Frances Waldeaux - Rebecca Harding Davis (best black authors txt) 📗

she had been trying to peddle a roll of George's sketches to the rich Americans. I asked her what was wrong, and she laughed and said, "We were trying to make thirty francs do the work of thirty thousand. And we have made up our minds that we know no more of art than house painters. We are in a blind alley!" Soon after that the baby was born. They went down to Brittany. I hear that Lisa, since the child came, has been ill. I tell all this dreary stuff to you thinking that you may pass it on to their folks. Somebody ought to go to their relief.'"
"Relief!" exclaimed Miss Vance. "And the money that they were flinging into the gutter was earned day by day by his old mother! Every dollar of it! I know that during the last year she has done without proper clothes and food to send their allowance to them." "You forget," said Lucy, "that George Waldeaux was doing noble work in the world. It was a small thing for his mother to help him."
"Noble work? His pictures or his sermons, Lucy?" demanded Miss Vance, with a contemptuous shrug.
Lucy without reply walked out to the inn garden and seated herself in a shady corner. There Mr. Perry found her just as the first stroke of the angelus sounded on the air. Her book lay unopened on her lap.
He walked slowly up to her and stopped, breathing hard, as if he had been running. "It is evening now. I have come for my answer, Miss Dunbar," he said, forcing a smile.
"Answer?" Lucy looked up bewildered.
"You have forgotten!"
The blood rushed to her face. She held out her hands. "Oh, forgive me! I heard bad news. I have been so troubled----"
"You forgot that I had asked you to be my wife!"
"Mr. Perry----"
"No, don't say another word, Miss Dunbar. I have had my answer. I knew you didn't love me, but I did not think I was so paltry that you would forget that I had offered to marry you."
Lucy pressed her hands together, looking up at him miserably without a word. He walked down the path and leaned on the wall with his back to her. His very back was indignant.
Presently he turned. "I will bid you goodby," he said, with an effort at lofty courtesy, "and I will leave my adieux for your friends with you."
"Are you going--back to the States?" stammered Lucy.
"Yes, I am going back to the States," he replied sternly. "A man of merit there has his place, regardless of rank. Jem Perry can hold his head there as high as any beggarly prince. Farewell, Miss Dunbar."
He strode down the path and disappeared. Lucy shook her head and cried from sheer wretchedness. She felt that she had been beaten to-day with many stripes.
Suddenly the bushes beside her rustled. "Forgive me," he said hoarsely. She looked up and saw his red honest eyes. "I behaved like a brute. Good-by, Lucy! I never loved any woman but you, and I never will."
"Stay, stay!" she cried.
He heard her, but he did not come back.


CHAPTER VIII
Lucy was silent and dejected for a day or two, being filled with pity for Mr. Perry's ruined life. But when she saw his name in a list of outgoing passengers on the Paris her heart gave a bound of relief. Nothing more could now be done. That chapter was closed. There had been no other chapter of moment in her life, she told herself sternly. Now, all the clouds had cleared away. It was a new day. She would begin again.
So she put on new clothes, none of which she had ever worn before, and tied back her curly hair with a fresh white ribbon, and came down to breakfast singing gayly.
Miss Vance gave her her roll and milk in silence, and frowning importantly, drew out a letter.
"Lucy, I have just received a communication from Prince Wolfburgh. He is in Bozen."
"Here!" Lucy started up, glancing around like a chased hare.
Then she sat down again and waited. There was no other chapter, and the book was so blank!
"His coming is very opportune," she said presently, gently.
"Oh! do YOU think so, my dear? Really! Well, I always have liked the young man. So simple. So secure of his social position. The Wolfburghs, I find, go back to the eleventh century. Mr. Perry had noble traits, but one never felt quite safe as to his nails or his grammar."
"But the prince--the prince?" cried Jean.
"Oh, yes. Well, he writes--most deferentially. He begs for the honor of an interview with me this afternoon upon a subject of the most vital importance. He says, 'regarding you, as I do, in loco parentis to the hochgeboren Fraulein Dunbar.'" "Hochgeboren!" said Lucy. "My grandfather was a saddler. Tell him so, Miss Vance. Tell him the exact facts. I want no disclosures after----"
"After marriage?" said Jean, rising suddenly. "Then you have decided?"
"I have not said that I had decided," replied Lucy calmly.
Jean laughed. "He will not be scared by the saddler. Europeans of his order take no account of our American class distinctions. They look upon us as low-born parvenues, all alike. They weigh and value us by other standards than birth."
"I have money, if you mean that, Jean," said Lucy cheerfully.
