Kitabı oku: «Frances Waldeaux», sayfa 5

CHAPTER IX

When Miss Vance came into the corridor after she had reported this interview to Lucy, Jean swept her into her room and dragged the whole story from her. In fact the poor anxious lady was glad to submit it to the girl's shrewd hard sense.

"You told him that she was the uncontrolled mistress of her money!"

"It is the truth. I had to tell him the truth, my dear."

"Yes, I suppose so, for he would have found it out anyhow."

"I do feel," panted Clara, "as if I had put a dove into the claws of a vulture."

"Not at all," said Jean promptly. "The little man has a heart, but an empty pocket. Was Lucy interested most in his love or his bargaining?"

"In neither, I think. She just went on painting, and said nothing."

"Oh, she will decide the matter in time! She will bring her little intellect to bear on it as if it were a picnic for her Sunday-school class!" Jean stood silent a while. "Miss Vance," she said suddenly, "let me engineer this affair for a few days. I can help you."

"What do you propose to do, Jean?"

"To leave Bozen to-morrow. For Munich."

"But the Wolfburghs have a palace or—something in Munich. Is it quite delicate for us–"

"It is quite rational. Let us see what the something is. So far in our dealings with principalities and powers, we have had a stout little man—with no background." The prince was startled when he was told of this sudden journey, but declared that he would follow them to-morrow.

Lucy, as usual, asked no questions, but calmly packed her satchel.

As the little train, the next day, lumbered through the valley of the Eisach, she sat in her corner, reading a newspaper. Miss Vance dozed, or woke with a start to lecture on points of historic interest.

"Why don't you look, Lucy? That monastery was a Roman fortress in the third century. And you are missing the color effects of the vineyards."

"I can look now. I have finished my paper." Lucy folded it neatly and replaced it in her bag. "I have read the Delaware State Sun," she said triumphantly, "regularly, every week since we left home. When I go back I shall be only seven days behind with the Wilmington news."

Jean glanced at her contemptuously. "Look at that great castle on yonder mountain," she said. "You could lodge a village inside of the ramparts. Do you think Wolfburgh Schloss is like that? The prince told us last night," turning to Miss Vance, "the old legends about his castle. The first Wolfburgh was a Titan about the time of Noah, and married a human wife, and with his hands tore open the mountain for rocks to lay the foundation of his house. According to his story there were no end of giants and trolls and kings concerned in the building of it," she went on, furtively watching the deepening pink in Lucy's cheek. "The Wolfburgh of Charlemagne's day was besieged by him, and another entertained St. Louis and all his crusaders within the walls." Jean's voice rose shrilly and her eyes glowed. She leaned forward, looking eagerly across the fields. "The prince told us that the Schloss of his race had for centuries been one of the great fortresses of Christendom. And here it is! Now we shall see—we shall see!"

The car stopped. The guard opened the door and Miss Vance and Lucy suddenly found themselves swept by Jean on to the platform, while the little train rumbled on down the valley. Miss Vance cried out in dismay.

"Never mind. There will be another train in a half hour," said Jean. "Here is the Schloss," pointing to a pepper-box tower neatly whitewashed, which rose out of a huge mass of broken stone. "And here, I suppose, is the capital of the kingdom over which the Wolfburghs now reign feudal lords?"

Clara found herself against her will looking curiously at the forge, the dirty shop, the tiny bier-halle, and a half a dozen huts, out of which swarmed a few old women and children.

"Where are the men of this village?" Jean demanded of the station master, a stout old man with a pipe in his mouth.

"Gone to America, for the most part," he said, with a shrug.

Lucy came up hastily, an angry glitter in her soft eyes. "You have no right to make me play the spy in this way!" she said haughtily, and going into the little station sat down with her back to the door.

"You? It is I—I–" muttered Jean breathlessly. "And who lives in the tower, my good man? It is not big enough for a dozen hens." She slipped a florin into his hand.

"Four of the noble ladies live there. The princesses. The gracious sisters of Furst Hugo. There come two of them now."

A couple of lean, wrinkled women dressed in soiled merino gowns and huge black aprons, their hair bristling in curl papers, crossed the road, peering curiously at the strangers.

"They came to look at you, Fraulein," said the man, chuckling. "Strangers do not stop at Wolfburgh twice in the year."

"And what do the noble ladies do all the year?"

