Frances Waldeaux Part 10

He had touched her. For one minute she had been his!

He turned and walked quickly across the Platz.

Lucy, left alone, was full of remorse. She looked down into her heart; she had forgotten to do it before. No, not a spark for him to blow into a flame; not a single warm thought of him!

The girl was ashamed of herself. He might be a cad, but he was real; his honest love possessed him body and soul. It was a matter of expediency to her; a thing to debate with herself, to dally over, with paltry pros and cons.

Miss Vance came hurriedly up the street, an open letter in her hand.

Lucy ran to meet her.

"What is it? You have heard bad news?"

"I suppose we ought not to call it that. It is from George Waldeaux.

They have a son, two months old. He tells it as a matter for rejoicing."

"Oh, yes," said Lucy feebly.

"They are at Vannes--in Brittany. He has a cough. He seems to know n.o.body--to have no friends, and, I suspect, not much money. He is terribly depressed." Clara folded the letter thoughtfully. "He asks me to tell his mother that the baby has come."

"Where is his mother?"

"In Switzerland."

"Why is she not with him?" demanded Lucy angrily. "Wandering about gathering edelweiss, while he is alone and wretched!"

"He has his wife. You probably do not understand the case fully," said Clara coldly. "I am going to wire to his mother now." She turned away and Lucy stood irresolute, her hand clutching the s.h.a.ggy head of the stone beast beside her.

"I can give him money. I'll go to him. He needs me!" she said aloud.

Then her whole body burned with shame. She--Lucy Dunbar, good proper Lucy, whose conscience hurt her if she laid her handkerchiefs away awry in her drawer, nursing a criminal pa.s.sion for a married man!

She went slowly back to the inn. "He has his wife," she told herself.

"I am nothing to him. I doubt if he would know me if he met me on the street." She tried to go back to her easy-going mannerly little thoughts, but there was something strange and fierce behind them that would not down.

Jean came presently to the salle. "I have had a letter too," she said.

"The girl who writes came from Pond City. She was in the same atelier in Paris with George. She says: 'Your friends the Waldeaux have come to grief by a short cut. They flung money about for a few months as if they were backed by the Barings. The Barings might have given their suppers. As for their studio--there was no untidier jumble of old armor and bra.s.ses and Spanish leather in Paris; and Mme. George posing in the middle in soiled tea-gowns! But the suppers suddenly stopped, and the leather and Persian hangings went to the Jews. I met Lisa one day coming out of the Vendome, where she had been trying to peddle a roll of George's sketches to the rich Americans. I asked her what was wrong, and she laughed and said, "We were trying to make thirty francs do the work of thirty thousand. And we have made up our minds that we know no more of art than house painters. We are in a blind alley!"

Soon after that the baby was born. They went down to Brittany. I hear that Lisa, since the child came, has been ill. I tell all this dreary stuff to you thinking that you may pa.s.s it on to their folks. Somebody ought to go to their relief.'"

"Relief!" exclaimed Miss Vance. "And the money that they were flinging into the gutter was earned day by day by his old mother! Every dollar of it! I know that during the last year she has done without proper clothes and food to send their allowance to them." "You forget," said Lucy, "that George Waldeaux was doing n.o.ble work in the world. It was a small thing for his mother to help him."

"n.o.ble work? His pictures or his sermons, Lucy?" demanded Miss Vance, with a contemptuous shrug.

Lucy without reply walked out to the inn garden and seated herself in a shady corner. There Mr. Perry found her just as the first stroke of the angelus sounded on the air. Her book lay unopened on her lap.

He walked slowly up to her and stopped, breathing hard, as if he had been running. "It is evening now. I have come for my answer, Miss Dunbar," he said, forcing a smile.

"Answer?" Lucy looked up bewildered.

"You have forgotten!"

The blood rushed to her face. She held out her hands. "Oh, forgive me! I heard bad news. I have been so troubled----"

"You forgot that I had asked you to be my wife!"

"Mr. Perry----"

"No, don't say another word, Miss Dunbar. I have had my answer. I knew you didn't love me, but I did not think I was so paltry that you would forget that I had offered to marry you."

Lucy pressed her hands together, looking up at him miserably without a word. He walked down the path and leaned on the wall with his back to her. His very back was indignant.

Presently he turned. "I will bid you goodby," he said, with an effort at lofty courtesy, "and I will leave my adieux for your friends with you."

"Are you going--back to the States?" stammered Lucy.

"Yes, I am going back to the States," he replied sternly. "A man of merit there has his place, regardless of rank. Jem Perry can hold his head there as high as any beggarly prince. Farewell, Miss Dunbar."

He strode down the path and disappeared. Lucy shook her head and cried from sheer wretchedness. She felt that she had been beaten to-day with many stripes.

Suddenly the bushes beside her rustled. "Forgive me," he said hoa.r.s.ely. She looked up and saw his red honest eyes. "I behaved like a brute. Good-by, Lucy! I never loved any woman but you, and I never will."

"Stay, stay!" she cried.

He heard her, but he did not come back.

CHAPTER VIII

Lucy was silent and dejected for a day or two, being filled with pity for Mr. Perry's ruined life. But when she saw his name in a list of outgoing pa.s.sengers on the Paris her heart gave a bound of relief.

Nothing more could now be done. That chapter was closed. There had been no other chapter of moment in her life, she told herself sternly.

Now, all the clouds had cleared away. It was a new day. She would begin again.

So she put on new clothes, none of which she had ever worn before, and tied back her curly hair with a fresh white ribbon, and came down to breakfast singing gayly.

Miss Vance gave her her roll and milk in silence, and frowning importantly, drew out a letter.

"Lucy, I have just received a communication from Prince Wolfburgh. He is in Bozen."

"Here!" Lucy started up, glancing around like a chased hare.

Then she sat down again and waited. There was no other chapter, and the book was so blank!

"His coming is very opportune," she said presently, gently.

"Oh! do YOU think so, my dear? Really! Well, I always have liked the young man. So simple. So secure of his social position. The Wolfburghs, I find, go back to the eleventh century. Mr. Perry had n.o.ble traits, but one never felt quite safe as to his nails or his grammar."

"But the prince--the prince?" cried Jean.

"Oh, yes. Well, he writes--most deferentially. He begs for the honor of an interview with me this afternoon upon a subject of the most vital importance. He says, 'regarding you, as I do, in loco parentis to the hochgeboren Fraulein Dunbar.'" "Hochgeboren!" said Lucy. "My grandfather was a saddler. Tell him so, Miss Vance. Tell him the exact facts. I want no disclosures after----"