A week passed, but the question of the first call was not yet settled. It required as much diplomacy as an international difficulty. Furst Hugo represented the princesses as "burning with impatience to behold the engelreine Madchen whom they hoped to embrace as a sister," but no visible sign of their ardor reached Miss Vance.
On Monday Jean went to spend the day with some of her artist friends, but at noon she dashed into the room where Clara and Lucy sat sewing, her dark face blotched red, and her voice stuttering with excitement.
"I have seen into the cave!" she shouted. I have got at the truth! It's a rather stagy throne, the Wolfburghs!
Plated, cheap!"
"What is the matter with you?" said Miss Vance.
"Nothing is the matter with ME. It is Lucy's tragedy.
I've seen the magnificent ancient palace of the Wolfburghs. It is a flat! In the very house where I went to-day. The third story flat just under the attics where the poor Joneses daub portraits. I passed the open doors and I saw the shabby old tables and chairs and the princesses--two fat old women in frowzy wrappers, and their hair in papers, eating that soup of pork and cabbages and raisins--the air was thick with the smell!
And that is not the worst!"
"Take breath, Jean," said Lucy calmly.
"The prince himself--the Joneses told me, there can be no doubt--the prince makes soap for a living! No wonder you turn pale, Miss Vance. Soap! He is the silent partner in the firm of Woertz und Zimmer, and it is not a paying business either."Jean did not wait for an answer, but walked up and down the room, laughing angrily to herself. "Yes, soap! He cannot sneer at Lucy's ancestral saddles, now. Nor my father's saws! His rank is the only thing he has to give for Lucy's millions, and now she knows what it is worth!"Lucy rose and, picking up her work basket, walked quietly out of the room. Jean flashed an indignant glance after her.
"She might have told me that he gave himself! Surely the man counts for something! Anyhow, rank like his is not smirched by poverty or trade. Bismarck himself brews beer.""Your temper is contradictory to-day," said Clara coldly.
"Did you know," she said presently, "that the princesses will be at the Countess von Amte's to-morrow?""Then we shall meet them!" cried Jean. "Then something will be settled."Lucy locked the door of her chamber after her.
She found much comfort in the tiny bare room with its white walls and blue stove, and the table where lay her worn Bible and a picture of her old home. The room seemed a warm home to her now. Above the wall she had hung photographs of the great Madonnas, and lately she had placed one of Frances Waldeaux among them. That was the face on which she looked last at night. When Clara had noticed it, Lucy had said, "I am as fond of the dear lady as if she were my own mother."She sat down before it now, and taking out her sewing began to work, glancing up at it, half smiling as to a friend who talked to her. She thought of Furst Hugo boiling soap, with a gentle pity, and of Jean with hot disdain. What had Jean to do with it? The prince was her own lover, as her gloves were her own.
But indeed, the prince and love were but shadows on the far sky line to the little girl; the real things were her work and her Bible, and George's mother talking to her.
She often traced remembered expressions on Mrs.
Waldeaux's face; the gayety, the sympathy, a strange foreboding in the eyes. Finer meanings, surely, than any in the features of these immortal insipid Madonnas!
Sometimes Lucy could not decide whether she had seen these meanings on Frances Waldeaux's face, or on her son's.
She sewed until late in the afternoon. There came a tap at the door. She opened it, and there stood Mrs.
Waldeaux, wrapped in a heavy cloak. Lucy jumped at her, trembling, and hugged her.
"Oh, come in! Come in!" she cried shrilly. "I have just been thinking of you and talking to you!"Frances laughed, bewildered. "Oh, it is Miss Dunbar? The man sent me here by mistake to wait. Miss Vance is out, he said.""Yes, I suppose so. But I--I am here." Lucy threw her arms around her again, laying her head down on her shoulder. She felt as if something that she had waited for a long time was coming to her. "Sit by the stove.
Your hands are like ice," she said.
