With a gasp of despair, May disengaged her and led her to the front door, where he deposited his precious burden upon the china garden-seat. The countess seemed less graceful than of yore, and she certainty was heavier. But the countess, of course it was.
“Sech a time, Mr. May,” said she. “Me a-comin’ up with the dépôt-man, and findin’ a burglar in the house; an’ the volleys from the ambushes as was outside; an’ Mr. Eastman a-runnin’ for his gun, an’ I chasin’ the burglar; an’ all along of that furriner in the kitchen as left the cellar-door wide open; an’, says I——”
“Mrs. Eastman!” cried May, with a sigh of relief, as if he saw the dawn again. But that heroine’s short-lived valor was exhausted. To chase an elderly burglar out one’s own front door, amid salvoes of musketry, was surely excuse enough for leaning on the shoulder of the first reliable male one met and knew; but the thought of both actions was too much for feminine nerves, and Mrs. Eastman proceeded to get up the best notion of hysterics her Maine training could produce. As for May, he was so glad that it was not the Polacca de Valska that he could have kissed even the elderly housekeeper; but he thought better of it, and consigned her to the tender soothing of her husband.
“Mirandy,” he heard Mr. Eastman say, “don’t ye be a fool!”
Scene Fifth
THE RESIDUARY BEQUEST
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.”