I.
THE ORDER OF DISCHARGE.
May went back again to his pavilion. Great heavens, what a day! He looked at his watch. It was already after ten o’clock; and his heart gave a leap of joy. Could it be that the countess would never turn up at all?
He was too much shaken by the excitements of the day to sit still quietly, and count the minutes; so he took to wandering in the driveway about the lake. He was conscious of a marvellous accession of spirits! Poor Mr. Terwilliger Dehon! And May laughed to himself as he pictured their meeting, and the Eastmans taking him for a burglar. What could she have done to drive Dehon in such terror from the house? May wondered what had become of him, and looked with some apprehension lest he should have rushed into the lily-pond. But that was impossible in so light a night. Moreover, he could have waded out. Well, well! he never should have known how to get rid of him. Peace to his widower’s weeds.
The harvest moon had risen, and shone brightly on the familiar fields. Beauty is only relished by the free. How strong and sweet is our memory for places! Each swell of grassy hill seemed like an old playmate; the very contour of the masses of elm-foliage, darkly outlined under the moon, seemed all familiar to him. Every time that May walked by the main gate-way, with the iron cannon-balls, he looked nervously through it; but the white, shady road was clean and empty, and the night was still.
His fortune was almost too great to be believed in, and he looked frequently at his watch, and listened timidly for every sound. Had the countess forgotten him? Had she captured another? Well, Gladys was dead, and Georgiana “was married;” and he sat there, “dipping his nose in the Gascon wine”—still seven years short of “forty year.”
But the night waxed and the moon rose higher, and the white mists began to drift in, stilly, from the distant river; and there was yet no manifestation of the Countess Polacca de Valska.
And at last the village church rang out twelve bells; and the cocks crew; and May pitched his cigar into the lake with a sigh that resembled a benediction. The day was over. That most terrible twenty-four hours of his life was safely passed. He could go to bed and sleep serenely, in the consciousness that no one of his idle old dreams was to be realized, that no folly of his past was to assume shape and confront him now. And all his arsenal of weapons, his laboratory of drugs, his store-house of Dutch courage, had proved unnecessary.
He walked along by the margent of the little lake; and as he did so, a thought struck him. He entered the pavilion and set the fountain playing, in celebration of his deliverance. He threw open all the shutters and the wide door—useless precautions now—and the flood of moonlight streamed again into the familiar old hall. He looked about at the misanthropic pictures, and the moonlight fell fair upon the beautiful Venus of Milo in the corner. He looked again at the old will, and Georgiana Rutherford’s note, and Mrs. Dehon’s visiting-card lying beside it. Through such various fortunes had he tended into Latium.
He patted Fides on his massive head, as the dog walked along beside him. He went back into the house. It was all his own now; all his own, and untrammelled. He called his valet to him.
“Schmidt,” said he, “I am not going to sit up any longer. If anyone comes, I have been here and gone—you understand? I have gone—to Arizona.” Schmidt bowed. He had regained his imperturbability, and was fearful of being discharged. An American servant would have left, and brought an action for his ducking; not so the obsequious Oriental. And Austin May took his candle and went quietly to bed. He had kept his tryst honorably; he had made due tender of himself; and by all laws, human and divine, his three offers of marriage had now expired.