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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ragged Lady, Complete, by William Dean Howells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ragged Lady, Complete
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+Release Date: September 1, 2006 [EBook #4270]
+Last Updated: February 25, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAGGED LADY, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RAGGED LADY.
+
+By William Dean Howells
+
+
+
+
+Part 1.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+It was their first summer at Middlemount and the Landers did not know
+the roads. When they came to a place where they had a choice of two,
+she said that now he must get out of the carry-all and ask at the house
+standing a little back in the edge of the pine woods, which road they
+ought to take for South Middlemount. She alleged many cases in which
+they had met trouble through his perverse reluctance to find out where
+they were before he pushed rashly forward in their drives. Whilst she
+urged the facts she reached forward from the back seat where she sat,
+and held her hand upon the reins to prevent his starting the horse,
+which was impartially cropping first the sweet fern on one side and then
+the blueberry bushes on the other side of the narrow wheel-track. She
+declared at last that if he would not get out and ask she would do it
+herself, and at this the dry little man jerked the reins in spite of
+her, and the horse suddenly pulled the carry-all to the right, and
+seemed about to overset it.
+
+“Oh, what are you doing, Albe't?” Mrs. Lander lamented, falling helpless
+against the back of her seat. “Haven't I always told you to speak to the
+hoss fust?”
+
+“He wouldn't have minded my speakin',” said her husband. “I'm goin' to
+take you up to the dooa so that you can ask for youaself without gettin'
+out.”
+
+This was so well, in view of Mrs. Lander's age and bulk, and the
+hardship she must have undergone, if she had tried to carry out her
+threat, that she was obliged to take it in some sort as a favor; and
+while the vehicle rose and sank over the surface left rough, after
+building, in front of the house, like a vessel on a chopping sea, she
+was silent for several seconds.
+
+The house was still in a raw state of unfinish, though it seemed to have
+been lived in for a year at least. The earth had been banked up at the
+foundations for warmth in winter, and the sheathing of the walls had
+been splotched with irregular spaces of weather boarding; there was a
+good roof over all, but the window-casings had been merely set in their
+places and the trim left for a future impulse of the builder. A block
+of wood suggested the intention of steps at the front door, which stood
+hospitably open, but remained unresponsive for some time after the
+Landers made their appeal to the house at large by anxious noises in
+their throats, and by talking loud with each other, and then talking
+low. They wondered whether there were anybody in the house; and decided
+that there must be, for there was smoke coming out of the stove pipe
+piercing the roof of the wing at the rear.
+
+Mr. Lander brought himself under censure by venturing, without his
+wife's authority, to lean forward and tap on the door-frame with the
+butt of his whip. At the sound, a shrill voice called instantly from
+the region of the stove pipe, “Clem! Clementina? Go to the front dooa!
+The'e's somebody knockin'.” The sound of feet, soft and quick, made
+itself heard within, and in a few moments a slim maid, too large for a
+little girl, too childlike for a young girl, stood in the open doorway,
+looking down on the elderly people in the buggy, with a face as glad as
+a flower's. She had blue eyes, and a smiling mouth, a straight nose, and
+a pretty chin whose firm jut accented a certain wistfulness of her lips.
+She had hair of a dull, dark yellow, which sent out from its thick mass
+light prongs, or tendrils, curving inward again till they delicately
+touched it. Her tanned face was not very different in color from her
+hair, and neither were her bare feet, which showed well above her ankles
+in the calico skirt she wore. At sight of the elders in the buggy she
+involuntarily stooped a little to lengthen her skirt in effect, and at
+the same time she pulled it together sidewise, to close a tear in it,
+but she lost in her anxiety no ray of the joy which the mere presence of
+the strangers seemed to give her, and she kept smiling sunnily upon them
+while she waited for them to speak.
+
+“Oh!” Mrs. Lander began with involuntary apology in her tone, “we just
+wished to know which of these roads went to South Middlemount. We've
+come from the hotel, and we wa'n't quite ce'tain.”
+
+The girl laughed as she said, “Both roads go to South Middlemount'm;
+they join together again just a little piece farther on.”
+
+The girl and the woman in their parlance replaced the letter 'r' by
+vowel sounds almost too obscure to be represented, except where it
+came last in a word before a word beginning with a vowel; there it
+was annexed to the vowel by a strong liaison, according to the custom
+universal in rural New England.
+
+“Oh, do they?” said Mrs. Lander.
+
+“Yes'm,” answered the girl. “It's a kind of tu'nout in the wintatime; or
+I guess that's what made it in the beginning; sometimes folks take one
+hand side and sometimes the other, and that keeps them separate; but
+they're really the same road, 'm.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Mrs. Lander, and she pushed her husband to make him
+say something, too, but he remained silently intent upon the child's
+prettiness, which her blue eyes seemed to illumine with a light of their
+own. She had got hold of the door, now, and was using it as if it was
+a piece of drapery, to hide not only the tear in her gown, but somehow
+both her bare feet. She leaned out beyond the edge of it; and then, at
+moments she vanished altogether behind it.
+
+Since Mr. Lander would not speak, and made no sign of starting up his
+horse, Mrs. Lander added, “I presume you must be used to havin' people
+ask about the road, if it's so puzzlin'.”
+
+“O, yes'm,” returned the girl, gladly. “Almost every day, in the
+summatime.”
+
+“You have got a pretty place for a home, he'e,” said Mrs. Lander.
+
+“Well, it will be when it's finished up.” Without leaning forward
+inconveniently Mrs. Lander could see that the partitions of the house
+within were lathed, but not plastered, and the girl looked round as if
+to realize its condition and added, “It isn't quite finished inside.”
+
+“We wouldn't, have troubled you,” said Mrs. Lander, “if we had seen
+anybody to inquire of.”
+
+“Yes'm,” said the girl. “It a'n't any trouble.”
+
+“There are not many otha houses about, very nea', but I don't suppose
+you get lonesome; young folks are plenty of company for themselves, and
+if you've got any brothas and sistas--”
+
+“Oh,” said the girl, with a tender laugh, “I've got eva so many of
+them!”
+
+There was a stir in the bushes about the carriage, and Mrs. Lander was
+aware for an instant of children's faces looking through the leaves at
+her and then flashing out of sight, with gay cries at being seen. A boy,
+older than the rest, came round in front of the horse and passed out of
+sight at the corner of the house.
+
+Lander now leaned back and looked over his shoulder at his wife as if
+he might hopefully suppose she had come to the end of her questions, but
+she gave no sign of encouraging him to start on their way again.
+
+“That your brotha, too?” she asked the girl.
+
+“Yes'm. He's the oldest of the boys; he's next to me.”
+
+“I don't know,” said Mrs. Lander thoughtfully, “as I noticed how many
+boys there were, or how many girls.”
+
+“I've got two sistas, and three brothas, 'm,” said the girl, always
+smiling sweetly. She now emerged from the shelter of the door, and Mrs.
+Lander perceived that the slight movements of such parts of her person
+as had been evident beyond its edge were the effects of some endeavor at
+greater presentableness. She had contrived to get about her an overskirt
+which covered the rent in her frock, and she had got a pair of shoes on
+her feet. Stockings were still wanting, but by a mutual concession of
+her shoe-tops and the border of her skirt, they were almost eliminated
+from the problem. This happened altogether when the girl sat down on the
+threshold, and got herself into such foreshortening that the eye of
+Mrs. Lander in looking down upon her could not detect their absence. Her
+little head then showed in the dark of the doorway like a painted head
+against its background.
+
+“You haven't been livin' here a great while, by the looks,” said Mrs.
+Lander. “It don't seem to be clea'ed off very much.”
+
+“We've got quite a ga'den-patch back of the house,” replied the girl,
+“and we should have had moa, but fatha wasn't very well, this spring;
+he's eva so much better than when we fust came he'e.”
+
+“It has the name of being a very healthy locality,” said Mrs. Lander,
+somewhat discontentedly, “though I can't see as it's done me so very
+much good, yit. Both your payrints livin'?”
+
+“Yes'm. Oh, yes, indeed!”
+
+“And your mother, is she real rugged? She need to be, with such a flock
+of little ones!”
+
+“Yes, motha's always well. Fatha was just run down, the doctas said, and
+ought to keep more in the open air. That's what he's done since he came
+he'e. He helped a great deal on the house and he planned it all out
+himself.”
+
+“Is he a ca'penta?” asked Mrs. Lander.
+
+“No'm; but he's--I don't know how to express it--he likes to do every
+kind of thing.”
+
+“But he's got some business, ha'n't he?” A shadow of severity crept
+over Mrs. Lander's tone, in provisional reprehension of possible
+shiftlessness.
+
+“Yes'm. He was a machinist at the Mills; that's what the doctas thought
+didn't agree with him. He bought a piece of land he'e, so as to be in
+the pine woods, and then we built this house.”
+
+“When did you say you came?”
+
+“Two yea's ago, this summa.”
+
+“Well! What did you do befoa you built this house?”
+
+“We camped the first summa.”
+
+“You camped? In a tent?”
+
+“Well, it was pahtly a tent, and pahtly bank.”
+
+“I should have thought you would have died.”
+
+The girl laughed. “Oh, no, we all kept fast-rate. We slept in the
+tents--we had two--and we cooked in the shanty.” She smiled at the notion in
+adding, “At fast the neighbas thought we we'e Gipsies; and the summa
+folks thought we were Indians, and wanted to get baskets of us.”
+
+Mrs. Lander did not know what to think, and she asked, “But didn't it
+almost perish you, stayin' through the winter in an unfinished house?”
+
+“Well, it was pretty cold. But it was so dry, the air was, and the woods
+kept the wind off nicely.”
+
+The same shrill voice in the region of the stovepipe which had sent
+the girl to the Landers now called her from them. “Clem! Come here a
+minute!”
+
+The girl said to Mrs. Lander, politely, “You'll have to excuse me,
+now'm. I've got to go to motha.”
+
+“So do!” said Mrs. Lander, and she was so taken by the girl's art and
+grace in getting to her feet and fading into the background of the
+hallway without visibly casting any detail of her raiment, that she was
+not aware of her husband's starting up the horse in time to stop him.
+They were fairly under way again, when she lamented, “What you doin',
+Albe't? Whe'e you goin'?”
+
+“I'm goin' to South Middlemount. Didn't you want to?”
+
+“Well, of all the men! Drivin' right off without waitin' to say thankye
+to the child, or take leave, or anything!”
+
+“Seemed to me as if SHE took leave.”
+
+“But she was comin' back! And I wanted to ask--”
+
+“I guess you asked enough for one while. Ask the rest to-morra.”
+
+Mrs. Lander was a woman who could often be thrown aside from an
+immediate purpose, by the suggestion of some remoter end, which had
+already, perhaps, intimated itself to her. She said, “That's true,”
+ but by the time her husband had driven down one of the roads beyond
+the woods into open country, she was a quiver of intolerable curiosity.
+“Well, all I've got to say is that I sha'n't rest till I know all about
+'em.”
+
+“Find out when we get back to the hotel, I guess,” said her husband.
+
+“No, I can't wait till I get back to the hotel. I want to know now.
+I want you should stop at the very fust house we come to. Dea'! The'e
+don't seem to be any houses, any moa.” She peered out around the side
+of the carry-all and scrutinized the landscape. “Hold on! No, yes it is,
+too! Whoa! Whoa! The'e's a man in that hay-field, now!”
+
+She laid hold of the reins and pulled the horse to a stand. Mr. Lander
+looked round over his shoulder at her. “Hadn't you betta wait till you
+get within half a mile of the man?”
+
+“Well, I want you should stop when you do git to him. Will you? I want
+to speak to him, and ask him all about those folks.”
+
+“I didn't suppose you'd let me have much of a chance,” said her husband.
+When he came within easy hail of the man in the hay-field, he pulled up
+beside the meadow-wall, where the horse began to nibble the blackberry
+vines that overran it.
+
+Mrs. Lander beckoned and called to the man, who had stopped pitching hay
+and now stood leaning on the handle of his fork. At the signs and sounds
+she made, he came actively forward to the road, bringing his fork with
+him. When he arrived within easy conversational distance, he planted the
+tines in the ground and braced himself at an opposite incline from the
+long smooth handle, and waited for Mrs. Lander to begin.
+
+“Will you please tell us who those folks ah', livin' back there in the
+edge of the woods, in that new unfinished house?”
+
+The man released his fork with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy
+that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his
+teeth, where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he
+talked, before he answered, “You mean the Claxons?”
+
+“I don't know what thei' name is.” Mrs. Lander repeated exactly what she
+had said.
+
+The farmer said, “Long, red-headed man, kind of sickly-lookin'?”
+
+“We didn't see the man--”
+
+“Little woman, skinny-lookin; pootty tonguey?”
+
+“We didn't see her, eitha; but I guess we hea'd her at the back of the
+house.”
+
+“Lot o' children, about as big as pa'tridges, runnin' round in the
+bushes?”
+
+“Yes! And a very pretty-appearing girl; about thi'teen or fou'teen, I
+should think.”
+
+The farmer pulled his fork out of the ground, and planted it with his
+person at new slopes in the figure of a letter A, rather more upright
+than before. “Yes; it's them,” he said. “Ha'n't been in the neighbahood
+a great while, eitha. Up from down Po'tland way, some'res, I guess.
+Built that house last summer, as far as it's got, but I don't believe
+it's goin' to git much fa'tha.”
+
+“Why, what's the matta?” demanded Mrs. Lander in an anguish of interest.
+
+The man in the hay-field seemed to think it more dignified to include
+Lander in this inquiry, and he said with a glimmer of the eye for him,
+“Hea'd of do-nothin' folks?”
+
+“Seen 'em, too,” answered Lander, comprehensively.
+
+“Well, that a'n't Claxon's complaint exactly. He a'n't a do-nothin';
+he's a do-everything. I guess it's about as bad.” Lander glimmered back
+at the man, but did not speak.
+
+“Kind of a machinist down at the Mills, where he come from,” the farmer
+began again, and Mrs. Lander, eager not to be left out of the affair for
+a moment, interrupted:
+
+“Yes, Yes! That's what the gul said.”
+
+“But he don't seem to think't the i'on agreed with him, and now he's
+goin' in for wood. Well, he did have a kind of a foot-powa tu'nin'
+lathe, and tuned all sots o' things; cups, and bowls, and u'ns for
+fence-posts, and vases, and sleeve-buttons and little knick-knacks; but
+the place bunt down, here, a while back, and he's been huntin' round for
+wood, the whole winta long, to make canes out of for the summa-folks.
+Seems to think that the smell o' the wood, whether it's green or it's
+dry, is goin' to cure him, and he can't git too much of it.”
+
+“Well, I believe it's so, Albe't!” cried Mrs. Lander, as if her husband
+had disputed the theory with his taciturn back. He made no other sign of
+controversy, and the man in the hay-field went on.
+
+“I hea' he's goin' to put up a wind mill, back in an open place he's
+got, and use the powa for tu'nin', if he eva gits it up. But he don't
+seem to be in any great of a hurry, and they scrape along somehow.
+Wife takes in sewin' and the girl wo'ked at the Middlemount House last
+season. Whole fam'ly's got to tu'n in and help s'po't a man that can do
+everything.”
+
+The farmer appealed with another humorous cast of his eye to Lander; but
+the old man tacitly refused to take any further part in the talk, which
+began to flourish apace, in question and answer, between his wife and
+the man in the hay-field. It seemed that the children had all inherited
+the father's smartness. The oldest boy could beat the nation at figures,
+and one of the young ones could draw anything you had a mind to. They
+were all clear up in their classes at school, and yet you might say they
+almost ran wild, between times. The oldest girl was a pretty-behaved
+little thing, but the man in the hay-field guessed there was not very
+much to her, compared with some of the boys. Any rate, she had not the
+name of being so smart at school. Good little thing, too, and kind of
+mothered the young ones.
+
+Mrs. Lander, when she had wrung the last drop of information out of him,
+let him crawl back to his work, mentally flaccid, and let her husband
+drive on, but under a fire of conjecture and asseveration that was
+scarcely intermitted till they reached their hotel. That night she
+talked a long time about their afternoon's adventure before she allowed
+him to go to sleep. She said she must certainly see the child again;
+that they must drive down there in the morning, and ask her all about
+herself.
+
+“Albe't,” she concluded; “I wish we had her to live with us. Yes, I do!
+I wonder if we could get her to. You know I always did want to adopt a
+baby.”
+
+“You neva said so,” Mr. Lander opened his mouth almost for the first
+time, since the talk began.
+
+“I didn't suppose you'd like it,” said his wife.
+
+“Well, she a'n't a baby. I guess you'd find you had your hands full,
+takon' a half-grown gul like that to bring up.”
+
+“I shouldn't be afraid any,” the wife declared. “She has just twined
+herself round my heat. I can't get her pretty looks out of my eyes. I
+know she's good.”
+
+“We'll see how you feel about it in the morning.”
+
+The old man began to wind his watch, and his wife seemed to take this
+for a sign that the incident was closed, for the present at least. He
+seldom talked, but there came times when he would not even listen. One
+of these was the time after he had wound his watch. A minute later he
+had undressed, with an agility incredible of his years, and was in
+bed, as effectively blind and deaf to his wife's appeals as if he were
+already asleep.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+When Albert Gallatin Lander (he was named for an early Secretary of the
+Treasury as a tribute to the statesman's financial policy) went out of
+business, his wife began to go out of health; and it became the most
+serious affair of his declining years to provide for her invalid
+fancies. He would have liked to buy a place in the Boston suburbs (he
+preferred one of the Newtons) where they could both have had something
+to do, she inside of the house, and he outside; but she declared that
+what they both needed was a good long rest, with freedom from care and
+trouble of every kind. She broke up their establishment in Boston, and
+stored their furniture, and she would have made him sell the simple
+old house in which they had always lived, on an unfashionable
+up-and-down-hill street of the West End, if he had not taken one of his
+stubborn stands, and let it for a term of years without consulting her.
+But she had her way about their own movements, and they began that life
+of hotels, which they had now lived so long that she believed any other
+impossible. Its luxury and idleness had told upon each of them with
+diverse effect.
+
+They had both entered upon it in much the same corporal figure, but she
+had constantly grown in flesh, while he had dwindled away until he was
+not much more than half the weight of his prime. Their digestion was
+alike impaired by their joint life, but as they took the same medicines
+Mrs. Lander was baffled to account for the varying result. She was sure
+that all the anxiety came upon her, and that logically she was the one
+who ought to have wasted away. But she had before her the spectacle of
+a husband who, while he gave his entire attention to her health, did
+not audibly or visibly worry about it, and yet had lost weight in such
+measure that upon trying on a pair of his old trousers taken out of
+storage with some clothes of her own, he found it impossible to use the
+side pockets which the change in his figure carried so far to the rear
+when the garment was reduced at the waist. At the same time her own
+dresses of ten years earlier would not half meet round her; and one
+of the most corroding cares of a woman who had done everything a woman
+could to get rid of care, was what to do with those things which they
+could neither of them ever wear again. She talked the matter over
+with herself before her husband, till he took the desperate measure of
+sending them back to storage; and they had been left there in the spring
+when the Landers came away for the summer.
+
+They always spent the later spring months at a hotel in the suburbs of
+Boston, where they arrived in May from a fortnight in a hotel at New
+York, on their way up from hotels in Washington, Ashville, Aiken and St.
+Augustine. They passed the summer months in the mountains, and early in
+the autumn they went back to the hotel in the Boston suburbs, where Mrs.
+Lander considered it essential to make some sojourn before going to a
+Boston hotel for November and December, and getting ready to go down to
+Florida in January. She would not on any account have gone directly to
+the city from the mountains, for people who did that were sure to lose
+the good of their summer, and to feel the loss all the winter, if they
+did not actually come down with a fever.
+
+She was by no means aware that she was a selfish or foolish person. She
+made Mr. Lander subscribe statedly to worthy objects in Boston, which
+she still regarded as home, because they had not dwelt any where else
+since they ceased to live there; and she took lavishly of tickets for
+all the charitable entertainments in the hotels where they stayed. Few
+if any guests at hotels enjoyed so much honor from porters, bell-boys,
+waiters, chambermaids and bootblacks as the Landers, for they gave
+richly in fees for every conceivable service which could be rendered
+them; they went out of their way to invent debts of gratitude to menials
+who had done nothing for them. He would make the boy who sold papers at
+the dining-room door keep the change, when he had been charged a profit
+of a hundred per cent. already; and she would let no driver who had
+plundered them according to the carriage tariff escape without something
+for himself.
+
+A sense of their munificence penetrated the clerks and proprietors with
+a just esteem for guests who always wanted the best of everything, and
+questioned no bill for extras. Mrs. Lander, in fact, who ruled these
+expenditures, had no knowledge of the value of things, and made her
+husband pay whatever was asked. Yet when they lived under their own roof
+they had lived simply, and Lander had got his money in an old-fashioned
+business way, and not in some delirious speculation such as leaves a
+man reckless of money afterwards. He had been first of all a tailor,
+and then he had gone into boys' and youths' clothing in a small way, and
+finally he had mastered this business and come out at the top, with his
+hands full. He invested his money so prosperously that the income
+for two elderly people, who had no children, and only a few outlying
+relations on his side, was far beyond their wants, or even their whims.
+
+She as a woman, who in spite of her bulk and the jellylike majesty with
+which she shook in her smoothly casing brown silks, as she entered hotel
+dining-rooms, and the severity with which she frowned over her fan down
+the length of the hotel drawing-rooms, betrayed more than her husband
+the commonness of their origin. She could not help talking, and her
+accent and her diction gave her away for a middle-class New England
+person of village birth and unfashionable sojourn in Boston. He, on
+the contrary, lurked about the hotels where they passed their days in a
+silence so dignified that when his verbs and nominatives seemed not to
+agree, you accused your own hearing. He was correctly dressed, as an
+elderly man should be, in the yesterday of the fashions, and he wore
+with impressiveness a silk hat whenever such a hat could be worn. A pair
+of drab cloth gaiters did much to identify him with an old school of
+gentlemen, not very definite in time or place. He had a full gray beard
+cut close, and he was in the habit of pursing his mouth a great deal.
+But he meant nothing by it, and his wife meant nothing by her frowning.
+They had no wish to subdue or overawe any one, or to pass for persons of
+social distinction. They really did not know what society was, and they
+were rather afraid of it than otherwise as they caught sight of it in
+their journeys and sojourns. They led a life of public seclusion, and
+dwelling forever amidst crowds, they were all in all to each other,
+and nothing to the rest of the world, just as they had been when they
+resided (as they would have said) on Pinckney street. In their own house
+they had never entertained, though they sometimes had company, in the
+style of the country town where Mrs. Lander grew up. As soon as she was
+released to the grandeur of hotel life, she expanded to the full measure
+of its responsibilities and privileges, but still without seeking
+to make it the basis of approach to society. Among the people who
+surrounded her, she had not so much acquaintance as her husband even,
+who talked so little that he needed none. She sometimes envied his ease
+in getting on with people when he chose; and his boldness in speaking to
+fellow guests and fellow travellers, if he really wanted anything. She
+wanted something of them all the time, she wanted their conversation
+and their companionship; but in her ignorance of the social arts she was
+thrown mainly upon the compassion of the chambermaids. She kept these
+talking as long as she could detain them in her rooms; and often fed
+them candy (which she ate herself with childish greed) to bribe them to
+further delays. If she was staying some days in a hotel, she sent for
+the house-keeper, and made all she could of her as a listener, and
+as soon as she settled herself for a week, she asked who was the best
+doctor in the place. With doctors she had no reserves, and she
+poured out upon them the history of her diseases and symptoms in an
+inexhaustible flow of statement, conjecture and misgiving, which was
+by no means affected by her profound and inexpugnable ignorance of the
+principles of health. From time to time she forgot which side her liver
+was on, but she had been doctored (as she called it) for all her organs,
+and she was willing to be doctored for any one of them that happened
+to be in the place where she fancied a present discomfort. She was not
+insensible to the claims which her husband's disorders had upon science,
+and she liked to end the tale of her own sufferings with some such
+appeal as: “I wish you could do something for Mr. Landa, too, docta.”
+ She made him take a little of each medicine that was left for her; but
+in her presence he always denied that there was anything the matter with
+him, though he was apt to follow the doctor out of the room, and get a
+prescription from him for some ailment which he professed not to believe
+in himself, but wanted to quiet Mrs. Lander's mind about.
+
+He rose early, both from long habit, and from the scant sleep of an
+elderly man; he could not lie in bed; but his wife always had her
+breakfast there and remained so long that the chambermaid had done up
+most of the other rooms and had leisure for talk with her. As soon as he
+was awake, he stole softly out and was the first in the dining-room for
+breakfast. He owned to casual acquaintance in moments of expansion that
+breakfast was his best meal, but he did what he could to make it his
+worst by beginning with oranges and oatmeal, going forward to beefsteak
+and fried potatoes, and closing with griddle cakes and syrup, washed
+down with a cup of cocoa, which his wife decided to be wholesomer than
+coffee. By the time he had finished such a repast, he crept out of the
+dining-room in a state of tension little short of anguish, which he
+confided to the sympathy of the bootblack in the washroom.
+
+He always went from having his shoes polished to get a toothpick at the
+clerk's desk; and at the Middlemount House, the morning after he had
+been that drive with Mrs. Lander, he lingered a moment with his elbows
+beside the register. “How about a buckboa'd?” he asked.
+
+“Something you can drive yourself”--the clerk professionally dropped his
+eye to the register--“Mr. Lander?”
+
+“Well, no, I guess not, this time,” the little man returned, after a
+moment's reflection. “Know anything of a family named Claxon, down the
+road, here, a piece?” He twisted his head in the direction he meant.
+
+“This is my first season at Middlemount; but I guess Mr. Atwell will
+know.” The clerk called to the landlord, who was smoking in his private
+room behind the office, and the landlord came out. The clerk repeated
+Mr. Lander's questions.
+
+“Pootty good kind of folks, I guess,” said the landlord provisionally,
+through his cigar-smoke. “Man's a kind of univussal genius, but he's got
+a nice family of children; smaht as traps, all of 'em.”
+
+“How about that oldest gul?” asked Mr. Lander.
+
+“Well, the'a,” said the landlord, taking the cigar out of his mouth. “I
+think she's about the nicest little thing goin'. We've had her up he'e,
+to help out in a busy time, last summer, and she's got moo sense than
+guls twice as old. Takes hold like--lightnin'.”
+
+“About how old did you say she was?”
+
+“Well, you've got me the'a, Mr. Landa; I guess I'll ask Mis' Atwell.”
+
+“The'e's no hurry,” said Lander. “That buckboa'd be round pretty soon?”
+ he asked of the clerk.
+
+“Be right along now, Mr. Lander,” said the clerk, soothingly. He stepped
+out to the platform that the teams drove up to from the stable, and came
+back to say that it was coming. “I believe you said you wanted something
+you could drive yourself?”
+
+“No, I didn't, young man,” answered the elder sharply. But the next
+moment he added, “Come to think of it, I guess it's just as well. You
+needn't get me no driver. I guess I know the way well enough. You put me
+in a hitchin' strap.”
+
+“All right, Mr. Lander,” said the clerk, meekly.
+
+The landlord had caught the peremptory note in Lander's voice, and he
+came out of his room again to see that there was nothing going wrong.
+
+“It's all right,” said Lander, and went out and got into his buckboard.
+
+“Same horse you had yesterday,” said the young clerk. “You don't need to
+spare the whip.”
