Part 18 (2/2)
It had been a brilliant ten years, and Mrs. Lestrange had met most royalties and all travelling Americans of any consequence--all with the same gracious dignity, the same delicate balance of charm and reserve that delighted foreigner and compatriot alike. Her portrait was painted by a great German, her bust was modelled by a great Frenchman, the words of a little lullaby she had composed for her baby girl was set to music and made famous through Europe by a great Italian. Queen Victoria complimented her on her devoted personal care of her children, and sent her an autographed _carte de visite_, as they were still called then, framed in brilliants. The silver trowel with which she laid the foundation stone of her school for instructing the peasant-girls of her adopted country in the simple household arts is still a bone of contention between her two proud children. A duke stood G.o.dfather to her little Wilhelmina and Royalty herself embroidered at least one frill of the baby's christening robe.
When the children were twelve and fourteen, however, the family returned; papered, painted and decorated the house anew from top to bottom, and settled down to the task that had brought them back--the bringing up of their boy and girl in an American tradition. If Mrs.
Lestrange ever missed the polish and variety of European social life, if she found the ”Anglo-mania” (just then so fas.h.i.+onable in New York) a little shallow and unconvincing, she never showed it. Handsome and serene, a trifle more matronly than women of her age appear to-day, perhaps, but none the less admired for it, she moved through her duties of household, nursery, ballroom and _salon_, omitting nothing, excelling in all.
No charity bazaar, no educational exhibition, no welcoming of distinguished foreigners, no celebration of the arts, was complete without Mrs. Elliot Lestrange. For her son's sake she patronized music extensively, for her daughter's, she sat through endless b.a.l.l.s and garden parties. By the time they were both married, her dark hair was powdered with silver.
”What a beautiful old lady mamma is going to make,” Wilhelmina said to her brother, who had made a flying visit across the Atlantic and left the old Italian villa where he made music all day among the birds and orange-trees, to see his sister's baby son.
”You think so?” he answered quickly, with his darting, foreign air. ”I am myself far from certain.”
”Why, Elly, what do you mean?” she cried, looking up a moment from the lace-trimmed ba.s.sinet. ”What a thing to say!”
He laughed indulgently.
”Oh, you know everything I say always shocked you, Sister Mina,” he said. ”What a joy it must have been to you and father when I left these Puritan sh.o.r.es for good!”
”No, no,” she began, but he tapped her lips.
”Yes, yes!” he contradicted. ”Even to marry an opera singer, you were glad to see me go! But about mamma: I suppose you mean that she will sit in a Mechlin cap and knit, with a blue Angora cat on the rug beside her, and hear this little lady in the ba.s.sinet here say her lessons?”
Something very like this had been in Wilhelmina's mind and she admitted it.
”Well,” young Elliot said, reflectively, ”all I can say is, I don't think so. There's something about mamma that you can't be sure of.”
”Why, Elly, what do you mean?”
”I can't explain it exactly,” he said, ”but she's very deep--mamma.
Father doesn't understand her, you know.”
”Now, Elliot, that is rank nonsense!” his sister contradicted. ”You remind me of that nurse Dr. Stanchon sent up when mamma had that fit of not sleeping last year. She and mamma got on famously, from the first; she stayed out of doors all night with her till mamma got to sleeping again. She was used to it--the nurse, I mean--and didn't mind, she said, she'd been doing it in the Adirondacks.
”I remember asking her why she thought mamma should have insomnia--for there was nothing whatever on her mind, and they say that's the cause, you know. She gave me the strangest look.
”'Are you sure your mother has nothing on her mind?' she asked me, 'your mother's very deep, you know!'
”'What nonsense, Miss Jessop!' I told her. 'Mamma's as open as the day!'”
Elliot laughed.
”Sensible woman, your Miss Jessop,” he said.
”Oh, I don't know. She was very decided, certainly, and easy in her ways. More so than I quite like in a trained nurse. I will say for her, though, that the out-of-doors idea was hers. Though father was quite alarmed about it.”
”That's what I say. Father doesn't understand her.”
”Oh, Elly, how can you? Every one says there never were two people so suited to each other. There's not one wish of father's she doesn't carry out, and never has been.”
”I don't say not,” he agreed, ”but that merely shows what a good, clever wife she is. That doesn't say he understands her. He certainly never understood me, I know; Uncle John didn't either.”
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