I know nothing. I can do nothing.
I am a mass of flabby pretences."
Every month she filled his pocket-book. She found at last that he did
not touch the money. He sold his clothes and his jewelry to keep
himself alive while he tramped the streets of New York looking for
work. He starved himself to make this money last. His flesh was
lead-colored from want of proper food, and he staggered from weakness.
"'He that will not work neither let him eat,'" he said grimly.
It was about this time that Miss Vance came home. Mrs. Waldeaux in a
moment of weakness gave her a hint of his defeat.
"Is the world blind," she cried, "to deny work to a man of George's
capacity? What does it mean?"
Clara heard of George's sufferings with equanimity. "The truth is,"
she said, when she told the story to Miss Dunbar, "Frances brought that
boy up to believe that he was a Grand Llama among men. There is no
work for Grand Llamas in this country, and when he understands that he
is made of very ordinary clay indeed, he will probably be of some use
in the world."
Lucy was watering her roses. "It is a matter of indifference to me,"
she said, "what the people of New York think of Mr. Waldeaux."
Clara looked at her quickly. "I do not quite catch your meaning?" she
said.
But Lucy filled her can, and forgot to answer.