+
+“I guess I can look out for myself,” said Lander, and he shook the reins
+and gave the horse a smart cut, as a hint of what he might expect.
+
+The landlord joined the clerk in looking after the brisk start the horse
+made. “Not the way he set off with the old lady, yesterday,” suggested
+the clerk.
+
+The landlord rolled his cigar round in his tubed lips. “I guess he's
+used to ridin' after a good hoss.” He added gravely to the clerk, “You
+don't want to make very free with that man, Mr. Pane. He won't stan'
+it, and he's a class of custom that you want to cata to when it comes
+in your way. I suspicioned what he was when they came here and took the
+highest cost rooms without tu'nin' a haia. They're a class of custom
+that you won't get outside the big hotels in the big reso'ts. Yes, sir,”
+ said the landlord taking a fresh start, “they're them kind of folks that
+live the whole yea' round in hotels; no'th in summa, south in winta, and
+city hotels between times. They want the best their money can buy, and
+they got plenty of it. She”--he meant Mrs. Lander--“has been tellin' my
+wife how they do; she likes to talk a little betta than he doos; and I
+guess when it comes to society, they're away up, and they won't stun'
+any nonsense.”
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Lander came into his wife's room between ten and eleven o'clock, and
+found her still in bed, but with her half-finished breakfast on a tray
+before her. As soon as he opened the door she said, “I do wish you would
+take some of that heat-tonic of mine, Albe't, that the docta left for
+me in Boston. You'll find it in the upper right bureau box, the'a; and
+I know it'll be the very thing for you. It'll relieve you of that
+suffocatin' feeling that I always have, comin' up stars. Dea'! I don't
+see why they don't have an elevata; they make you pay enough; and I wish
+you'd get me a little more silva, so's't I can give to the chambamaid
+and the bell-boy; I do hate to be out of it. I guess you been up and
+out long ago. They did make that polonaise of mine too tight after all
+I said, and I've been thinkin' how I could get it alt'ed; but I presume
+there ain't a seamstress to be had around he'e for love or money. Well,
+now, that's right, Albe't; I'm glad to see you doin' it.”
+
+Lander had opened the lid of the bureau box, and uncorked a bottle from
+it, and tilted this to his lips.
+
+“Don't take too much,” she cautioned him, “or you'll lose the effects.
+When I take too much of a medicine, it's wo'se than nothing, as fah's I
+can make out. When I had that spell in Thomasville spring before last,
+I believe I should have been over it twice as quick if I had taken just
+half the medicine I did. You don't really feel anyways bad about the
+heat, do you, Albe't?”
+
+“I'm all right,” said Lander. He put back the bottle in its place and
+sat down.
+
+Mrs. Lander lifted herself on her elbow and looked over at him. “Show me
+on the bottle how much you took.”
+
+He got the bottle out again and showed her with his thumb nail a point
+which he chose at random.
+
+“Well, that was just about the dose for you,” she said; and she sank
+down in bed again with the air of having used a final precaution. “You
+don't want to slow your heat up too quick.”
+
+Lander did not put the bottle back this time. He kept it in his hand,
+with his thumb on the cork, and rocked it back and forth on his knees as
+he spoke. “Why don't you get that woman to alter it for you?”
+
+“What woman alta what?”
+
+“Your polonaise. The one whe'e we stopped yestaday.”
+
+“Oh! Well, I've been thinkin' about that child, Albe't; I did before I
+went to sleep; and I don't believe I want to risk anything with her.
+It would be a ca'e,” said Mrs. Lander with a sigh, “and I guess I don't
+want to take any moa ca'e than what I've got now. What makes you think
+she could alta my polonaise?”
+
+“Said she done dress-makin',” said Lander, doggedly.
+
+“You ha'n't been the'a?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“You didn't say anything to her about her daughta?”
+
+“Yes, I did,” said Lander.
+
+“Well, you ce'tainly do equal anything,” said his wife. She lay still
+awhile, and then she roused herself with indignant energy. “Well, then,
+I can tell you what, Albe't Landa: you can go right straight and take
+back everything you said. I don't want the child, and I won't have her.
+I've got care enough to worry me now, I should think; and we should have
+her whole family on our hands, with that shiftless father of hers, and
+the whole pack of her brothas and sistas. What made you think I wanted
+you to do such a thing?”
+
+“You wanted me to do it last night. Wouldn't ha'dly let me go to bed.”
+
+“Yes! And how many times have I told you nova to go off and do a thing
+that I wanted you to, unless you asked me if I did? Must I die befo'e
+you can find out that there is such a thing as talkin', and such anotha
+thing as doin'? You wouldn't get yourself into half as many scrapes if
+you talked more and done less, in this wo'ld.” Lander rose.
+
+“Wait! Hold on! What are you going to say to the pooa thing? She'll be
+so disappointed!”
+
+“I don't know as I shall need to say anything myself,” answered the
+little man, at his dryest. “Leave that to you.”
+
+“Well, I can tell you,” returned his wife, “I'm not goin' nea' them
+again; and if you think--What did you ask the woman, anyway?”
+
+“I asked her,” he said, “if she wanted to let the gul come and see you
+about some sewing you had to have done, and she said she did.”
+
+“And you didn't speak about havin' her come to live with us?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, why in the land didn't you say so before, Albe't?”
+
+“You didn't ask me. What do you want I should say to her now?”
+
+“Say to who?”
+
+“The gul. She's down in the pahlor, waitin'.”
+
+“Well, of all the men!” cried Mrs. Lander. But she seemed to find
+herself, upon reflection, less able to cope with Lander personally than
+with the situation generally. “Will you send her up, Albe't?” she asked,
+very patiently, as if he might be driven to further excesses, if not
+delicately handled. As soon as he had gone out of the room she wished
+that she had told him to give her time to dress and have her room put in
+order, before he sent the child up; but she could only make the best of
+herself in bed with a cap and a breakfast jacket, arranged with the help
+of a handglass. She had to get out of bed to put her other clothes away
+in the closet and she seized the chance to push the breakfast tray out
+of the door, and smooth up the bed, while she composed her features and
+her ideas to receive her visitor. Both, from long habit rather than from
+any cause or reason, were of a querulous cast, and her ordinary tone
+was a snuffle expressive of deep-seated affliction. She was at once
+plaintive and voluable, and in moments of excitement her need of freeing
+her mind was so great that she took herself into her own confidence, and
+found a more sympathetic listener than when she talked to her husband.
+As she now whisked about her room in her bed-gown with an activity not
+predicable of her age and shape, and finally plunged under the covering
+and drew it up to her chin with one hand while she pressed it out
+decorously over her person with the other, she kept up a rapid flow of
+lamentation and conjecture. “I do suppose he'll be right back with her
+before I'm half ready; and what the man was thinkin' of to do such a
+thing anyway, I don't know. I don't know as she'll notice much, comin'
+out of such a lookin' place as that, and I don't know as I need to care
+if she did. But if the'e's care anywhe's around, I presume I'm the one
+to have it. I presume I did take a fancy to her, and I guess I shall be
+glad to see how I like her now; and if he's only told her I want some
+sewin' done, I can scrape up something to let her carry home with her.
+It's well I keep my things where I can put my hand on 'em at a time like
+this, and I don't believe I shall sca'e the child, as it is. I do hope
+Albe't won't hang round half the day before he brings her; I like to
+have a thing ova.”
+
+Lander wandered about looking for the girl through the parlors and the
+piazzas, and then went to the office to ask what had become of her.
+
+The landlord came out of his room at his question to the clerk. “Oh, I
+guess she's round in my wife's room, Mr. Landa. She always likes to see
+Clementina, and I guess they all do. She's a so't o' pet amongst 'em.”
+
+“No hurry,” said Lander, “I guess my wife ain't quite ready for her
+yet.”
+
+“Well, she'll be right out, in a minute or so,” said the landlord.
+
+The old man tilted his hat forward over his eyes, and went to sit on
+the veranda and look at the landscape while he waited. It was one of the
+loveliest landscapes in the mountains; the river flowed at the foot of
+an abrupt slope from the road before the hotel, stealing into and out of
+the valley, and the mountains, gray in the farther distance, were draped
+with folds of cloud hanging upon their flanks and tops. But Lander was
+tired of nearly all kinds of views and prospects, though he put' up
+with them, in his perpetual movement from place to place, in the same
+resignation that he suffered the limitations of comfort in parlor cars
+and sleepers, and the unwholesomeness of hotel tables. He was chained to
+the restless pursuit of an ideal not his own, but doomed to suffer for
+its impossibility as if he contrived each of his wife's disappointments
+from it. He did not philosophize his situation, but accepted it as in an
+order of Providence which it would be useless for him to oppose; though
+there were moments when he permitted himself to feel a modest doubt of
+its justice. He was aware that when he had a house of his own he was
+master in it, after a fashion, and that as long as he was in business he
+was in some sort of authority. He perceived that now he was a slave to
+the wishes of a mistress who did not know what she wanted, and that he
+was never farther from pleasing her than when he tried to do what she
+asked. He could not have told how all initiative had been taken from
+him, and he had fallen into the mere follower of a woman guided only by
+her whims, who had no object in life except to deprive it of all object.
+He felt no rancor toward her for this; he knew that she had a tender
+regard for him, and that she believed she was considering him first in
+her most selfish arrangements. He always hoped that sometime she would
+get tired of her restlessness, and be willing to settle down again in
+some stated place; and wherever it was, he meant to get into some kind
+of business again. Till this should happen he waited with an apathetic
+patience of which his present abeyance was a detail. He would hardly
+have thought it anything unfit, and certainly nothing surprising, that
+the landlady should have taken the young girl away from where he had
+left her, and then in the pleasure of talking with her, and finding her
+a centre of interest for the whole domestic force of the hotel, should
+have forgotten to bring her back.
+
+The Middlemount House had just been organized on the scale of a first
+class hotel, with prices that had risen a little in anticipation of
+the other improvements. The landlord had hitherto united in himself the
+functions of clerk and head waiter, but he had now got a senior, who was
+working his way through college, to take charge of the dining-room, and
+had put in the office a youth of a year's experience as under clerk at
+a city hotel. But he meant to relinquish no more authority than his wife
+who frankly kept the name as well as duty of house-keeper. It was in
+making her morning inspection of the dusting that she found Clementina
+in the parlor where Lander had told her to sit down till he should come
+for her.
+
+“Why, Clem!” she said, “I didn't know you! You have grown so! Youa folks
+all well? I decla'e you ah' quite a woman now,” she added, as the girl
+stood up in her slender, graceful height. “You look as pretty as a pink
+in that hat. Make that dress youaself? Well, you do beat the witch! I
+want you should come to my room with me.”
+
+Mrs. Atwell showered other questions and exclamations on the girl, who
+explained how she happened to be there, and said that she supposed she
+must stay where she was for fear Mr. Lander should come back and find
+her gone; but Mrs. Atwell overruled her with the fact that Mrs. Lander's
+breakfast had just gone up to her; and she made her come out and see
+the new features of the enlarged house-keeping. In the dining-room there
+were some of the waitresses who had been there the summer before, and
+recognitions of more or less dignity passed between them and Clementina.
+The place was now shut against guests, and the head-waiter was having
+it put in order for the one o'clock dinner. As they came near him, Mrs.
+Atwell introduced him to Clementina, and he behaved deferentially, as
+if she were some young lady visitor whom Mrs. Atwell was showing the
+improvements, but he seemed harassed and impatient, as if he were
+anxious about his duties, and eager to get at them again. He was a
+handsome little fellow, with hair lighter than Clementina's and a
+sanguine complexion, and the color coming and going.
+
+“He's smaht,” said Mrs. Atwell, when they had left him--he held the
+dining-room door open for them, and bowed them out. “I don't know but he
+worries almost too much. That'll wear off when he gets things runnin' to
+suit him. He's pretty p'tic'la'. Now I'll show you how they've made the
+office over, and built in a room for Mr. Atwell behind it.”
+
+The landlord welcomed Clementina as if she had been some acceptable
+class of custom, and when the tall young clerk came in to ask him
+something, and Mrs. Atwell said, “I want to introduce you to Miss
+Claxon, Mr. Fane,” the clerk smiled down upon her from the height of his
+smooth, acquiline young face, which he held bent encouragingly upon one
+side.
+
+“Now, I want you should come in and see where I live, a minute,” said
+Mrs. Atwell. She took the girl from the clerk, and led her to the
+official housekeeper's room which she said had been prepared for her so
+that folks need not keep running to her in her private room where she
+wanted to be alone with her children, when she was there. “Why, you
+a'n't much moa than a child youaself, Clem, and here I be talkin' to you
+as if you was a mother in Israel. How old ah' you, this summa? Time does
+go so!”
+
+“I'm sixteen now,” said Clementina, smiling.
+
+“You be? Well, I don't see why I say that, eitha! You're full lahge
+enough for your age, but not seein' you in long dresses before, I didn't
+realize your age so much. My, but you do all of you know how to do
+things!”
+
+“I'm about the only one that don't, Mrs. Atwell,” said the girl. “If it
+hadn't been for mother, I don't believe I could have eva finished this
+dress.” She began to laugh at something passing in her mind, and Mrs.
+Atwell laughed too, in sympathy, though she did not know what at till
+Clementina said, “Why, Mrs. Atwell, nea'ly the whole family wo'ked on
+this dress. Jim drew the patte'n of it from the dress of one of the
+summa boa'das that he took a fancy to at the Centa, and fatha cut it
+out, and I helped motha make it. I guess every one of the children
+helped a little.”
+
+“Well, it's just as I said, you can all of you do things,” said Mrs.
+Atwell. “But I guess you ah' the one that keeps 'em straight. What did
+you say Mr. Landa said his wife wanted of you?”
+
+“He said some kind of sewing that motha could do.”
+
+“Well, I'll tell you what! Now, if she ha'n't really got anything that
+your motha'll want you to help with, I wish you'd come here again and
+help me. I tuned my foot, here, two-three weeks back, and I feel it,
+times, and I should like some one to do about half my steppin' for me.
+I don't want to take you away from her, but IF. You sha'n't go int' the
+dinin'room, or be under anybody's oddas but mine. Now, will you?”
+
+“I'll see, Mrs. Atwell. I don't like to say anything till I know what
+Mrs. Landa wants.”
+
+“Well, that's right. I decla'e, you've got moa judgment! That's what
+I used to say about you last summa to my husband: she's got judgment.
+Well, what's wanted?” Mrs. Atwell spoke to her husband, who had opened
+her door and looked in, and she stopped rocking, while she waited his
+answer.
+
+“I guess you don't want to keep Clementina from Mr. Landa much longa.
+He's settin' out there on the front piazza waitin' for her.”
+
+“Well, the'a!” cried Mrs. Atwell. “Ain't that just like me? Why didn't
+you tell me sooner, Alonzo? Don't you forgit what I said, Clem!”
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Mrs. Lander had taken twice of a specific for what she called her
+nerve-fag before her husband came with Clementina, and had rehearsed
+aloud many of the things she meant to say to the girl. In spite of
+her preparation, they were all driven out of her head when Clementina
+actually appeared, and gave her a bow like a young birch's obeisance in
+the wind.
+
+“Take a chaia,” said Lander, pushing her one, and the girl tilted over
+toward him, before she sank into it. He went out of the room, and left
+Mrs. Lander to deal with the problem alone. She apologized for being
+in bed, but Clementina said so sweetly, “Mr. Landa told me you were not
+feeling very well, 'm,” that she began to be proud of her ailments, and
+bragged of them at length, and of the different doctors who had treated
+her for them. While she talked she missed one thing or another, and
+Clementina seemed to divine what it was she wanted, and got it for her,
+with a gentle deference which made the elder feel her age cushioned by
+the girl's youth. When she grew a little heated from the interest she
+took in her personal annals, and cast off one of the folds of her bed
+clothing, Clementina got her a fan, and asked her if she should put up
+one of the windows a little.
+
+“How you do think of things!” said Mrs. Lander. “I guess I will let
+you. I presume you get used to thinkin' of othas in a lahge family like
+youas. I don't suppose they could get along without you very well,” she
+suggested.
+
+“I've neva been away except last summa, for a little while.”
+
+“And where was you then?”
+
+“I was helping Mrs. Atwell.”
+
+“Did you like it?”
+
+“I don't know,” said Clementina. “It's pleasant to be whe'e things ah'
+going on.”
+
+“Yes--for young folks,” said Mrs. Lander, whom the going on of things
+had long ceased to bring pleasure.
+
+“It's real nice at home, too,” said Clementina. “We have very good
+times--evenings in the winta; in the summer it's very nice in the woods,
+around there. It's safe for the children, and they enjoy it, and fatha
+likes to have them. Motha don't ca'e so much about it. I guess she'd
+ratha have the house fixed up more, and the place. Fatha's going to do
+it pretty soon. He thinks the'e's time enough.”
+
+“That's the way with men,” said Mrs. Lander. “They always think the's
+time enough; but I like to have things over and done with. What chuhch
+do you 'tend?”
+
+“Well, there isn't any but the Episcopal,” Clementina answered. “I go to
+that, and some of the children go to the Sunday School. I don't believe
+fatha ca'es very much for going to chuhch, but he likes Mr. Richling;
+he's the recta. They take walks in the woods; and they go up the
+mountains togetha.”
+
+“They want,” said Mrs. Lander, severely, “to be ca'eful how they drink
+of them cold brooks when they're heated. Mr. Richling a married man?”
+
+“Oh, yes'm! But they haven't got any family.”
+
+“If I could see his wife, I sh'd caution her about lettin' him climb
+mountains too much. A'n't your father afraid he'll ovado?”
+
+“I don't know. He thinks he can't be too much in the open air on the
+mountains.”
+
+“Well, he may not have the same complaint as Mr. Landa; but I know if I
+was to climb a mountain,' it would lay me up for a yea'.”
+
+The girl did not urge anything against this conviction. She smiled
+politely and waited patiently for the next turn Mrs. Lander's talk
+should take, which was oddly enough toward the business Clementina had
+come upon.
+
+“I declare I most forgot about my polonaise. Mr. Landa said your motha
+thought she could do something to it for me.”
+
+“Yes'm.”
+
+“Well, I may as well let you see it. If you'll reach into that fuhthest
+closet, you'll find it on the last uppa hook on the right hand, and if
+you'll give it to me, I'll show you what I want done. Don't mind the
+looks of that closet; I've just tossed my things in, till I could get a
+little time and stren'th to put 'em in odda.”
+
+Clementina brought the polonaise to Mrs. Lander, who sat up and spread
+it before her on the bed, and had a happy half hour in telling the girl
+where she had bought the material and where she had it made up, and how
+it came home just as she was going away, and she did not find out that
+it was all wrong till a week afterwards when she tried it on. By the
+end of this time the girl had commended herself so much by judicious
+and sympathetic assent, that Mrs. Lander learned with a shock of
+disappointment that her mother expected her to bring the garment home
+with her, where Mrs. Lander was to come and have it fitted over for the
+alterations she wanted made.
+
+“But I supposed, from what Mr. Landa said, that your motha would come
+here and fit me!” she lamented.
+
+“I guess he didn't undastand, 'm. Motha doesn't eva go out to do wo'k,”
+ said Clementina gently but firmly.
+
+“Well, I might have known Mr. Landa would mix it up, if it could be
+mixed;” Mrs. Lander's sense of injury was aggravated by her suspicion
+that he had brought the girl in the hope of pleasing her, and confirming
+her in the wish to have her with them; she was not a woman who liked to
+have her way in spite of herself; she wished at every step to realize
+that she was taking it, and that no one else was taking it for her.
+
+“Well,” she said dryly, “I shall have to see about it. I'm a good deal
+of an invalid, and I don't know as I could go back and fo'th to try on.
+I'm moa used to havin' the things brought to me.”
+
+“Yes'm,” said Clementina. She moved a little from the bed, on her way to
+the door, to be ready for Mrs. Lander in leave-taking.
+
+“I'm real sorry,” said Mrs. Lander. “I presume it's a disappointment for
+you, too.”
+
+“Oh, not at all,” answered Clementina. “I'm sorry we can't do the wo'k
+he'a; but I know mocha wouldn't like to. Good-mo'ning, 'm!”
+
+“No, no! Don't go yet a minute! Won't you just give me my hand bag off
+the bureau the'a?” Mrs. Lander entreated, and when the girl gave her the
+bag she felt about among the bank-notes which she seemed to have loose
+in it, and drew out a handful of them without regard to their value.
+“He'a!” she said, and she tried to put the notes into Clementina's hand,
+“I want you should get yourself something.”
+
+The girl shrank back. “Oh, no'm,” she said, with an effect of seeming
+to know that her refusal would hurt, and with the wish to soften it.
+“I--couldn't; indeed I couldn't.”
+
+“Why couldn't you? Now you must! If I can't let you have the wo'k the
+way you want, I don't think it's fair, and you ought to have the money
+for it just the same.”
+
+Clementina shook her head smiling. “I don't believe motha would like to
+have me take it.”
+
+“Oh, now, pshaw!” said Mrs. Lander, inadequately. “I want you should
+take this for youaself; and if you don't want to buy anything to wea',
+you can get something to fix your room up with. Don't you be afraid of
+robbin' us. Land! We got moa money! Now you take this.”
+
+Mrs. Lander reached the money as far toward Clementina as she could and
+shook it in the vehemence of her desire.
+
+“Thank you, I couldn't take it,” Clementina persisted. “I'm afraid I
+must be going; I guess I must bid you good-mo'ning.”
+
+“Why, I believe the child's sca'ed of me! But you needn't be. Don't you
+suppose I know how you feel? You set down in that chai'a there, and
+I'll tell you how you feel. I guess we've been pooa, too--I don't
+mean anything that a'n't exactly right--and I guess I've had the same
+feelin's. You think it's demeanin' to you to take it. A'n't that it?”
+ Clementina sank provisionally upon the edge of the chair. “Well, it did
+use to be so consid'ed. But it's all changed, nowadays. We travel pretty
+nee' the whole while, Mr. Lander and me, and we see folks everywhere,
+and it a'n't the custom to refuse any moa. Now, a'n't there any little
+thing for your own room, there in your nice new house? Or something your
+motha's got her heat set on? Or one of your brothas? My, if you don't
+have it, some one else will! Do take it!”
+
+The girl kept slipping toward the door. “I shouldn't know what to tell
+them, when I got home. They would think I must be--out of my senses.”
+
+“I guess you mean they'd think I was. Now, listen to me a minute!” Mrs.
+Lander persisted.
+
+“You just take this money, and when you get home, you tell your mother
+every word about it, and if she says, you bring it right straight back
+to me. Now, can't you do that?”
+
+“I don't know but I can,” Clementina faltered. “Well, then take it!”
+ Mrs. Lander put the bills into her hand but she did not release her at
+once. She pulled Clementina down and herself up till she could lay her
+other arm on her neck. “I want you should let me kiss you. Will you?”
+
+“Why, certainly,” said Clementina, and she kissed the old woman.
+
+“You tell your mother I'm comin' to see her before I go; and I guess,”
+ said Mrs. Lander in instant expression of the idea that came into her
+mind, “we shall be goin' pretty soon, now.”
+
+“Yes'm,” said Clementina.
+
+She went out, and shortly after Lander came in with a sort of hopeful
+apathy in his face.
+
+Mrs. Lander turned her head on her pillow, and so confronted him.
+“Albe't, what made you want me to see that child?”
+
+Lander must have perceived that his wife meant business, and he came
+to it at once. “I thought you might take a fancy to her, and get her to
+come and live with us.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“We're both of us gettin' pretty well on, and you'd ought to have
+somebody to look after you if--I'm not around. You want somebody that
+can do for you; and keep you company, and read to you, and talk to
+you--well, moa like a daughta than a suvvant--somebody that you'd get
+attached to, maybe--”
+
+“And don't you see,” Mrs. Lander broke out severely upon him, “what a
+ca'e that would be? Why, it's got so already that I can't help thinkin'
+about her the whole while, and if I got attached to her I'd have her on
+my mind day and night, and the moa she done for me the more I should be
+tewin' around to do for her. I shouldn't have any peace of my life any
+moa. Can't you see that?”
+
+“I guess if you see it, I don't need to,” said Lander.
+
+“Well, then, I want you shouldn't eva mention her to me again. I've had
+the greatest escape! But I've got her off home, and I've give her money
+enough! had a time with her about it--so that they won't feel as if we'd
+made 'em trouble for nothing, and now I neva want to hear of her again.
+I don't want we should stay here a great while longer; I shall be
+frettin' if I'm in reach of her, and I shan't get any good of the ai'a.
+Will you promise?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, then!” Mrs. Lander turned her face upon the pillow again in the
+dramatization of her exhaustion; but she was not so far gone that she
+was insensible to the possible interest that a light rap at the door
+suggested. She once more twisted her head in that direction and called,
+“Come in!”
+
+The door opened and Clementina came in. She advanced to the bedside
+smiling joyously, and put the money Mrs. Lander had given her down upon
+the counterpane.
+
+“Why, you haven't been home, child?”
+
+“No'm,” said Clementina, breathlessly. “But I couldn't take it. I knew
+they wouldn't want me to, and I thought you'd like it better if I just
+brought it back myself. Good-mo'ning.” She slipped out of the door. Mrs.
+Lander swept the bank-notes from the coverlet and pulled it over her
+head, and sent from beneath it a stifled wail. “Now we got to go! And
+it's all youa fault, Albe't.”
+
+Lander took the money from the floor, and smoothed each bill out, and
+then laid them in a neat pile on the corner of the bureau. He sighed
+profoundly but left the room without an effort to justify himself.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The Landers had been gone a week before Clementina's mother decided that
+she could spare her to Mrs. Atwell for a while. It was established that
+she was not to serve either in the dining-room or the carving room; she
+was not to wash dishes or to do any part of the chamber work, but to
+carry messages and orders for the landlady, and to save her steps,
+when she wished to see the head-waiter, or the head-cook; or to make an
+excuse or a promise to some of the lady-boarders; or to send word to Mr.
+Atwell about the buying, or to communicate with the clerk about rooms
+taken or left.
+
+She had a good deal of dignity of her own and such a gravity in the
+discharge of her duties that the chef, who was a middle-aged Yankee with
+grown girls of his own, liked to pretend that it was Mrs. Atwell herself
+who was talking with him, and to discover just as she left him that it
+was Clementina. He called her the Boss when he spoke of her to others in
+her hearing, and he addressed her as Boss when he feigned to find that
+it was not Mrs. Atwell. She did not mind that in him, and let the chef
+have his joke as if it were not one. But one day when the clerk called
+her Boss she merely looked at him without speaking, and made him feel
+that he had taken a liberty which he must not repeat. He was a young man
+who much preferred a state of self-satisfaction to humiliation of any
+sort, and after he had endured Clementina's gaze as long as he could, he
+said, “Perhaps you don't allow anybody but the chef to call you that?”
+
+She did not answer, but repeated the message Mrs. Atwell had given her
+for him, and went away.
+
+It seemed to him undue that a person who exchanged repartees with the
+young lady boarders across his desk, when they came many times a day to
+look at the register, or to ask for letters, should remain snubbed by
+a girl who still wore her hair in a braid; but he was an amiable youth,
+and he tried to appease her by little favors and services, instead of
+trying to bully her.
