Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Harding Davis (top books to read .txt) 📖

hang on the edge of the crowd and stare at the haute noblesse."
"Don't be absurd, Jean," said Miss Vance.
"I am quite serious. I think an American girl like Lucy, with her beauty and her money, will be welcomed by these German nobles as a white swan among ducks. She ought to take her place and hold it." Jean's black eyes snapped and the blood flamed up her cheeks. "If I were she I'd make my money tell! I'd buy poor King Ludwig's residence at Binderhof, with the cascades and jewelled peacocks and fairy grottos, for my country seat. The Bavarian nobility are a beggarly lot. If they knew that Lucy and her millions were coming to town in this cab, they'd blow their trumpets for joy. 'Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave!'" Lucy's impatient shrug silenced her, but she was preoccupied and excited throughout the day. Miss Vance watched her curiously. Could it be that she had heard of the prince's plan of marrying her to his cousin, and that she was building these air castles for herself?
A day or two sufficed to make Miss Vance's cheery apartments the rendezvous of troops of Americans of all kinds: from the rich lounger, bored by the sight of pictures, which he did not understand, and courts which he could not enter, to the half-starved, eager-eyed art students, who smoked, and drank beer, and chattered in gutturals, hoping to pass for Germans.
There were plenty of idle young New Yorkers and Bostonians too, hovering round Lucy and Jean, overweighted by their faultless London coats and trousers and fluent French. But they deceived nobody; they all had that nimble brain, and that unconscious swagger of importance and success which stamps the American in every country. Prince Hugo, in his old brown suit, came and went quietly among them.
"The genuine article!" Jean declared loudly. "There is something royal in his hospitality! He lays all Munich at Lucy's feet, as if it were his own estate, and the museums and palaces were the furniture of his house. That homely simplicity of his is tremendously fine, if she could understand it!"
The homely genuineness had its effect even upon Lucy. The carriage which he brought to drive them to Isar-anen was scaly with age, but the crest upon it was the noblest in Bavaria; in the cabinet of portraits of ancient beauties in the royal palace he showed her indifferently two or three of his aunts and grandmothers, and in the historical picture of the anointing of the great Charlemagne, one of his ancestors, stout and good-humored as Hugo himself, supported the emperor.
"The pudgy little man," said Jean one day, "somehow belongs to the old world of knights and crusaders--Sintram and his companions. He will make it all real to Lucy when she marries him. He is like Ali Baba, standing at the shut door of the cave full of jewels and treasures with the key in his hand."
"Those Arabian Night stories are simply silly," said Lucy severely. "I am astonished that any woman in this age of the world should read that kind of trash."
"But the prince's cave?" persisted Jean. "When are we to look into it? I want to be sure of the treasures inside. When are we to go to his palace? When will his sisters ask us to dinner?"
Miss Vance looked anxious. "That is a question of great importance," she said. "The princesses have invited me through their brother to call. It is of course etiquette here for the stranger to call first, but I don't wish to compromise Lucy by making advances."
There was a moment's silence, then Lucy said, blushing and faltering a little, "It would be better perhaps to call, and not prejudice them, by any discourtesy, against us. The prince is very kind."
"So! The wind is in that quarter?" Jean said, with a harsh laugh.
She jumped up and went to her own room. She was in a rage at herself. Why had she not run away to Paris months ago and begun her great picture of the World's mother, Eve? There was a career for her! And thinking--perhaps of Eve--she cried hot salt tears.


CHAPTER XI
A week passed, but the question of the first call was not yet settled. It required as much diplomacy as an international difficulty. Furst Hugo represented the princesses as "burning with impatience to behold the engelreine Madchen whom they hoped to embrace as a sister," but no visible sign of their ardor reached Miss Vance.
On Monday Jean went to spend the day with some of her artist friends, but at noon she dashed into the room where Clara and Lucy sat sewing, her dark face blotched red, and her voice stuttering with excitement.
"I have seen into the cave!" she shouted. "I have got at the truth! It's a rather stagy throne, the Wolfburghs! Plated, cheap!"
"What is the matter with you?" said Miss Vance.
"Nothing is the matter with ME. It is Lucy's tragedy. I've seen the magnificent ancient palace of the Wolfburghs. It is a flat! In the very house where I went to-day. The third story flat just under the attics where the poor Joneses daub portraits. I passed the open doors and I saw the shabby old tables and chairs and the princesses--two fat old women in frowzy wrappers, and their hair in papers, eating that soup of pork and cabbages and raisins--the air was thick with the smell! And that is not the worst!"
"Take breath, Jean," said Lucy calmly.
