Part 6 (2/2)
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 G.o.d! 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 G.o.d.”
”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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 ma.s.s of corruption! Oh, G.o.d lets such things be done! Nothing but a green fly----” She shook off Clara's hold, drawing her breath with difficulty. ”That is Lisa. It is George that is being poisoned, body and soul. It's a pity to see my boy killed by a thing like that--it's a pity----”
Miss Vance was too frightened to argue with her. She brought her wrapper, loosened her hair, soothing her in little womanish ways. But her burning curiosity drove her presently to ask one question.
”How can they live?”
”I have doubled his allowance.”
”Frances! You will work harder to make money for Lisa Arpent?”
”Oh, what is money!” cried Frances, pus.h.i.+ng her away impatiently.
CHAPTER V
Miss Vance persuaded Mrs. Waldeaux to go with her to Scotland. During the weeks that followed Frances always found Lucy Dunbar at her side in the trains or on the coaches.
”She is a very companionable child,” she told Clara. ”I often forget that I am any older than she. She never tires of hearing stories of George's sc.r.a.pes or his queer sayings when he was a child. Such stories, I think, are usually tedious, but George was a peculiar boy.”
Mr. Perry's search for notorieties took him also to Scotland, and, oddly enough, Prince Wolfburgh's search for amus.e.m.e.nt led him in the same direction. They met him and his cousin, Captain Odo Wolfburgh, at Oban, and again on the ramparts of Stirling Castle, and the very day that they arrived in Edinburgh, there, in Holyrood, in Queen Mary's chamber, stood the pursy little man, curling his mustache before her mirror.
Mr. Perry fell into the background with Miss Ha.s.sard. ”His Highness is becoming monotonous!” he grumbled. ”These foreigners never know when they are superfluous in society.”
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