CHAPTER IV
Two days later Mr. Perry met Miss Vance in Canterbury and told her of the marriage. She hurried back to London. She could not hide her distress and dismay from the two girls.
"How did she force him into it? One is almost driven to believe in hypnotism," she cried.
Lucy Dunbar had no joke to make about it to-day. The merry little girl was silent, having, she said, a headache.
"You've had too much cathedral!" said Miss Hassard. "And the whole church is wretchedly out of drawing!"
Jean Hassard had studied art at Pond City in Dakota, and her soul's hope had been to follow Marie Bashkirtseff's career in Paris. But her father had morally handcuffed her and put her into Clara's custody for a year. It was hard! To be led about to old churches, respectable as her grandmother, when she might have been studying the nude in a mixed class! She rattled her chains disagreeably at every step.
"The mesalliance is on the other side," she told Lucy privately. "A woman of the world who knew life, to marry that bloodless, finical priest!"
"He was not bloodless. He loved her."
Mr. Perry came up with them from Canterbury, being secretly alarmed about Miss Dunbar's headache. Nobody took proper care of that lovely child! He had attached himself to Miss Vance's party in England; he dropped in every evening to tell of his interviews with Gladstone or Mrs. Oliphant or an artist or a duke. It was delightful to the girls to come so close to these unknown great folks. They felt quite like peris, just outside the court of heaven, with the gate a little bit ajar. This evening Mr. Perry promised it should open for them. He was going to bring a real prince, whom he familiarly dubbed "a jolly fellow," to call upon Miss Vance.
"Who is the man?" said Clara irritably. "Be careful, Mr. Perry. I have had enough of foreign adventurers."
"Oh, the Hof Kalender will post you as to Prince Wolfburgh. I looked him up in it. He is head of one of the great mediatized families. Would have been reigning now if old Kaiser Wilhelm had not played Aaron's serpent and gobbled up all the little kings. Wolfburgh has kept all his land and castles, however."
"Very well. Let us see what the man is like," Miss Vance said loftily.
Mrs. Waldeaux was not in the house when they arrived. Every day she went early in the morning to the Green Park, where she had seen George last, and wandered about until night fell. She thought that he had gone to Paris, and that she was alone in London. But somehow she came nearer to him there.
When she found that Clara had arrived, she knew that she would be full of pity for her. She came down to dinner in full dress, told some funny stories, and laughed incessantly.
No. She had not missed them. The days had gone merry as a marriage bell with her even after her son and his wife had run away to Paris.
Mr. Perry congratulated her warmly on the match. "The lady is very fetching, indeed," he said. "I remarked that the first day on ship-board. Oh, yes, I know a diamond when I see it. But your son picks it up. Lucky fellow! He picks it up!" He told Miss Vance that there was a curious attraction about her friend, "who, by the way, should always wear brown velvet and lace."
Miss Vance drew little Lucy aside after dinner. "Do you see," she said, "the tears in her eyes? It wrenches my heart. She has become an old woman in a day. I feel as if Frances were dead, and that was her ghost joking and laughing."
Lucy said nothing, but she went to Frances and sat beside her all evening. When the prince arrived and was presented, going on his triumphant way through the room, she nestled closer, whispering, "What do you think of him?"
"He looks very like our little fat Dutch baker in Weir—he has the same air of patronage," said Frances coldly. She was offended that Lucy should notice the man at all. Was it not she whom George should have married? How happy they would have been—her boy and this sweet, neat little girl! And already Lucy was curious about so-called princes!
When his Highness came back to them she rose hastily and went to her own room.
Late that night Miss Vance found her there in the dark, sitting bolt upright in her chair, still robed in velvet and lace. Clara regarded her sternly, feeling that it was time to take her in hand.
"You have not forgiven George?" she said abruptly.
Mrs. Waldeaux looked up, but said nothing.
"Is he coming back soon?"
"He never shall come back while that woman is with him."
Miss Vance put her lamp on the table and sat down. "Frances," she said deliberately, "I know what this is to you. It would have been better for you that George had died."
"Much better."
"But he didn't die. He married Lisa Arpent. Now it is your duty to accept it. Make the best of it."