+
+He was great friends with the head-waiter, whom he respected as a
+college student, though for the time being he ranked the student
+socially. He had him in behind the frame of letter-boxes, which formed
+a sort of little private room for him, and talked with him at such hours
+of the forenoon and the late evening as the student was off duty. He
+found comfort in the student's fretful strength, which expressed itself
+in the pugnacious frown of his hot-looking young face, where a bright
+sorrel mustache was beginning to blaze on a short upper lip.
+
+Fane thought himself a good-looking fellow, and he regarded his figure
+with pleasure, as it was set off by the suit of fine gray check that he
+wore habitually; but he thought Gregory's educational advantages told in
+his face. His own education had ended at a commercial college, where he
+acquired a good knowledge of bookkeeping, and the fine business hand he
+wrote, but where it seemed to him sometimes that the earlier learning
+of the public school had been hermetically sealed within him by several
+coats of mathematical varnish. He believed that he had once known a
+number of things that he no longer knew, and that he had not always been
+so weak in his double letters as he presently found himself.
+
+One night while Gregory sat on a high stool and rested his elbow on the
+desk before it, with his chin in his hand, looking down upon Fane, who
+sprawled sadly in his chair, and listening to the last dance playing
+in the distant parlor, Fane said. “Now, what'll you bet that they won't
+every one of 'em come and look for a letter in her box before she goes
+to bed? I tell you, girls are queer, and there's no place like a hotel
+to study 'em.”
+
+“I don't want to study them,” said Gregory, harshly.
+
+“Think Greek's more worth your while, or know 'em well enough already?”
+ Fane suggested.
+
+“No, I don't know them at all,” said the student.
+
+“I don't believe,” urged the clerk, as if it were relevant, “that
+there's a girl in the house that you couldn't marry, if you gave your
+mind to it.”
+
+Gregory twitched irascibly. “I don't want to marry them.”
+
+“Pretty cheap lot, you mean? Well, I don't know.”
+
+“I don't mean that,” retorted the student. “But I've got other things to
+think of.”
+
+“Don't you believe,” the clerk modestly urged, “that it is natural for a
+man--well, a young man--to think about girls?”
+
+“I suppose it is.”
+
+“And you don't consider it wrong?”
+
+“How, wrong?”
+
+“Well, a waste of time. I don't know as I always think about wanting to
+marry 'em, or be in love, but I like to let my mind run on 'em. There's
+something about a girl that, well, you don't know what it is, exactly.
+Take almost any of 'em,” said the clerk, with an air of inductive
+reasoning. “Take that Claxon girl, now for example, I don't know what
+it is about her. She's good-looking, I don't deny that; and she's got
+pretty manners, and she's as graceful as a bird. But it a'n't any one of
+'em, and it don't seem to be all of 'em put together that makes you
+want to keep your eyes on her the whole while. Ever noticed what a nice
+little foot she's got? Or her hands?”
+
+“No,” said the student.
+
+“I don't mean that she ever tries to show them off; though I know some
+girls that would. But she's not that kind. She ain't much more than a
+child, and yet you got to treat her just like a woman. Noticed the kind
+of way she's got?”
+
+“No,” said the student, with impatience.
+
+The clerk mused with a plaintive air for a moment before he spoke.
+“Well, it's something as if she'd been trained to it, so that she knew
+just the right thing to do, every time, and yet I guess it's nature. You
+know how the chef always calls her the Boss? That explains it about as
+well as anything, and I presume that's what my mind was running on, the
+other day, when I called her Boss. But, my! I can't get anywhere near
+her since!”
+
+“It serves you right,” said Gregory. “You had no business to tease her.”
+
+“Now, do you think it was teasing? I did, at first, and then again it
+seemed to me that I came out with the word because it seemed the right
+one. I presume I couldn't explain that to her.”
+
+“It wouldn't be easy.”
+
+“I look upon her,” said Fane, with an effect of argument in the
+sweetness of his smile, “just as I would upon any other young lady in
+the house. Do you spell apology with one p or two?”
+
+“One,” said the student, and the clerk made a minute on a piece of
+paper.
+
+“I feel badly for the girl. I don't want her to think I was teasing her
+or taking any sort of liberty with her. Now, would you apologize to her,
+if you was in my place, and would you write a note, or just wait your
+chance and speak to her?”
+
+Gregory got down from his stool with a disdainful laugh, and went out of
+the place. “You make me sick, Fane,” he said.
+
+The last dance was over, and the young ladies who had been waltzing with
+one another, came out of the parlor with gay cries and laughter, like
+summer girls who had been at a brilliant hop, and began to stray down
+the piazzas, and storm into the office. Several of them fluttered up to
+the desk, as the clerk had foretold, and looked for letters in the boxes
+bearing their initials. They called him out, and asked if he had not
+forgotten something for them. He denied it with a sad, wise smile, and
+then they tried to provoke him to a belated flirtation, in lack of other
+material, but he met their overtures discreetly, and they presently
+said, Well, they guessed they must go; and went. Fane turned to
+encounter Gregory, who had come in by a side door.
+
+“Fane, I want to beg your pardon. I was rude to you just now.”
+
+“Oh, no! Oh, no!” the clerk protested. “That's all right. Sit down a
+while, can't you, and talk with a fellow. It's early, yet.”
+
+“No, I can't. I just wanted to say I was sorry I spoke in that way.
+Good-night. Is there anything in particular?”
+
+“No; good-night. I was just wondering about--that girl.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Gregory had an habitual severity with his own behavior which did not
+stop there, but was always passing on to the behavior of others; and his
+days went by in alternate offence and reparation to those he had to
+do with. He had to do chiefly with the dining-room girls, whose
+susceptibilities were such that they kept about their work bathed
+in tears or suffused with anger much of the time. He was not only
+good-looking but he was a college student, and their feelings were ready
+to bud toward him in tender efflorescence, but he kept them cropped and
+blighted by his curt words and impatient manner. Some of them loved him
+for the hurts he did them, and some hated him, but all agreed fondly
+or furiously that he was too cross for anything. They were mostly young
+school-mistresses, and whether they were of a soft and amorous make,
+or of a forbidding temper, they knew enough in spite of their hurts to
+value a young fellow whose thoughts were not running upon girls all the
+time. Women, even in their spring-time, like men to treat them as if
+they had souls as well as hearts, and it was a saving grace in Gregory
+that he treated them all, the silliest of them, as if they had souls.
+Very likely they responded more with their hearts than with their souls,
+but they were aware that this was not his fault.
+
+The girls that waited at table saw that he did not distinguish in manner
+between them and the girls whom they served. The knot between his brows
+did not dissolve in the smiling gratitude of the young ladies whom he
+preceded to their places, and pulled out their chairs for, any more than
+in the blandishments of a waitress who thanked him for some correction.
+
+They owned when he had been harshest that no one could be kinder if he
+saw a girl really trying, or more patient with well meaning stupidity,
+but some things fretted him, and he was as apt to correct a girl in her
+grammar as in her table service. Out of work hours, if he met any of
+them, he recognized them with deferential politeness; but he shunned
+occasions of encounter with them as distinctly as he avoided the ladies
+among the hotel guests. Some of the table girls pitied his loneliness,
+and once they proposed that he should read to them on the back piazza in
+the leisure of their mid-afternoons. He said that he had to keep up with
+his studies in all the time he could get; he treated their request with
+grave civility, but they felt his refusal to be final.
+
+He was seen very little about the house outside of his own place and
+function, and he was scarcely known to consort with anyone but Fane, who
+celebrated his high sense of the honor to the lady-guests; but if any of
+these would have been willing to show Gregory that they considered
+his work to get an education as something that redeemed itself from
+discredit through the nobility of its object, he gave them no chance to
+do so.
+
+The afternoon following their talk about Clementina, Gregory looked in
+for Fane behind the letter boxes, but did not find him, and the girl
+herself came round from the front to say that he was out buying, but
+would be back now, very soon; it was occasionally the clerk's business
+to forage among the farmers for the lighter supplies, such as eggs,
+and butter, and poultry, and this was the buying that Clementina meant.
+“Very well, I'll wait here for him a little while,” Gregory answered.
+
+“So do,” said Clementina, in a formula which she thought polite; but she
+saw the frown with which Gregory took a Greek book from his pocket, and
+she hurried round in front of the boxes again, wondering how she could
+have displeased him. She put her face in sight a moment to explain, “I
+have got to be here and give out the lettas till Mr. Fane gets back,”
+ and then withdrew it. He tried to lose himself in his book, but her
+tender voice spoke from time to time beyond the boxes, and Gregory kept
+listening for Clementina to say, “No'm, there a'n't. Perhaps, the'e'll
+be something the next mail,” and “Yes'm, he'e's one, and I guess this
+paper is for some of youa folks, too.”
+
+Gregory shut his book with a sudden bang at last and jumped to his feet,
+to go away.
+
+The girl came running round the corner of the boxes. “Oh! I thought
+something had happened.”
+
+“No, nothing has happened,” said Gregory, with a sort of violence;
+which was heightened by a sense of the rings and tendrils of loose hair
+springing from the mass that defined her pretty head. “Don't you know
+that you oughtn't to say 'No'm' and 'Yes'm?”' he demanded, bitterly, and
+then he expected to see the water come into her eyes, or the fire into
+her cheeks.
+
+Clementina merely looked interested. “Did I say that? I meant to say
+Yes, ma'am and No, ma'am; but I keep forgetting.”
+
+“You oughtn't to say anything!” Gregory answered savagely, “Just say
+Yes, and No, and let your voice do the rest.”
+
+“Oh!” said the girl, with the gentlest abeyance, as if charmed with the
+novelty of the idea. “I should be afraid it wasn't polite.”
+
+Gregory took an even brutal tone. It seemed to him as if he were forced
+to hurt her feelings. But his words, in spite of his tone, were not
+brutal; they might have even been thought flattering. “The politeness is
+in the manner, and you don't need anything but your manner.”
+
+“Do you think so, truly?” asked the girl joyously. “I should like to try
+it once!”
+
+He frowned again. “I've no business to criticise your way of speaking.”
+
+“Oh yes'm--yes, ma'am; sir, I mean; I mean, Oh, yes, indeed! The'a! It
+does sound just as well, don't it?” Clementina laughed in triumph at
+the outcome of her efforts, so that a reluctant visional smile came upon
+Gregory's face, too. “I'm very mach obliged to you, Mr. Gregory--I shall
+always want to do it, if it's the right way.”
+
+“It's the right way,” said Gregory coldly.
+
+“And don't they,” she urged, “don't they really say Sir and Ma'am,
+whe'e--whe'e you came from?”
+
+He said gloomily, “Not ladies and gentlemen. Servants do. Waiters--like
+me.” He inflicted this stab to his pride with savage fortitude and he
+bore with self-scorn the pursuit of her innocent curiosity.
+
+“But I thought--I thought you was a college student.”
+
+“Were,” Gregory corrected her, involuntarily, and she said, “Were, I
+mean.”
+
+“I'm a student at college, and here I'm a servant! It's all right!” he
+said with a suppressed gritting of the teeth; and he added, “My Master
+was the servant of the meanest, and I must--I beg your pardon for
+meddling with your manner of speaking--”
+
+“Oh, I'm very much obliged to you; indeed I am. And I shall not care
+if you tell me of anything that's out of the way in my talking,” said
+Clementina, generously.
+
+“Thank you; I think I won't wait any longer for Mr. Fane.”
+
+“Why, I'm su'a he'll be back very soon, now. I'll try not to disturb you
+any moa.”
+
+Gregory turned from taking some steps towards the door, and said, “I
+wish you would tell Mr. Fane something.”
+
+“For you? Why, suttainly!”
+
+“No. For you. Tell him that it's all right about his calling you Boss.”
+
+The indignant color came into Clementina's face. “He had no business to
+call me that.”
+
+“No; and he doesn't think he had, now. He's truly sorry for it.”
+
+“I'll see,” said Clementina.
+
+She had not seen by the time Fane got back. She received his apologies
+for being gone so long coldly, and went away to Mrs. Atwell, whom she
+told what had passed between Gregory and herself.
+
+“Is he truly so proud?” she asked.
+
+“He's a very good young man,” said Mrs. Atwell, “but I guess he's proud.
+He can't help it, but you can see he fights against it. If I was you,
+Clem, I wouldn't say anything to the guls about it.”
+
+“Oh, no'm--I mean, no, indeed. I shouldn't think of it. But don't you
+think that was funny, his bringing in Christ, that way?”
+
+“Well, he's going to be a minister, you know.”
+
+“Is he really?” Clementina was a while silent. At last she said, “Don't
+you think Mr. Gregory has a good many freckles?”
+
+“Well, them red-complected kind is liable to freckle,” said Mrs. Atwell,
+judicially.
+
+After rather a long pause for both of them, Clementina asked, “Do you
+think it would be nice for me to ask Mr. Gregory about things, when I
+wasn't suttain?”
+
+“Like what?”
+
+“Oh-wo'ds, and pronunciation; and books to read.”
+
+“Why, I presume he'd love to have you. He's always correctin' the guls;
+I see him take up a book one day, that one of 'em was readin', and when
+she as't him about it, he said it was rubbage. I guess you couldn't have
+a betta guide.”
+
+“Well, that was what I was thinking. I guess I sha'n't do it, though.
+I sh'd neva have the courage.” Clementina laughed and then fell rather
+seriously silent again.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+One day the shoeman stopped his wagon at the door of the helps' house,
+and called up at its windows, “Well, guls, any of you want to git a
+numba foua foot into a numba two shoe, to-day? Now's youa chance, but
+you got to be quick abort it. The'e ha'r't but just so many numba two
+shoes made, and the wohld's full o' numba foua feet.”
+
+The windows filled with laughing faces at the first sound of the
+shoeman's ironical voice; and at sight of his neat wagon, with its
+drawers at the rear and sides, and its buggy-hood over the seat where
+the shoeman lounged lazily holding the reins, the girls flocked down the
+stairs, and out upon the piazza where the shoe man had handily ranged
+his vehicle.
+
+They began to ask him if he had not this thing and that, but he said
+with firmness, “Nothin' but shoes, guls. I did carry a gen'l line, one
+while, of what you may call ankle-wea', such as spats, and stockin's,
+and gaitas, but I nova did like to speak of such things befoa ladies,
+and now I stick ex-elusively to shoes. You know that well enough, guls;
+what's the use?”
+
+He kept a sober face amidst the giggling that his words aroused,--and
+let his voice sink into a final note of injury.
+
+“Well, if you don't want any shoes, to-day, I guess I must be goin'.”
+ He made a feint of jerking his horse's reins, but forebore at the
+entreaties that went up from the group of girls.
+
+“Yes, we do!” “Let's see them!” “Oh, don't go!” they chorused in an
+equally histrionic alarm, and the shoeman got down from his perch to
+show his wares.
+
+“Now, the'a, ladies,” he said, pulling out one of the drawers, and
+dangling a pair of shoes from it by the string that joined their heels,
+“the'e's a shoe that looks as good as any Sat'd'y-night shoe you eva
+see. Looks as han'some as if it had a pasteboa'd sole and was split
+stock all through, like the kind you buy for a dollar at the store, and
+kick out in the fust walk you take with your fella--'r some other gul's
+fella, I don't ca'e which. And yet that's an honest shoe, made of the
+best of material all the way through, and in the best manna. Just look
+at that shoe, ladies; ex-amine it; sha'n't cost you a cent, and I'll pay
+for youa lost time myself, if any complaint is made.” He began to toss
+pairs of the shoes into the crowd of girls, who caught them from each
+other before they fell, with hysterical laughter, and ran away with
+them in-doors to try them on. “This is a shoe that I'm intaducin',”
+ the shoeman went on, “and every pair is warranted--warranted numba two;
+don't make any otha size, because we want to cata to a strictly numba
+two custom. If any lady doos feel 'em a little mite too snug, I'm sorry
+for her, but I can't do anything to help her in this shoe.”
+
+“Too snug!” came a gay voice from in-doors. “Why my foot feels puffectly
+lost in this one.”
+
+“All right,” the shoeman shouted back. “Call it a numba one shoe and
+then see if you can't find that lost foot in it, some'eres. Or try a
+little flour, and see if it won't feel more at home. I've hea'd of a
+shoe that give that sensation of looseness by not goin' on at all.”
+
+The girls exulted joyfully together at the defeat of their companion,
+but the shoeman kept a grave face, while he searched out other sorts
+of shoes and slippers, and offered them, or responded to some definite
+demand with something as near like as he could hope to make serve. The
+tumult of talk and laughter grew till the chef put his head out of the
+kitchen door, and then came sauntering across the grass to the helps'
+piazza. At the same time the clerk suffered himself to be lured from his
+post by the excitement. He came and stood beside the chef, who listened
+to the shoeman's flow of banter with a longing to take his chances with
+him.
+
+“That's a nice hawss,” he said. “What'll you take for him?”
+
+“Why, hello!” said the shoeman, with an eye that dwelt upon the chef's
+official white cap and apron, “You talk English, don't you? Fust off, I
+didn't know but it was one of them foreign dukes come ova he'a to marry
+some oua poor millionai'es daughtas.” The girls cried out for joy, and
+the chef bore their mirth stoically, but not without a personal relish
+of the shoeman's up-and-comingness. “Want a hawss?” asked the shoeman
+with an air of business. “What'll you give?”
+
+“I'll give you thutty-seven dollas and a half,” said the chef.
+
+“Sorry I can't take it. That hawss is sellin' at present for just one
+hundred and fifty dollas.”
+
+“Well,” said the chef, “I'll raise you a dolla and a quahta. Say
+thutty-eight and seventy-five.”
+
+“W-ell now, you're gittin' up among the figgas where you're liable to
+own a hawss. You just keep right on a raisin' me, while I sell these
+ladies some shoes, and maybe you'll hit it yit, 'fo'e night.”
+
+The girls were trying on shoes on every side now, and they had dispensed
+with the formality of going in-doors for the purpose. More than one put
+out her foot to the clerk for his opinion of the fit, and the shoeman
+was mingling with the crowd, testing with his hand, advising from his
+professional knowledge, suggesting, urging, and in some cases artfully
+agreeing with the reluctance shown.
+
+“This man,” said the chef, indicating Fane, “says you can tell moa lies
+to the square inch than any man out o' Boston.”
+
+“Doos he?” asked the shoeman, turning with a pair of high-heeled bronze
+slippers in his hand from the wagon. “Well, now, if I stood as nea' to
+him as you do, I believe I sh'd hit him.”
+
+“Why, man, I can't dispute him!” said the chef, and as if he had now at
+last scored a point, he threw back his head and laughed. When he brought
+down his head again, it was to perceive the approach of Clementina.
+“Hello,” he said for her to hear, “he'e comes the Boss. Well, I guess
+I must be goin',” he added, in mock anxiety. “I'm a goin', Boss, I'm a
+goin'.”
+
+Clementina ignored him. “Mr. Atwell wants to see you a moment, Mr.
+Fane,” she said to the clerk.
+
+“All right, Miss Claxon,” Fane answered, with the sorrowful respect
+which he always showed Clementina, now, “I'll be right there.” But he
+waited a moment, either in expression of his personal independence, or
+from curiosity to know what the shoeman was going to say of the bronze
+slippers.
+
+Clementina felt the fascination, too; she thought the slippers were
+beautiful, and her foot thrilled with a mysterious prescience of its
+fitness for them.
+
+“Now, the'e, ladies, or as I may say guls, if you'll excuse it in one
+that's moa like a fatha to you than anything else, in his feelings”--the
+girls tittered, and some one shouted derisively--“It's true!”--“now
+there is a shoe, or call it a slippa, that I've rutha hesitated about
+showin' to you, because I know that you're all rutha serious-minded,
+I don't ca'e how young ye be, or how good-lookin' ye be; and I don't
+presume the'e's one among you that's eve' head o' dancin'.” In the
+mirthful hooting and mocking that followed, the shoeman hedged gravely
+from the extreme position he had taken. “What? Well, maybe you have
+among some the summa folks, but we all know what summa folks ah', and I
+don't expect you to patte'n by them. But what I will say is that if
+any young lady within the sound of my voice,”--he looked round for
+the applause which did not fail him in his parody of the pulpit
+style--“should get an invitation to a dance next winta, and should feel
+it a wo'k of a charity to the young man to go, she'll be sorry--on his
+account, rememba--that she ha'n't got this pair o' slippas.
+
+“The'a! They're a numba two, and they'll fit any lady here, I don't ca'e
+how small a foot she's got. Don't all speak at once, sistas! Ample time
+allowed for meals. That's a custom-made shoe, and if it hadn't b'en too
+small for the lady they was oddid foh, you couldn't-'a' got 'em for less
+than seven dollas; but now I'm throwin' on 'em away for three.”
+
+A groan of dismay went up from the whole circle, and some who had
+pressed forward for a sight of the slippers, shrank back again.
+
+“Did I hea' just now,” asked the shoeman, with a soft insinuation in his
+voice, and in the glance he suddenly turned upon Clementina, “a party
+addressed as Boss?” Clementina flushed, but she did not cower; the chef
+walked away with a laugh, and the shoeman pursued him with his voice.
+“Not that I am goin' to folla the wicked example of a man who tries to
+make spot of young ladies; but if the young lady addressed as Boss--”
+
+“Miss Claxon,” said the clerk with ingratiating reverence.
+
+“Miss Claxon--I Stan' corrected,” pursued the shoeman. “If Miss Claxon
+will do me the fava just to try on this slippa, I sh'd be able to tell
+at the next place I stopped just how it looked on a lady's foot. I see
+you a'n't any of you disposed to buy 'em this aftanoon, 'and I a'n't
+complainin'; you done pootty well by me, already, and I don't want
+to uhge you; but I do want to carry away the picture, in my mind's
+eye--what you may call a mental photograph--of this slipper on the kind
+of a foot it was made for, so't I can praise it truthfully to my next
+customer. What do you say, ma'am?” he addressed himself with profound
+respect to Clementina.
+
+“Oh, do let him, Clem!” said one of the girls, and another pleaded,
+“Just so he needn't tell a story to his next customa,” and that made the
+rest laugh.
+
+Clementina's heart was throbbing, and joyous lights were dancing in her
+eyes. “I don't care if I do,” she said, and she stooped to unlace her
+shoe, but one of the big girls threw herself on her knees at her feet to
+prevent her. Clementina remembered too late that there was a hole in her
+stocking and that her little toe came through it, but she now folded the
+toe artfully down, and the big girl discovered the hole in time to abet
+her attempt at concealment. She caught the slipper from the shoeman and
+harried it on; she tied the ribbons across the instep, and then put on
+the other. “Now put out youa foot, Clem! Fast dancin' position!” She
+leaned back upon her own heels, and Clementina daintily lifted the edge
+of her skirt a little, and peered over at her feet. The slippers might
+or might not have been of an imperfect taste, in their imitation of the
+prevalent fashion, but on Clementina's feet they had distinction.
+
+“Them feet was made for them slippas,” said the shoeman devoutly.
+
+The clerk was silent; he put his hand helplessly to his mouth, and then
+dropped it at his side again.
+
+Gregory came round the corner of the building from the dining-room, and
+the big girl who was crouching before Clementina, and who boasted that
+she was not afraid of the student, called saucily to him, “Come here, a
+minute, Mr. Gregory,” and as he approached, she tilted aside, to let him
+see Clementina's slippers.
+
+Clementina beamed up at him with all her happiness in her eyes, but
+after a faltering instant, his face reddened through its freckles, and
+he gave her a rebuking frown and passed on.
+
+“Well, I decla'e!” said the big girl. Fane turned uneasily, and said
+with a sigh, he guessed he must be going, now.
+
+A blight fell upon the gay spirits of the group, and the shoeman asked
+with an ironical glance after Gregory's retreating figure, “Owna of this
+propaty?”
+
+“No, just the ea'th,” said the big girl, angrily.
+
+The voice of Clementina made itself heard with a cheerfulness which had
+apparently suffered no chill, but was really a rising rebellion. “How
+much ah' the slippas?”
+
+“Three dollas,” said the shoeman in a surprise which he could not
+conceal at Clementina's courage.
+
+She laughed, and stooped to untie the slippers. “That's too much for
+me.”
+
+“Let me untie 'em, Clem,” said the big girl. “It's a shame for you eva
+to take 'em off.”
+
+“That's right, lady,” said the shoeman. “And you don't eva need to,” he
+added, to Clementina, “unless you object to sleepin' in 'em. You pay me
+what you want to now, and the rest when I come around the latta paht of
+August.”
+
+“Oh keep 'em, Clem!” the big girl urged, passionately, and the rest
+joined her with their entreaties.
+
+“I guess I betta not,” said Clementina, and she completed the work of
+taking off the slippers in which the big girl could lend her no further
+aid, such was her affliction of spirit.
+
+“All right, lady,” said the shoeman. “Them's youa slippas, and I'll just
+keep 'em for you till the latta paht of August.”
+
+He drove away, and in the woods which he had to pass through on the
+road to another hotel he overtook the figure of a man pacing rapidly. He
+easily recognized Gregory, but he bore him no malice. “Like a lift?” he
+asked, slowing up beside him.
+
+“No, thank you,” said Gregory. “I'm out for the walk.” He looked round
+furtively, and then put his hand on the side of the wagon, mechanically,
+as if to detain it, while he walked on.
+
+“Did you sell the slippers to the young lady?”
+
+“Well, not as you may say sell, exactly,” returned the shoeman,
+cautiously.
+
+“Have you--got them yet?” asked the student.
+
+“Guess so,” said the man. “Like to see 'em?”
+
+He pulled up his horse.
+
+Gregory faltered a moment. Then he said, “I'd like to buy them. Quick!”
+
+He looked guiltily about, while the shoeman alertly obeyed, with some
+delay for a box to put them in. “How much are they?”
+
+“Well, that's a custom made slipper, and the price to the lady that
+oddid'em was seven dollas. But I'll let you have 'em for three--if you
+want 'em for a present.”--The shoeman was far too discreet to permit
+himself anything so overt as a smile; he merely let a light of
+intelligence come into his face.
+
+Gregory paid the money. “Please consider this as confidential,” he said,
+and he made swiftly away. Before the shoeman could lock the drawer that
+had held the slippers, and clamber to his perch under the buggy-hood,
+Gregory was running back to him again.
+
+“Stop!” he called, and as he came up panting in an excitement which the
+shoeman might well have mistaken for indignation attending the discovery
+of some blemish in his purchase. “Do you regard this as in any manner a
+deception?” he palpitated.
+
+“Why,” the shoeman began cautiously, “it wa'n't what you may call a
+promise, exactly. More of a joke than anything else, I looked on it. I
+just said I'd keep 'em for her; but--”
+
+“You don't understand. If I seemed to disapprove--if I led any one to
+suppose, by my manner, or by--anything--that I thought it unwise or
+unbecoming to buy the shoes, and then bought them myself, do you think
+it is in the nature of an acted falsehood?”
+
+“Lo'd no!” said the shoeman, and he caught up the slack of his reins to
+drive on, as if he thought this amusing maniac might also be dangerous.
+
+Gregory stopped him with another question. “And shall--will you--think
+it necessary to speak of--of this transaction? I leave you free!”
+
+“Well,” said the shoeman. “I don't know what you're after, exactly, but
+if you think I'm so shot on for subjects that I've got to tell the folks
+at the next stop that I sold a fellar a pair of slippas for his gul--Go
+'long!” he called to his horse, and left Gregory standing in the middle
+of the road.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The people who came to the Middlemount in July were ordinarily the
+nicest, but that year the August folks were nicer than usual and there
+were some students among them, and several graduates just going into
+business, who chose to take their outing there instead of going to the
+sea-side or the North Woods. This was a chance that might not happen in
+years again, and it made the house very gay for the young ladies; they
+ceased to pay court to the clerk, and asked him for letters only at
+mail-time. Five or six couples were often on the floor together, at the
+hops, and the young people sat so thick upon the stairs that one could
+scarcely get up or down.
