Frances Waldeaux

CHAPTER XII

Prince Hugo had made no secret of his intentions with regard to Miss Dunbar, so that when it was known that his sisters and the rich American Mees would at last meet at the Countess von Amte's there was a flutter of curiosity in the exclusive circle of Munich. The countess herself called twice on Clara that day, so great was her triumph that this social event would occur at her house.

She asked boldly "Which of Miss Dunbar's marvellous Parisian confections will she wear? It is so important for her future happiness that the princesses should be favorably impressed! Aber, lieber Gott!" she shrieked, "don't let her speak French! Not a word! That would be ruin! They are all patriotism!" She hurried away, and ran back to say that the sun was shining as it had not done for days.

"She thinks nature itself is agog to see how the princesses receive Lucy," said Miss Vance indignantly. "One would suppose that the child was on trial."

"So she is. Me, too," said Jean, wistfully regarding the bebe waist of the gown which Doucet had just sent her. "I must go as an ingenue. I don't play the part well!"

"No, you do not," said Clara.

Miss Vance tapped at Lucy's door as she went down, and found her working at her embroidery. "You must lie down for an hour, my dear," she said, "and be fresh and rosy for this evening."

"I am not going. I must finish these pinks. I have just sent a note of apology to the countess."

"Not going!" Clara gasped, dismayed. Then she laughed with triumph. "The princesses and all the Herrschaft of Munich will be there to pass judgment on the bride, and the bride will be sitting at home finishing her pinks! Good!"

"I am no bride!" Lucy rose, stuck her needle carefully in its place, and came closer to Miss Vance. "I have made up my mind," she said earnestly. "I shall never marry. My life now is quiet and clean. I'm not at all sure that it would be either if I were the Princess Wolfburgh."

Clara stroked her hair fondly. "Your decision is sudden, my dear," she faltered, at last.

"Yes. There was something last night. It showed me what I was doing. To marry a man just because he is good and kind, that is—vile!" The tears rushed to her eyes. There was a short silence.

"Don't look so aghast, dear Miss Vance," said Lucy cheerfully. "Go now and dress to meet the Herrschaft."

"And what will you do, child?"

"I really must finish these pinks to-night." She took up her work. Her chin trembled a little. "We won't speak of this again, please," she said. "I never shall be a bride or a wife or mother. I will have a quiet, independent life—like yours."

The sunshine fell on the girl's grave, uplifted face, on the white walls, the blue stove, and the calm, watching Madonnas. Clara, as Mrs. Waldeaux had done, thought of a nun in her cell to whom love could only be a sacred dream.

She smiled back at Lucy, bade her goodnight, and closed the door.

"Like mine?" she said, as she went down the corridor. "Well, it is a comfortable, quiet life. But empty–" And she laid her hand suddenly across her thin breast.

Jean listened in silence when Clara told her briefly that Lucy was not going.

"She is very shrewd," she said presently. "She means to treat them de haut en bas from the outset. It is capital policy."

Jean, when she entered the countess's salon, with downcast eyes, draped in filmy lace without a jewel or flower, was shy innocence in person. Furst Hugo stood near the hostess, with two stout women in shabby gowns and magnificent jewels.

"The frocks they made themselves, and the emeralds are heirlooms," Jean muttered to Clara, without lifting her timid eyes.

"Miss Dunbar is not coming?" exclaimed the prince.

"No," said Miss Vance.

"The Fraulein is ill?" demanded one of his sisters.

"No," Clara said, again smiling. "WE expected to meet her," the younger princess said. "It is most singular–"

"She has sent her apology to the countess," said Clara gently, and passed on.

But her little triumph was short lived.

A famous professional soprano appeared in a white-ribboned enclosure at the end of the salon, and the guests were rapidly arranged according to their rank to listen. Clara and Jean stood until every man and woman were comfortably seated, when they were placed in the back row.

When the music was over supper was announced, and the same ceremony was observed. The Highnessess, the hochwohlgeboren privy councillors, the hochgeboren secretaries, even the untitled Herren who held some petty office, were ushered with profound deference to their seats at the long table, while Clara stood waiting. Jean's eyes still drooped meekly, but even her lips were pale.

"How can you look so placid?" she whispered. "It is a deliberate insult to your gray hairs."

"No. It is the custom of the country. It does not hurt me."

They were led at the moment to the lowest seats. Jean shot one vindictive glance around the table.

"You have more wit and breeding than any of them!" she said. "And as for me, this lace I wear would buy any of their rickety old palaces."