"If a lizard crawls into my house will you tell me to accept it? Make the best of it? Oh, my God! The slimy vile creature!"
"She is not vile! I tell you there are lovable qualities in Lisa. And even if she were as wicked as her mother, what right have you– You, too, are a sinner before God."
"No," said Mrs. Waldeaux gravely, "I am not. I have lived a good Christian life. I may have been tempted to commit sin, but I cannot remember that I ever did it."
Miss Vance looked at her aghast. "But surely your religion teaches you– Why, you are sinning now, when you hate this girl!"
"I do not hate her. God made her as he made the lizard. I simply will not allow her to cross my path. What has religion to do with it? I am clean and she is vile. That is all there is to say."
Both women were silent. Mrs. Waldeaux got up at last and caught Clara by the arm. She was trembling violently. "No, I'm not ill. I'm well enough. But you don't understand! That woman has killed George. I spent twenty years in making him what he is. I worked—there was nothing but him for me in the world. I didn't spare myself. To make him a gentleman—a Christian. And in a month she turns him into a thing like herself. He is following her vulgar courses. I saw the difference after he had lived with her for one day. He is tainted." She stood staring into the dull lamp. "She may not live long, though," she said. "She doesn't look strong–"
"Frances! For God's sake!"
"Well, what of it? Why shouldn't I wish her gone? The harm—the harm! Do you remember that Swedish maid I had—a great fair woman? One day she was stung by a green fly, and in a week she was dead, her whole body a mass of corruption! Oh, God lets such things be done! Nothing but a green fly–" She shook off Clara's hold, drawing her breath with difficulty. "That is Lisa. It is George that is being poisoned, body and soul. It's a pity to see my boy killed by a thing like that—it's a pity–"
Miss Vance was too frightened to argue with her. She brought her wrapper, loosened her hair, soothing her in little womanish ways. But her burning curiosity drove her presently to ask one question.
"How can they live?"
"I have doubled his allowance."
"Frances! You will work harder to make money for Lisa Arpent?"
"Oh, what is money!" cried Frances, pushing her away impatiently.
CHAPTER V
Miss Vance persuaded Mrs. Waldeaux to go with her to Scotland. During the weeks that followed Frances always found Lucy Dunbar at her side in the trains or on the coaches.
"She is a very companionable child," she told Clara. "I often forget that I am any older than she. She never tires of hearing stories of George's scrapes or his queer sayings when he was a child. Such stories, I think, are usually tedious, but George was a peculiar boy."
Mr. Perry's search for notorieties took him also to Scotland, and, oddly enough, Prince Wolfburgh's search for amusement led him in the same direction. They met him and his cousin, Captain Odo Wolfburgh, at Oban, and again on the ramparts of Stirling Castle, and the very day that they arrived in Edinburgh, there, in Holyrood, in Queen Mary's chamber, stood the pursy little man, curling his mustache before her mirror.
Mr. Perry fell into the background with Miss Hassard. "His Highness is becoming monotonous!" he grumbled. "These foreigners never know when they are superfluous in society."
"Is he superfluous?" Jean glanced to the corner where the prince and Lucy were eagerly searching for the blood of Rizzio upon the steps.
"Decidedly," said Perry. "I wished to show you and Miss Dunbar a live prince, and I did it. That is done and over with. He has been seen and heard. There is no reason why he should pop up here and there all over Great Britain like a Jack-in-the-box. He's becoming a bore."
"You suspect him to be an impostor?" said Jean quickly.
"No. He's genuine enough. But we don't want any foreigners in our caravan," stroking his red beard complacently.
"No. What do you suppose is his object?" asked Jean, with one of her quick, furtive glances.
Mr. Perry's jaws grew red as his beard. "How can I tell?" he said gruffly. He went on irritably, a moment later: "Of course you see it. The fellow has no delicacy. He makes no more secret of his plans than if he were going to run down a rabbit. Last night at Stirling, over his beer, he held forth upon the dimples on Miss Dunbar's pink elbows, and asked me if her hair were all her own. I said, at last, that American men did not value women like sheep by their flesh and fleece and the money they were rated at in the market. I hit him square that time, prince or no prince!"
