Clara had brought Miss Dunbar back and established her in her own house
near Weir, under the care of a deaf widowed aunt. Dunbar Place was a
stately colonial house, set in a large demesne, and all Kent County
waited breathless to know what revelations the heiress would make to
it, in the way of equi-pages, marqueterie furniture, or Paris gowns.
Mrs. Waldeaux found Lucy one day, a month after her arrival, seated at
her sewing on the broad, rose-covered piazza, looking as if she never
had left it.
"Have you come to stay now, my dear," she said, "or will Prince
Wolfburgh----"
"Oh, that is an old story," interrupted Clara. "Lucy handed the little
prince over to Jean Hassard, who married him after he had a long fight
with her father about her dot. He won the dot, but Count Odo is now
the head of the house. Jean, I hear, is in Munich fighting her way up
among the Herrschaft."
"Jean has good fighting qualities," Lucy said. "She will win."
"I had a letter from her to-day," said Miss Vance. "Here it is. She
says, 'I mean to rebuild the Schloss, and I have put a stop to the
soap-boiling business. I will have no fumes of scorching fat in our
ancestral halls. Four of the princesses live with us here in the flat.
Gussy Carson from Pond City is staying with me now. We have an
American tea every Wednesday. Gus receives with me.'"
"Poor princesses!" said Lucy.
Miss Vance folded the letter with a complacent nod. "I am glad that
Jean is settled so satisfactorily," she said. "As for Lucy----"
No one answered. Lucy threaded her needle.
"I start next week to Chicago, did you know, Frances? The Bixbys--two
orphan heiresses--wish me to take them to Australia, coming back by
India. And I suppose," she said, rising impatiently, "if I were to
stay away forty years I should find Lucy when I came back, with white
hair maybe, but sitting calmly sewing, not caring whether there was a
man in the world or not!"
Lucy laughed, but did not even blush.
Mrs. Waldeaux presently said good-by, and Clara went home with her to
spend the night. Lucy was left alone upon the piazza. It was there
that George Waldeaux saw her again.
This had been the hardest day of his life. He rose that morning
telling himself with an oath that he would earn the money to buy his
own food or never eat again. His mother had sent him a cheque by post.
He tore it up and went out of his cheap lodging-house without
breakfast. There was a queer change in him--a sudden lofty
independence--a sudden loathing of himself. He knew now that it was
not in him to do good work in the world, but at least he would pay his
own way. He had been a mass of vanity and now he was so mean in his
own eyes that he shrank from the passers-by. Perhaps the long strain
had damaged the gray matter of the brain, or some nervous centre--I do
not know what change a physician would have found in him, but the man
was changed.
A clerk was needed in a provision shop on Green Street. George placed
himself in the line of dirty, squalid applicants. The day was hot, the
air of the shop was foul with the smells of rotting meat and
vegetables. He felt himself stagger against a stall. He seemed to be
asleep, but he heard the butchers laughing. They called him a drunken
tramp, and then he was hurled out on the muddy pavement.
"Too much whiskey for this time o' day!" a policeman said, hauling him
to his feet.
"Move along, young man!"
Whiskey? That was what he wanted. He turned into a shop and bought a
dram with his last pennies. It made him comfortable for a few hours,
then he began to cry and swear. George Waldeaux had never been drunk
in his life. The ascetic, stainless priest in him stood off and looked
at this dog of the gutter with his obscene talk, and then came defeat
of soul and body.
"I give up!" he said quietly. "I'll never try again."
He wandered unconsciously to the ferry and, having his yearly book of
tickets in his pocket, took the train for home from force of habit. He
left the cars at a station several miles from Weir, and wandered across
the country. Just at sundown, covered with mud and weak from hunger
and drunkenness, he crossed the lawn before Lucy's house and, looking
up, saw her.
He had stumbled into a world of peace and purity! A soft splendor
filled the sky and the bay and the green slopes, with their clumps of
mighty forest trees. The air was full of the scents of flowers and the
good-night song of happy birds. And in the midst of it all, lady of
the great domain, under her climbing rose vines, sat the young, fair
woman, clad in some fleecy white garments, her head bent, her blue eyes
fixed on the distance--waiting.