"They have something which we cannot buy," said Miss Vance gravely. "I never understood before how actual a thing rank is here."

"Cannot it be bought? I am going to look into that when this huge feed is over," Miss Hassard said to herself.

Late in the evening she danced with Count Odo, and prattled to him in a childish, frank fashion which he found very charming.

"Your rules of precedence are very disagreeable!" she pouted. "Especially when one sits at the foot of the table and is served last."

"They must seem queer to you," he said, laughing, "but they are inflexible as iron."

"But they will bend for Miss Dunbar, if she makes up her mind to marry your cousin?" she asked, looking up into his face like an innocent child.

"No. Hugo makes a serious sacrifice in marrying a woman of no birth," he said. "He must give up his place and title as head of the family. She will not be received at court nor in certain houses; she must always remain outside of much of his social life."

He led her back to Miss Vance. She seemed to be struck dumb, and even forgot to smile when he bowed low and thanked her for the dance.

"Let us go home," she whispered to Clara. "The American girl is a fool who marries one of these men!"

When Miss Vance's carriage reached her hotel, she found Prince Hugo's coupe before the door.

"He has come to see Lucy, alone!" she said indignantly, as she hurried up the steps. "He has no right to annoy her!"

She met him coming out of the long salle. The little man walked nervously, fingering his sword hilt. He could not control his voice when he tried to speak naturally.

"Yes, gracious lady, I am guilty. It was unpardonable to come when I knew the chaperone was gone. But—ach! I could not wait!" throwing out both hands to her. "I have waited so long! I knew when she did not come to meet my sisters to-night she had resolved against me, but I could not sleep uncertain. So I break all the laws, and come!"

"You have seen her, then? She has told you?"

He nodded without speaking. His round face was red, and something like tears stood in his eyes.

He waited irresolute a moment, and then threw up his head.

"Soh! It is over! I shall not whine! You have been very good to me," he said earnestly, taking Clara's hand. "This is the first great trouble in my life. I have loved her very dearly. I decided to make great sacrifices for her. But I am not to have her—never."

"I am so sorry for you, prince." Clara squeezed his hand energetically. "Nor her dot. That would have been so comfortable for me," he said simply.

Clara hid a smile, and bade him an affectionate good-night.

As he passed into the outer salle a childish figure in creamy lace rose before him, and a soft hand was held out. "I know what has happened!" she whispered passionately. "She has treated you scandalously! She cannot appreciate YOU!"

Prince Hugo stuttered and coughed and almost kissed the little hand which lay so trustingly in his. He found himself safely outside at last, and drove away, wretched to the soul.

But below his wretchedness something whispered: "SHE appreciates me, and her dot is quite as large."

CHAPTER XIII

George Waldeaux hummed a tune gayly as he climbed the winding maze of streets in Vannes, one cloudy afternoon, with Lisa.

"It is impertinent to be modern Americans in this old town," he said. "We might play that we were jongleurs, and that it was still mediaeval times. I am sure the gray walls yonder and the fortress houses in this street have not changed in ages."

"Neither have the smells, apparently," said Lisa grimly. "Wrap this scarf about your throat, George. You coughed last night."

George tied up his throat. "Coughed, did I?" he said anxiously. He had had a cold last winter, and his wife with her poultices and fright had convinced him that he was a confirmed invalid. The coming of her baby had given to the woman a motherly feeling toward all of the world, even to her husband.

"Look at these women," he said, going on with his fancy presently. "I am sure that they were here wearing these black gowns and huge red aprons in the twelfth century. What is this?" he said, stopping abruptly, to a boy of six who was digging mud at the foot of an ancient ivy-covered tower.

"C'est le tour du Connetable," the child lisped. "Et v'la, monsieur!" pointing to a filthy pen with a gate of black oak; "v'la le donjon de Clisson!" "Who was Clisson?" said Lisa impatiently.

"A live man to Froissart—and to this boy," said George, laughing. "I told you that we had gone back seven centuries. This fog comes in from the Morbihan sea where Arthur and his knights went sailing to find the Holy Greal. They have not come back. And south yonder is the country of the Druids. I will take you to-morrow and show you twenty thousand of their menhirs, and then we will sail away to an island where there is an altar that the serpent worshippers built ages before Christ."

Lisa laughed. He was not often in this playful mood. She panted as she toiled up the dark little street, a step behind him, but he did not think of giving her his arm. He had grown accustomed to regard himself as the invalid now, and the one who needed care.

