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

is your son has married before you take her home. I assure you that you can present me to the society in Weir with pride. I have royal blood----" "Lisa!" George caught her arm. "It is not necessary. You forget----"
"Oh, I forget nothing! I said royal blood. My father, madam, was the brother of the Czar, and my mother was Pauline Felix. You don't seem to understand----" after a moment's pause. "It was my mother whose name you said should not cross any decent woman's lips--my mother----" She broke down into wild sobs.
"When I said it I did not know that you---- I am sorry." Frances suddenly walked away, pulling open her collar. It seemed to her that there was no breath in the world. George followed her. "Did you know this?" she said at last, in a hoarse whisper. "And you are--married to her? There is no way of being rid of her?"
"No, there is no way," said Waldeaux stoutly. "And if there were, I should not look for it. I am sorry that there is any smirch on Lisa's birth. But even her mother, I fancy, was not altogether a bad lot. Bygones must be bygones. I love my wife, mother. She's worth loving, as you'd find if you would take the trouble to know her. Her dead mother shall not come between her and me."
"She's like her, George!" said Mrs. Waldeaux, with white, trembling lips. "I ought to have seen it at first. Those luring, terrible eyes. It is Pauline Felix's heart that is in her. Rotten to the core--rotten----"
"I don't care. I'll stand by her." But George's face, too, began to lose its color. He shook himself uncomfortably. "The thing's done now," he muttered.
"Certainly, certainly," Frances repeated mechanically. "Tell her that I am sorry I spoke of her mother before her. It was rude--brutal. I ask her pardon."
"Oh, she'll soon forget that! Lisa has a warm heart, if you take her right. There's lots of hearty fun in her too. You'll like that. Are you going now? Good-by, dear. We will come and see you in the morning. The thing will not seem half so bad when you have slept on it."
He paused uncertainly, as she still stood motionless. She was facing the grim walls of Stafford House, looming dimly through the mist, her eyes fixed as if she were studying the sky line.
"George," she said. "You don't understand. You will come to me always. But that woman never shall cross my threshold." "Mother! Do you mean what you say?"
It was a man, not a shuffling boy that spoke now. "Do you mean that we are not to go to you to-morrow? Not to go home in October? Never----"
"Your home is open to you. But Pauline Felix's child is no more to me than a wild beast--or a snake in the grass, and never can be." She faced him steadily now.
"There she is," said Frances, looking at the little black figure under the trees, "and here am I. You can choose between us."
"Those whom God hath joined together," muttered George. "You know that."
"You have known her for three weeks," cried Frances vehemently. "I gave you life. I have been your slave every hour since you were born. I have lived but for you. Which of us has God joined together?"
"Mother, you're damnably unreasonable! It is the course of nature for a man to leave his parents and cleave to his wife."
"Yes, I know," she said slowly. "You can keep that foul thing in your life, but it never shall come into mine."
"Then neither will I. I will stand by my wife."
"That is the end, then?"
She waited, her eyes on his.
He did not speak.
She turned and left him, disappearing slowly in the rain and mist.


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