"Yes, you did, indeed," said Jean vaguely. Her keen eyes followed Lucy and the prince, who were loitering through the gallery, pausing before the faded portraits. "You think it is only her money that draws him after us?"
"Why, of course! A fellow like that could not appreciate Miss Dunbar's beauty and wit."
"You think Lucy witty?" said Jean dryly. "And you think she would not marry for a title?"
"I don't believe any pure American girl would sell herself, like a sheep in the shambles! And she is pure! A lamb, a lily! cried Perry, growing incoherent in his heat.
"She would not if her heart were preoccupied," said Jean thoughtfully.
"And you think–" he said breathlessly.
But Jean only laughed, and said no more.
The guide had been paying profound deference to Prince Wolfburgh, keeping close to his heels. Now he swung open a door. "If your Highnesses will come this way?" he said, bowing profoundly to Lucy.
The little girl started and hurried back to Miss Vance. Her face was scarlet, and she laughed nervously. Prince Wolfburgh also laughed, loudly and meaningly. He swore at the old man and went out into the cloister where his cousin stood smoking.
"Had enough of the old barracks?" said the captain.
"I found I was making too fast running in there," said the prince uneasily; "I'll waken up and find that girl married to me some day."
"Not so bad a dream," puffed his cousin.
"I'll take a train somewhere," said the prince. "But no matter where I go, I'll find an American old woman with a girl to marry. They all carry the Hof Kalender in their pockets, and know every bachelor in Germany."
The captain watched him attentively. "I don't believe those women inside mean to drive any marriage bargain with you, Hugo," he said gruffly. "I doubt whether the little mees would marry you if you asked her. Her dot, I hear, is e-normous!" waving his hand upward as if to mountain heights. "And as for beauty, she is a wild rose!"
Now, there were reasons why the captain should rejoice when Hugo allied himself to the little mees. On the day when he would take these hills of gold and wild rose to himself, the captain would become the head of the house of Wolfburgh. It was, perhaps, a mean, ungilded throne, but by German law no nameless Yankee woman could sit upon it.
The prince looked at Captain Odo. "You cannot put me into a gallop when I choose to walk," he said. "She's a pretty girl, and a good girl, and some time I may marry her, but not now."
Odo laughed good-humoredly, and they sauntered down the path together.
The prince had offered to dine with Miss Vance that evening, but sent a note to say that he was summoned to the Highlands unexpectedly.
"It is adieu, not auf wiedersehen, I fear, with his Highness," Miss Vance said, folding the note pensively. She had not meant to drive a marriage bargain, and yet—to have placed a pupil upon even such a bric-a-brac throne as that of Wolfburgh! She looked thoughtfully at Lucy's chubby cheeks. A princess? The man was not objectionable in himself, either—a kindly, overgrown boy. "He told me," said Jean, "that he was going to a house party at Inverary Castle."
"Whose house is that, Jean?" asked Lucy.
"It is the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Argyll."
"Oh!" Lucy gave a little sigh. Prince Hugo was undeniably fat and very slow to catch a joke, but there was certainly a different flavor in this talk of dukes and ancestral seats to the gossip about the Whites and Greens at home.
Indeed, the whole party, including even Mr. Perry, experienced a sensation of sudden vacancy and flatness when his Highness left them. It was as though they had been sheltering a royal eagle that was used to dwelling in sunlit heights unknown to them, and now they were left on flat ground to consort with common poultry.
CHAPTER VI
Miss Vance led her party slowly through Scotland and down again to London. Mrs. Waldeaux went with them. The girls secretly laughed together at her fine indomitable politeness, and her violent passion for the Stuarts, and hate of the Roundheads. But Mr. Perry was bored by her.
"What is it to us," he said, "that Queen Mary paddled over this lake, or Cromwell's soldiers whitewashed that fresco? Give me a clean, new American church, anyhow, before all of your mouldy, tomby cathedrals. These things are so many cancelled cheques to me. I have nothing to pay on them. It is live issues that draw on my heart. You American girls ought to be at home looking into the negro problem, or Tammany, or the Sugar Trust, instead of nosing into Rembrandts, or miracles at Lourdes, or palaces. These are all back numbers. Write n. g. on them and bury them. So, by the way, is your Mrs. Waldeaux a back number. My own opinion is that all men and women at fifty ought to go willingly and be shut up in the room where the world keeps its second-hand lumber!"