"Jean, Jean!" remonstrated Clara.

"Oh, Miss Vance! This is life and death to some of us! What do they do?"

"Do?" said the man, staring. "What shall any gracious lady do? They cook and brew, and crochet lace and–"

"Are there any more princesses—sisters of Furst Hugo?"

"Two more. They live in Munich. No, none of them are married. Because," he added zealously, "there are no men as high-born as our gracious ladies, so they cannot marry."

"No doubt that accounts for it," said Jean. "Six. These are 'the channels into which the income will flow,' hey?" She gave him more money, and marching into the station caught Lucy by the shoulder, shaking her passionately. "Do you think any American girl could stand that? How would YOU like to be caged up in that ridiculous tower to cook and crochet and brew beer and watch the train go by for recreation? The year round—the year round?"

Lucy rose quietly. "The train is coming now," she said. "Calm yourself, Jean. YOU will not have to live in the tower."

Jean laughed. When they were seated in the car again, she looked wistfully out at the heaps of ruins.

"It must have been a mighty fortress once," she said. "Those stones were hewed before Charlemagne's time. And a great castle could easily be built with them now," she added thoughtfully.

CHAPTER X

The travellers entered Munich at noon. The great generous city lay tranquil and smiling in the frosty sunlight.

"I have secured apartments," said Miss Vance, "used hitherto by royalties or American millionaires. My girl must be properly framed when a prince comes a-wooing."

Lucy smiled. But her usual warm color faded as they drove through the streets. Jean, however, was gay and eager.

"Ah, the dear splendid town!" she cried. "It always seems to give us a royal welcome. Nothing is changed! There is the music in the Kellers, and there go the same Bavarian officers with their swagger and saucy blue eyes. They are the handsomest men in Europe! And here is the Munchen-kindl laughing at us, and the same crowds are going to the Pinakothek! What do you want more? Beer and splendor and fun and art! What a home it will be for you, Lucy!"

Lucy's cold silence did not check Jean's affectionate zeal. She anxiously searched among the stately old buildings, which they passed, for the Wolfburgh palace. "It will not be in these commonplace Haussmannized streets," she said. "It is in some old corner; it has a vast, mysterious, feudal air, I fancy. You will hold a little court in it, and sometimes let a poor American artist from Pond City in to 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? It was a year, too, since she had seen any one who knew George. Naturally, she began to empty her heart, which was full of him, to Lucy.

"I have not spoken English for months," she said, smiling over her coffee. "It is a relief! And you are a friend of my son's, too?"

"No. A mere acquaintance," said Lucy, with reserve.

"No one could even see George and not understand how different he is from other men."

"Oh! altogether different!" said Lucy. "Yes, you understand. And there was that future before him—when his trouble came. Oh, I've thought of it, and thought of it, until my head is tired! He fell under that woman's influence, you see. It was like mesmerism, or the voodoo curse that the negroes talk of. It came on me too. Why, there was a time when I despised him. George!" Her eyes grew full of horror. "I left him, to live my own life. He has staggered under his burden alone, and I could have rid him of it. Now there are two of them."

"Two of them?" said Lucy curiously.

"There is a baby—Pauline Felix's grandson. I beg your pardon, my child, I ought not to have named her. She is not a person whom you should ever hear of. He has them both,—George. He has that weight to carry." She stood up. "That is why I am going to him. It must be taken from him."

"You mean—a divorce?"

"I don't know—I can't think clearly. But God does such queer things! There are millions of men in the world, and this curse falls on—George!"

Lucy put her hands on the older woman's arms and seated her. "Mrs. Waldeaux," she said, with decision, "you need sleep, or you would not talk in that way. Lisa is not a curse. Nor a voodoo witch. She came to your son instead of to any other man—because he chose her out from all other women. He had seen them." She held her curly head erect. "As he did choose her, he should make the best of her."

Frances looked at her as one awakened out of a dream. "You talk sensibly, child. Perhaps you are right. But I must go. Ring for a cab, please. No, I will wait in the station. Clara would argue and lecture. I could not stand that to-night," with her old comical shrug.

Lucy's entreaties were vain.

But as the train rushed through the valley of the Isar that night, Frances looked forward into the darkness with a nameless terror. "That child was so healthy and sane," she said, "I wish I had stayed with her longer."