During the year which followed, Mr. Perry was forced to return to the States, but he made two flying trips across "the pond," as he called it, in the interests of his magazine, always running down his prey of notorieties in that quarter of Europe in which Miss Vance and her charges chanced to be.
When he came in July he found them in a humble little inn in Bozen. He looked with contempt at the stone floors, the clean cell-like chambers, each with its narrow bed, and blue stone ewer perched on a wooden stool; and he sniffed with disgust when breakfast was served on a table set out in the Platz.
"Don't know," he said, "whether I can digest food, eating out of doors. Myself, I never give in to these foreign ways. It's time they learned manners from us."
"I have no doubt," said Miss Vance placidly, "that you can find one of the usual hotels built for rich Americans in the town. We avoid them. We search out the inns du pays to see as far behind the scenes as we can. I don't care to go to those huge houses with mobs of Chicagoans and New Yorkers; and have the couriers and portiers turn the flashlights on Europe for me, as if it were a burlesque show."
"Now, that's just what I like!" said Perry. "I always go to the houses where the royalties put up. I like to order better dishes and give bigger tips than they do. They don't know Jem Perry from Adam, but it's my way of waving the American flag."
"I am afraid we have no such patriotic motive," said Clara. "My girls seem to care for nothing now but art. We have made this little inn our headquarters in the Tyrol chiefly out of love for the old church yonder."
Mr. Perry glanced contemptuously across the Platz at the frowning gray building, and sat down with his back to it.
"Art, eh? Well, I've no doubt I could soon catch on to Art, if I turned my mind that way. It pays, too,—Art. Not the fellows who paint, but the connoisseurs. There's Miller from our town. He was a drummer for a candy firm. Had an eye for color. Well, he buys pictures now for Americans who want galleries in their houses. He bought his whole collection for Stout—the great dealer in hams. Why, Miller can tell the money value within five dollars, at sight, of any picture in Europe. He's safe, too. Never invests in pictures that aren't sure to go up in price. Getting rich! And began as a candy drummer! No, ma'am! Art's no mystery. I've never taken it up myself. Europe is sheer pleasure to me. I get the best out of it. I know where to lodge well, and I can tell you where the famous plats are cooked, and I have my coats built by Toole. The house pays me a salary which justifies me in humoring my little follies," stroking his red beard complacently.
Lucy's chubby face and steady blue eyes were turned on him thoughtfully, and presently, when they sauntered down the windy street together, he talked and she still silently watched him.
"Miss Precision is weighing him in the balance," said Jean, laughing, as she poured out more black coffee. "With all of her soft ways Lucy is shrewd. She knows quite well why he races across the Atlantic, and why Prince Wolfburgh has backed away from us and charged on us again all summer. She is cool. She is measuring poor Perry's qualifications for a husband now just as she would materials for a cake. A neat little inventory. So much energy, so much honest kindness—so much vulgarity. I couldn't do that. If ever a man wants to marry me, I'll fly to him or away from him, as quick as the steel needle does when the magnet touches it." Miss Vance listened to her attentively. "Jean," she said, after a pause, "are you sure that it is Lucy whom the prince wishes to marry?"
"It is not I," said Miss Hassard promptly. "He has thought of me several times—he has weighed my qualifications. But the man is in love with Lucy as honestly as a ploughman could be. Don't you think I've tough luck?" she said, resting her elbow on the table and her chin on her palm, her keen gray eyes following Miss Dunbar and her lover as they loitered under the shadow of the church. "I am as young as Lucy. I have a better brain and as big a dot. But her lovers make her life a burden, and I never have had one. Just because our noses and chins are made up differently!"
"Oh, my dear!" said Clara anxiously. "I never thought you cared for that kind of success!"
"I'm only human," Jean laughed. "Of course I'm an artist. I'm going to paint a great picture some day that all the world shall go mad about. Of Eve. I'll put all the power of all women into her. But in the meantime I'd like to see one man turn pale and pant before me as the fat little prince does when Lucy snubs him."
"Lucy is very hard to please," complained Miss Vance. "She snubs Mr. Perry—naturally. But the prince—why should she not marry the prince?"
"Your generation," said Jean, smiling slyly, "used to think that an unreasonable whim called love was a good thing in marriage——"
"But why should she not love the prince? He is honorable and kind, and quite passable as to looks—— Can there be any one else?" turning suddenly to Jean.
Miss Hassard looked at her a moment, hesitating. "Your cousin George used to be Lucy's type of a hero——"
"Why! the man is married!" Miss Vance stood up, her lean face reddening. "Jean! You surprise me! That kind of talk—it's indecent! It is that loose American idea of marriage that ends in hideous divorce cases. But for one of my girls——"
"It is a very old idea," said Jean calmly.