+
+So many young men made it gay not only for the young ladies, but also
+for a certain young married lady, when she managed to shirk her
+rather filial duties to her husband, who was much about the verandas,
+purblindly feeling his way with a stick, as he walked up and down, or
+sitting opaque behind the glasses that preserved what was left of his
+sight, while his wife read to him. She was soon acquainted with a good
+many more people than he knew, and was in constant request for such
+occasions as needed a chaperon not averse to mountain climbing, or
+drives to other hotels for dancing and supper and return by moonlight,
+or the more boisterous sorts of charades; no sheet and pillow case party
+was complete without her; for welsh-rarebits her presence was essential.
+The event of the conflict between these social claims and her duties to
+her husband was her appeal to Mrs. Atwell on a point which the landlady
+referred to Clementina.
+
+“She wants somebody to read to her husband, and I don't believe but what
+you could do it, Clem. You're a good reader, as good as I want to hear,
+and while you may say that you don't put in a great deal of elocution,
+I guess you can read full well enough. All he wants is just something to
+keep him occupied, and all she wants is a chance to occupy herself with
+otha folks. Well, she is moa their own age. I d'know as the's any hahm
+in her. And my foot's so much betta, now, that I don't need you the
+whole while, any moa.”
+
+“Did you speak to her about me?” asked the girl.
+
+“Well, I told her I'd tell you. I couldn't say how you'd like.”
+
+“Oh, I guess I should like,” said Clementina, with her eyes shining.
+“But--I should have to ask motha.”
+
+“I don't believe but what your motha'd be willin',” said Mrs. Atwell.
+“You just go down and see her about it.”
+
+The next day Mrs. Milray was able to take leave of her husband, in
+setting off to matronize a coaching party, with an exuberance of good
+conscience that she shared with the spectators. She kissed him with
+lively affection, and charged him not to let the child read herself to
+death for him. She captioned Clementina that Mr. Milray never knew when
+he was tired, and she had better go by the clock in her reading, and not
+trust to any sign from him.
+
+Clementina promised, and when the public had followed Mrs. Milray away,
+to watch her ascent to the topmost seat of the towering coach, by
+means of the ladder held in place by two porters, and by help of the
+down-stretched hands of all the young men on the coach, Clementina
+opened the book at the mark she found in it, and began to read to Mr.
+Milray.
+
+The book was a metaphysical essay, which he professed to find a lighter
+sort of reading than fiction; he said most novelists were too seriously
+employed in preventing the marriage of the lovers, up to a certain
+point, to be amusing; but you could always trust a metaphysician for
+entertainment if he was very much in earnest, and most metaphysicians
+were. He let Clementina read on a good while in her tender voice, which
+had still so many notes of childhood in it, before he manifested any
+consciousness of being read to. He kept the smile on his delicate face
+which had come there when his wife said at parting, “I don't believe I
+should leave her with you if you could see how prettty she was,” and he
+held his head almost motionlessly at the same poise he had given it in
+listening to her final charges. It was a fine head, still well covered
+with soft hair, which lay upon it in little sculpturesque masses, like
+chiseled silver, and the acquiline profile had a purity of line in the
+arch of the high nose and the jut of the thin lips and delicate chin,
+which had not been lost in the change from youth to age. One could never
+have taken it for the profile of a New York lawyer who had early found
+New York politics more profitable than law, and after a long time passed
+in city affairs, had emerged with a name shadowed by certain doubtful
+transactions. But this was Milray's history, which in the rapid progress
+of American events, was so far forgotten that you had first to remind
+people of what he had helped do before you could enjoy their surprise
+in realizing that this gentle person, with the cast of intellectual
+refinement which distinguished his face, was the notorious Milray,
+who was once in all the papers. When he made his game and retired from
+politics, his family would have sacrificed itself a good deal to reclaim
+him socially, though they were of a severer social than spiritual
+conscience, in the decay of some ancestral ideals. But he had rendered
+their willingness hopeless by marrying, rather late in life, a young
+girl from the farther West who had come East with a general purpose
+to get on. She got on very well with Milray, and it was perhaps not
+altogether her own fault that she did not get on so well with his
+family, when she began to substitute a society aim for the artistic
+ambition that had brought her to New York. They might have forgiven him
+for marrying her, but they could not forgive her for marrying him. They
+were of New England origin and they were perhaps a little more critical
+with her than if they had been New Yorkers of Dutch strain. They said
+that she was a little Western hoyden, but that the stage would have been
+a good place for her if she could have got over her Pike county accent;
+in the hush of family councils they confided to one another the belief
+that there were phases of the variety business in which her accent would
+have been no barrier to her success, since it could not have been heard
+in the dance, and might have been disguised in the song.
+
+“Will you kindly read that passage over again?” Milray asked as
+Clementina paused at the end of a certain paragraph. She read it, while
+he listened attentively. “Could you tell me just what you understand by
+that?” he pursued, as if he really expected Clementina to instruct him.
+
+She hesitated a moment before she answered, “I don't believe I undastand
+anything at all.”
+
+“Do you know,” said Milray, “that's exactly my own case? And I've an
+idea that the author is in the same box,” and Clementina perceived she
+might laugh, and laughed discreetly.
+
+Milray seemed to feel the note of discreetness in her laugh, and he
+asked, smiling, “How old did you tell me you were?”
+
+“I'm sixteen,” said Clementina.
+
+“It's a great age,” said Milray. “I remember being sixteen myself; I
+have never been so old since. But I was very old for my age, then. Do
+you think you are?”
+
+“I don't believe I am,” said Clementina, laughing again, but still very
+discreetly.
+
+“Then I should like to tell you that you have a very agreeable voice. Do
+you sing?”
+
+“No'm--no, sir--no,” said Clementina, “I can't sing at all.”
+
+“Ah, that's very interesting,” said Milray, “but it's not surprising.
+I wish I could see your face distinctly; I've a great curiosity about
+matching voices and faces; I must get Mrs. Milray to tell me how you
+look. Where did you pick up your pretty knack at reading? In school,
+here?”
+
+“I don't know,” answered Clementina. “Do I read-the way you want?”
+
+“Oh, perfectly. You let the meaning come through--when there is any.”
+
+“Sometimes,” said Clementina ingenuously, “I read too fast; the children
+ah' so impatient when I'm reading to them at home, and they hurry me.
+But I can read a great deal slower if you want me to.”
+
+“No, I'm impatient, too,” said Milray. “Are there many of them,--the
+children?”
+
+“There ah' six in all.”
+
+“And are you the oldest?”
+
+“Yes,” said Clementina. She still felt it very blunt not to say sir,
+too, but she tried to make her tone imply the sir, as Mr. Gregory had
+bidden her.
+
+“You've got a very pretty name.”
+
+Clementina brightened. “Do you like it? Motha gave it to me; she took it
+out of a book that fatha was reading to her.”
+
+“I like it very much,” said Milray. “Are you tall for your age?”
+
+“I guess I am pretty tall.”
+
+“You're fair, of course. I can tell that by your voice; you've got a
+light-haired voice. And what are your eyes?”
+
+“Blue!” Clementina laughed at his pursuit.
+
+“Ah, of course! It isn't a gray-eyed blonde voice. Do you think--has
+anybody ever told you-that you were graceful?”
+
+“I don't know as they have,” said Clementina, after thinking.
+
+“And what is your own opinion?” Clementina began to feel her dignity
+infringed; she did not answer, and now Milray laughed. “I felt the
+little tilt in your step as you came up. It's all right. Shall we try
+for our friend's meaning, now?”
+
+Clementina began again, and again Milray stopped her. “You mustn't bear
+malice. I can hear the grudge in your voice; but I didn't mean to laugh
+at you. You don't like being made fun of, do you?”
+
+“I don't believe anybody does,” said Clementina.
+
+“No, indeed,” said Milray. “If I had tried such a thing I should be
+afraid you would make it uncomfortable for me. But I haven't, have I?”
+
+“I don't know,” said Clementina, reluctantly.
+
+Milray laughed gleefully. “Well, you'll forgive me, because I'm an old
+fellow. If I were young, you wouldn't, would you?”
+
+Clementina thought of the clerk; she had certainly never forgiven him.
+“Shall I read on?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, yes. Read on,” he said, respectfully. Once he interrupted her to
+say that she pronounced admirable, but he would like now and then to
+differ with her about a word if she did not mind. She answered, Oh no,
+indeed; she should like it ever so much, if he would tell her when
+she was wrong. After that he corrected her, and he amused himself by
+studying forms of respect so delicate that they should not alarm her
+pride; Clementina reassured him in terms as fine as his own. She did not
+accept his instructions implicitly; she meant to bring them to the bar
+of Gregory's knowledge. If he approved of them, then she would submit.
+
+Milray easily possessed himself of the history of her life and of all
+its circumstances, and he said he would like to meet her father and make
+the acquaintance of a man whose mind, as Clementina interpreted it to
+him, he found so original.
+
+He authorized his wife to arrange with Mrs. Atwell for a monopoly of
+Clementina's time while he stayed at Middlemount, and neither he nor
+Mrs. Milray seemed surprised at the good round sum, as the landlady
+thought it, which she asked in the girl's behalf.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+The Milrays stayed through August, and Mrs. Milray was the ruling spirit
+of the great holiday of the summer, at Middlemount. It was this year
+that the landlords of the central mountain region had decided to compete
+in a coaching parade, and to rival by their common glory the splendor
+of the East Side and the West Side parades. The boarding-houses were
+to take part, as well as the hotels; the farms where only three or four
+summer folks were received, were to send their mountain-wagons, and all
+were to be decorated with bunting. An arch draped with flags and covered
+with flowers spanned the entrance to the main street at Middlemount
+Centre, and every shop in the village was adorned for the event.
+
+Mrs. Milray made the landlord tell her all about coaching parades, and
+the champions of former years on the East Side and the West Side, and
+then she said that the Middlemount House must take the prize from
+them all this year, or she should never come near his house again. He
+answered, with a dignity and spirit he rarely showed with Mrs. Milray's
+class of custom, “I'm goin' to drive our hossis myself.”
+
+She gave her whole time to imagining and organizing the personal display
+on the coach. She consulted with the other ladies as to the kind of
+dresses that were to be worn, but she decided everything herself; and
+when the time came she had all the young men ravaging the lanes and
+pastures for the goldenrod and asters which formed the keynote of her
+decoration for the coach.
+
+She made peace and kept it between factions that declared themselves
+early in the affair, and of all who could have criticized her for taking
+the lead perhaps none would have willingly relieved her of the trouble.
+She freely declared that it was killing her, and she sounded her accents
+of despair all over the place. When their dresses were finished she made
+the persons of her drama rehearse it on the coach top in the secret
+of the barn, where no one but the stable men were suffered to see the
+effects she aimed at. But on the eve of realizing these in public she
+was overwhelmed by disaster. The crowning glory of her composition was
+to be a young girl standing on the highest seat of the coach, in the
+character of the Spirit of Summer, wreathed and garlanded with flowers,
+and invisibly sustained by the twelve months of the year, equally
+divided as to sex, but with the more difficult and painful attitudes
+assigned to the gentlemen who were to figure as the fall and winter
+months. It had been all worked out and the actors drilled in their
+parts, when the Spirit of Summer, who had been chosen for the
+inoffensiveness of her extreme youth, was taken with mumps, and
+withdrawn by the doctor's orders. Mrs. Milray had now not only to
+improvise another Spirit of Summer, but had to choose her from a group
+of young ladies, with the chance of alienating and embittering those who
+were not chosen. In her calamity she asked her husband what she should
+do, with but the least hope that he could tell her. But he answered
+promptly, “Take Clementina; I'll let you have her for the day,” and then
+waited for the storm of her renunciations and denunciations to spend
+itself.
+
+“To be sure,” she said, when this had happened, “it isn't as if she were
+a servant in the house; and the position can be regarded as a kind of
+public function, anyhow. I can't say that I've hired her to take the
+part, but I can give her a present afterwards, and it will be the same
+thing.”
+
+The question of clothes for Clementina Mrs. Milray declared was almost
+as sweeping in its implication as the question of the child's creation.
+“She has got to be dressed new from head to foot,” she said, “every
+stitch, and how am I to manage it in twenty-four hours?”
+
+By a succession of miracles with cheese-cloth, and sashes and ribbons,
+it was managed; and ended in a triumph so great that Mrs. Milray took
+the girl in her arms and kissed her for looking the Spirit of Summer to
+a perfection that the victim of the mumps could not have approached. The
+victory was not lastingly marred by the failure of Clementina's shoes to
+look the Spirit of Summer as well as the rest of her costume. No shoes
+at all world have been the very thing, but shoes so shabby and worn down
+at one side of the heel as Clementina's were very far from the thing.
+Mrs. Milray decided that another fold of cheese-cloth would add to the
+statuesque charm of her figure, and give her more height; and she was
+richly satisfied with the effect when the Middlemount coach drove up to
+the great veranda the next morning, with all the figures of her picture
+in position on its roof, and Clementina supreme among them. She herself
+mounted in simple, undramatized authority to her official seat beside
+the landlord, who in coachman's dress, with a bouquet of autumnal
+flowers in his lapel, sat holding his garlanded reins over the backs of
+his six horses; and then the coach as she intended it to appear in the
+parade set out as soon as the turnouts of the other houses joined it.
+They were all to meet at the Middlemount, which was thickly draped and
+festooned in flags, with knots of evergreen and the first red boughs of
+the young swamp maples holding them in place over its irregular facade.
+The coach itself was amass of foliage and flowers, from which it defined
+itself as a wheeled vehicle in vague and partial outline; the other
+wagons and coaches, as they drove tremulously up, with an effect of
+having been mired in blossoms about their spokes and hubs, had
+the unwieldiness which seems inseparable from spectacularity. They
+represented motives in color and design sometimes tasteless enough, and
+sometimes so nearly very good that Mrs. Milray's heart was a great
+deal in her mouth, as they arrived, each with its hotel-cry roared and
+shrilled from a score of masculine and feminine throats, and finally
+spelled for distinctness sake, with an ultimate yell or growl. But she
+had not finished giving the lady-representative of a Sunday newspaper
+the points of her own tableau, before she regained the courage and the
+faith in which she remained serenely steadfast throughout the parade.
+
+It was when all the equipages of the neighborhood had arrived that she
+climbed to her place; the ladder was taken away; the landlord spoke to
+his horses, and the Middlemount coach led the parade, amid the renewed
+slogans, and the cries and fluttered handkerchiefs of the guests
+crowding the verandas.
+
+The line of march was by one road to Middlemount Centre, where the prize
+was to be awarded at the judges' stand, and then the coaches were to
+escort the triumphant vehicle homeward by another route, so as to pass
+as many houses on the way as possible. It was a curious expression of
+the carnival spirit in a region immemorially starved of beauty in
+the lives of its people; and whatever was the origin of the mountain
+coaching parade, or from whatever impulse of sentimentality or
+advertising it came, the effect was of undeniable splendor, and of
+phantasmagoric strangeness.
+
+Gregory watched its progress from a hill-side pasture as it trailed
+slowly along the rising and falling road. The songs of the young girls,
+interrupted by the explosion of hotel slogans and college cries from the
+young men, floated off to him on the thin breeze of the cloudless
+August morning, like the hymns and shouts of a saturnalian rout going in
+holiday processional to sacrifice to their gods. Words of fierce Hebrew
+poetry burned in his thought; the warnings and the accusals and the
+condemnations of the angry prophets; and he stood rapt from his own time
+and place in a dream of days when the Most High stooped to commune face
+to face with His ministers, while the young voices of those forgetful
+or ignorant of Him, called to his own youth, and the garlanded chariots,
+with their banners and their streamers passed on the road beneath him
+and out of sight in the shadow of the woods beyond.
+
+When the prize was given to the Middlemount coach at the Center the
+landlord took the flag, and gallantly transferred it to Mrs. Milray,
+and Mrs. Milray passed it up to Clementina, and bade her, “Wave it, wave
+it!”
+
+The village street was thronged with people that cheered, and swung
+their hats and handkerchiefs to the coach as it left the judges' stand
+and drove under the triumphal arch, with the other coaches behind it.
+Then Atwell turned his horses heads homewards, and at the brisker pace
+with which people always return from festivals or from funerals, he left
+the village and struck out upon the country road with his long escort
+before him. The crowd was quick to catch the courteous intention of
+the victors, and followed them with applause as far beyond the village
+borders as wind and limb would allow; but the last noisy boy had dropped
+off breathless before they reached a half-finished house in the edge
+of some woods. A line of little children was drawn up by the road-side
+before it, who watched the retinue with grave eagerness, till the
+Middlemount coach came in full sight. Then they sprang into the air, and
+beating their hands together, screamed, “Clem! Clem! Oh it's Clem!” and
+jumped up and down, and a shabby looking work worn woman came round the
+corner of the house and stared up at Clementina waving her banner wildly
+to the children, and shouting unintelligible words to them. The young
+people on the coach joined in response to the children, some simply,
+some ironically, and one of the men caught up a great wreath of flowers
+which lay at Clementina's feet, and flung it down to them; the shabby
+woman quickly vanished round the corner of the house again. Mrs. Milray
+leaned over to ask the landlord, “Who in the world are Clementina's
+friends?”
+
+“Why don't you know?” he retorted in abated voice. “Them's her brothas
+and sistas.”
+
+“And that woman?”
+
+“The lady at the conna? That's her motha.”
+
+When the event was over, and all the things had been said and said
+again, and there was nothing more to keep the spring and summer months
+from going up to their rooms to lie down, and the fall and winter months
+from trying to get something to eat, Mrs. Milray found herself alone
+with Clementina.
+
+The child seemed anxious about something, and Mrs. Milray, who wanted
+to go and lie down, too, asked a little impatiently, “What is it,
+Clementina?”
+
+“Oh, nothing. Only I was afraid maybe you didn't like my waving to
+the children, when you saw how queea they looked.” Clementina's lips
+quivered.
+
+“Did any of the rest say anything?”
+
+“I know what they thought. But I don't care! I should do it right over
+again!”
+
+Mrs. Milray's happiness in the day's triumph was so great that she could
+indulge a generous emotion. She caught the girl in her arms. “I want to
+kiss you; I want to hug you, Clementina!”
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+The notion of a dance for the following night to celebrate the
+success of the house in the coaching parade came to Mrs. Milray over a
+welsh-rarebit which she gave at the close of the evening. The party was
+in the charge of Gregory, who silently served them at their orgy with an
+austerity that might have conspired with the viand itself against their
+dreams, if they had not been so used to the gloom of his ministrations.
+He would not allow the waitresses to be disturbed in their evening
+leisure, or kept from their sleep by such belated pleasures; and when
+he had provided the materials for the rarebit, he stood aloof, and left
+their combination to Mrs. Milray and her chafing-dish.
+
+She had excluded Clementina on account of her youth, as she said to
+one of the fall and winter months, who came in late, and noticed
+Clementina's absence with a “Hello! Anything the matter with the Spirit
+of Summer?” Clementina had become both a pet and a joke with these
+months before the parade was over, and now they clamored together, and
+said they must have her at the dance anyway. They were more tepidly
+seconded by the spring and summer months, and Mrs. Milray said, “Well,
+then, you'll have to all subscribe and get her a pair of dancing
+slippers.” They pressed her for her meaning, and she had to explain
+the fact of Clementina's destitution, which that additional fold of
+cheese-cloth had hidden so well in the coaching tableau that it had
+never been suspected. The young men entreated her to let them each buy a
+pair of slippers for the Spirit of Summer, which she should wear in turn
+for the dance that she must give each of them; and this made Mrs. Milray
+declare that, no, the child should not come to the dance at all, and
+that she was not going to have her spoiled. But, before the party broke
+up, she promised that she would see what could be done, and she put it
+very prettily to the child the next day, and waited for her to say, as
+she knew she must, that she could not go, and why. They agreed that the
+cheese-cloth draperies of the Spirit of Summer were surpassingly fit for
+the dance; but they had to agree that this still left the question of
+slippers untouched. It remained even more hopeless when Clementina tried
+on all of Mrs. Milray's festive shoes, and none of her razorpoints
+and high heels would avail. She went away disappointed, but not yet
+disheartened; youth does not so easily renounce a pleasure pressed to
+the lips; and Clementina had it in her head to ask some of the table
+girls to help her out. She meant to try first with that big girl who had
+helped her put on the shoeman's bronze slippers; and she hurried through
+the office, pushing purblindly past Fane without looking his way, when
+he called to her in the deference which he now always used with her,
+“Here's a package here for you, Clementina--Miss Claxon,” and he gave
+her an oblong parcel, addressed in a hand strange to her. “Who is
+it from?” she asked, innocently, and Fane replied with the same
+ingenuousness: “I'm sure I don't know.” Afterwards he thought of having
+retorted, “I haven't opened it,” but still without being certain that he
+would have had the courage to say it.
+
+Clementina did not think of opening it herself, even when she was alone
+in her little room above Mrs. Atwell's, until she had carefully felt
+it over, and ascertained that it was a box of pasteboard, three or four
+inches deep and wide, and eight or ten inches long. She looked at the
+address again, “Miss Clementina Claxon,” and at the narrow notched
+ribbon which tied it, and noted that the paper it was wrapped in was
+very white and clean. Then she sighed, and loosed the knot, and the
+paper slipped off the box, and at the same time the lid fell off, and
+the shoe man's bronze slippers fell out upon the floor.
+
+Either it must be a dream or it must be a joke; it could not be both
+real and earnest; somebody was trying to tease her; such flattery of
+fortune could not be honestly meant. But it went to her head, and she
+was so giddy with it as she caught the slippers from the floor, and ran
+down to Mrs. Atwell, that she knocked against the sides of the narrow
+staircase.
+
+“What is it? What does it mean? Who did it?” she panted, with the
+slippers in her hand. “Whe'e did they come from?” She poured out the
+history of her trying on these shoes, and of her present need of them
+and of their mysterious coming, to meet her longing after it had almost
+ceased to be a hope. Mrs. Atwell closed with her in an exultation hardly
+short of a clapping the hands. Her hair was gray, and the girl's hair
+still hung in braids down her back, but they were of the same age in
+their transport, which they referred to Mrs. Milray, and joined with
+her in glad but fruitless wonder who had sent Clementina the shoes.
+Mrs. Atwell held that the help who had seen the girl trying them on had
+clubbed together and got them for her at the time; and had now given
+them to her for the honor she had done the Middlemount House in the
+parade. Mrs. Milray argued that the spring and summer months had
+secretly dispatched some fall and winter month to ransack the stores at
+Middlemount Centre for them. Clementina believed that they came from the
+shoe man himself, who had always wanted to send them, in the hope that
+she would keep them, and had merely happened to send them just then
+in that moment of extremity when she was helpless against them. Each
+conjecture involved improbabilities so gross that it left the field free
+to any opposite theory.
+
+Rumor of the fact could not fail to go through the house, and long
+before his day's work was done it reached the chef, and amused him as a
+piece of the Boss's luck. He was smoking his evening pipe at the kitchen
+door after supper, when Clementina passed him on one of the many errands
+that took her between Mrs. Milray's room and her own, and he called to
+her: “Boss, what's this I hear about a pair o' glass slippas droppin'
+out the sky int' youa lap?”
+
+Clementina was so happy that she thought she might trust him for once,
+and she said, “Oh, yes, Mr. Mahtin! Who do you suppose sent them?” she
+entreated him so sweetly that it would have softened any heart but the
+heart of a tease.
+
+“I believe I could give a pootty good guess if I had the facts.”
+
+Clementina innocently gave them to him, and he listened with a
+well-affected sympathy.
+
+“Say Fane fust told you about 'em?”
+
+“Yes. 'He'e's a package for you,' he said. Just that way; and he
+couldn't tell me who left it, or anything.”
+
+“Anybody asked him about it since?”
+
+“Oh, yes! Mrs. Milray, and Mrs. Atwell, and Mr. Atwell, and everybody.”
+
+“Everybody.” The chef smiled with a peculiar droop of one eye. “And he
+didn't know when the slippas got into the landlo'd's box?”
+
+“No. The fust thing he knew, the' they we'e!” Clementina stood
+expectant, but the chef smoked on as if that were all there was to say,
+and seemed to have forgotten her. “Who do you think put them thea, Mr.
+Mahtin?”
+
+The chef looked up as if surprised to find her still there. “Oh! Oh,
+yes! Who d' I think? Why, I know, Boss. But I don't believe I'd betta
+tell you.”
+
+“Oh, do, Mr. Mahtin! If you knew how I felt about it--”
+
+“No, no! I guess I betta not. 'Twouldn't do you any good. I guess I
+won't say anything moa. But if I was in youa place, and I really wanted
+to know whe'e them slippas come from--”
+
+“I do--I do indeed--”
+
+The chef paused before he added, “I should go at Fane. I guess what he
+don't know ain't wo'th knowin', and I guess nobody else knows anything.
+Thea! I don't know but I said mo'n I ought, now.”
+
+What the chef said was of a piece with what had been more than once in
+Clementina's mind; but she had driven it out, not because it might not
+be true, but because she would not have it true. Her head drooped;
+she turned limp and springless away. Even the heart of the tease was
+touched; he had not known that it would worry her so much, though he
+knew that she disliked the clerk.
+
+“Mind,” he called after her, too late, “I ain't got no proof 't he done
+it.”
+
+She did not answer him, or look round. She went to her room, and sat
+down in the growing dusk to think, with a hot lump in her throat.
+
+Mrs. Atwell found her there an hour later, when she climbed to the
+chamber where she thought she ought to have heard Clementina moving
+about over her own room.
+
+“Didn't know but I could help you do youa dressin',” she began, and then
+at sight of the dim figure she broke off: “Why, Clem! What's the matte?
+Ah' you asleep? Ah' you sick? It's half an hour of the time and--”
+
+“I'm not going,” Clementina answered, and she did not move.
+
+“Not goin'! Why the land o'--”
+
+“Oh, I can't go, Mrs. Atwell. Don't ask me! Tell Mrs. Milray, please!”
+
+“I will, when I got something to tell,” said Mrs. Atwell. “Now, you just
+say what's happened, Clementina Claxon!” Clementina suffered the woful
+truth to be drawn from her. “But you don't know whether it's so or not,”
+ the landlady protested.
+
+“Yes, yes, I do! It was the last thing I thought of, and the chef
+wouldn't have said it if he didn't believe it.”
+
+“That's just what he would done,” cried Mrs. Atwell. “And I'll give him
+such a goin' ova, for his teasin', as he ain't had in one while. He just
+said it to tease. What you goin' to say to Mrs. Milray?”
+
+“Oh, tell her I'm not a bit well, Mrs. Atwell! My head does ache,
+truly.”
+
+“Why, listen,” said Mrs. Atwell, recklessly. “If you believe he done
+it--and he no business to--why don't you just go to the dance, in 'em,
+and then give 'em back to him after it's ova? It would suv him right.”
+
+Clementina listened for a moment of temptation, and then shook her head.
+“It wouldn't do, Mrs. Atwell; you know it wouldn't,” she said, and Mrs.