"The prince himself--the Joneses told me, there can be no doubt--the prince makes soap for a living! No wonder you turn pale, Miss Vance. Soap! He is the silent partner in the firm of Woertz und Zimmer, and it is not a paying business either."
Jean did not wait for an answer, but walked up and down the room, laughing angrily to herself. "Yes, soap! He cannot sneer at Lucy's ancestral saddles, now. Nor my father's saws! His rank is the only thing he has to give for Lucy's millions, and now she knows what it is worth!"
Lucy rose and, picking up her work basket, walked quietly out of the room. Jean flashed an indignant glance after her.
"She might have told me that he gave himself! Surely the man counts for something! Anyhow, rank like his is not smirched by poverty or trade. Bismarck himself brews beer."
"Your temper is contradictory to-day," said Clara coldly. "Did you know," she said presently, "that the princesses will be at the Countess von Amte's to-morrow?"
"Then we shall meet them!" cried Jean. "Then something will be settled."
Lucy locked the door of her chamber after her. She found much comfort in the tiny bare room with its white walls and blue stove, and the table where lay her worn Bible and a picture of her old home. The room seemed a warm home to her now. Above the wall she had hung photographs of the great Madonnas, and lately she had placed one of Frances Waldeaux among them. That was the face on which she looked last at night. When Clara had noticed it, Lucy had said, "I am as fond of the dear lady as if she were my own mother."
She sat down before it now, and taking out her sewing began to work, glancing up at it, half smiling as to a friend who talked to her. She thought of Furst Hugo boiling soap, with a gentle pity, and of Jean with hot disdain. What had Jean to do with it? The prince was her own lover, as her gloves were her own.
But indeed, the prince and love were but shadows on the far sky line to the little girl; the real things were her work and her Bible, and George's mother talking to her. She often traced remembered expressions on Mrs. Waldeaux's face; the gayety, the sympathy, a strange foreboding in the eyes. Finer meanings, surely, than any in the features of these immortal insipid Madonnas!
Sometimes Lucy could not decide whether she had seen these meanings on Frances Waldeaux's face, or on her son's.
She sewed until late in the afternoon. There came a tap at the door. She opened it, and there stood Mrs. Waldeaux, wrapped in a heavy cloak. Lucy jumped at her, trembling, and hugged her.
"Oh, come in! Come in!" she cried shrilly. "I have just been thinking of you and talking to you!"
Frances laughed, bewildered. "Oh, it is Miss Dunbar? The man sent me here by mistake to wait. Miss Vance is out, he said."
"Yes, I suppose so. But I--I am here." Lucy threw her arms around her again, laying her head down on her shoulder. She felt as if something that she had waited for a long time was coming to her. "Sit by the stove. Your hands are like ice," she said.
"Yes, I am usually cold now; I don't know why."
Lucy then saw a curious change in her face. The fine meanings were not in it now. It was fatter--coarser; the hair was dead, the eyes moved sluggishly, like the glass eyes of a doll.
"You are always cold? Your blood is thin, perhaps. You are overtired, dear. Have you travelled much?"
"Oh, yes! all of the time. I have seen whole tracts of pictures, and no end of palaces and hotels--hotels--hotels!" Frances said, awakening to the necessity of being talkative and vivacious with the young girl. She threw off her cloak. There was a rip in the fur, and the dirty lining hung out. Lucy shuddered. Mrs. Waldeaux's blood must have turned to water, or she would never have permitted that!
"You must rest now. I will take care of you," she said, with a little nod of authority. Frances looked at her perplexed. Why should this pretty creature mother her with such tenderness?
Oh! It was the girl that George should have married!
She glanced at the white room with its dainty bibelots, the Bible, the Madonnas, watching, benign. Poor little nun, waiting for the love that never could come to her!
"I am glad you are here, my child. You can tell me what I want to know. I have not an hour to spare. I am going to my son--to George. Do you know where he is?"
"At Vannes, in Brittany."
"Brittany--that is a long way." Frances rose uncertainly. "I hoped he was near. I was in a Russian village, and Clara's letter was long in finding me. When I got it, I travelled night and day. I somehow thought I should meet him on the way. I fancied he would come to meet me."
Lucy's blue eyes watched her keenly a moment. Then she rang the bell.
"You must eat, first of all," she said.
"No, I am not hungry. Vannes, you said? I must go now. I haven't an hour."
"You have two, exactly. You'll take the express at eight. Oh, I'm never mistaken about a train. Here is the coffee. Now, I'll make you a nice sandwich."
Frances was faint with hunger. As she ate, she watched the pretty matter-of-fact little girl, and laughed with delight. When had she found any thing so wholesome?