"Yet nobody," said Lucy indignantly, "is more careful or tender with Mrs. Waldeaux than you!"
"That is because Mr. Perry has the genuine American awe of people of good birth," said Jean slyly. "It is the only trait which makes me suspect that he is a self-made man." Mr. Perry, for answer, only bowed gravely. He long ago had ceased to hide his opinion that Miss Hassard was insufferable.
Frances, for her part, was sure that the young people were glad to have her as a companion. One day she decided to stay with them, and the next to go to New York on the first steamer. She seemed to see life hazily, as one over whose mind a cataract was growing. What had she to do in Europe, she reasoned? George was gone. Her one actual hold on the world had slipped from her. That great mysterious thing called living was done and past for her.
And yet—there was Kenilworth, and Scott's house? Scott, who had been her friend and leader since she was eight years old! And in that anthem at York minster there was a message, which she had been waiting all of her life to hear! And here was Lucy beside her with her soft voice, and loving blue eyes—Lucy, who should have been George's wife! In all of these things something high and good called to the poor lady, which she heard and understood as a child would the voice of its mother.
One hour she resolved to leave her son with his wife, to go back to Weir at once and work with the poultry and Quigg's jokes for the rest of her life. She was dead. Let her give up and consent to be dead.
The next, she would stay where she could see George sometimes, and try to forgive the woman who had him in her keeping. Perhaps, after all, she was human, as Clara said. If she could forgive Lisa, she could be happy with these young people and live—live in this wonderful old world, where all that was best of past ages was kept waiting for her.
When they came to London, she went at once to Morgan's to make a deposit, for she had been hard at work on her jokes as she travelled, and had received her pay.
"Your son, madam," said the clerk, "drew on his account to-day. He said he expected remittances from you. Is this to be put to his credit?"
"My son was in London to-day?
"He has just left the house."
"Did he—he left a message for me? A letter, perhaps?"
"No, nothing, madam."
"Put the money to his credit, of course." She went out into the narrow street and wandered along to the Bank of England, staring up at the huge buildings.
He had been looking at them—he had walked on this very pavement a minute ago! That might be the smoke of his cigar, yonder!
She could easily find him. Just to look at him once; to hold his hand! He might be ill and need her; he never was well in foggy weather.
Then she remembered that Lisa was with him. She would nurse him.
She called a cab, and, as she drove home, looked out at the crowd with a hard, smiling face.
Henry Irving that night played "Shylock," and Mr. Perry secured a box for Miss Vance. Frances went with the others. Before the curtain rose there was a startled movement among them, a whisper, and then Clara turned to Mrs. Waldeaux.
"Frances, Lisa is coming into the opposite box," she said. "She is really a beautiful woman in that decollete gown, and her cheeks flushed, and her eyes– I had no idea! She is superb!"
Two men in the dress of French officers entered the box with Lisa. They seated her, bending over her with an empressement which, to Mrs. Waldeaux's heated fancy, was insulting. George came last, carrying his wife's cloak, which he placed upon a chair. One of the men tossed his cape to him, with a familiar nod, and George laid it aside and sat down at the back of the box.
His mother leaned forward, watching. That woman had put her son in the place of an inferior—an attendant.
The great orchestra shook the house with a final crash, and the curtain rose upon the Venetian plaza. Every face in the audience was turned attentive toward it. But Mrs. Waldeaux saw only Lisa.
A strange change came upon her as she watched her son's wife. For months she had struggled feebly against her hate of Lisa. Now she welcomed it; she let herself go.
Is the old story true after all? Is there some brutal passion hiding in every human soul, waiting its chance, even in old age? It is certain that this woman, after her long harmless life, recognized the fury in her soul and freed it.
"Frances," whispered Clara, "when this act is over, go and speak to them. I will go with you. It is your chance to put an end to this horrible separation. They are your children."
