FRANCES WALDEAUX
A Novel
BY
REBECCA HARDING DAVIS
AUTHOR OF "DOCTOR WARRICK'S DAUGHTER"
A REMEMBRANCER
OF
BRITTANY
FOR THE BEST FELLOW-TRAVELLER
IN THE WORLD
FRANCES WALDEAUX
---CHAPTER I
In another minute the Kaiser Wilhelm would push off
from her pier in Hoboken. The last bell had rung, the
last uniformed officer and white-jacketed steward had
scurried up the gangway. The pier was massed with people
who had come to bid their friends good-by. They were all
Germans, and there had been unlimited embracing and
kissing and sobs of "Ach! mein lieber Sckatz!" and
"Gott bewahre Dick!"
Now they stood looking up to the crowded decks, shouting
out last fond words. A band playing "The Merry Maiden
and the Tar" marched on board.
The passengers pressed against the rails, looking down.
Almost every one held flowers which had been brought to
them: not costly bouquets, but homely bunches of
marigolds or pinks. They carried, too, little German
or American flags, which they waved frantically.
The gangways fell, and the huge ship parted from the
dock. It was but an inch, but the whole ocean yawned in
it between those who went and those who stayed. There
was a sudden silence; a thousand handkerchiefs fluttered
white on the pier and the flags and flowers were waved on
the ship, but there was not a cry nor a sound.
James Perry, one of the dozen Americans on board, was
leaning over the rail watching it all with an amused
smile. "Hello, Watts!" he called, as another young man
joined him. "Going over? Quite dramatic, isn't it? It
might be a German ship going out of a German port. The
other liners set off in as commonplace a way as a Jersey
City ferryboat, but these North German Lloyd ships always
sail with a certain ceremony and solemnity. I like it."
"I always cross on them," said Dr. Watts. "I have but a
month's vacation--two weeks on board ship, two on land.
Now you, I suppose, have to count your days?
You cross every year. I can't see, for my part, what
business the assistant editor of a magazine has abroad."
"Oh, we make a specialty of articles from notorieties
over there; statesmen, scientific fellows, or people with
titles. I expect to capture a paper from Lorne and some
sketches by the Princess Beatrice this time."
"Lorne? It throws you into contact with that sort of
folk, eh?" said the doctor, looking at him enviously.
"How do they strike you, Jem?"
"Well," said Perry importantly, "well-bred people are the
same the world over. I only see them in a business way,
of course, but one can judge. Their voices are better
than ours, but as to looks--no! It's queer, but American
women--the wives and daughters of saddlers or farmers,
perhaps--have more often the patrician look than English
duchesses. Now there, for example," warming to the
subject, "that woman to whom you bowed just now, the
middle-aged one in blue cloth. Some Mrs. Smith or Pratt,
probably. A homely woman, but there is a distinction in
her face, a certain surety of good breeding, which is
lacking in the heavy-jawed English royalties."
"Yes; that is a friend of mine," said Watts.
She is a Mrs. Waldeaux from Wier, in Delaware. You could
hardly call her a typical American woman. Old French
emigre family. Probably better blood than the Coburgs
a few generations back. That priggish young fellow is
her son. Going to be an Episcopalian minister."
Mr. Perry surveyed his friend's friends good-humoredly.
"Brand new rugs and cushions," he said. "First voyage.
Heavens! I wish it were my first voyage, and that I had
their appetite for Europe."
"You might as well ask for your relish of the bread and
butter of your youth," said Watts.
The two men leaned lazily against the bulwark watching
the other passengers who were squabbling about trunks.
Mr. Perry suddenly stood upright as a group of women
passed.
"Do you know who that girl is?" he said eagerly. "The
one who looked back at us over her shoulder."
"No. They are only a lot of school-girls, personally
conducted. That is the teacher in front."
"Of course, I see that. But the short, dark one--surely
I know that woman."
The doctor looked after her. "She looks like a dog
turning into a human being," he said leisurely. "One
often sees such cases of arrested evolution. D'ye see?
Thick lips, coarse curls, flat nostrils----"
Perry laughed. "The eyes, anyhow, are quite human," he
said. "They challenge the whole world of men. I can't
place her!" staring after her, perplexed. "I really
believe I ever saw her before. Yet her face brings
up some old story of a tragedy or crime to me."
"Nonsense! The girl is not twenty. Very fetching with
all her vulgarity, though. Steward, send some coffee to
my stateroom. Let's go down, Jem. The fog is too
chilly."
Frances Waldeaux did not find the fog chilly. She had
been thinking for thirty years of the day when she should
start to Europe--ever since she could think at all.
This was the day. It was like no other, now that it
had come. The fog, the crowd, the greasy smells of the
pier, all familiar enough yesterday, took on a certain
remoteness and mystery. It seemed to her that she was
doing something which nobody had ever done before. She
was going to discover the Old World.
The New was not more tremendous or unreal before the eyes
of Columbus when he, too, stood on the poop of his ship.
Her son was arguing with the deck steward about chairs.
"Now, mother," he said at last, "all right. They
are under cover so that the glare will not strain your
eyes, and we can keep dry while we watch the storms."
"How did you know about it all? One would think you had
crossed a dozen times, George."
"Oh, I've studied the whole thing up thoroughly," George
said, with a satisfied little nod. "I've had time
enough! Why, when I was in petticoats you used to tell
me you would buy a ship and we would sail away together.
You used to spoil all my school maps with red lines,
drawing our routes."
"Yes. And now going!" said Frances to herself.
He sat down beside her and they watched the unending
procession of passengers marching around the deck.
George called her attention by a wink to any picturesque
or queer figure that passed. He liked to watch her quiet
brown eyes gleam with fun. Nobody had such a keen sense
of the ridiculous as his mother. Sometimes, at the mere
remembrance of some absurd idea, she would go off into
soft silent paroxysms of laughter until the tears would
stream down her cheeks.
George was fond and proud of his childish little mother.
He had never known any body, he thought, so young or so
transparent. It was easily understood. She had married
at sixteen, and had been left a widow little more than a
year afterward. "And I," he used to think, "was born
with an old head on my shoulders; so we have grown up
together. I suppose the dear soul never had a thought in
her life which she has not told me."
As they sat together a steward brought Mrs. Waldeaux a
note, which she read, blushing and smiling.
"The captain invites us to sit at his table," she said,
when the man was gone.
"Very proper in the captain," said George complacently.
"You see, Madam Waldeaux, even the men who go down in
ships have heard of you and your family!"
"I believe the captain ever heard of me," she said,
after a grave consideration," nor of the Waldeaux. It is
much more likely that he has read your article in the
Quarterly, George."
"Nonsense!" But he stiffened himself up consciously.
He had sent a paper on some abstruse point of sociology
to the Quarterly last spring, and it had aroused quite
a little buzz of criticism. His mother had regarded it
very much as the Duchess of Kent did the crown when it
was set upon her little girl's head. She always had
known that her child was born to reign, but it was
satisfactory to see this visible sign of it.
She whispered now, eagerly leaning over to him. "There
was something about that paper which I never told you.
I think tell you now that the great day has come."
"Well?"
"Why, you know--I never think of you as my son, or a man,
or anything outside of me--not at all. You are just
ME, doing the things I should have done if I had not
been a woman. Well,"--she drew her breath
quickly,--"when I was a girl it seemed as if there was
something in me that I must say, so I ...
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