+Atwell had too little faith in her suggestion to make it prevail. She
+went away to carry Clementina's message to Mrs. Milray, and her task
+was greatly eased by the increasing difficulty Mrs. Milray had begun
+to find, since the way was perfectly smoothed for her, in imagining the
+management of Clementina at the dance: neither child nor woman, neither
+servant nor lady, how was she to be carried successfully through it,
+without sorrow to herself or offence to others? In proportion to the
+relief she felt, Mrs. Milray protested her irreconcilable grief; but
+when the simpler Mrs. Atwell proposed her going and reasoning with
+Clementina, she said, No, no; better let her alone, if she felt as she
+did; and perhaps after all she was right.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+Clementina listened to the music of the dance, till the last note was
+played; and she heard the gay shouts and laughter of the dancers as
+they issued from the ball room and began to disperse about the halls
+and verandas, and presently to call good night to one another. Then she
+lighted her lamp, and put the slippers back into the box and wrapped
+it up in the nice paper it had come in, and tied it with the notched
+ribbon. She thought how she had meant to put the slippers away so, after
+the dance, when she had danced her fill in them, and how differently she
+was doing it all now. She wrote the clerk's name on the parcel, and then
+she took the box, and descended to the office with it. There seemed to
+be nobody there, but at the noise of her step Fane came round the case
+of letter-boxes, and advanced to meet her at the long desk.
+
+“What's wanted, Miss Claxon?” he asked, with his hopeless
+respectfulness. “Anything I can do for you?”
+
+She did not answer, but looked him solemnly in the eyes and laid the
+parcel down on the open register, and then went out.
+
+He looked at the address on the parcel, and when he untied it, the box
+fell open and the shoes fell out of it, as they had with Clementina.
+He ran with them behind the letter-box frame, and held them up before
+Gregory, who was seated there on the stool he usually occupied, gloomily
+nursing his knee.
+
+“What do you suppose this means, Frank?”
+
+Gregory looked at the shoes frowningly. “They're the slippers she got
+to-day. She thinks you sent them to her.”
+
+“And she wouldn't have them because she thought I sent them! As sure as
+I'm standing here, I never did it,” said the clerk, solemnly.
+
+“I know it,” said Gregory. “I sent them.”
+
+“You!”
+
+“What's so wonderful?” Gregory retorted. “I saw that she wanted them
+that day when the shoe peddler was here. I could see it, and you could.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I went across into the woods, and the man overtook me with his wagon. I
+was tempted, and I bought the slippers of him. I wanted to give them
+to her then, but I resisted, and I thought I should never give them.
+To-day, when I heard that she was going to that dance, I sent them to
+her anonymously. That's all there is about it.”
+
+The clerk had a moment of bitterness. “If she'd known it was you, she
+wouldn't have given them back.”
+
+“That's to be seen. I shall tell her, now. I never meant her to know,
+but she must, because she's doing you wrong in her ignorance.”
+
+Gregory was silent, and Fane was trying to measure the extent of his own
+suffering, and to get the whole bearing of the incident in his mind. In
+the end his attempt was a failure. He asked Gregory, “And do you think
+you've done just right by me?”
+
+“I've done right by nobody,” said Gregory, “not even by myself; and I
+can see that it was my own pleasure I had in mind. I must tell her the
+truth, and then I must leave this place.”
+
+“I suppose you want I should keep it quiet,” said Fane.
+
+“I don't ask anything of you.”
+
+“And she wouldn't,” said Fane, after reflection. “But I know she'd be
+glad of it, and I sha'n't say anything. Of course, she never can care
+for me; and--there's my hand with my word, if you want it.” Gregory
+silently took the hand stretched toward him and Fane added: “All I'll
+ask is that you'll tell her I wouldn't have presumed to send her the
+shoes. She wouldn't be mad at you for it.”
+
+Gregory took the box, and after some efforts to speak, he went away.
+It was an old trouble, an old error, an old folly; he had yielded to
+impulse at every step, and at every step he had sinned against another
+or against himself. What pain he had now given the simple soul of Fane;
+what pain he had given that poor child who had so mistaken and punished
+the simple soul! With Fane it was over now, but with Clementina the
+worst was perhaps to come yet. He could not hope to see the girl before
+morning, and then, what should he say to her? At sight of a lamp burning
+in Mrs. Atwell's room, which was on a level with the veranda where he
+was walking, it came to him that first of all he ought to go to her,
+and confess the whole affair; if her husband were with her, he ought to
+confess before him; they were there in the place of the child's father
+and mother, and it was due to them. As he pressed rapidly toward the
+light he framed in his thought the things he should say, and he did
+not notice, as he turned to enter the private hallway leading to Mrs.
+Atwell's apartment, a figure at the door. It shrank back from his
+contact, and he recognized Clementina. His purpose instantly changed,
+and he said, “Is that you, Miss Claxon? I want to speak with you. Will
+you come a moment where I can?”
+
+“I--I don't know as I'd betta,” she faltered. But she saw the box under
+his arm, and she thought that he wished to speak to her about that, and
+she wanted to hear what he would say. She had been waiting at the door
+there, because she could not bear to go to her room without having
+something more happen.
+
+“You needn't be afraid. I shall not keep you. Come with me a moment.
+There is something I must tell you at once. You have made a mistake. And
+it is my fault. Come!”
+
+Clementina stepped out into the moonlight with him, and they walked
+across the grass that sloped between the hotel and the river. There
+were still people about, late smokers singly, and in groups along the
+piazzas, and young couples, like themselves, strolling in the dry air,
+under the pure sky.
+
+Gregory made several failures in trying to begin, before he said: “I
+have to tell you that you are mistaken about Mr. Fane. I was there
+behind the letter boxes when you came in, and I know that you left these
+shoes because you thought he sent them to you. He didn't send them.”
+ Clementina did not say anything, and Gregory was forced to ask: “Do you
+wish to know who sent them? I won't tell you unless you do wish it.”
+
+“I think I ought to know,” she said, and she asked, “Don't you?”
+
+“Yes; for you must blame some one else now, for what you thought Fane
+did. I sent them to you.”
+
+Clementina's heart gave a leap in her breast, and she could not say
+anything. He went on.
+
+“I saw that you wanted them that day, and when the peddler happened to
+overtake me in the woods where I was walking, after I left you, I acted
+on a sudden impulse, and I bought them for you. I meant to send them
+to you anonymously, then. I had committed one error in acting upon
+impulse-my rashness is my besetting sin--and I wished to add a species
+of deceit to that. But I was kept from it until-to-day. I hoped you
+would like to wear them to the dance to-night, and I put them in the
+post-office for you myself. Mr. Fane didn't know anything about it. That
+is all. I am to blame, and no one else.”
+
+He waited for her to speak, but Clementina could only say, “I don't know
+what to say.”
+
+“You can't say anything that would be punishment enough for me. I have
+acted foolishly, cruelly.”
+
+Clementina did not think so. She was not indignant, as she was when she
+thought Fane had taken this liberty with her, but if Mr. Gregory thought
+it was so very bad, it must be something much more serious than she had
+imagined. She said, “I don't see why you wanted to do it,” hoping that
+he would be able to tell her something that would make his behavior seem
+less dreadful than he appeared to think it was.
+
+“There is only one thing that could justify it, and that is something
+that I cannot justify.” It was very mysterious, but youth loves mystery,
+and Clementina was very young. “I did it,” said Gregory solemnly, and
+he felt that now he was acting from no impulse, but from a wisely
+considered decision which he might not fail in without culpability,
+“because I love you.”
+
+“Oh!” said Clementina, and she started away from him.
+
+“I knew that it would make me detestable!” he cried, bitterly. “I had
+to tell you, to explain what I did. I couldn't help doing it. But now if
+you can forget it, and never think of me again, I can go away, and try
+to atone for it somehow. I shall be guided.”
+
+Clementina did not know why she ought to feel affronted or injured by
+what he had said to her; but if Mr. Gregory thought it was wrong for him
+to have spoken so, it must be wrong. She did not wish him to feel badly,
+even if he had done wrong, but she had to take his view of what he had
+done. “Why, suttainly, Mr. Gregory,” she answered. “You mustn't mind
+it.”
+
+“But I do mind it. I have been very, very selfish, very thoughtless. We
+are both too young. I can't ask you to wait for me till I could marry--”
+
+The word really frightened Clementina. She said, “I don't believe I
+betta promise.”
+
+“Oh, I know it!” said Gregory. “I am going away from here. I am
+going to-morrow as soon as I can arrange--as soon as I can get away.
+Good-night--I”--Clementina in her agitation put her hands up to her
+face. “Oh, don't cry--I can't bear to have you cry.”
+
+She took down her hands. “I'm not crying! But I wish I had neva seen
+those slippas.”
+
+They had come to the bank of the river, whose current quivered at that
+point in a scaly ripple in the moonlight. At her words Gregory suddenly
+pulled the box from under his arm, and flung it into the stream as
+far as he could. It caught upon a shallow of the ripple, hung there a
+moment, then loosed itself, and swam swiftly down the stream.
+
+“Oh!” Clementina moaned.
+
+“Do you want them back?” he demanded. “I will go in for them!”
+
+“No, no! No. But it seemed such a--waste!”
+
+“Yes, that is a sin, too.” They climbed silently to the hotel. At Mrs.
+Atwell's door, he spoke. “Try to forget what I said, and forgive me, if
+you can.”
+
+“Yes--yes, I will, Mr. Gregory. You mustn't think of it any moa.”
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+Clementina did not sleep till well toward morning, and she was still
+sleeping when Mrs. Atwell knocked and called in to her that her brother
+Jim wanted to see her. She hurried down, and in the confusion of mind
+left over from the night before she cooed sweetly at Jim as if he had
+been Mr. Gregory, “What is it, Jim? What do you want me for?”
+
+The boy answered with the disgust a sister's company manners always
+rouse in a brother. “Motha wants you. Says she's wo'ked down, and she
+wants you to come and help.” Then he went his way.
+
+Mrs. Atwell was used to having help snatched from her by their families
+at a moment's notice. “I presume you've got to go, Clem,” she said.
+
+“Oh, yes, I've got to go,” Clementina assented, with a note of relief
+which mystified Mrs. Atwell.
+
+“You tied readin' to Mr. Milray?”
+
+“Oh, no'm--no, I mean. But I guess I betta go home. I guess I've been
+away long enough.”
+
+“Well, you're a good gul, Clem. I presume your motha's got a right to
+have you home if she wants you.” Clementina said nothing to this, but
+turned briskly, and started upstairs toward her room again. The landlady
+called after her, “Shall you speak to Mis' Milray, or do you want I
+should?”
+
+Clementina looked back at her over her shoulder to warble, “Why, if you
+would, Mrs. Atwell,” and kept on to her room.
+
+Mrs. Milray was not wholly sorry to have her go; she was going herself
+very soon, and Clementina's earlier departure simplified the question
+of getting rid of her; but she overwhelmed her with reproaches which
+Clementina received with such sweet sincerity that another than Mrs.
+Milray might have blamed herself for having abused her ingenuousness.
+
+The Atwells could very well have let the girl walk home, but they sent
+her in a buckboard, with one of the stablemen to drive her. The landlord
+put her neat bundle under the seat of the buckboard with his own
+hand. There was something in the child's bearing, her dignity and
+her amiability, which made people offer her, half in fun, and half in
+earnest, the deference paid to age and state.
+
+She did not know whether Gregory would try to see her before she went.
+She thought he must have known she was going, but since he neither came
+to take leave of her, nor sent her any message, she decided that she had
+not expected him to do so. About the third week of September she heard
+that he had left Middlemount and gone back to college.
+
+She kept at her work in the house and helped her mother, and looked
+after the little ones; she followed her father in the woods, in his
+quest of stuff for walking sticks, and advised with both concerning the
+taste of summer folks in dress and in canes. The winter came, and she
+read many books in its long leisure, mostly novels, out of the rector's
+library. He had a whole set of Miss Edgeworth, and nearly all of Miss
+Austen and Miss Gurney, and he gave of them to Clementina, as the best
+thing for her mind as well as her morals; he believed nothing could be
+better for any one than these old English novels, which he had nearly
+forgotten in their details. She colored the faded English life of the
+stories afresh from her Yankee circumstance; and it seemed the consensus
+of their testimony that she had really been made love to, and not so
+very much too soon, at her age of sixteen, for most of their heroines
+were not much older. The terms of Gregory's declaration and of its
+withdrawal were mystifying, but not more mystifying than many such
+things, and from what happened in the novels she read, the affair might
+be trusted to come out all right of itself in time. She was rather
+thoughtfuller for it, and once her mother asked her what was the matter
+with her. “Oh, I guess I'm getting old, motha,” she said, and turned
+the question off. She would not have minded telling her mother about
+Gregory, but it would not have been the custom; and her mother would
+have worried, and would have blamed him. Clementina could have more
+easily trusted her father with the case, but so far as she knew fathers
+never were trusted with anything of the kind. She would have been
+willing that accident should bring it to the knowledge of Mrs. Richling;
+but the moment never came when she could voluntarily confide in
+her, though she was a great deal with her that winter. She was Mrs.
+Richling's lieutenant in the social affairs of the parish, which the
+rector's wife took under her care. She helped her get up entertainments
+of the kind that could be given in the church parlor, and they managed
+together some dances which had to be exiled to the town hall. They
+contrived to make the young people of the village feel that they were
+having a gay time, and Clementina did not herself feel that it was a
+dull one. She taught them some of the new steps and figures which the
+help used to pick up from the summer folks at the Middlemount, and
+practise together; she liked doing that; her mother said the child would
+rather dance than eat, any time. She was never sad, but so much dignity
+got into her sweetness that the rector now and then complained of
+feeling put down by her.
+
+She did not know whether she expected Gregory to write to her or not;
+but when no letters came she decided that she had not expected them. She
+wondered if he would come back to the Middlemount the next summer; but
+when the summer came, she heard that they had another student in his
+place. She heard that they had a new clerk, and that the boarders were
+not so pleasant. Another year passed, and towards the end of the season
+Mrs. Atwell wished her to come and help her again, and Clementina went
+over to the hotel to soften her refusal. She explained that her mother
+had so much sewing now that she could not spare her; and Mrs. Atwell
+said: Well, that was right, and that she must be the greatest kind of
+dependence for her mother. “You ah' going on seventeen this year, ain't
+you?”
+
+“I was nineteen the last day of August,” said Clementina, and Mrs.
+Atwell sighed, and said, How the time did fly.
+
+It was the second week of September, but Mrs. Atwell said they were
+going to keep the house open till the middle of October, if they could,
+for the autumnal foliage, which there was getting to be quite a class of
+custom for.
+
+“I presume you knew Mr. Landa was dead,” she added, and at Clementina's
+look of astonishment, she said with a natural satisfaction, “Mm! died
+the thutteenth day of August. I presumed somehow you'd know it, though
+you didn't see a great deal of 'em, come to think of it. I guess he
+was a good man; too good for her, I guess,” she concluded, in the New
+England necessity of blaming some one. “She sent us the papah.”
+
+There was an early frost; and people said there was going to be a hard
+winter, but it was not this that made Clementina's father set to work
+finishing his house. His turning business was well started, now, and
+he had got together money enough to pay for the work. He had lately
+enlarged the scope of his industry by turning gate-posts and urns for
+the tops of them, which had become very popular, for the front yards of
+the farm and village houses in a wide stretch of country. They sold more
+steadily than the smaller wares, the cups, and tops, and little vases
+and platters which had once been the output of his lathe; after the
+first season the interest of the summer folks in these fell off; but the
+gate posts and the urns appealed to a lasting taste in the natives.
+
+Claxon wished to put the finishing touches on the house himself, and
+he was willing to suspend more profitable labors to do so. After some
+attempts at plastering he was forced to leave that to the plasterers,
+but he managed the clap-boarding, with Clementina to hand him boards and
+nails, and to keep him supplied with the hammer he was apt to drop at
+critical moments. They talked pretty constantly at their labors, and in
+their leisure, which they spent on the brown needles under the pines at
+the side of the house. Sometimes the hammering or the talking would be
+interrupted by a voice calling, from a passing vehicle in the hidden
+roadway, something about urns. Claxon would answer, without troubling
+himself to verify the inquirer; or moving from his place, that he would
+get round to them, and then would hammer on, or talk on with Clementina.
+
+One day in October a carriage drove up to the door, after the work on
+the house had been carried as far as Claxon's mood and money allowed,
+and he and Clementina were picking up the litter of his carpentering.
+He had replaced the block of wood which once served at the front door
+by some steps under an arbor of rustic work; but this was still so novel
+that the younger children had not outgrown their pride in it and were
+playing at house-keeping there. Clementina ran around to the back door
+and out through the front entry in time to save the visitor and the
+children from the misunderstanding they began to fall into, and met
+her with a smile of hospitable brilliancy, and a recognition full of
+compassionate welcome.
+
+Mrs. Lander gave way to her tears as she broke out, “Oh, it ain't
+the way it was the last time I was he'a! You hea'd that he--that Mr.
+Landa--”
+
+“Mrs. Atwell told me,” said Clementina. “Won't you come in, and sit
+down?”
+
+“Why, yes.” Mrs. Lander pushed in through the narrow door of what was to
+be the parlor. Her crapes swept about her and exhaled a strong scent
+of their dyes. Her veil softened her heavy face; but she had not grown
+thinner in her bereavement.
+
+“I just got to the Middlemount last night,” she said, “and I wanted to
+see you and your payrents, both, Miss Claxon. It doos bring him back so!
+You won't neva know how much he thought of you, and you'll all think I'm
+crazy. I wouldn't come as long as he was with me, and now I have to come
+without him; I held out ag'inst him as long as I had him to hold out
+ag'inst. Not that he was eva one to push, and I don't know as he so much
+as spoke of it, afta we left the hotel two yea's ago; but I presume it
+wa'n't out of his mind a single minute. Time and time again I'd say to
+him, 'Now, Albe't, do you feel about it just the way you done?' and he'd
+say, 'I ha'r't had any call to charge my mind about it,' and then I'd
+begin tryin' to ahgue him out of it, and keep a hectorin', till he'd
+say, 'Well, I'm not askin' you to do it,' and that's all I could get
+out of him. But I see all the while 't he wanted me to do it, whateva he
+asked, and now I've got to do it when it can't give him any pleasure.”
+ Mrs. Lander put up her black-bordered handkerchief and sobbed into it,
+and Clementina waited till her grief had spent itself; then she gave her
+a fan, and Mrs. Lander gratefully cooled her hot wet face. The children
+had found the noises of her affliction and the turbid tones of her
+monologue annoying, and had gone off to play in the woods; Claxon kept
+incuriously about the work that Clementina had left him to; his wife
+maintained the confidence which she always felt in Clementina's ability
+to treat with the world when it presented itself, and though she was
+curious enough, she did not offer to interrupt the girl's interview with
+Mrs. Lander; Clementina would know how to behave.
+
+Mrs. Lander, when she had refreshed herself with the fan, seemed to
+get a fresh grip of her theme, and she told Clementina all abort Mr.
+Lander's last sickness. It had been so short that it gave her no time to
+try the climate of Colorado upon him, which she now felt sure would have
+brought him right up; and she had remembered, when too late, to give him
+a liver-medicine of her own, though it did not appear that it was his
+liver which was affected; that was the strange part of it. But, brief
+as his sickness was, he had felt that it was to be his last, and had
+solemnly talked over her future with her, which he seemed to think would
+be lonely. He had not named Clementina, but Mrs. Lander had known well
+enough what he meant; and now she wished to ask her, and her father and
+mother, how they would all like Clementina to come and spend the winter
+with her at Boston first, and then further South, and wherever she
+should happen to go. She apologized for not having come sooner upon this
+errand; she had resolved upon it as soon as Mr. Lander was gone, but she
+had been sick herself, and had only just now got out of bed.
+
+Clementina was too young to feel the pathos of the case fully, or
+perhaps even to follow the tortuous course of Mrs. Lander's motives, but
+she was moved by her grief; and she could not help a thrill of pleasure
+in the vague splendor of the future outlined by Mrs. Lander's proposal.
+For a time she had thought that Mrs. Milray was going to ask her to
+visit her in New York; Mrs. Milray had thrown out a hint of something
+of the kind at parting, but that was the last of it; and now she at
+once made up her mind that she would like to go with Mrs. Lander, while
+discreetly saying that she would ask her father and mother to come and
+talk with her.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Her parents objected to leaving their work; each suggested that the
+other had better go; but they both came at Clementina's urgence. Her
+father laughed and her mother frowned when she told them what Mrs.
+Lander wanted, from the same misgiving of her sanity. They partly
+abandoned this theory for a conviction of Mrs. Lander's mere folly when
+she began to talk, and this slowly yielded to the perception that she
+had some streaks of sense. It was sense in the first place to want to
+have Clementina with her, and though it might not be sense to suppose
+that they would be anxious to let her go, they did not find so much want
+of it as Mrs. Lander talked on. It was one of her necessities to talk
+away her emotions before arriving at her ideas, which were often found
+in a tangle, but were not without a certain propriety. She was now,
+after her interview with Clementina, in the immediate presence of these,
+and it was her ideas that she began to produce for the girl's father and
+mother. She said, frankly, that she had more money than she knew what to
+do with, and they must not think she supposed she was doing a favor, for
+she was really asking one.
+
+She was alone in the world, without near connections of her own, or
+relatives of her husband's, and it would be a mercy if they could let
+their daughter come and visit her; she would not call it more than a
+visit; that would be the best thing on both sides; she told of her great
+fancy for Clementina the first time she saw her, and of her husband's
+wish that she would come and visit with them then for the winter. As for
+that money she had tried to make the child take, she presumed that they
+knew about it, and she wished to say that she did it because she was
+afraid Mr. Lander had said so much about the sewing, that they would
+be disappointed. She gave way to her tears at the recollection, and
+confessed that she wanted the child to have the money anyway. She ended
+by asking Mrs. Claxon if she would please to let her have a drink of
+water; and she looked about the room, and said that they had got it
+finished up a great deal, now, had not they? She made other remarks upon
+it, so apt that Mrs. Claxon gave her a sort of permissive invitation to
+look about the whole lower floor, ending with the kitchen.
+
+Mrs. Lander sat down there while Mrs. Claxon drew from the pipes a glass
+of water, which she proudly explained was pumped all over the house by
+the wind mill that supplied the power for her husband's turning lathes.
+
+“Well, I wish mah husband could have tasted that wata,” said Mrs.
+Lander, as if reminded of husbands by the word, and by the action of
+putting down the glass. “He was always such a great hand for good, cold
+wata. My! He'd 'a liked youa kitchen, Mrs. Claxon. He always was such
+a home-body, and he did get so ti'ed of hotels. For all he had such an
+appearance, when you see him, of bein'--well!--stiff and proud, he was
+fah moa common in his tastes--I don't mean common, exactly, eitha--than
+what I was; and many a time when we'd be drivin' through the country,
+and we'd pass some o' them long-strung-out houses, don't you know, with
+the kitchen next to the wood shed, and then an ahchway befoa you get
+to the stable, Mr. Landa he'd get out, and make an urrand, just so's
+to look in at the kitchen dooa; he said it made him think of his own
+motha's kitchen. We was both brought up in the country, that's a fact,
+and I guess if the truth was known we both expected to settle down and
+die thea, some time; but now he's gone, and I don't know what'll become
+o' me, and sometimes I don't much care. I guess if Mr. Landa'd 'a seen
+youa kitchen, it wouldn't 'a' been so easy to git him out of it; and
+I do believe if he's livin' anywhe' now he takes as much comfo't in
+my settin' here as what I do. I presume I shall settle down somewhe's
+before a great while, and if you could make up youa mind to let your
+daughta come to me for a little visit till spring, you couldn't do a
+thing that 'd please Mr. Landa moa.”
+
+Mrs. Claxon said that she would talk it over with the child's father;
+and then Mrs. Lander pressed her to let her take Clementina back to
+the Middlemount with her for supper, if they wouldn't let her stay the
+night. After Clementina had driven away, Mrs. Claxon accused herself to
+her husband of being the greatest fool in the State, but he said that
+the carriage was one of the Middlemount rigs, and he guessed it was all
+right. He could see that Clem was wild to go, and he didn't see why she
+shouldn't.
+
+“Well, I do, then,” his wife retorted. “We don't know anything about the
+woman, or who she is.”
+
+“I guess no harm'll come to Clem for one night,” said Claxon, and Mrs.
+Claxon was forced back upon the larger question for the maintenance of
+her anxiety. She asked what he was going to do about letting Clem go the
+whole winter with a perfect stranger; and he answered that he had not
+got round to that yet, and that there were a good many things to be
+thought of first. He got round to see the rector before dark, and in the
+light of his larger horizon, was better able to orient Mrs. Lander and
+her motives than he had been before.
+
+When she came back with the girl the next morning, she had thought
+of something in the nature of credentials. It was the letter from her
+church in Boston, which she took whenever she left home, so that if she
+wished she might unite with the church in any place where she happened
+to be stopping. It did not make a great impression upon the Claxons,
+who were of no religion, though they allowed their children to go to the
+Episcopal church and Sunday-school, and always meant to go themselves.
+They said they would like to talk the matter over with the rector, if
+Mrs. Lander did not object; she offered to send her carriage for him,
+and the rector was brought at once.
+
+He was one of those men who have, in the breaking down of the old
+Puritanical faith, and the dying out of the later Unitarian rationalism,
+advanced and established the Anglican church so notably in the New
+England hill-country, by a wise conformity to the necessities and
+exactions of the native temperament. On the ecclesiastical side he was
+conscientiously uncompromising, but personally he was as simple-mannered
+as he was simple-hearted. He was a tall lean man in rusty black, with a
+clerical waistcoat that buttoned high, and scholarly glasses, but with a
+belated straw hat that had counted more than one summer, and a farmer's
+tan on his face and hands. He pronounced the church-letter, though quite
+outside of his own church, a document of the highest respectability,
+and he listened with patient deference to the autobiography which Mrs.
+Lander poured out upon him, and her identifications, through reference
+to this or that person in Boston whom he knew either at first or second
+hand. He had not to pronounce upon her syntax, or her social quality;
+it was enough for him, in behalf of the Claxons, to find her what she
+professed to be.
+
+“You must think,” he said, laughing, “that we are over-particular; but
+the fact is that we value Clementina rather highly, and we wish to be
+sure that your hospitable offer will be for her real good.”
+
+“Of cou'se,” said Mrs. Lander. “I should be just so myself abort her.”
+
+“I don't know,” he continued, “that I've ever said how much we think of
+her, Mrs. Richling and I, but this seems a good opportunity, as she is
+not present.
+
+“She is not perfect, but she comes as near being a thoroughly good girl
+as she can without knowing it. She has a great deal of common-sense, and
+we all want her to have the best chance.”
+
+“Well, that's just the way I feel about her, and that's just what I mean
+to give her,” said Mrs. Lander.
+
+“I am not sure that I make myself quite clear,” said the rector. “I
+mean, a chance to prove how useful and helpful she can be. Do you think
+you can make life hard for her occasionally? Can you be peevish and
+exacting, and unreasonable? Can you do something to make her value
+superfluity and luxury at their true worth?”
