Frances Waldeaux [8]
"A kiss? A blessing for me?" Lisa laughed and nodded meaningly to the sea and world at large. "She could hardly have blessed a woman lolling full length in her chair," she thought. "It IS her chair. And I have unseated her for life curling herself up in the rugs.
Yet she had a twinge of pity for the old lady. Even the wild boar has its affections and moments of gentleness. A week ago Lisa could have trampled the life out of this woman who had slandered her dead mother, with the fury of any wild beast. For she was Pauline Felix's daughter. It was her mother's name that Mrs. Waldeaux had said could not be spoken by any decent woman. Lisa had been but a child, but she had held her mother's head close to her stout little heart as she lay dying--that awful mysterious death of which the young man had tried to make a telling story. The girl crossed herself now and closed her tired eyes as she thought of it. She had been a wicked child and a wicked woman, but she knew certainly that the Virgin and her Son had come near to her that day, and had helped her.
George, who was poring fondly on her face, exclaimed: "Your eyes are wet. You are in trouble!"
"I was thinking of my mother," she said gently, holding out her hand to him.
He took it and said presently, "Will you not talk to me about her, Lisa? You have not told me any thing of your people, my darling. Nor of yourself. Why, I don't even know whether you are French or German."
"Oh, you shall hear the whole story when we are married," she replied softly, a wicked glitter in her eyes. "Some of the noblest blood in Europe is in my veins. I will give you my genealogical tree to hang up in that old homestead of yours. It will interest the people of Weir--and please your mother."
"It is good in you to think of her," he said, tenderly looking down at her.
He was not blind. He saw the muddy skin, the thick lips, the soiled, ragged lace. They would have disgusted him in another woman.
But this was--Lisa. There was no more to be said.
These outside trifles would fall off when she came into his life. Even with them she was the breath and soul of it.
She saw the difference between them more sharply than he did. She had been cast for a low part in the play, and knew it. Sometimes she had earned the food which kept her alive in ways of which this untempted young priest had never even heard. There was something in this clean past of his, in his cold patrician face and luxurious habits new to her, and she had a greedy relish for it all.
She had been loved before, caressed as men caress a dog, kicking it off when it becomes troublesome. George's boyish shyness, his reverent awe of her, startled her.
"He thinks Lisa Arpent a jeune fille--like these others. A little white rose!" she thought, and laughed. She would not tell him why she laughed, and muttered an oath when he stupidly insisted on knowing.
He was the first lover who had ever believed in her.
She had begun this affair simply to punish the "old woman"; the man in it had counted for nothing. But now, as they crossed the gangway, she looked up at him with eyes that for the moment were honest and true as a child's, and her firm hand suddenly trembled in his.
Three weeks later Mrs. Waldeaux came into Miss Vance's little parlor on Half Moon Street. Her face was red from the wind, her eyes sparkled, and she hummed some gay air which an organ ground outside. Clara laid down her pen.
"Where have you been, Frances? It is a week since I saw you."
"Oh, everywhere! George has been showing me London!" She sat down before the fire with a gurgle of comfort and dropped her bonnet and gloves on the floor beside her. "Yesterday we spent at the Museum. George explained the Elgin marbles to me. I don't suppose any body in London has studied their history so thoroughly. I did wish you could have heard him. And the day before I was at the House--in the ladies' gallery. I can't imagine how he got admission for me. He IS so clever!"
"We are going down to Canterbury