"I am going for letters," he called back, diving into a dingy alley. The baby and its bonne were near Lisa. The child never was out of her sight for, a moment. She waited, standing a little apart from Colette to watch whether the passers-by would notice the baby. When one or two of the gloomy and stolid women who hurried past in their wooden sabots clicked their fingers to it, she could not help smiling gayly and bidding them good-day.

The fog was stifling. As she waited she gave a tired gasp. Colette ran to her. "Madame is going to be ill!"

"No, no! Don't frighten monsieur."

George came out of the gate at the moment.

"Going to faint again, Lisa?" he said, with an annoyed glance around the street. "Your attacks do choose the most malapropos times–"

"Oh, dear no, George! I am quite well quite." She walked beside him with an airy step, laughing gayly now and then, but George's frown deepened.

"I don't understand these seizures at all," he said. "You seem to be in sound physical condition."

"Oh, all women have queer turns, George."

"Did you consult D'Abri, as I told you to do, in Paris?"

"Yes, yes! Now let us talk no more about it. I have had these—symptoms since I was a child."

"You never told me of them before we were married," he muttered.

Lisa scowled darkly at him, but she glanced at the baby and her mouth closed. Little Jacques should never hear her rage nor swear.

From an overhanging gable at the street corner looked down a roughly hewn stone Madonna. The arms of the Holy Child were outstretched to bless. Lisa paused before it, crossing herself. A strange joy filled her heart.

"I too am a mother! I too!" she said. She hurried after George and clung to his arm as they went home.

"Was there any letter?" she asked.

"Only one from Munich—Miss Vance. I haven't opened it."

"I thought your mother would write. She must have heard about the boy!"

George's face grew dark. "No, she'll not write. Nor come."

"You wish for her every day, George?" She looked at him wistfully.

"Yes, I do. She and I were comrades to a queer degree. I long for something hearty and homelike again. See here, Lisa. I'm going home before my boy begins to talk. I mean he shall grow up under wholesome American influences—not foreign."

"Not foreign," she repeated gravely. She was silent a while. "I have thought much of it all lately," she said at last. "It will be wholesome for Jacques on your farm. Horses—dogs– Your mother will love him. She can't help it. She—I acted like a beast to that woman, George. I'll say that. She hit me hard. But she has good traits. She is not unlike my own mother."

George said nothing. God forbid that he should tell her, even by a look, that she and her mother were of a caste different from his own.

But he was bored to the soul by the difference; he was tired of her ignorances, which she showed every minute, of her ghastly, unclean knowledges—which she never showed.

They came into the courtyard of the Chateau de la Motte, the ancient castle of the Breton dukes, which is now an inn. The red sunset flamed up behind the sad little town and its gray old houses and spires massed on the hill, and the black river creeping by. George's eyes kindled at the sombre picture.

"In this very court," he said, "Constance stood when she summoned the States of Brittany to save her boy Arthur from King John."

"Oh, yes, you have read of it to me in your Shakespeare. It is one of his unpleasant stories. Come, Bebe. It grows damp."

As she climbed the stone stairway with the child, Colette lingered to gossip with the portier. "Poor lady! You will adore her! She is one of us. But she makes of that bete Anglais and the ugly child, saints and gods!"

When George presently came up to their bare little room, Lisa was singing softly, as she rocked Jacques to sleep.

"Can't you sing the boy something a bit more cheerful?" he said. "You used to know some jolly catches from the music halls."

"Catches for HIM?" with a frightened look at the child's shut eyes.

"The 'Adeste Fideles' is moral, but it is not a merry air. You sing it morning, noon, and night," he grumbled.

"Yes," she whispered, laying the child in its crib. "One never knows how much HE understands, and he may remember, I thought. Some day when he is a great boy, he may hear it and he'll think, 'My mother sang that hymn. She must have been a good woman!'"

"Nonsense, Lisa," said George kindly. "You'll teach him every day, while he is growing to be a great boy, that you are a good woman."

She said nothing, but stood on the other side of the crib looking at him.

"Well, what is it?" said George uneasily. "You look at me as if somebody were dragging you away from me."

She laughed. "What ridiculous fancies you have!" She came behind him and, drawing his head back, kissed him on the forehead. "Oh, you poor, foolish boy!" she said.

Lisa sat down to her work, which was the making of garments for Jacques out of her own gowns. She was an expert needlewoman, and had already a pile of fantastic kilts of cloth and velvet.