+
+Mrs. Lander looked a little alarmed and a little offended. “I don't know
+as I undastand what you mean, exactly,” she said, frowning rather with
+perplexity than resentment. “But the child sha'n't have a care, and her
+own motha couldn't be betta to her than me. There a'n't anything money
+can buy that she sha'n't have, if she wants it, and all I'll ask of her
+is 't she'll enjoy herself as much as she knows how. I want her with me
+because I should love to have her round; and we did from the very fust
+minute she spoke, Mr. Lander and me, both. She shall have her own money,
+and spend it for anything she pleases, and she needn't do a stitch o'
+work from mohnin' till night. But if you're afraid I shall put upon
+her.”
+
+“No, no,” said the rector, and he threw back his head with a laugh.
+
+When it was all arranged, a few days later, after the verification of
+certain of Mrs. Lander's references by letters to Boston, he said to
+Clementina's father and mother, “There's only one danger, now, and that
+is that she will spoil Clementina; but there's a reasonable hope that
+she won't know how.” He found the Claxons struggling with a fresh
+misgiving, which Claxon expressed. “The way I look at it is like this. I
+don't want that woman should eva think Clem was after her money. On the
+face of it there a'n't very much to her that would make anybody think
+but what we was after it; and I should want it pootty well undastood
+that we wa'n't that kind. But I don't seem to see any way of tellin'
+her.”
+
+“No,” said the rector, with a sympathetic twinkle, “that would be
+difficult.”
+
+“It's plain to be seen,” Mrs. Claxon interposed, “that she thinks a good
+deal of her money; and I d' know but what she'd think she was doin' Clem
+most too much of a favor anyway. If it can't be a puffectly even thing,
+all round, I d' know as I should want it to be at all.”
+
+“You're quite right, Mrs. Claxon, quite right. But I believe Mrs. Lander
+may be safely left to look out for her own interests. After all, she has
+merely asked Clementina to pass the winter with her. It will be a good
+opportunity for her to see something of the world; and perhaps it may
+bring her the chance of placing herself in life. We have got to consider
+these things with reference to a young girl.”
+
+Mrs. Claxon said, “Of cou'se,” but Claxon did not assent so readily.
+
+“I don't feel as if I should want Clem to look at it in that light. If
+the chance don't come to her, I don't want she should go huntin' round
+for it.”
+
+“I thoroughly agree with you,” said the rector. “But I was thinking that
+there was not only no chance worthy of her in Middlemount, but there is
+no chance at all.”
+
+“I guess that's so,” Claxon owned with a laugh. “Well, I guess we can
+leave it to Clem to do what's right and proper everyway. As you say,
+she's got lots of sense.”
+
+From that moment he emptied his mind of care concerning the matter; but
+husband and wife are never both quite free of care on the same point of
+common interest, and Mrs. Claxon assumed more and more of the anxieties
+which he had abandoned. She fretted under the load, and expressed an
+exasperated tenderness for Clementina when the girl seemed forgetful of
+any of the little steps to be taken before the great one in getting her
+clothes ready for leaving home. She said finally that she presumed they
+were doing a wild thing, and that it looked crazier and crazier the
+more she thought of it; but all was, if Clem didn't like, she could
+come home. By this time her husband was in something of that insensate
+eagerness to have the affair over that people feel in a house where
+there is a funeral.
+
+At the station, when Clementina started for Boston with Mrs. Lander, her
+father and mother, with the rector and his wife, came to see her off.
+Other friends mistakenly made themselves of the party, and kept her
+talking vacuities when her heart was full, till the train drew up.
+Her father went with her into the parlor car, where the porter of the
+Middlemount House set down Mrs. Lander's hand baggage and took the final
+fee she thrust upon him. When Claxon came out he was not so satisfactory
+about the car as he might have been to his wife, who had never been
+inside a parlor car, and who had remained proudly in the background,
+where she could not see into it from the outside. He said that he had
+felt so bad about Clem that he did not notice what the car was like. But
+he was able to report that she looked as well as any of the folks in
+it, and that, if there were any better dressed, he did not see them. He
+owned that she cried some, when he said good-bye to her.
+
+“I guess,” said his wife, grimly, “we're a passel o' fools to let her
+go. Even if she don't like, the'a, with that crazy-head, she won't be
+the same Clem when she comes back.”
+
+They were too heavy-hearted to dispute much, and were mostly silent as
+they drove home behind Claxon's self-broken colt: a creature that had
+taken voluntarily to harness almost from its birth, and was an example
+to its kind in sobriety and industry.
+
+The children ran out from the house to meet them, with a story of having
+seen Clem at a point in the woods where the train always slowed up
+before a crossing, and where they had all gone to wait for her. She had
+seen them through the car-window, and had come out on the car platform,
+and waved her handkerchief, as she passed, and called something to them,
+but they could not hear what it was, they were all cheering so.
+
+At this their mother broke down, and went crying into the house. Not to
+have had the last words of the child whom she should never see the same
+again if she ever saw her at all, was more, she said, than heart could
+bear.
+
+The rector's wife arrived home with her husband in a mood of mounting
+hopefulness, which soared to tops commanding a view of perhaps more of
+this world's kingdoms than a clergyman's wife ought ever to see, even
+for another. She decided that Clementina's chances of making a splendid
+match, somewhere, were about of the nature of certainties, and she
+contended that she would adorn any station, with experience, and with
+her native tact, especially if it were a very high station in Europe,
+where Mrs. Lander would now be sure to take her. If she did not take her
+to Europe, however, she would be sure to leave her all her money, and
+this would serve the same end, though more indirectly.
+
+Mr. Richling scoffed at this ideal of Clementina's future with a
+contempt which was as little becoming to his cloth. He made his wife
+reflect that, with all her inherent grace and charm, Clementina was an
+ignorant little country girl, who had neither the hardness of heart nor
+the greediness of soul, which gets people on in the world, and repair
+for them the disadvantages of birth and education. He represented that
+even if favorable chances for success in society showed themselves to
+the girl, the intense and inexpugnable vulgarity of Mrs. Lander would
+spoil them; and he was glad of this, he said, for he believed that the
+best thing which could happen to the child would be to come home as
+sweet and good as she had gone away; he added this was what they ought
+both to pray for.
+
+His wife admitted this, but she retorted by asking if he thought such a
+thing was possible, and he was obliged to own that it was not possible.
+He marred the effect of his concession by subjoining that it was no more
+possible than her making a brilliant and triumphant social figure in
+society, either at home or in Europe.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+So far from embarking at once for Europe, Mrs. Lander went to that
+hotel in a suburb of Boston, where she had the habit of passing the late
+autumn months, in order to fortify herself for the climate of the early
+winter months in the city. She was a little puzzled how to provide for
+Clementina, with respect to herself, but she decided that the best thing
+would be to have her sleep in a room opening out of her own, with a
+folding bed in it, so that it could be used as a sort of parlor for both
+of them during the day, and be within easy reach, for conversation, at
+all times.
+
+On her part, Clementina began by looking after Mrs. Lander's comforts,
+large and little, like a daughter, to her own conception and to that of
+Mrs. Lander, but to other eyes, like a servant. Mrs. Lander shyly shrank
+from acquaintance among the other ladies, and in the absence of this,
+she could not introduce Clementina, who went down to an early breakfast
+alone, and sat apart with her at lunch and dinner, ministering to her in
+public as she did in private. She ran back to their rooms to fetch her
+shawl, or her handkerchief, or whichever drops or powders she happened
+to be taking with her meals, and adjusted with closer care the hassock
+which the head waiter had officially placed at her feet. They seldom sat
+in the parlor where the ladies met, after dinner; they talked only to
+each other; and there, as elsewhere, the girl kept her filial care of
+the old woman. The question of her relation to Mrs. Lander became so
+pressing among several of the guests that, after Clementina had watched
+over the banisters, with throbbing heart and feet, a little dance one
+night which the other girls had got up among themselves, and had fled
+back to her room at the approach of one of the kindlier and bolder of
+them, the landlord felt forced to learn from Mrs. Lander how Miss Claxon
+was to be regarded. He managed delicately, by saying he would give the
+Sunday paper she had ordered to her nurse, “Or, I beg your pardon,”
+ he added, as if he had made a mistake. “Why, she a'n't my nuhse,” Mrs.
+Lander explained, simply, neither annoyed nor amused; “she's just a
+young lady that's visiting me, as you may say,” and this put an end
+to the misgiving among the ladies. But it suggested something to Mrs.
+Lander, and a few days afterwards, when they came out from Boston where
+they had been shopping, and she had been lavishing a bewildering waste
+of gloves, hats, shoes, capes and gowns upon Clementina, she said, “I'll
+tell you what. We've got to have a maid.”
+
+“A maid?” cried the girl.
+
+“It isn't me, or my things I want her for,” said Mrs. Lander. “It's you
+and these dresses of youas. I presume you could look afta them, come to
+give youa mind to it; but I don't want to have you tied up to a lot of
+clothes; and I presume we should find her a comfo't in moa ways than
+one, both of us. I don't know what we shall want her to do, exactly; but
+I guess she will, if she undastands her business, and I want you should
+go in with me, to-morror, and find one. I'll speak to some of the
+ladies, and find out whe's the best place to go, and we'll get the best
+there is.”
+
+A lady whom Mrs. Lander spoke to entered into the affair with zeal born
+of a lurking sense of the wrong she had helped do Clementina in the
+common doubt whether she was not herself Mrs. Lander's maid. She offered
+to go into Boston with them to an intelligence office, where you could
+get nice girls of all kinds; but she ended by giving Mrs. Lander the
+address, and instructions as to what she was to require in a maid.
+She was chiefly to get an English maid, if at all possible, for the
+qualifications would more or less naturally follow from her nationality.
+There proved to be no English maid, but there was a Swedish one who had
+received a rigid training in an English family living on the Continent,
+and had come immediately from that service to seek her first place in
+America. The manager of the office pronounced her character, as set down
+in writing, faultless, and Mrs. Lander engaged her. “You want to look
+afta this young lady,” she said, indicating Clementina. “I can look
+afta myself,” but Ellida took charge of them both on the train out from
+Boston with prompt intelligence.
+
+“We got to get used to it, I guess,” Mrs. Lander confided at the first
+chance of whispering to Clementina.
+
+Within a month after washing the faces and combing the hair of all her
+brothers and sisters who would suffer it at her hands, Clementina's
+own head was under the brush of a lady's maid, who was of as great a
+discreetness in her own way as Clementina herself. She supplied the
+defects of Mrs. Lander's elementary habits by simply asking if she
+should get this thing and that thing for the toilet, without criticising
+its absence,--and then asking whether she should get the same things for
+her young lady. She appeared to let Mrs. Lander decide between having
+her brushes in ivory or silver, but there was really no choice for her,
+and they came in silver. She knew not only her own place, but the places
+of her two ladies, and she presently had them in such training that they
+were as proficient in what they might and might not do for themselves
+and for each other, as if making these distinctions were the custom of
+their lives.
+
+Their hearts would both have gone out to Ellida, but Ellida kept them at
+a distance with the smooth respectfulness of the iron hand in the
+glove of velvet; and Clementina first learned from her to imagine the
+impassable gulf between mistress and maid.
+
+At the end of her month she gave them, out of a clear sky, a week's
+warning. She professed no grievance, and was not moved by Mrs. Lander's
+appeal to say what wages she wanted. She would only say that she was
+going to take a place an Commonwealth Avenue, where a friend of hers was
+living, and when the week was up, she went, and left her late mistresses
+feeling rather blank. “I presume we shall have to get anotha,” said Mrs.
+Lander.
+
+“Oh, not right away!” Clementina pleaded.
+
+“Well, not right away,” Mrs. Lander assented; and provisionally they
+each took the other into her keeping, and were much freer and happier
+together.
+
+Soon after Clementina was startled one morning, as she was going in to
+breakfast, by seeing Mr. Fane at the clerk's desk. He did not see her;
+he was looking down at the hotel register, to compute the bill of a
+departing guest; but when she passed out she found him watching for her,
+with some letters.
+
+“I didn't know you were with us,” he said, with his pensive smile, “till
+I found your letters here, addressed to Mrs. Lander's care; and then I
+put two and two together. It only shows how small the world is, don't
+you think so? I've just got back from my vacation; I prefer to take
+it in the fall of the year, because it's so much pleasanter to travel,
+then. I suppose you didn't know I was here?”
+
+“No, I didn't,” said Clementina. “I never dreamed of such a thing.”
+
+“To be sure; why should you?” Fane reflected. “I've been here ever since
+last spring. But I'll say this, Miss Claxon, that if it's the least
+unpleasant to you, or the least disagreeable, or awakens any kind of
+associations--”
+
+“Oh, no!” Clementina protested, and Fane was spared the pain of saying
+what he would do if it were.
+
+He bowed, and she said sweetly, “It's pleasant to meet any one I've seen
+before. I suppose you don't know how much it's changed at Middlemount
+since you we' e thea.” Fane answered blankly, while he felt in his
+breast pocket, Oh, he presumed so; and she added: “Ha'dly any of the
+same guests came back this summer, and they had more in July than they
+had in August, Mrs. Atwell said. Mr. Mahtin, the chef, is gone, and
+newly all the help is different.”
+
+Fane kept feeling in one pocket and then slapped himself over the other
+pockets. “No,” he said, “I haven't got it with me. I must have left it
+in my room. I just received a letter from Frank--Mr. Gregory, you know,
+I always call him Frank--and I thought I had it with me. He was asking
+about Middlemount; and I wanted to read you what he said. But I'll find
+it upstairs. He's out of college, now, and he's begun his studies in the
+divinity school. He's at Andover. I don't know what to make of Frank,
+oftentimes,” the clerk continued, confidentially. “I tell him he's a
+kind of a survival, in religion; he's so aesthetic.” It seemed to
+Fane that he had not meant aesthetic, exactly, but he could not ask
+Clementina what the word was. He went on to say, “He's a grand good
+fellow, Frank is, but he don't make enough allowance for human nature.
+He's more like one of those old fashioned orthodox. I go in for having a
+good time, so long as you don't do anybody else any hurt.”
+
+He left her, and went to receive the commands of a lady who was leaning
+over the desk, and saying severely, “My mail, if you please,” and
+Clementina could not wait for him to come back; she had to go to Mrs.
+Lander, and get her ready for breakfast; Ellida had taught Mrs. Lander a
+luxury of helplessness in which she persisted after the maid's help was
+withdrawn.
+
+Clementina went about the whole day with the wonder what Gregory had
+said about Middlemount filling her mind. It must have had something to
+do with her; he could not have forgotten the words he had asked her to
+forget. She remembered them now with a curiosity, which had no rancor in
+it, to know why he really took them back. She had never blamed him, and
+she had outlived the hurt she had felt at not hearing from him. But she
+had never lost the hope of hearing from him, or rather the expectation,
+and now she found that she was eager for his message; she decided that
+it must be something like a message, although it could not be anything
+direct. No one else had come to his place in her fancy, and she was
+willing to try what they would think of each other now, to measure her
+own obligation to the past by a knowledge of his. There was scarcely
+more than this in her heart when she allowed herself to drift near
+Fane's place that night, that he might speak to her, and tell her what
+Gregory had said. But he had apparently forgotten about his letter, and
+only wished to talk about himself. He wished to analyze himself, to tell
+her what sort of person he was. He dealt impartially with the subject;
+he did not spare some faults of his; and after a week, he proposed a
+correspondence with her, in a letter of carefully studied spelling, as a
+means of mutual improvement as well as further acquaintance.
+
+It cost Clementina a good deal of trouble to answer him as she wished
+and not hurt his feelings. She declined in terms she thought so cold
+that they must offend him beyond the point of speaking to her again; but
+he sought her out, as soon after as he could, and thanked her for her
+kindness, and begged her pardon. He said he knew that she was a very
+busy person, with all the lessons she was taking, and that she had no
+time for carrying on a correspondence. He regretted that he could not
+write French, because then the correspondence would have been good
+practice for her. Clementina had begun taking French lessons, of a
+teacher who came out from Boston. She lunched three times a week with
+her and Mrs. Lander, and spoke the language with Clementina, whose
+accent she praised for its purity; purity of accent was characteristic
+of all this lady's pupils; but what was really extraordinary in
+Mademoiselle Claxon was her sense of grammatical structure; she wrote
+the language even more perfectly than she spoke it; but beautifully, but
+wonderfully; her exercises were something marvellous.
+
+Mrs. Lander would have liked Clementina to take all the lessons that
+she heard any of the other young ladies in the hotel were taking. One of
+them went in town every day, and studied drawing at an art-school, and
+she wanted Clementina to do that, too. But Clementina would not do that;
+she had tried often enough at home, when her brother Jim was drawing,
+and her father was designing the patterns of his woodwork; she knew that
+she never could do it, and the time would be wasted. She decided against
+piano lessons and singing lessons, too; she did not care for either, and
+she pleaded that it would be a waste to study them; but she suggested
+dancing lessons, and her gift for dancing won greater praise, and
+perhaps sincerer, than her accent won from Mademoiselle Blanc, though
+Mrs. Lander said that she would not have believed any one could be
+more complimentary. She learned the new steps and figures in all the
+fashionable dances; she mastered some fancy dances, which society was
+then beginning to borrow from the stage; and she gave these before Mrs.
+Lander with a success which she felt herself.
+
+“I believe I could teach dancing,” she said.
+
+“Well, you won't eve' haf to, child,” returned Mrs. Lander, with an eye
+on the side of the case that seldom escaped her.
+
+In spite of his wish to respect these preoccupations, Fane could
+not keep from offering Clementina attentions, which took the form of
+persecution when they changed from flowers for Mrs. Lander's table to
+letters for herself. He apologized for his letters whenever he met her;
+but at last one of them came to her before breakfast with a special
+delivery stamp from Boston. He had withdrawn to the city to write it,
+and he said that if she could not make him a favorable answer, he should
+not come back to Woodlake.
+
+She had to show this letter to Mrs. Lander, who asked: “You want he
+should come back?”
+
+“No, indeed! I don't want eva to see him again.”
+
+“Well, then, I guess you'll know how to tell him so.”
+
+The girl went into her own room to write, and when she brought her
+answer to show it to Mrs. Lander she found her in frowning thought.
+“I don't know but you'll have to go back and write it all over again,
+Clementina,” she said, “if you've told him not to come. I've been
+thinkin', if you don't want to have anything to do with him, we betta go
+ouaselves.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Clementina, “that's what I've said.”
+
+“You have? Well, the witch is in it! How came you to--”
+
+“I just wanted to talk with you about it. But I thought maybe you'd like
+to go. Or at least I should. I should like to go home, Mrs. Landa.”
+
+“Home!” retorted Mrs. Lander. “The'e's plenty of places where you can be
+safe from the fella besides home, though I'll take you back the'a this
+minute if you say so. But you needn't to feel wo'ked up about it.”
+
+“Oh, I'm not,” said Clementina, but with a gulp which betrayed her
+nervousness.
+
+“I did think,” Mrs. Lander went on, “that I should go into the Vonndome,
+for December and January, but just as likely as not he'd come pesterin'
+the'a, too, and I wouldn't go, now, if you was to give me the whole city
+of Boston. Why shouldn't we go to Florida?”
+
+When Mrs. Lander had once imagined the move, the nomadic impulse mounted
+irresistably in her. She spoke of hotels in the South, where they could
+renew the summer, and she mapped out a campaign which she put into
+instant action so far as to advance upon New York.
+
+
+
+
+Part 2.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+Mrs. Lander went to a hotel in New York where she had been in the habit
+of staying with her husband, on their way South or North. The clerk knew
+her, and shook hands with her across the register, and said she could
+have her old rooms if she wanted them; the bell-boy who took up their
+hand-baggage recalled himself to her; the elevator-boy welcomed her with
+a smile of remembrance.
+
+Since she was already up, from coming off the sleeping-car, she had no
+excuse for not going to breakfast like other people; and she went with
+Clementina to the dining-room, where the head-waiter, who found them
+places, spoke with an outlandish accent, and the waiter who served
+them had a parlance that seemed superficially English, but was inwardly
+something else; there was even a touch in the cooking of the familiar
+dishes, that needed translation for the girl's inexperienced palate.
+She was finding a refuge in the strangeness of everything, when she was
+startled by the sound of a familiar voice calling, “Clementina Claxon!
+Well, I was sure all along it was you, and I determined I wouldn't stand
+it another minute. Why, child, how you have changed! Why, I declare you
+are quite a woman! When did you come? How pretty you are!” Mrs. Milray
+took Clementina in her arms and kissed her in proof of her admiration
+before the whole breakfast room. She was very nice to Mrs. Lander, too,
+who, when Clementina introduced them, made haste to say that Clementina
+was there on a visit with her. Mrs. Milray answered that she envied her
+such a visitor as Miss Claxon, and protested that she should steal her
+away for a visit to herself, if Mr. Milray was not so much in love with
+her that it made her jealous. “Mr. Milray has to have his breakfast in
+his room,” she explained to Clementina. “He's not been so well, since he
+lost his mother. Yes,” she said, with decorous solemnity, “I'm still in
+mourning for her,” and Clementina saw that she was in a tempered black.
+“She died last year, and now I'm taking Mr. Milray abroad to see if it
+won't cheer him up a little. Are you going South for the winter?” she
+inquired, politely, of Mrs. Lander. “I wish I was going,” she said, when
+Mrs. Lander guessed they should go, later on. “Well, you must come in
+and see me all you can, Clementina; and I shall have the pleasure of
+calling upon you,” she added to Mrs. Lander with state that was lost in
+the soubrette-like volatility of her flight from them the next moment.
+“Goodness, I forgot all about Mr. Milray's breakfast!” She ran back to
+the table she had left on the other side of the room.
+
+“Who is that, Clementina?” asked Mrs. Lander, on their way to their
+rooms. Clementina explained as well as she could, and Mrs. Lander summed
+up her feeling in the verdict, “Well, she's a lady, if ever I saw a
+lady; and you don't see many of 'em, nowadays.”
+
+The girl remembered how Mrs. Milray had once before seemed very fond of
+her, and had afterwards forgotten the pretty promises and professions
+she had made her. But she went with Mrs. Lander to see her, and she saw
+Mr. Milray, too, for a little while. He seemed glad of their meeting,
+but still depressed by the bereavement which Mrs. Milray supported
+almost with gayety. When he left them she explained that he was a good
+deal away from her, with his family, as she approved of his being,
+though she had apparently no wish to join him in all the steps of the
+reconciliation which the mother's death had brought about among them.
+Sometimes his sisters came to the hotel to see her, but she amused
+herself perfectly without them, and she gave much more of her leisure to
+Clementina and Mrs. Lander.
+
+She soon knew the whole history of the relation between them, and the
+first time that Clementina found her alone with Mrs. Lander she could
+have divined that Mrs. Lander had been telling her of the Fane affair,
+even if Mrs. Milray had not at once called out to her, “I know all about
+it; and I'll tell you what, Clementina, I'm going to take you over
+with me and marry you to an English Duke. Mrs. Lander and I have been
+planning it all out, and I'm going to send down to the steamer office,
+and engage your passage. It's all settled!”
+
+When she was gone, Mrs. Lander asked, “What do you s'pose your folks
+would say to your goin' to Europe, anyway, Clementina?” as if the matter
+had been already debated between them.
+
+Clementina hesitated. “I should want to be su'a, Mrs. Milray really
+wanted me to go ova with her.”
+
+“Why, didn't you hear her say so?” demanded Mrs. Lander.
+
+“Yes,” sighed Clementina. “Mrs. Lander, I think Mrs. Milray means what
+she says, at the time, but she is one that seems to forget.”
+
+“She thinks the wo'ld of you,” Mrs. Lander urged.
+
+“She was very nice to me that summer at Middlemount. I guess maybe she
+would like to have us go with her,” the girl relented.
+
+“I guess we'll wait and see,” said Mrs. Lander. “I shouldn't want she
+should change her mind when it was too late, as you say.” They were
+both silent for a time, and then Mrs. Lander resumed, “But I presume she
+ha'n't got the only steams that's crossin'. What should you say about
+goin' over on some otha steams? I been South a good many wintas, and I
+should feel kind of lonesome goin' round to the places where I been with
+Mr. Landa. I felt it since I been here in this hotel, some, and I can't
+seem to want to go ova the same ground again, well, not right away.”
+
+Clementina said, “Why, of cou'se, Mrs. Landa.”
+
+“Should you be willin',” asked Mrs. Lander, after another little pause,
+“if your folks was willin', to go ova the'a, to some of them European
+countries, to spend the winta?”
+
+“Oh yes, indeed!” said Clementina.
+
+They discussed the matter in one of the full talks they both liked. At
+the end Mrs. Lander said, “Well, I guess you betta write home, and ask
+your motha whetha you can go, so't if we take the notion we can go any
+time. Tell her to telegraph, if she'll let you, and do write all the ifs
+and ands, so't she'll know just how to answa, without havin' to have you
+write again.”
+
+That evening Mrs. Milray came to their table from where she had been
+dining alone, and asked in banter: “Well, have you made up your minds to
+go over with me?”
+
+Mrs. Lander said bluntly, “We can't ha'dly believe you really want us
+to, Mrs. Milray.”
+
+“I don't want you? Who put such an idea into your head! Oh, I know!” She
+threatened Clementina with the door-key, which she was carrying in her
+hand. “It was you, was it? What an artful, suspicious thing! What's got
+into you, child? Do you hate me?” She did not give Clementina time to
+protest. “Well, now, I can just tell you I do want you, and I'll be
+quite heart-broken if you don't come.”
+
+“Well, she wrote to her friends this mohning,” Mrs. Lander said, “but I
+guess she won't git an answa in time for youa steamer, even if they do
+let her go.”
+
+“Oh, yes she will,” Mrs. Milray protested. “It's all right, now; you've
+got to go, and there's no use trying to get out of it.”
+
+She came to them whenever she could find them in the dining-room, and
+she knocked daily at their door till she knew that Clementina had heard
+from home. The girl's mother wrote, without a punctuation mark in her
+letter, but with a great deal of sense, that such a thing as her going
+to Europe could not be settled by telegraph. She did not think it worth
+while to report all the facts of a consultation with the rector which
+they had held upon getting Clementina's request, and which had renewed
+all the original question of her relations with Mrs. Lander in an
+intensified form. He had disposed of this upon much the same terms as
+before; and they had yielded more readily because the experiment had so
+far succeeded. Clementina had apparently no complaint to make of Mrs.
+Lander; she was eager to go, and the rector and his wife, who had been
+invited to be of the council, were both of the opinion that a course of
+European travel would be of the greatest advantage to the girl, if she
+wished to fit herself for teaching. It was an opportunity that they
+must not think of throwing away. If Mrs. Lander went to Florence, as
+it seemed from Clementina's letter she thought of doing, the girl would
+pass a delightful winter in study of one of the most interesting cities
+in the world, and she would learn things which would enable her to do
+better for herself when she came home than she could ever hope to do
+otherwise. She might never marry, Mr. Richling suggested, and it was
+only right and fair that she should be equipped with as much culture as
+possible for the struggle of life; Mrs. Richling agreed with this rather
+vague theory, but she was sure that Clementina would get married to
+greater advantage in Florence than anywhere else. They neither of them
+really knew anything at first hand about Florence; the rector's opinion
+was grounded on the thought of the joy that a sojourn in Italy would
+have been to him; his wife derived her hope of a Florentine marriage for
+Clementina from several romances in which love and travel had gone hand
+in hand, to the lasting credit of triumphant American girlhood.
+
+The Claxons were not able to enter into their view of the case, but if
+Mrs. Lander wanted to go to Florence instead of Florida they did not see
+why Clementina should not go with her to one place as well as the other.
