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

reddened.
A group of girls came up the deck. Both women scanned the foremost one critically. "I like that wholesome, candid look of her," said Miss Vance.
"Oh, she is well enough," said Frances. "But I am sure George does not like yellow hair. Nothing but an absolutely beautiful woman will attract him."
"An artist," said Miss Vance hastily, "would tell you her features were perfect. And her flesh tints----"
"For Heaven's sake, Clara, don't dissect the child. Who is that girl with the red cravat? Your maid?"
"It is not a cravat, it's an Indian scarf. If it only were clean----" Miss Vance looked uneasy and perplexed. "She is not my maid. She is Fraulein Arpent. The Ewalts brought her as governess from Paris, don't you remember? They sent the girls to Bryn Mawr last week and turned her adrift, almost penniless. She wished to go back to France. I engaged her as assistant chaperone for the season."
Mrs. Waldeaux's eyebrows went up significantly. She never commented in words on the affairs of others, but her face always was indiscreet. George, who had come up in time to hear the last words, was not so scrupulous. He surveyed the young woman through his spectacles as she passed again, with cold disapproval.
"French or German?" he asked.
"I really don't know. She has a singular facility in tongues," said Miss Vance.
"Well, that is not the companion _I_ should have chosen for those innocent little girls," he said authoritatively, glad to be disagreeable to his cousin. "She looks like a hawk among doves."
"The woman is harmless enough," said Miss Vance tartly. "She speaks exquisite French."
"But what does she say in it?" persisted George. "She is vulgar from her red pompon to her boots. She has the swagger of a soubrette and she has left a trail of perfume behind her--pah! I confess I am surprised at you, Miss Vance. You do not often slip in your judgment."
"Don't make yourself unpleasant, George," said his mother gently. Miss Vance smiled icily, and as the girls came near again, stopped them and stood talking to Mlle. Arpent with an aggressive show of familiarity.
"Why do you worry Clara?" said Mrs. Waldeaux. "She knows she has made a mistake. What do you think of that little blonde girl?" she asked presently, watching him anxiously. "She has remarkable beauty, certainly; but there is something finical--precise----"
"Take care. She will hear you," said George. "Beauty, eh? Oh, I don't know," indifferently. "She is passably pretty. I have never seen a woman yet whose beauty satisfied ME."
Mrs. Waldeaux leaned back with a comfortable little laugh. "But you must not be so hard to please, my son. You must bring me my daughter soon," she said.
"Not very soon. I have some thing else to think of than marriage for the next ten years."
Just then Dr. Watts came up and asked leave to present his friend Perry. The doctor, like all young men who knew Mrs. Waldeaux, had succumbed to her peculiar charm, which was only that of a woman past her youth who had strong personal magnetism and not a spark of coquetry. George's friends all were sure that they would fall in love with a woman just like her--but not a man of them ever thought of falling in love with her.
Young Perry, in twenty minutes, decided that she was the most brilliant and agreeable of companions. He had talked, and she had spoken only with her listening, sympathetic eyes. He was always apt to be voluble. On this occasion he was too voluble. "You are from Weir, I think, in Delaware, Mrs. Waldeaux?" he asked. "I must have seen the name of the town with yours on the list of passengers, for the story of a woman who once lived there has been haunting me all day. I have not seen nor thought of her for years, and I could not account for my sudden remembrance of her."
"Who was she?" asked George, trying to save his mother from Perry, who threatened to be a bore.
"Her name was Pauline Felix. You have heard her story, Mrs. Waldeaux?"
"Yes" said Frances coldly. "I have heard her story. Can you find my shawl, George?"
But Perry was conscious of no rebuff, and turned cheerfully to George. "It was one of those dramas of real life, too unlikely to put into a novel. She was the daughter of a poor clergyman in Weir, a devout, good man, I believe. She had marvellous beauty and a devilish disposition. She ran away, lived a wild life in Paris, and became the mistress of a Russian Grand Duke. Her death----"
He could not have told why he stopped. Mrs. Waldeaux still watched him, attentive, but the sympathetic smile had frozen into icy civility. She had the old-fashioned modesty of her generation. What right had this young man to speak of "mistresses" to her? Clara's girls within hearing too! She rose when he paused, bowed, and hurried to them, like a hen fluttering to protect her chicks.
"He was talking to me of a woman," she said excitedly to Clara, "who is never mentioned by decent people."
"Yes, I heard him," said Miss Vance. "Poor Pauline! Her career was always a mystery to me. I was at school with her, and she was the most generous, lovable girl! Yet she came to a wretched end," turning to her flock, her tone growing didactic. "One is never safe, you see. One must always be on guard."