"Enough to last until he is ten years old," George said contemptuously. "And you will not leave a gown for yourself."

"There will be all I shall need," she said.

He turned up the lamp and opened Clara's letter.

Lisa's needle flew through the red and yellow silk. It was pleasant work; she was doing it skilfully. The fire warmed her thin blood. She could hear the baby's regular, soft breathing as it slept. A pleasure that was almost like health stole through her lean body. She leaned back in her chair looking at Jacques. In three years he could wear the velvet suit with the cap and pompon. His hair would be yellow and curly, like his father's. But his eyes would be like her mother's. She pressed her hands together, laughing, the hot tears rushing to her eyes. "Ah, maman!" she said. "Do you know that your little girl has a baby? Can you see him?"

What a superb "great boy" he would be! He should go to a military school. Yes! She lay back in her chair, watching him.

George suddenly started up with a cry of amazement.

"What is it?" she said indifferently.

He did not answer, but turned the letter and read it over again. Then he folded it with shaking fingers.

"I have news here. Miss Vance thinks it time that I was told, and I agree with her. It appears that I am a pauper, and always have been. My father died penniless."

"Then Jacques will be poor?"

"Jacques! You think of nothing but that mewling, senseless thing! It is mother—she always has supported me. We are living now on the money that she earns from week to week, while I play that I am an artist!"

Lisa listened attentively. "It does not seem strange that a mother should work for her son," she said slowly. "But she has never told us! That is fine! I like that! I told you she had very good traits."

George stared at her. "But—me! Don't you see what a cad I am?"

He paced up and down, muttering, and then throwing on his hat went out into the night to be alone.

Lisa sank back again and watched Jacques. At military school, yes; and after he had left school he would be a soldier, perhaps. Such a gallant young fellow!

She leaned over the cradle, holding out her hands. Ah, God! if she could but live to see it! Surely it might be? There was no pain now. Doctors were not infallible—even D'Abri might be mistaken, after all.

George, coming in an hour later, found her sitting with her hands covering her face.

"Are you asleep, Lisa?"

"No."

"There is a telegram from Clara. My mother has left Munich for Vannes. She will be here in two days."

She rose with an effort. "I am glad for you, George."

"You are ill, Lisa!"

"A little tired, only. Colette will give me my powder, and I shall be quite well in the morning. Will you send her to me now?"

After George was gone the rumbling of a diligence was heard in the courtyard, and presently a woman was brought up to the opposite chamber.

The hall was dark. Looking across it, Frances Waldeaux saw in the lighted room Lisa and her child.

CHAPTER XIV

Before we come to the dark story of that night in the inn, it is but fair to Frances to say that she came there with no definite evil purpose. She had been cheerful on her journey from Munich. There was one clear fact in her brain: She was on her way to George.

The countless toy farms of southern France, trimmed neatly by the inch, swept past her. In Brittany came melancholy stretches of brown heath and rain-beaten hills; or great affluent estates, the Manor houses covered with thatch, stagnant pools close to the doors, the cattle breaking through the slovenly wattled walls.

Frances, being a farmer, felt a vague amusement at these things, but they were all dim to her as a faded landscape hanging on the wall.

She was going to George.

Sometimes she seemed to be in Lucy's room again, with the sweet, clean air of youth about her. All of that purity and love might have gone into George's life—before it fell into the slough.

But she was going now to take it out of the slough.

There was a merchant and his wife from Geneva in the carriage with their little boy, a pretty child of five. Frances played and joked with him.

"Has madam also a son?" his mother asked civilly.

She said yes, and presently added, "My son has now a great trouble, but I am going to relieve him of it."

The woman, startled, stared at her.

"Is it not right for me to rid him of it?" she demanded loudly.

"Mais oui, certainement," said the Swiss. She watched Frances after that furtively. Her eyes, she thought, were quite sane. But how eccentric all of these Americans were!

Mrs. Waldeaux reached Vannes at nightfall. At last! Here was the place in this great empty world where he was.

When the diligence entered the courtyard, George was so near to the gate that the smoke of his cigar was blown into her face, but he did not see her. He was lean and pale, and his eyes told his misery. When she saw them his mother grew sick from head to foot with a sudden nausea. This was his wife's doing. She was killing him! Frances hurried into the inn, her legs giving way under her. She could not speak to him. She must think what to do.

She was taken to her room. It was dark, and across the corridor she saw Lisa in her lighted chamber. This was good luck! God had put the creature at once into her hands to deal with!