+They were not without a sense of flattery from the fact that their
+daughter was going to Europe; but they put that as far from them as they
+could, the mother severely and the father ironically, as something too
+silly, and they tried not to let it weigh with them in making up their
+mind, but to consider only Clementina's best good, and not even
+to regard her pleasure. Her mother put before her the most crucial
+questions she could think of, in her letter, and then gave her full
+leave from her father as well as herself to go if she wished.
+
+Clementina had rather it had been too late to go with the Milrays, but
+she felt bound to own her decision when she reached it; and Mrs. Milray,
+whatever her real wish was, made it a point of honor to help get Mrs.
+Lander berths on her steamer. It did not require much effort; there
+are plenty of berths for the latest-comers on a winter passage, and
+Clementina found herself the fellow passenger of Mrs. Milray.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Lander could make her way to her state-room, she
+got into her berth, and began to take the different remedies for
+sea-sickness which she had brought with her. Mrs. Milray said that was
+nice, and that now she and Clementina could have a good time. But before
+it came to that she had taken pity on a number of lonely young men whom
+she found on board. She cheered them up by walking round the ship with
+them; but if any of them continued dull in spite of this, she dropped
+him, and took another; and before she had been two days out she had
+gone through with nearly all the lonely young men on the list of cabin
+passengers. She introduced some of them to Clementina, but at such times
+as she had them in charge; and for the most part she left her to Milray.
+Once, as the girl sat beside him in her steamer-chair, Mrs. Milray shed
+a wrap on his knees in whirring by on the arm of one of her young men,
+with some laughed and shouted charge about it.
+
+“What did she say?” he asked Clementina, slanting the down-pulled brim
+of his soft hat purblindly toward her.
+
+She said she had not understood, and then Milray asked, “What sort of
+person is that Boston youth of Mrs. Milray's? Is he a donkey or a lamb?”
+
+Clementina said ingenuously, “Oh, she's walking with that English
+gentleman now--that lo'd.”
+
+“Ah, yes,” said Milray. “He's not very much to look at, I hear.”
+
+“Well, not very much,” Clementina admitted; she did not like to talk
+against people.
+
+“Lords are sometimes disappointing, Clementina,” Milray said, “but
+then, so are other great men. I've seen politicians on our side who were
+disappointing, and there are clergymen and gamblers who don't look
+it.” He laughed sadly. “That's the way people talk who are a little
+disappointing themselves. I hope you don't expect too much of yourself,
+Clementina?”
+
+“I don't know what you mean,” she said, stiffening with a suspicion that
+he might be going to make fun of her.
+
+He laughed more gayly. “Well, I mean we must hold the other fellows up
+to their duty, or we can't do our own. We need their example. Charity
+may begin at home, but duty certainly begins abroad.” He went on, as
+if it were a branch of the same inquiry, “Did you ever meet my sisters?
+They came to the hotel in New York to see Mrs. Milray.”
+
+“Yes, I was in the room once when they came in.”
+
+“Did you like them?”
+
+“Yes--I sca'cely spoke to them--I only stayed a moment.”
+
+“Would you like to see any more of the family?”
+
+“Why, of cou'se!” Clementina was amused at his asking, but he seemed in
+earnest.
+
+“One of my sisters lives in Florence, and Mrs. Milray says you think of
+going there, too.”
+
+“Mrs. Landa thought it would be a good place to spend the winter. Is it
+a pleasant place?”
+
+“Oh, delightful! Do you know much about Italy?”
+
+“Not very much, I don't believe.”
+
+“Well, my sister has lived a good while in Florence. I should like to
+give you a letter to her.”
+
+“Oh, thank you!” said Clementina.
+
+Milray smiled at her spare acknowledgment, but inquired gravely: “What
+do you expect to do in Florence?”
+
+“Why, I presume, whateva Mrs. Landa wants to do.”
+
+“Do you think Mrs. Lander will want to go into society?”
+
+This question had not occurred to Clementina. “I don't believe she
+will,” she said, thoughtfully.
+
+“Shall you?”
+
+Clementina laughed, “Why, do you think,” she ventured, “that society
+would want me to?”
+
+“Yes, I think it would, if you're as charming as you've tried to make me
+believe. Oh, I don't mean, to your own knowledge; but some people have
+ways of being charming without knowing it. If Mrs. Lander isn't going
+into society, and there should be a way found for you to go, don't
+refuse, will you?”
+
+“I shall wait and see if I'm asked, fust.”
+
+“Yes, that will be best,” said Milray. “But I shall give you a letter to
+my sister. She and I used to be famous cronies, and we went to a great
+many parties together when we were young people. We thought the world
+was a fine thing, then. But it changes.”
+
+He fell into a muse, and they were both sitting quite silent when Mrs.
+Milray came round the corner of the music room in the course of her
+twentieth or thirtieth compass of the deck, and introduced her lord to
+her husband and to Clementina. He promptly ignored Milray, and devoted
+himself to the girl, leaning over her with his hand against the bulkhead
+behind her and talking down upon her.
+
+Lord Lioncourt must have been about thirty, but he had the heated and
+broken complexion of a man who has taken more than is good for him in
+twice that number of years. This was one of the wrongs nature had done
+him in apparent resentment of the social advantages he was born to, for
+he was rather abstemious, as Englishmen go. He looked a very shy person
+till he spoke, and then you found that he was not in the least shy. He
+looked so English that you would have expected a strong English accent
+of him, but his speech was more that of an American, without the
+nasality. This was not apparently because he had been much in America;
+he was returning from his first visit to the States, which had been
+spent chiefly in the Territories; after a brief interval of Newport
+he had preferred the West; he liked rather to hunt than to be hunted,
+though even in the West his main business had been to kill time, which
+he found more plentiful there than other game. The natives, everywhere,
+were much the same thing to him; if he distinguished it was in favor
+of those who did not suppose themselves cultivated. If again he had a
+choice it was for the females; they seemed to him more amusing than the
+males, who struck him as having an exaggerated reputation for humor. He
+did not care much for Clementina's past, as he knew it from Mrs. Milray,
+and if it did not touch his fancy, it certainly did not offend his
+taste. A real artistocracy is above social prejudice, when it will; he
+had known some of his order choose the mothers of their heirs from
+the music halls, and when it came to a question of distinctions among
+Americans, he could not feel them. They might be richer or poorer; but
+they could not be more patrician or more plebeian.
+
+The passengers, he told Clementina, were getting up, at this point
+of the ship's run, an entertainment for the benefit of the seaman's
+hospital in Liverpool, that well-known convention of ocean-travel, which
+is sure at some time or other, to enlist all the talent on board every
+English steamer in some sort of public appeal. He was not very clear how
+he came to be on the committee for drumming up talent for the occasion;
+his distinction seemed to have been conferred by a popular vote in the
+smoking room, as nearly as he could make out; but here he was, and he
+was counting upon Miss Claxon to help him out. He said Mrs. Milray had
+told him about that charming affair they had got up in the mountains,
+and he was sure they could have something of the kind again. “Perhaps
+not a coaching party; that mightn't be so easy to manage at sea. But
+isn't there something else--some tableaux or something? If we couldn't
+have the months of the year we might have the points of the compass, and
+you could take your choice.”
+
+He tried to get something out of the notion, but nothing came of it that
+Mrs. Milray thought possible. She said, across her husband, on whose
+further side she had sunk into a chair, that they must have something
+very informal; everybody must do what they could, separately. “I know
+you can do anything you like, Clementina. Can't you play something, or
+sing?” At Clementina's look of utter denial, she added, desperately, “Or
+dance something?” A light came into the girl's face at which she caught.
+“I know you can dance something! Why, of course! Now, what is it?”
+
+Clementina smiled at her vehemence. “Why, it's nothing. And I don't know
+whether I should like to.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” urged Lord Lioncourt. “Such a good cause, you know.”
+
+“What is it?” Mrs. Milray insisted. “Is it something you could do
+alone?”
+
+“It's just a dance that I learned at Woodlake. The teacha said that all
+the young ladies we'e leaning it. It's a skut-dance--”
+
+“The very thing!” Mrs. Milray shouted. “It'll be the hit of the
+evening.”
+
+“But I've never done it before any one,” Clementina faltered.
+
+“They'll all be doing their turns,” the Englishman said. “Speaking, and
+singing, and playing.”
+
+Clementina felt herself giving way, and she pleaded in final reluctance,
+“But I haven't got a pleated skut in my steama trunk.”
+
+“No matter! We can manage that.” Mrs. Milray jumped to her feet and took
+Lord Lioncourt's arm. “Now we must go and drum up somebody else.” He
+did not seem eager to go, but he started. “Then that's all settled,” she
+shouted over her shoulder to Clementina.
+
+“No, no, Mrs. Milray!” Clementina called after her. “The ship tilts
+so--”
+
+“Nonsense! It's the smoothest run she ever made in December. And I'll
+engage to have the sea as steady as a rock for you. Remember, now,
+you've promised.”
+
+Mrs. Milray whirled her Englishman away, and left Clementina sitting
+beside her husband.
+
+“Did you want to dance for them, Clementina?” he asked.
+
+“I don't know,” she said, with the vague smile of one to whom a pleasant
+hope has occurred.
+
+“I thought perhaps you were letting Mrs. Milray bully you into it. She's
+a frightful tyrant.”
+
+“Oh, I guess I should like to do it, if you think it would be--nice.”
+
+“I dare say it will be the nicest thing at their ridiculous show.”
+ Milray laughed as if her willingness to do the dance had defeated a
+sentimental sympathy in him.
+
+“I don't believe it will be that,” said Clementina, beaming joyously.
+“But I guess I shall try it, if I can find the right kind of a dress.”
+
+“Is a pleated skirt absolutely necessary,” asked Milray, gravely.
+
+“I don't see how I could get on without it,” said Clementina.
+
+She was so serious still when she went down to her state-room that Mrs.
+Lander was distracted from her potential ailments to ask: “What is it,
+Clementina?”
+
+“Oh, nothing. Mrs. Milray has got me to say that I would do something at
+a concert they ah' going to have on the ship.” She explained, “It's that
+skut dance I learnt at Woodlake of Miss Wilson.”
+
+“Well, I guess if you're worryin' about that you needn't to.”
+
+“Oh, I'm not worrying about the dance. I was just thinking what I should
+wear. If I could only get at the trunks!”
+
+“It won't make any matte what you wear,” said Mrs. Lander. “It'll be the
+greatest thing; and if 't wa'n't for this sea-sickness that I have to
+keep fightin' off he'a, night and day, I should come up and see you
+myself. You ah' just lovely in that dance, Clementina.”
+
+“Do you think so, Mrs. Landa?” asked the girl, gratefully. “Well, Mr.
+Milray didn't seem to think that I need to have a pleated skut.
+Any rate, I'm going to look over my things, and see if I can't make
+something else do.”
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+The entertainment was to be the second night after that, and Mrs. Milray
+at first took the whole affair into her own hands. She was willing to
+let the others consult with her, but she made all the decisions, and she
+became so prepotent that she drove Lord Lioncourt to rebellion in the
+case of some theatrical people whom he wanted in the programme. He
+wished her to let them feel that they were favoring rather than favored,
+and she insisted that it should be quite the other way. She professed a
+scruple against having theatrical people in the programme at all, which
+she might not have felt if her own past had been different, and she
+spoke with an abhorrence of the stage which he could by no means
+tolerate in the case. She submitted with dignity when she could not help
+it. Perhaps she submitted with too much dignity. Her concession verged
+upon hauteur; and in her arrogant meekness she went back to another
+of her young men, whom she began to post again as the companion of her
+promenades.
+
+He had rather an anxious air in the enjoyment of the honor, but the
+Englishman seemed unconscious of its loss, or else he chose to ignore
+it. He frankly gave his leisure to Clementina, and she thought he was
+very pleasant. There was something different in his way from that of any
+of the other men she had met; something very natural and simple, a way
+of being easy in what he was, and not caring whether he was like others
+or not; he was not ashamed of being ignorant of anything he did not
+know, and she was able to instruct him on some points. He took her quite
+seriously when she told him about Middlemount, and how her family came
+to settle there, and then how she came to be going to Europe with
+Mrs. Lander. He said Mrs. Milray had spoken about it; but he had not
+understood quite how it was before; and he hoped Mrs. Lander was coming
+to the entertainment.
+
+He did not seem aware that Mrs. Milray was leaving the affair more and
+more to him. He went forward with it and was as amiable with her as she
+would allow. He was so amiable with everybody that he reconciled many
+true Americans to his leadership, who felt that as nearly all the
+passengers were Americans, the chief patron of the entertainment ought
+to have been some distinguished American. The want of an American who
+was very distinguished did something to pacify them; but the behavior of
+an English lord who put on no airs was the main agency. When the night
+came they filled the large music room of the 'Asia Minor', and stood
+about in front of the sofas and chairs so many deep that it was hard to
+see or hear through them.
+
+They each paid a shilling admittance; they were prepared to give
+munificently besides when the hat came round; and after the first burst
+of blundering from Lord Lioncourt, they led the magnanimous applause. He
+said he never minded making a bad speech in a good cause, and he made
+as bad a one as very well could be. He closed it by telling Mark Twain's
+whistling story so that those who knew it by heart missed the point; but
+that might have been because he hurried it, to get himself out of the
+way of the others following. When he had done, one of the most ardent of
+the Americans proposed three cheers for him.
+
+The actress whom he had secured in spite of Mrs. Milray appeared
+in woman's dress contrary to her inveterate professional habit, and
+followed him with great acceptance in her favorite variety-stage song;
+and then her husband gave imitations of Sir Henry Irving, and of Miss
+Maggie Kline in “T'row him down, McCloskey,” with a cockney accent. A
+frightened little girl, whose mother had volunteered her talent, gasped
+a ballad to her mother's accompaniment, and two young girls played a
+duet on the mandolin and guitar. A gentleman of cosmopolitan military
+tradition, who sold the pools in the smoking-room, and was the friend of
+all the men present, and the acquaintance of several, gave selections of
+his autobiography prefatory to bellowing in a deep bass voice, “They're
+hanging Danny Deaver,” and then a lady interpolated herself into the
+programme with a kindness which Lord Lioncourt acknowledged, in saying
+“The more the merrier,” and sang Bonnie Dundee, thumping the piano out
+of all proportion to her size and apparent strength.
+
+Some advances which Clementina had made for Mrs. Milray's help about the
+dress she should wear in her dance met with bewildering indifference,
+and she had fallen back upon her own devices. She did not think of
+taking back her promise, and she had come to look forward to her part
+with a happiness which the good weather and the even sway of the ship
+encouraged. But her pulses fluttered, as she glided into the music room,
+and sank into a chair next Mrs. Milray. She had on an accordion skirt
+which she had been able to get out of her trunk in the hold, and she
+felt that the glance of Mrs. Milray did not refuse it approval.
+
+“That will do nicely, Clementina,” she said. She added, in careless
+acknowledgement of her own failure to direct her choice, “I see you
+didn't need my help after all,” and the thorny point which Clementina
+felt in her praise was rankling, when Lord Lioncourt began to introduce
+her.
+
+He made rather a mess of it, but as soon as he came to an end of his
+well-meant blunders, she stood up and began her poses and paces. It was
+all very innocent, with something courageous as well as appealing. She
+had a kind of tender dignity in her dance, and the delicate beauty of
+her face translated itself into the grace of her movements. It was not
+impersonal; there was her own quality of sylvan, of elegant in it; but
+it was unconscious, and so far it was typical, it was classic; Mrs.
+Milray's Bostonian achieved a snub from her by saying it was like a
+Botticelli; and in fact it was merely the skirt-dance which society had
+borrowed from the stage at that period, leaving behind the footlights
+its more acrobatic phases, but keeping its pretty turns and bows and
+bends. Clementina did it not only with tender dignity, but when she
+was fairly launched in it, with a passion to which her sense of Mrs.
+Milray's strange unkindness lent defiance. The dance was still so new a
+thing then, that it had a surprise to which the girl's gentleness lent
+a curious charm, and it had some adventitious fascinations from the
+necessity she was in of weaving it in and out among the stationary
+armchairs and sofas which still further cramped the narrow space where
+she gave it. Her own delight in it shone from her smiling face, which
+was appealingly happy. Just before it should have ended, one of those
+wandering waves that roam the smoothest sea struck the ship, and
+Clementina caught herself skilfully from falling, and reeled to her
+seat, while the room rang with the applause and sympathetic laughter
+for the mischance she had baffled. There was a storm of encores, but
+Clementina called out, “The ship tilts so!” and her naivete won her
+another burst of favor, which was at its height when Lord Lioncourt had
+an inspiration.
+
+He jumped up and said, “Miss Claxon is going to oblige us with a little
+bit of dramatics, now, and I'm sure you'll all enjoy that quite as much
+as her beautiful dancing. She's going to take the principal part in the
+laughable after-piece of Passing round the Hat, and I hope the audience
+will--a--a--a--do the rest. She's consented on this occasion to use a
+hat--or cap, rather--of her own, the charming Tam O'Shanter in which
+we've all seen her, and--a--admired her about the ship for the week
+past.”
+
+He caught up the flat woolen steamer-cap which Clementina had left in
+her seat beside Mrs. Milray when she rose to dance, and held it aloft.
+Some one called out, “Chorus! For he's a jolly good fellow,” and led
+off in his praise. Lord Lioncourt shouted through the uproar the
+announcement that while Miss Claxon was taking up the collection, Mr.
+Ewins, of Boston, would sing one of the student songs of Cambridge--no!
+Harvard--University; the music being his own.
+
+Everyone wanted to make some joke or some compliment to Clementina
+about the cap which grew momently heavier under the sovereigns and
+half sovereigns, half crowns and half dollars, shillings, quarters,
+greenbacks and every fraction of English and American silver; and the
+actor who had given the imitations, made bold, as he said, to ask his
+lordship if the audience might not hope, before they dispersed, for
+something more from Miss Claxon. He was sure she could do something
+more; he for one would be glad of anything; and Clementina turned from
+putting her cap into Mrs. Milray's lap, to find Lord Lioncourt bowing
+at her elbow, and offering her his arm to lead her to the spot where she
+had stood in dancing.
+
+The joy of her triumph went to her head; she wished to retrieve herself
+from any shadow of defeat.
+
+She stood panting a moment, and then, if she had had the professional
+instinct, she would have given her admirers the surprise of something
+altogether different from what had pleased them before. That was what
+the actor would have done, but Clementina thought of how her dance had
+been brought to an untimely close by the rolling of the ship; she burned
+to do it all as she knew it, no matter how the sea behaved, and in
+another moment she struck into it again. This time the sea behaved
+perfectly, and the dance ended with just the swoop and swirl she had
+meant it to have at first. The spectators went generously wild over her;
+they cheered and clapped her, and crowded upon her to tell how lovely it
+was; but she escaped from them, and ran back to the place where she had
+left Mrs. Milray. She was not there, and Clementina's cap full of alms
+lay abandoned on the chair. Lord Lioncourt said he would take charge of
+the money, if she would lend him her cap to carry it in to the purser,
+and she made her way into the saloon. In a distant corner she saw Mrs.
+Milray with Mr. Ewins.
+
+She advanced in a vague dismay toward them, and as she came near Mrs.
+Milray said to Mr. Ewins, “I don't like this place. Let's go over
+yonder.” She rose and rushed him to the other end of the saloon.
+
+Lord Lioncourt came in looking about. “Ah, have you found her?” he
+asked, gayly. “There were twenty pounds in your cap, and two hundred
+dollars.”
+
+“Yes,” said Clementina, “she's over the'a.” She pointed, and then shrank
+and slipped away.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+At breakfast Mrs. Milray would not meet Clementina's eye; she talked to
+the people across the table in a loud, lively voice, and then suddenly
+rose, and swept past her out of the saloon.
+
+The girl did not see her again till Mrs. Milray came up on the promenade
+at the hour when people who have eaten too much breakfast begin to
+spoil their appetite for luncheon with the tea and bouillon of the
+deck-stewards. She looked fiercely about, and saw Clementina seated
+in her usual place, but with Lord Lioncourt in her own chair next
+her husband, and Ewins on foot before her. They were both talking to
+Clementina, whom Lord Lioncourt was accusing of being in low spirits
+unworthy of her last night's triumphs. He jumped up, and offered his
+place, “I've got your chair, Mrs. Milray.”
+
+“Oh, no,” she said, coldly, “I was just coming to look after Mr. Milray.
+But I see he's in good hands.”
+
+She turned away, as if to make the round of the deck, and Ewins hurried
+after her. He came back directly, and said that Mrs. Milray had gone
+into the library to write letters. He stayed, uneasily, trying to talk,
+but with the air of a man who has been snubbed, and has not got back his
+composure.
+
+Lord Lioncourt talked on until he had used up the incidents of the night
+before, and the probabilities of their getting into Queenstown before
+morning; then he and Mr. Ewins went to the smoking-room together, and
+Clementina was left alone with Milray.
+
+“Clementina,” he said, gently, “I don't see everything; but isn't there
+some trouble between you and Mrs. Milray?”
+
+“Why, I don't know what it can be,” answered the girl, with trembling
+lips. “I've been trying to find out, and I can't undastand it.”
+
+“Ah, those things are often very obscure,” said Milray, with a patient
+smile.
+
+Clementina wanted to ask him if Mrs. Milray had said anything to him
+about her, but she could not, and he did not speak again till he heard
+her stir in rising from her chair. Then he said, “I haven't forgotten
+that letter to my sister, Clementina. I will give it to you before we
+leave the steamer. Are you going to stay in Liverpool, over night, or
+shall you go up to London at once?”
+
+“I don't know. It will depend upon how Mrs. Landa feels.”
+
+“Well, we shall see each other again. Don't be worried.” He looked up at
+her with a smile, and he could not see how forlornly she returned it.
+
+As the day passed, Mrs. Milray's angry eyes seemed to search her out for
+scorn whenever Clementina found herself the centre of her last night's
+celebrity. Many people came up and spoke to her, at first with a certain
+expectation of knowingness in her, which her simplicity baffled. Then
+they either dropped her, and went away, or stayed and tried to make
+friends with her because of this; an elderly English clergyman and
+his wife were at first compassionately anxious about her, and then
+affectionately attentive to her in her obvious isolation. Clementina's
+simple-hearted response to their advances appeared to win while it
+puzzled them; and they seemed trying to divine her in the strange double
+character she wore to their more single civilization. The theatrical
+people thought none the worse of her for her simple-heartedness,
+apparently; they were both very sweet to her, and wanted her to promise
+to come and see them in their little box in St. John's Wood. Once,
+indeed, Clementina thought she saw relenting in Mrs. Milray's glance,
+but it hardened again as Lord Lioncourt and Mr. Ewins came up to her,
+and began to talk with her. She could not go to her chair beside
+Milray, for his wife was now keeping guard of him on the other side with
+unexampled devotion. Lord Lioncourt asked her to walk with him and she
+consented. She thought that Mr. Ewins would go and sit by Mrs. Milray,
+of course, but when she came round in her tour of the ship, Mrs. Milray
+was sitting alone beside her husband.
+
+After dinner she went to the library and got a book, but she could not
+read there; every chair was taken by people writing letters to send back
+from Queenstown in the morning; and she strayed into the ladies'
+sitting room, where no ladies seemed ever to sit, and lost herself in a
+miserable muse over her open page.
+
+Some one looked in at the door, and then advanced within and came
+straight to Clementina; she knew without looking up that it was Mrs.
+Milray. “I have been hunting for you, Miss Claxon,” she said, in a voice
+frostily fierce, and with a bearing furiously formal. “I have a letter
+to Miss Milray that my husband wished me to write for you, and give you
+with his compliments.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Clementina. She rose mechanically to her feet, and at
+the same time Mrs. Milray sat down.
+
+“You will find Miss Milray,” she continued, with the same glacial
+hauteur, “a very agreeable and cultivated lady.”
+
+Clementina said nothing; and Mrs. Milray added,
+
+“And I hope she may have the happiness of being more useful to you than
+I have.”
+
+“What do you mean, Mrs. Milray?” Clementina asked with unexpected spirit
+and courage.
+
+“I mean simply this, that I have not succeeded in putting you on your
+guard against your love of admiration--especially the admiration
+of gentlemen. A young girl can't be too careful how she accepts the
+attentions of gentlemen, and if she seems to invite them--”
+
+“Mrs. Milray!” cried Clementina. “How can you say such a thing to me?”
+
+“How? I shall have to be plain with you, I see. Perhaps I have not
+considered that, after all, you know nothing about life and are not
+to blame for things that a person born and bred in the world would
+understand from childhood. If you don't know already, I can tell you
+that the way you have behaved with Lord Lioncourt during the last two or
+three days, and the way you showed your pleasure the other night in his
+ridiculous flatteries of you, was enough to make you the talk of the
+whole steamer. I advise you for your own sake to take my warning in
+time. You are very young, and inexperienced and ignorant, but that will
+not save you in the eyes of the world if you keep on.” Mrs. Milray rose.
+“And now I will leave you to think of what I have said. Here is the
+letter for Miss Milray--”
+
+Clementina shook her head. “I don't want it.”
+
+“You don't want it? But I have written it at Mr. Milray's request, and I
+shall certainly leave it with you!”
+
+“If you do,” said Clementina, “I shall not take it!”
+
+“And what shall I say to Mr. Milray?”
+
+“What you have just said to me.”
+
+“What have I said to you?”
+
+“That I'm a bold girl, and that I've tried to make men admi'a me.”
+
+Mrs. Milray stopped as if suddenly daunted by a fact that had not
+occurred to her before. “Did I say that?”
+
+“The same as that.”
+
+“I didn't mean that--I--merely meant to put you on your guard. It may be
+because you are so innocent yourself, that you can't imagine what others
+think, and--I did it out of my regard for you.”
+
+Clementina did not answer.
+
+Mrs. Milray went on, “That was why I was so provoked with you. I think
+that for a young girl to stand up and dance alone before a whole steamer
+full of strangers”--Clementina looked at her without speaking, and
+Mrs. Milray hastened to say, “To be sure I advised you to do it, but I
+certainly was surprised that you should give an encore. But no matter,
+now. This letter--”
+
+“I can't take it, Mrs. Milray,” said Clementina, with a swelling heart.
+
+“Now, listen!” urged Mrs. Milray. “You think I'm just saying it because,
+if you don't take it I shall have to tell Mr. Milray I was so hateful to
+you, you couldn't. Well, I should hate to tell him that; but that isn't
+the reason. There!” She tore the letter in pieces, and threw it on the
+floor. Clementina did not make any sign of seeing this, and Mrs. Milray
+dropped upon her chair again. “Oh, how hard you are! Can't you say
+something to me?”
+
+Clementina did not lift her eyes. “I don't feel like saying anything
+just now.”
+
+Mrs. Milray was silent a moment. Then she sighed. “Well, you may hate
+me, but I shall always be your friend. What hotel are you going to in
+Liverpool?
+
+“I don't know,” said Clementina.
+
+“You had better come to the one where we go. I'm afraid Mrs. Lander
+won't know how to manage very well, and we've been in Liverpool so
+often. May I speak to her about it?”
+
+“If you want to,” Clementina coldly assented.
+
+“I see!” said Mrs. Milray. “You don't want to be under the same roof
+with me. Well, you needn't! But I'll tell you a good hotel: the one that
+the trains start out of; and I'll send you that letter for Miss Milray.”