"Oh, my dear!" cried Frances impatiently. "You surely don't mean to class these girls and me with Pauline Felix! Come, come!"
"None of us is safe," repeated Clara stiffly. "Somebody says there is a possible vice in the purest soul, and it may lie perdu there until old age. But it will break out some day."
Mrs. Waldeaux looked, laughing, at the eager, blushing faces around her. "It is not likely to break out in us, girls, eh! Really, Clara," she said, in a lower tone, "that seems to me like wasted morality. Women of our class are in no more danger of temptation to commit great crimes than they are of finding tigers in their drawing-rooms. Pauline Felix was born vicious. No woman could fall as she did, who was not rotten to the core."
A sudden shrill laugh burst from the French woman, who had been looking at Mrs. Waldeaux with insolent, bold eyes. But as she laughed, her head fell forward and she swung from side to side.
"It is nothing," she cried, "I am only a little faint. I must go below."
The ship was now crossing short, choppy waves. The passengers scattered rapidly. George took his mother to her stateroom, and there she stayed until land was sighted on the Irish coast. Clara and her companions also were forced to keep to their berths.
During the speechless misery of the first days Mrs. Waldeaux was conscious that George was hanging over her, tender as a mother with a baby. She commanded him to stay on deck, for each day she saw that he, too, grew more haggard. "Let me fight it out alone," she would beg of him. "My worst trouble is that I cannot take care of you."
He obeyed her at last, and would come down but once during the day, and then for only a few hurried minutes. His mother was alarmed at the ghastliness of his face and the expression of anxious wretchedness new to it. "His eye avoids mine craftily, like that of an insane man," she told herself, and when the doctor came, she asked him whether sea-sickness affected the brain.
On the last day of the voyage the breeze was from land, and with the first breath of it Frances found her vigor suddenly return. She rose and dressed herself. George had not been near her that day. "He must be very ill," she thought, and hurried out. "Is Mr. Waldeaux in his stateroom?" she asked the steward.
"No, madam. He is on deck. All the passengers are on deck," the man added, smiling. "Land is in sight."
Land! And George had not come to tell her! He must be desperately ill!
She groped up the steps, holding by the brass rail. "I will give him a fine surprise!" she said to herself. "I can take care of him, now. To-night we shall be on shore and this misery all over. And then the great joy will begin!"
She came out on deck. The sunshine and cold pure wind met her. She looked along the crowded deck for her invalid. Every-body was in holiday clothes, every-body was smiling and talking at once. Ah! there he was!
He was leaning over Frances' steamer chair, on which a woman lay indolently. He was in rude health, laughing, his face flushed, his eyes sparkling.
Looking up, he saw his mother and came hastily to meet her. The laugh was gone. "So you came up?" he said impatiently. "I would have called you in time. I---- Mother!" He caught her by the arm. "Wait, I must see you alone for a minute." Urged by the amazed fright in her face, he went on desperately, "I have something to tell you. I intended to break it to you. I don't want to hurt you, God knows. But I have not been idle in these days. I have found your daughter. She is here."
He led her up to the chair. The girl's head was wrapped in a veil and turned from her.
Mrs. Waldeaux held out her hands. "Lucy! Lucy Dunbar!" she heard herself say.
"Mais non! Cest moi!" said a shrill voice, and Mlle. Arpent, turning her head lazily, looked at her, smiling.


CHAPTER II
Clara Vance had her faults, but nobody could deny that, in this crisis, she acted with feeling and tact. She ignored mademoiselle and her lover, whose bliss was in evidence on deck all day, and took possession of Mrs. Waldeaux, caring for her as tenderly as if she had been some poor wretch sentenced to death. "She has no intellect left except her ideas about George," she told herself, "and if he turns his back on her for life in this way---- She never was too sane!" shaking her head ominously.
She thought it best to talk frankly of the matter to little Lucy Dunbar, and was relieved to find her ready to joke and laugh at it. "No bruise in that tender heart!" thought Clara, who was anxious as a mother for her girls.
"We all worshipped Mr. George," said Lucy saucily. "I, most of all. He is so cold, so exalted and ah--h, so good-looking! Like a Greek god. But he never gave a look to poor little me! The fraulein came on deck as soon as we all went down with sea-sickness, and bewitched him with her eyes. It must have been her eyes; they are yellow--witch's eyes. Or maybe that cheap smell about her is a love-philter! Or was it just soul calling to soul? I should have said the fraulein had the soul of a milliner. She