"No. That woman is my enemy, Clara," said Mrs. Waldeaux quietly. "I will make no terms with her."
Miss Vance sighed and turned to the stage, but Frances still watched the opposite box. It seemed as if the passion within her had cleared her eyes. They never had seen George as they now saw him.
Was that her son? Was it that little priggish, insignificant fellow that she had made a god of? He was dull, commonplace! Satisfied to sit dumb in the background and take orders from those bourgeois French Jews!
The play went on, but she saw nothing but George and his wife.
There was the result of all her drudgery! The hot summers of work in the filthy poultry yards; the grinding out of poor jokes; the coarse, cheap underclothes (she used to cry when she put them on, she hated them so). Years and years of it all; and for that cold, selfish fop!
His mother saw him leave the box, and knew that he was coming.
"Oh, good-evening, George!" she said gayly, as he opened the door. "A wonderful scene, wasn't it? I have always wished to see Irving in 'Hamlet.'"
"This is 'Shylock,'" he said gravely, and turned to speak to the others. They welcomed him eagerly, and made room for him. He had lost something of the cold, blase air which had ennobled him in the eyes of the young women. He looked around presently, and said with a comfortable shrug:
"It is so pleasant to talk English again! My wife detests it. We speak only French. I feel like an alien and outcast among you!" He laughed; his mother glanced at him curiously. But Lucy turned her face away, afraid that he should see it. As he talked, George noted the clear-cut American features of the girls, and their dainty gowns, with a keen pleasure; then he glanced quickly at the opposite box.
"Ah!" said Jean to Mr. Perry. "The soiled lace and musk are beginning to tell! He is tired of Lisa already!" "I never liked the fellow," said Mr. Perry coldly. "But he is hardly the cad that you suppose."
He fell into a gloomy silence. He had wasted two years' salary in following Lucy Dunbar about, in showering flowers on her, in posing before her in the last fashions of Conduit Street, and yet when this conceited fellow came into the box she was blind and deaf to all besides! Her eyes filled with tears just now when he talked of his loneliness. Lonely—with his wife! A married man!
George, when the curtain fell again, sat down by Frances.
"Mother," he said.
"Yes, George." Her eyes were bright and attentive, but her countenance had fallen into hard lines new to him.
"I went to Morgan's this afternoon. You have been very liberal to us."
"I will do what I can. You may depend upon that amount, regularly."
He rose and bade them good-night, and turned to her again.
"We—we are coming to-morrow to thank you. MOTHER?" There was a hoarse sob in his throat. He laid his hand on her arm. She moved so that it dropped. "We will come to-morrow," he said. "Did you understand? Lisa wishes to be friends with you. She is ready to forgive," he groped on, blundering, like a man.
"Oh, yes, I understand. You and Lisa are coming to forgive me to-morrow," she said, smiling.
He looked at her, perplexed and waiting. But she said no more.
"Well, I must go now. Good-night."
"Good-night, George!" Her bright, smiling eyes followed him steadily, as he went out.
Mrs. Waldeaux tapped at Clara's door that evening after they reached home.
"I came to tell you that I shall leave London early in the morning," she said.
"You will not wait to see George and his wife?"
"I hope I never shall see them again. No! Not a word! I will hear no arguments!" She came into the room and closed the door. There was a certain novel air of decision and youth in her figure and movements. "I am going to make a change, Clara," she said. "I have worked for others long enough. I am going away now, alone. I will be free. I will live my own life—at last." Her eyes shone with exultation.
"And– Where are you going?" stammered Miss Vance, dismayed.
"I don't know. There is so much—it has all been waiting so long for me. There are the cathedrals—and the mountains. Or the Holy Land. Perhaps I may try to write again. There seems to be a dumb word or two in me. Don't be angry with me, Clara," throwing her arms about her cousin, the tears rushing to her eyes. "I may come back to you and little Lucy some time. But just now I want to be alone and fancy myself young. I never was young."
When Lucy stole into her old friend's chamber the next morning as usual to drink her cup of coffee with her, she found the door open and the room in disorder, and she was told that Mrs. Waldeaux had left London at daybreak.