"David loved another man's wife. Mind you, I don't accuse Lucy of loving any body, but when the needle has once touched the magnet it answers to its call ever after."
Miss Vance vouchsafed no answer. She walked away across the Platz, jerking her bonnet strings into a knot. Jean was one of the New Women! Her opinions stuck out on every side like Briareus' hundred elbows! You could not come near her without being jabbed by them. Such women were all opinions; there was no softness, no feeling, no delicacy about them. Skeletons with no flesh! As for Lucy, she had no fear. If even the child had loved George, she would have cast out every thought of him on his wedding day, as a Christian girl should do!
She passed Lucy at that moment. She was leaning against one of the huge stone lions which crouch in front of the church, listening to Mr. Perry. If ever a pure soul looked into the world it was through those limpid eyes!
The Platz was nearly empty. One or two men in blouses clattered across the cobblestones and going into the dark church dropped on their knees. The wind was high, and now and then swept heavy clouds low across the sunlight space overhead.
Lucy, as Jean had guessed, knew why the man beside her had crossed the Atlantic, and she had decided last night to end the matter at once. The tears had stood in her eyes for pity at the thought of the pain she must give him. Yet she had put on her new close-fitting coat and a becoming fur cap, and pulled out the loose hair which she knew at this moment was blowing about her pink cheeks in curly wisps in a way that was perfectly maddening. Clara, seeing the mischief in her eyes as she listened shyly to Perry, went on satisfied. There was no abyss of black loss in that girl's life!
Lucy just now was concerned only for Perry. How the poor man loved her! Why not marry him after all, and put him out of his pain? She was twenty-four. Most women at twenty-four had gone through their little tragedy of love. But she had had no tragedy. She told herself firmly that there had been no story of love in her life. There never could be, now. She was too old.
She was tired, too, and very lonely. This man would seat her on a throne and worship her every day. That would be pleasant enough.
"I am ashamed of myself," he was saying, "to pursue you in this way. You have given me no encouragement, I know. But whenever I go to New York and bone down to work, something tells me to come back and try again."
Lucy did not answer, and there was a brief silence.
"Of course I'm a fool,"—prodding the ground with his stick. "But if a man were in a jail cell and knew that the sun was shining just outside, he'd keep on beating at the wall."
"Your life is not a jail cell. It's very comfortable, I think."
"It has been bare enough. I have had a hard fight to live at all. I told you that I began as a canal-boy."
She looked at him with quick sympathy. At once she fancied that she could read old marks of want on his face. His knuckles were knobbed like a laborer's. He had had a hard fight! It certainly would be pleasant to rain down comfort and luxury on the good, plucky fellow!
"Of course that was all long ago," said Perry. "I'm not ashamed of it. As Judge Baker remarked the other day, 'The acknowledged aristocrats of America, to-day, are its self-made men.' He ought to know. The Bakers are the top of the heap in New York. Very exclusive. I've been intimate there for years. No, Miss Dunbar, I may have begun as a mule-driver on a canal, but I am choice in my society. My wife will not find a man or woman in my circle who is half-cut."
Lucy drew a long breath. To live all day and every day with this man!
And yet—she was so tired! There was a good deal of money to manage, and he could do that. He would like a gay, hospitable house, and so would she, and they would be kind to the poor—and he was an Episcopalian, too. There would be no hitch there. Lucy was a zealous High Churchwoman.
Why should she not do it? The man was as good as gold at heart. Jean called him a cad, but the caddishness was only skin deep.
Mr. Perry watched her, reading her thoughts more keenly than she guessed.
"One thing I will say in justice to myself," he said. "You are a rich woman. If you marry me, YOU will know, if nobody else does, that I am no fortune-hunter. I shall always be independent of my wife. Every dollar she owns shall be settled on her before I go with her to the altar."
"Oh, I'm not thinking of the money," said Lucy impatiently.
"Then you are thinking of me!" He leaned over her. She felt as if she had been suddenly dragged too close to a big unpleasant fire. "I know you don't love me," he panted, "you cold little angel, you! But you do like me? Eh? just a little bit, Lucy? Marry me. Give me a chance. I'll bring you to me. If there is a single spark of love in your heart for me, I'll blow it into a flame! I can do it, I tell you!" He caught her fiercely by the shoulder.
Lucy drew back and threw out her hands. "Let me have time to think!"
"Time? You've had a year!"
"One more day. Come again this evening——"
"This evening? I've come so often!" staring breathlessly into her face. "It will be no use, I can see that. Well, as you please. I'll come once more."
The young fellow in his jaunty new clothes shook as if he had the ague. 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 nobody—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 shaggy 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 passion 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 brasses 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 pass 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 noble work in the world. It was a small thing for his mother to help him."
"Noble 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 hoarsely. 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.
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