She was conscious of a strange exaltation, as if from wine—as if she would never need to sleep nor eat again. Her thoughts came and went like flashes of fire. She watched Lisa as she would a vampire, a creeping deadly beast. Pauline Felix—all that was adulterous and vile in women—there it was!

Her mind too, as never before, was full of a haughty complacency in herself. She felt like the member of some petty sect who is sure that God communes with him inside of his altar rails, while the man is outside whom he believes that God made only to be damned.

Lisa began to undress. Frances quickly turned away, ashamed of peeping into her chamber. But the one fact burned on into her brain:

The woman was killing George.

If God would rid the world of her! If a storm should rise now, and the lightning strike the house, and these stone walls should fall on her, now—now!

But the walls stood firm and the moonlight shone tranquilly on the world outside.

She told herself to be calm—to be just. But there was no justice while this woman went on with her work! God saw. He meant her to be stopped. Frances prayed to him frantically that Lisa might soon be put off of the earth. Just as the Catholic used to pray before he massacred the Huguenot, or the Protestant, when he tied his Catholic brother to the stake. If this woman was mad for blood, it was a madness that many sincere people have shared.

Colette was busy with her mistress for a long time. She was very gentle and tender, being fond of Lisa, as people of her class always were. She raised her voice as she made ready to leave the room.

"If the pain returns, here is the powder of morphia, mixed, within madame's reach," she said.

Frances came close to the door.

"And if it continues?" asked Lisa.

"Let monsieur call me. I would not trust him to measure a powder," Colette said, laughing. "It is too dangerous. He is not used to it—like me."

Mrs. Waldeaux saw her lay a paper package on a shelf.

"I will pray that the pain will not return," the girl said. "But if it does, let monsieur knock at my door. Here is the tisane when you are thirsty." She placed a goblet of milky liquid near the bed.

What more she said Frances did not hear.

It was to be! There was the morphia, and yonder the night drink within her reach. It was God's will.

Colette turned out the lamp, hesitated, and sat down by the fire. Presently she rose softly, bent over her mistress, and, finding her asleep, left the room noiselessly. Her door closed far down the corridor.

Mrs. Waldeaux was quite alone, now.

It was but a step across the hall. So easy to do—easy. It must be done at once.

But her feet were like lead, she could not move; her tongue lay icy cold in her mouth. Her soul was willing, but her body rebelled.

What folly was this? It was the work of a moment. George would be free. She would have freed him.

In God's name then–

She crossed the hall softly. Into the hell of her thoughts flashed a little womanish shame, that she, Frances Waldeaux, should be walking on tiptoe, like a thief.

She took down the package, and leaning over the table at the side of the bed, shook the white powder into the glass. Then she went back to her room and shut the door.

The casement was open and the moonlight was white outside. She was conscious that the glare hurt her eyes, and that there was a strange stricture about her jaws and the base of her brain, like an iron hand.

It seemed to her but a minute that she stood there, but the dawn was breaking when there was a sudden confusion in the opposite room. She heard Colette's voice, and then George's, calling Lisa.

There was no answer.

Frances stood up, to listen. "Will she not speak?" she cried. "Make her speak!"

But in reality she said nothing. Even her breath had stopped to listen.

There was no answer.

Frances was awake now, for the rest of her life. She knew what she had done.

"Why, George," she said, "she cannot speak. She is dead. I did it."

She stood in the room a minute, looking from side to side, and then went with measured steps out of it, down the corridor and into the street.

"I did it," she said to herself again and again, as she walked slowly on.

The old cathedral is opposite to the inn. Her eyes, as she passed, rested on the gargoyles, and she thought how fine they were. One was a ridiculous head with lolling tongue.

A priest's voice inside was chanting mass. A dozen Breton women in their huge white winged caps and wooden shoes hurried up to the door, through the gray fog. They met Mrs. Waldeaux and saw her face. They huddled to one side, crossing themselves, and when she passed, stood still, forgetting the mass and looking, frightened, up the steep street behind her to find what horror had pursued her.

"They know what I have done," she said aloud.

Once when she was a child she had accidentally seen a bloated wretch, a murderer, on his way to the gallows.

"I am he," she thought. "I—I, Frances."

Then the gargoyle came into her mind again. What a capital headpiece it would make for "Quigg's" next column! It was time this week's jokes were sent.

But at last these ghosts of yesterday's life faded out, and she saw the fact.

She had hated her son's wife and had killed her!