George stopped, sobered by a sudden wrench of his heart. There was the
world to which he belonged--there! His keen eye noted every delicate
detail of her beauty and of her dress. He was of her sort, her
kind--he, kicked into the gutter from that foul shop as a tramp!
This is what I have lost! his soul cried to him.
He had not as yet recognized Lucy. But now she saw him, and with a
little inarticulate cry like that of a bird, she flew down the steps.
"Ah! It is you!" she said. "I thought you would come to welcome me
some time!"
Her voice was like a soft breath; her airy draperies blew against him.
It was as if a wonderful, beautiful dream were folding him in--and in.
He drew back. "I am not fit, Miss Dunbar. I did not know you were
here. Why--look at me!"
"Oh! You are ill! You have had an accident!" she cried. She had laid
her little white fingers on his hand and now, feeling it burn and
tremble at her touch, she caught it in both of her own and drew him
into the house.
"Mr. Waldeaux," she said to a servant who appeared, "has had a fall.
Bring him water and towels. Take care of him, Stephen." She spoke
quietly, but her voice trembled with fright.
The man led George to an inner room.
"Were you thrown, sir?" he asked sympathetically.
George hesitated. "Yes, I was thrown," he said grimly.
He made himself clean in angry haste, taking the whisk from the man and
brushing off the dry mud with a vicious fury.
Lucy came to meet him, with a pale, anxious smile. "You must not go
without a cup of hot coffee," she said, leading him to a lounge in the
hall. It was very sweet to be treated like a sick man!
"And God knows I am sick, body and soul!" he thought, sinking down.
Beside the lounge was a little table with one cover. He noted with
keen pleasure the delicate napery, the silver candlesticks, the bowl of
roses, with which the substantial meal was set out. Lucy waited on him
with the quick intelligence of a trained nurse. She scarcely spoke,
yet her every motion, as she served him, seemed a caress. When he had
finished he began to stammer out his thanks.
"No," she said, rising decisively. "You are too weak to talk to me
to-night, Mr. Waldeaux. The coupe is at the door. John will drive you
home. You need sleep now."
As he sank down into the luxurious cushions and drove away through the
twilight, he saw the little white figure in the door, and the grave
wistful face looking after him.
"Did she suspect!" he suddenly cried, starting up.
But George Waldeaux never knew how much Lucy suspected that night.
Meanwhile Mrs. Waldeaux's mare had jogged on leisurely, dragging her
mistress and Miss Vance home through the shady country lanes.
"Phebe is old," apologized Frances. "She really is a retired car
horse."
"You used to take pride in your horses, Frances?"
"Yes." Mrs. Waldeaux added after a pause. "My income is small. Of
course George soon will be coining money, but just now---- The peach
crop failed this year too. And I save every dollar for Jack's
education."
"But what of the jokes for the New York paper? They were profitable."
"Oh, I gave them up long ago." She glanced around cautiously. "Never
speak of that, Clara. I would not have George know for the world; I
never would hold up my head if he knew that I was 'Quigg.'"
Miss Vance gave a contemptuous sniff, but Mrs. Waldeaux went on
eagerly, "I have a plan! You know that swampy tract of ours near
Lewes? When I have enough money I'll drain it and lay out a summer
resort--hotels--cottages. I'll develop it as I sell the lots. Oh,
Jack shall have his millions yet to do great work in the world!" her
eyes sparkling. "Though perhaps he may choose to strip himself of
everything to give to the poor, like Francis d'Assisi! That would be
best of all. It's not unlikely. He is the most generous boy!"
"Stuff!" said Miss Vance. "St. Francis, indeed! I observe, by the
way, that he crosses himself after his meals. Are you making a
Romanist of the child? And you speak French to him, too?"
Mrs. Waldeaux's color rose. "His mother was French and Catholic," she
said. "I will not have Lisa forgotten."
They went on in silence. Miss Vance was lost in thought. Was George
Waldeaux equally eager to keep his wife's memory alive? Now that the
conceit had been beaten out of him, he would not make a bad husband.
And her child Lucy had always--esteemed him highly.