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."