"I think you had better go away, girls, if you have finished your dejeuner. He may be here at any moment now," said Clara, looking anxiously at her watch.
Lucy went to her little chamber and sat down to work at a monstrous caricature which she was painting of the church. Jean paced up and down the stone corridor, looking out of the window into the Platz.
"He has come," she said excitedly, appearing at Lucy's door. "He went into the church first, to say an ave for help, poor little man! His fat face is quite pale and stern. It is a matter of life and death to him. And it's no more to you than the choosing of a new coat."
Lucy smiled and sketched in a priest on the church steps. Her hand shook, but Jean could not see that. She went to the window again with something like an inward oath at the dolts of commonplace women who had all the best chances, but was back in a moment, laughing nervously.
"Do you know he has on that old brown suit?" She leaned against the jamb of the door. "If I were a prince, and came a-wooing, I would have troops of my Jagers, and trumpets and banners with the arms of my House, and I'd wear all my decorations. Of course we Americans are bound to say that rank and royalty are dead things. But if I had them, I'd galvanize the corpses! If they are useful as shows, I'd make the show worth seeing. I'd cover myself with jewels like the old Romanoffs. You would never see Queen Jean in a slouchy alpaca and pork-pie hat like Victoria." While her tongue chattered, her eyes watched Lucy keenly. "You don't hear me! You are deciding what to do. Why on earth should you hesitate? He is a gentleman--he loves you!" and then to Lucy's relief she suddenly threw on her hat and rushed off for a walk.
Miss Dunbar painted the priest's robe yellow, in her agitation. But the agitation was not deep. There really seemed no reason why she should hesitate. He would be kind; he was well-bred and agreeable. A princess? She had a vague idea of a glorified region of ancestral castles and palaces in which dukes and royalties dwelt apart and discoursed of high matters. She would be one of them.
The other day there seemed to be no reason why she should not marry Mr. Perry. In marriage then one must only consider the suitability of the man? There was nothing else to consider----
With a queer, hunted look in her soft eyes she worked on, daubing on paint liberally.
Meanwhile, in the little salle below, Miss Vance sat stiffly erect, while the prince talked in his shrill falsetto. Although he set forth his affection for the engelreine Madchen as simply as the little German baker in Weir (whom he certainly did resemble) might have done, she could find, in her agitation, no fitting words in which to answer him. That she, Clara Vance, should be the arbiter in a princely alliance! At last she managed to ask whether Miss Dunbar had given him any encouragement on which to found his claim.
"Ah, Fraulein Vance!" he cried, laughing. "The hare does not call to the hounds! But I have no fear. She speaks to me in other ways than by words.
"'Mein Herz und seine Augen
Verstehen sich gar so gut!'
You know the old song. Ah, ja! I understand what she would say--here!" touching his heart.
He paced up and down, smiling to himself. Suddenly he drew up before her, tossing his hands out as if to throw away some pleasant dream. "I have come to you, gracious lady, as I would to the mother of Miss Dunbar. I show to you the heart! But before I address her it is necessary that I shall consult her guardian with regard to business."
It was precisely, Clara said afterward, as if the baker from Weir had stopped singing, and presented his bill.
"Business?" she gasped. "Oh, I see! Settlements. We don't have such things in the States. But I quite understand all those European social traits. I have lived abroad for years. I----"
"Who is Miss Dunbar's guardian?" the prince demanded alertly. He sat down by the table and took out a notebook and papers.
"But--settlements? Is not that a little premature?" she ventured. "She has not accepted you."
"HE may not accept my financial proposals. It is business, you see. The gentle ladies, even die Amerikaner, do not comprehend business. It is not, you perceive, dear lady, the same when the head of the House of Wolfburgh allies himself with a hochgeboren Fraulein as when the tailors marry----"
"Nor bakers. I see," stammered Clara.
"Miss Dunbar's properties are valuable. Her estate in Del-aware," glancing at his notebook, "is larger than some of our German kingdoms. Her investments in railway and mining securities, if put on the market, should be worth a million of florins. These are solid matters, and must be dealt with carefully."
"But, good gracious, Prince Wolfburgh!" cried Miss Vance, "how did you find out about Lucy's investments?"
He looked at her in amazement. "Meine gnadigste Fraulein! It is not possible that you supposed that in such a matter as this men leap into the dark--the men of rank, princes, counts, English barons, who marry the American mees? That they do not know for what they exchange their--all that they give? I will tell you," with a condescending smile. "There are agents in the States--in New York--in Chicago--in--how do you name it? St. Sanata. They furnish exact information as to the dot of the