+ Clementina was silent. “Well, I'll send it, anyway.”
+
+Mrs. Milray went away in sudden tears, but the girl remained dry-eyed.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+Mrs. Lander realized when the ship came to anchor in the stream at
+Liverpool that she had not been seasick a moment during the voyage. In
+the brisk cold of the winter morning, as they came ashore in the tug,
+she fancied a property of health in the European atmosphere, which she
+was sure would bring her right up, if she stayed long enough; and a
+regret that she had never tried it with Mr. Lander mingled with her new
+hopes for herself.
+
+But Clementina looked with home-sick eyes at the strangeness of the
+alien scene: the pale, low heaven which seemed not to be clouded and yet
+was so dim; the flat shores with the little railroad trains running in
+and out over them; the grimy bulks of the city, and the shipping in the
+river, sparse and sombre after the gay forest of sails and stacks at New
+York.
+
+She did not see the Milrays after she left the tug, in the rapid
+dispersal of the steamer's passengers. They both took leave of her at
+the dock, and Mrs. Milray whispered with penitence in her voice and
+eyes, “I will write,” but the girl did not answer.
+
+Before Mrs. Lander's trunks and her own were passed, she saw Lord
+Lioncourt going away with his heavily laden man at his heels. Mr.
+Ewins came up to see if he could help her through the customs, but she
+believed that he had come at Mrs. Milray's bidding, and she thanked him
+so prohibitively that he could not insist. The English clergyman who had
+spoken to her the morning after the charity entertainment left his wife
+with Mrs. Lander, and came to her help, and then Mr. Ewins went his way.
+
+The clergyman, who appeared to feel the friendlessness of the young girl
+and the old woman a charge laid upon him, bestowed a sort of fatherly
+protection upon them both. He advised them to stop at a hotel for a
+few hours and take the later train for London that he and his wife were
+going up by; they drove to the hotel together, where Mrs. Lander could
+not be kept from paying the omnibus, and made them have luncheon with
+her. She allowed the clergyman to get her tickets, and she could not
+believe that he had taken second class tickets for himself and his wife.
+She said that she had never heard of anyone travelling second class
+before, and she assured him that they never did it in America. She
+begged him to let her pay the difference, and bring his wife into her
+compartment, which the guard had reserved for her. She urged that the
+money was nothing to her, compared with the comfort of being with some
+one you knew; and the clergyman had to promise that as they should be
+neighbors, he would look in upon her, whenever the train stopped long
+enough.
+
+Before it began to move, Clementina thought she saw Lord Lioncourt
+hurrying past their carriage-window. At Rugby the clergyman appeared,
+but almost before he could speak, Lord Lioncourt's little red face
+showed at his elbow. He asked Clementina to present him to Mrs. Lander,
+who pressed him to get into her compartment; the clergyman vanished, and
+Lord Lioncourt yielded.
+
+Mrs. Lander found him able to tell her the best way to get to Florence,
+whose situation he seemed to know perfectly; he confessed that he
+had been there rather often. He made out a little itinerary for going
+straight through by sleeping-car as soon as you crossed the Channel; she
+had said that she always liked a through train when she could get it,
+and the less stops the better. She bade Clementina take charge of the
+plan and not lose it; without it she did not see what they could do.
+She conceived of him as a friend of Clementina's, and she lost in the
+strange environment the shyness she had with most people. She told him
+how Mr. Lander had made his money, and from what beginnings he rose to
+be ignorant of what he really was worth when he died. She dwelt upon
+the diseases they had suffered, and at the thought of his death, so
+unnecessary in view of the good that the air was already doing her in
+Europe, she shed tears.
+
+Lord Lioncourt was very polite, but there was no resumption of the
+ship's comradery in his manner. Clementina could not know how quickly
+this always drops from people who have been fellow-passengers; and she
+wondered if he were guarding himself from her because she had danced at
+the charity entertainment. The poison which Mrs. Milray had instilled
+worked in her thoughts while she could not help seeing how patient he
+was with all Mrs. Lander's questions; he answered them with a simplicity
+of his own, or laughed and put them by, when they were quite impossible.
+Many of them related to the comparative merits of English and American
+railroads, and what he thought himself of these. Mrs. Lander noted the
+difference of the English stations; but she did not see much in the
+landscape to examine him upon. She required him to tell her why the
+rooks they saw were not crows, and she was not satisfied that he should
+say the country seat she pointed out was a castle when it was plainly
+deficient in battlements. She based upon his immovable confidence in
+respect to it an inquiry into the structure of English society, and she
+made him tell her what a lord was, and a commoner, and how the royal
+family differed from both. She asked him how he came to be a lord, and
+when he said that it was a peerage of George the Third's creation, she
+remembered that George III. was the one we took up arms against. She
+found that Lord Lioncourt knew of our revolution generally, but was
+ignorant of such particulars as the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the
+Surrender of Cornwallis, as well as the throwing of the Tea into Boston
+Harbor; he was much struck by this incident, and said, And quite right,
+he was sure.
+
+He told Clementina that her friends the Milrays had taken the steamer
+for London in the morning. He believed they were going to Egypt for the
+winter. Cairo, he said, was great fun, and he advised Mrs. Lander, if
+she found Florence a bit dull, to push on there. She asked if it was
+an easy place to get to, and he assured her that it was very easy from
+Italy.
+
+Mrs. Lander was again at home in her world of railroads and hotels; but
+she confessed, after he left them at the next station, that she should
+have felt more at home if he had been going on to London with them. She
+philosophized him to the disadvantage of her own countrymen as much less
+offish than a great many New York and Boston people. He had given her
+a good opinion of the whole English nation; and the clergyman, who had
+been so nice to them at Liverpool, confirmed her friendly impressions of
+England by getting her a small omnibus at the station in London before
+he got a cab for himself and his wife, and drove away to complete his
+own journey on another road. She celebrated the omnibus as if it were
+an effect of his goodness in her behalf. She admired its capacity for
+receiving all their trunks, and saving the trouble and delay of the
+express, which always vexed her so much in New York, and which had
+nearly failed in getting her baggage to the steamer in time.
+
+The omnibus remained her chief association with London, for she decided
+to take the first through train for Italy in the morning. She wished
+to be settled, by which she meant placed in a Florentine hotel for
+the winter. That lord, as she now began and always continued to call
+Lioncourt, had first given her the name of the best little hotel in
+Florence, but as it had neither elevator nor furnace heat in it, he
+agreed in the end that it would not do for her, and mentioned the most
+modern and expensive house on the Lungarno. He told her he did not
+think she need telegraph for rooms; but she took this precaution before
+leaving London, and was able to secure them at a price which seemed to
+her quite as much as she would have had to pay for the same rooms at a
+first class hotel on the Back Bay.
+
+The manager had reserved for her one of the best suites, which had just
+been vacated by a Russian princess. “I guess you better cable to
+your folks where you ah', Clementina,” she said. “Because if you're
+satisfied, I am, and I presume we sha'n't want to change as long as we
+stay in Florence. My, but it's sightly!” She joined Clementina a moment
+at the windows looking upon the Arno, and the hills beyond it. “I guess
+you'll spend most of your time settin' at this winder, and I sha'n't
+blame you.”
+
+They had arrived late in the dull, soft winter afternoon. The landlord
+led the way himself to their apartment, and asked if they would have
+fire; a facchino came in and kindled roaring blazes on the hearths;
+at the same time a servant lighted all the candles on the tables and
+mantels. They both gracefully accepted the fees that Mrs. Lander made
+Clementina give them; the facchino kissed the girl's hand. “My!” said
+Mrs. Lander, “I guess you never had your hand kissed before.”
+
+The hotel developed advantages which, if not those she was used to, were
+still advantages. The halls were warmed by a furnace, and she came to
+like the little logs burning in her rooms. In the care of her own fire,
+she went back to the simple time of her life in the country, and chose
+to kindle it herself when it died out, with the fagots of broom that
+blazed up so briskly.
+
+In the first days of her stay she made inquiry for the best American
+doctor in Florence; and she found him so intelligent that she at once
+put her liver in his charge, with a history of her diseases and symptoms
+of every kind. She told him that she was sure that he could have
+cured Mr. Lander, if he had only had him in time; she exacted a new
+prescription from him for herself, and made him order some quinine pills
+for Clementina against the event of her feeling debilitated by the air
+of Florence.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+In these first days a letter came to Clementina from Mrs. Lander's
+banker, enclosing the introduction which Mrs. Milray had promised to
+her sister-in-law. It was from Mr. Milray, as before, and it was in
+Mrs. Milray's handwriting; but no message from her came with it. To
+Clementina it explained itself, but she had to explain it to Mrs.
+Lander. She had to tell her of Mrs. Milray's behavior after the
+entertainment on the steamer, and Mrs. Lander said that Clementina had
+done just exactly right; and they both decided, against some impulses
+of curiosity in Clementina's heart, that she should not make use of the
+introduction.
+
+The 'Hotel des Financieres' was mainly frequented by rich Americans full
+of ready money, and by rich Russians of large credit. Better Americans
+and worse, went, like the English, to smaller and cheaper hotels;
+and Clementina's acquaintance was confined to mothers as shy and
+ungrammatical as Mrs. Lander herself, and daughters blankly indifferent
+to her. Mrs. Lander drove out every day when it did not rain, and she
+took Clementina with her, because the doctor said it would do them
+both good; but otherwise the girl remained pent in their apartment. The
+doctor found her a teacher, and she kept on with her French, and began
+to take lessons in Italian; she spoke with no one but her teacher,
+except when the doctor came. At the table d'hote she heard talk of the
+things that people seemed to come to Florence for: pictures, statues,
+palaces, famous places; and it made her ashamed of not knowing about
+them. But she could not go to see these things alone, and Mrs. Lander,
+in the content she felt with all her circumstances, seemed not to
+suppose that Clementina could care for anything but the comfort of the
+hotel and the doctor's visits. When the girl began to get letters from
+home in answer to the first she had written back, boasting how beautiful
+Florence was, they assumed that she was very gay, and demanded full
+accounts of her pleasures. Her brother Jim gave something of the village
+news, but he said he supposed that she would not care for that, and she
+would probably be too proud to speak to them when she came home. The
+Richlings had called in to share the family satisfaction in Clementina's
+first experiences, and Mrs. Richling wrote her very sweetly of their
+happiness in them. She charged her from the rector not to forget any
+chance of self-improvement in the allurements of society, but to
+make the most of her rare opportunities. She said that they had got a
+guide-book to Florence, with a plan of the city, and were following her
+in the expeditions they decided she must be making every day; they were
+reading up the Florentine history in Sismondi's Italian Republics,
+and she bade Clementina be sure and see all the scenes of Savonarola's
+martyrdom, so that they could talk them over together when she returned.
+
+Clementina wondered what Mrs. Richling would think if she told her that
+all she knew of Florence was what she overheard in the talk of the girls
+in the hotel, who spoke before her of their dances and afternoon teas,
+and evenings at the opera, and drives in the Cascine, and parties to
+Fiesole, as if she were not by.
+
+The days and weeks passed, until Carnival was half gone, and Mrs. Lander
+noticed one day that Clementina appeared dull. “You don't seem to get
+much acquainted?” she suggested.
+
+“Oh, the'e's plenty of time,” said Clementina.
+
+“I wish the'e was somebody you could go round with, and see the place.
+Shouldn't you like to see the place?” Mrs. Lander pursued.
+
+“There's no hurry about it, Mrs. Lander. It will stay as long as we do.”
+
+Mrs. Lander was thoughtfully silent. Then she said, “I declare, I've got
+half a mind to make you send that letta to Miss Milray, after all. What
+difference if Mrs. Milray did act so ugly to you? He never did, and
+she's his sista.”
+
+“Oh, I don't want to send it, Mrs. Landa; you mustn't ask me to. I shall
+get along,” said Clementina. The recognition of her forlornness deepened
+it, but she was cheerfuller, for no reason, the next morning; and that
+afternoon, the doctor unexpectedly came upon a call which he made haste
+to say was not professional.
+
+“I've just come from another patient of mine, and I promised to ask
+if you had not crossed on the same ship with a brother of hers,--Mr.
+Milray.”
+
+Celementina and Mrs. Lander looked guiltily at each other. “I guess we
+did,” Mrs. Lander owned at last, with a reluctant sigh.
+
+“Then, she says you have a letter for her.”
+
+The doctor spoke to both, but his looks confessed that he was not
+ignorant of the fact when Mrs. Lander admitted, “Well Clementina, he'e,
+has.”
+
+“She wants to know why you haven't delivered it,” the doctor blurted
+out.
+
+Mrs. Lander looked at Clementina. “I guess she ha'n't quite got round to
+it yet, have you, Clementina?”
+
+The doctor put in: “Well, Miss Milray is rather a dangerous person
+to keep waiting. If you don't deliver it pretty soon, I shouldn't be
+surprised if she came to get it.” Dr. Welwright was a young man in the
+early thirties, with a laugh that a great many ladies said had done more
+than any one thing for them, and he now prescribed it for Clementina.
+But it did not seem to help her in the trouble her face betrayed.
+
+Mrs. Lander took the word, “Well, I wouldn't say it to everybody. But
+you're our doctor, and I guess you won't mind it. We don't like the way
+Mrs. Milray acted to Clementina, in the ship, and we don't want to be
+beholden to any of her folks. I don't know as Clementina wants me to
+tell you just what it was, and I won't; but that's the long and sho't of
+it.”
+
+“I'm sorry,” the doctor said. “I've never met Mrs. Milray, but Miss
+Milray has such a pleasant house, and likes to get young people about
+her. There are a good many young people in your hotel, though, and
+I suppose you all have a very good time here together.” He ended by
+speaking to Clementina, and now he said he had done his errand, and must
+be going.
+
+When he was gone, Mrs. Lander faltered, “I don't know but what we made a
+mistake, Clementina.”
+
+“It's too late to worry about it now,” said the girl.
+
+“We ha'n't bound to stay in Florence,” said Mrs. Lander, thoughtfully.
+“I only took the rooms by the week, and we can go, any time, Clementina,
+if you are uncomf'table bein' here on Miss Milray's account. We could go
+to Rome; they say Rome's a nice place; or to Egypt.”
+
+“Mrs. Milray's in Egypt,” Clementina suggested.
+
+“That's true,” Mrs. Lander admitted, with a sigh. After a while she went
+on, “I don't know as we've got any right to keep the letter. It belongs
+to her, don't it?”
+
+“I guess it belongs to me, as much as it does to her,” said Clementina.
+“If it's to her, it's for me. I am not going to send it, Mrs. Landa.”
+
+They were still in this conclusion when early in the following afternoon
+Miss Milray's cards were brought up for Mrs. Lander and Miss Claxon.
+
+“Well, I decla'e!” cried Mrs. Lander. “That docta: must have gone
+straight and told her what we said.”
+
+“He had no right to,” said Clementina, but neither of them was
+displeased, and after it was over, Mrs. Lander said that any one would
+have thought the call was for her, instead of Clementina, from the way
+Miss Milray kept talking to her. She formed a high opinion of her; and
+Miss Milray put Clementina in mind of Mr. Milray; she had the same hair
+of chiseled silver, and the same smile; she moved like him, and talked
+like him; but with a greater liveliness. She asked fondly after him, and
+made Clementina tell her if he seemed quite well, and in good spirits;
+she was civilly interested in Mrs. Milray's health. At the embarrassment
+which showed itself in the girl, she laughed and said, “Don't imagine I
+don't know all about it, Miss Claxon! My sister-in-law has owned up
+very handsomely; she isn't half bad, as the English say, and I think she
+likes owning up if she can do it safely.”
+
+“And you don't think,” asked Mrs. Lander, “that Clementina done wrong to
+dance that way?”
+
+Clementina blushed, and Miss Milray laughed again. “If you'll let Miss
+Claxon come to a little party I'm giving she may do her dance at my
+house; but she sha'n't be obliged to do it, or anything she doesn't
+like. Don't say she hasn't a gown ready, or something of that kind! You
+don't know the resources of Florence, and how the dress makers here doat
+upon doing impossible things in no time at all, and being ready before
+they promise. If you'll put Miss Claxon in my hands, I'll see that she's
+dressed for my dance. I live out on one of the hills over there, that
+you see from your windows”--she nodded toward them--“in a beautiful
+villa, too cold for winter, and too hot for summer, but I think Miss
+Claxon can endure its discomfort for a day, if you can spare her, and
+she will consent to leave you to the tender mercies of your maid, and--”
+ Miss Milray paused at the kind of unresponsive blank to which she found
+herself talking, and put up her lorgnette, to glance from Mrs. Lander to
+Clementina. The girl said, with embarrassment, “I don't think I ought to
+leave Mrs. Landa, just now. She isn't very well, and I shouldn't like to
+leave her alone.”
+
+“But we're just as much obliged to you as if she could come,” Mrs.
+Lander interrupted; “and later on, maybe she can. You see, we han't got
+any maid, yit. Well, we did have one at Woodlake, but she made us do so
+many things for her, that we thought we should like to do a few things
+for ouaselves, awhile.”
+
+If Miss Milray perhaps did not conceive the situation, exactly, she
+said, Oh, they were quite right in that; but she might count upon Miss
+Claxon for her dance, might not she; and might not she do anything in
+her power for them? She rose to go, but Mrs. Lander took her at her
+word, so far as to say, Why, yes, if she could tell Clementina the best
+place to get a dress she guessed the child would be glad enough to come
+to the dance.
+
+“Tell her!” Miss Milray cried. “I'll take her! Put on your hat, my
+dear,” she said to Clementina, “and come with me now. My carriage is at
+your door.”
+
+Clementina looked at Mrs. Lander, who said, “Go, of cou'se, child. I
+wish I could go, too.”
+
+“Do come, too,” Miss Milray entreated.
+
+“No, no,” said Mrs. Lander, flattered. “I a'n't feeling very well,
+to-day. I guess I'm better off at home. But don't you hurry back on
+my account, Clementina.” While the girl was gone to put on her hat she
+talked on about her. “She's the best gul in the wo'ld, and she won't be
+one of the poorest; and I shall feel that I'm doin' just what Mr. Landa
+would have wanted I should. He picked her out himself, moa than three
+yea's ago, when we was drivin' past her house at Middlemount, and it was
+to humor him afta he was gone, moa than anything else, that I took her.
+Well, she wa'n't so very easy to git, either, I can tell you.” She cut
+short her history of the affair to say when Clementina came back, “I
+want you should do the odderin' yourself, Miss Milray, and not let her
+scrimp with the money. She wants to git some visitin' cahds; and if you
+miss anything about her that she'd ought to have, or that any otha yong
+lady's got, won't you just git it for her?”
+
+As soon as she imagined the case, Miss Milray set herself to overcome
+Mrs. Lander's reluctance from a maid. She prevailed with her to try the
+Italian woman whom she sent her, and in a day the genial Maddalena had
+effaced the whole tradition of the bleak Ellida. It was not essential to
+the understanding which instantly established itself between them that
+they should have any language in common. They babbled at each other,
+Mrs. Lander in her Bostonized Yankee, and Maddalena in her gutteral
+Florentine, and Mrs. Lander was flattered to find how well she knew
+Italian.
+
+Miss Milray had begun being nice to Clementina in fealty to her brother,
+who so seldom made any proof of her devotion to him, and to whom she
+had remained passionately true through his shady past. She was eager
+to humor his whim for the little country girl who had taken his
+fancy, because it was his whim, and not because she had any hopes that
+Clementina would justify it. She had made Dr. Welwright tell her all he
+knew about her, and his report of her grace and beauty had piqued her
+curiosity; his account of the forlorn dullness of her life with Mrs.
+Lander in their hotel had touched her heart. But she was still skeptical
+when she went to get her letter of introduction; when she brought
+Clementina home from the dressmaker's she asked if she might kiss her,
+and said she was already in love with her.
+
+Her love might have made her wish to do everything for her that she now
+began to do, but it simplified the situation to account for her to the
+world as the ward of Mrs. Lander, who was as rich as she was vulgar, and
+it was with Clementina in this character that Miss Milray began to
+make the round of afternoon teas, and inspired invitations for her at
+pleasant houses, by giving a young ladies' lunch for her at her own.
+Before the night of her little dance, she had lost any misgiving she had
+felt at first, in the delight of seeing Clementina take the world as if
+she had thought it would always behave as amiably as that, and as if she
+had forgotten her unkind experiences to the contrary. She knew from Mrs.
+Lander how the girls at their hotel had left her out, but Miss Milray
+could not see that Clementina met them with rancor, when her authority
+brought them together. If the child was humiliated by her past in the
+gross lonely luxury of Mrs. Lander's life or the unconscious poverty of
+her own home, she did not show it in the presence of the world that now
+opened its arms to her. She remained so tranquil in the midst of all
+the novel differences, that it made her friend feel rather vulgar in her
+anxieties for her, and it was not always enough to find that she had
+not gone wrong simply because she had hold still, and had the gift of
+waiting for things to happen. Sometimes when Miss Milray had almost
+decided that her passivity was the calm of a savage, she betrayed
+so sweet and grateful a sense of all that was done for her, that her
+benefactress decided that she was not rustic, but was sylvan in a way
+of her own, and not so much ignorant as innocent. She discovered that
+she was not ignorant even of books, but with no literary effect from
+them she had transmitted her reading into the substance of her native
+gentleness, and had both ideas and convictions. When Clementina most
+affected her as an untried wilderness in the conventional things she
+most felt her equality to any social fortune that might befall her, and
+then she would have liked to see her married to a title, and taking the
+glory of this world with an unconsciousness that experience would never
+wholly penetrate. But then again she felt that this would be somehow
+a profanation, and she wanted to pack her up and get her back to
+Middlemount before anything of the kind should happen. She gave Milray
+these impressions of Clementina in the letter she wrote to thank him for
+her, and to scold him for sending the girl to her. She accused him of
+wishing to get off on her a riddle which he could not read himself; but
+she owned that the charm of Clementina's mystery was worth a thousand
+times the fatigue of trying to guess her out and that she was more and
+more infatuated with her every day.
+
+In the meantime, Miss Milray's little dance grew upon her till it became
+a very large one that filled her villa to overflowing when the time came
+for it. She lived on one of the fine avenues of the Oltrarno region,
+laid out in the brief period of prosperity which Florence enjoyed as
+the capital of Italy. The villa was built at that time, and it was much
+newer than the house on Seventeenth street in New York, where she spent
+the girlhood that had since prolonged itself beyond middle life with
+her. She had first lived abroad in the Paris of the Second Empire,
+and she had been one winter in Rome, but she had settled definitely in
+Florence before London became an American colony, so that her
+friends were chiefly Americans, though she had a wide international
+acquaintance. Perhaps her habit of taking her brother's part, when he
+was a black sheep, inclined her to mercy with people who had not been so
+blameless in their morals as they were in their minds and manners.
+She exacted that they should be interesting and agreeable, and not too
+threadbare; but if they had something that decently buttoned over the
+frayed places, she did not frown upon their poverty. Bohemians of all
+kinds liked her; Philistines liked her too; and in such a place as
+Florence, where the Philistines themselves are a little Bohemian, she
+might be said to be very popular. You met persons whom you did not quite
+wish to meet at her house, but if these did not meet you there, it was
+your loss.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+On the night of the dance the line of private carriages, remises and
+cabs, lined the Viale Ariosto for a mile up and down before her gates,
+where young artists of both sexes arrived on foot. By this time her
+passion for Clementina was at its height. She had Maddalena bring her
+out early in the evening, and made her dress under her own eye and her
+French maid's, while Maddalena went back to comfort Mrs. Lander.
+
+“I hated to leave her,” said Clementina. “I don't believe she's very
+well.”
+
+“Isn't she always ill?” demanded Miss Milray. She embraced the girl
+again, as if once were not enough. “Clementina, if Mrs. Lander won't
+give you to me, I'm going to steal you. Do you know what I want you
+to do tonight? I want you to stand up with me, and receive, till the
+dancing begins, as if it were your coming-out. I mean to introduce
+everybody to you. You'll be easily the prettiest girl, there, and you'll
+have the nicest gown, and I don't mean that any of your charms shall be
+thrown away. You won't be frightened?”
+
+“No, I don't believe I shall,” said Clementina. “You can tell me what to
+do.”
+
+The dress she wore was of pale green, like the light seen in thin woods;
+out of it shone her white shoulders, and her young face, as if rising
+through the verdurous light. The artists, to a man and woman, wished to
+paint her, and severally told her so, during the evening which lasted
+till morning. She was not surprised when Lord Lioncourt appeared, toward
+midnight, and astonished Miss Milray by claiming acquaintance with
+Clementina. He asked about Mrs. Lander, and whether she had got to
+Florence without losing the way; he laughed but he seemed really to
+care. He took Clementina out to supper, when the time came; and she
+would have topped him by half a head as she leaned on his arm, if she
+had not considerately drooped and trailed a little after him.
+
+She could not know what a triumph he was making for her; and it was
+merely part of the magic of the time that Mr. Ewins should come in
+presently with one of the ladies. He had arrived in Florence that day,
+and had to be brought unasked. He put on the effect of an old friend
+with her; but Clementina's curiosity was chiefly taken with a tall
+American, whom she thought very handsome. His light yellow hair was
+brushed smooth across his forehead like a well-behaving boy's; he was
+dressed like the other men, but he seemed not quite happy in his evening
+coat, and his gloves which he smote together uneasily from time to time.
+He appeared to think that somehow the radiant Clementina would know how
+he felt; he did not dance, and he professed to have found himself at the
+party by a species of accident. He told her that he was out in Europe
+looking after a patent right that he had just taken hold of, and was
+having only a middling good time. He pretended surprise to hear her say
+that she was having a first-rate time, and he tried to reason her out of
+it. He confessed that from the moment he came into the room he had made
+up his mind to take her to supper, and had never been so disgusted in
+his life as when he saw that little lord toddling off with her, and
+trying to look as large as life. He asked her what a lord was like,
+anyway, and he made her laugh all the time.
+
+He told her his name, G. W. Hinkle, and asked whether she would be
+likely to remember it if they ever met again.
+
+Another man who interested her very much was a young Russian, with
+curling hair and neat, small features who spoke better English than
+she did, and said he was going to be a writer, but had not yet decided
+whether to write in Russian or French; she supposed he had wanted her
+advice, but he did not wait for it, or seem to expect it. He was very
+much in earnest, while he fanned her, and his earnestness amused her as
+much as the American's irony. He asked which city of America she came
+from, and when she said none, he asked which part of America. She
+answered New England, and he said, “Oh, yes, that is where they have the
+conscience.” She did not know what he meant, and he put before her the
+ideal of New England girlhood which he had evolved from reading American
+novels. “Are you like that?” he demanded.
+
+She laughed, and said, “Not a bit,” and asked him if he had ever met
+such an American girl, and he said, frankly, No; the American girls were
+all mercenary, and cared for nothing but money, or marrying titles. He
+added that he had a title, but he would not wear it.
+
+Clementina said she did not believe she cared for titles, and then
+he said, “But you care for money.” She denied it, but as if she had
+confessed it, he went on: “The only American that I have seen with that
+conscience was a man. I will tell you of him, if you wish.”
+
+He did not wait for her answer. “It was in Naples--at Pompeii. I saw
+at the first glance that he was different from other Americans, and I
+resolved to know him. He was there in company with a stupid boy, whose
+tutor he was; and he told me that he was studying to be a minister of
+the Protestant church. Next year he will go home to be consecrated. He
+promised to pass through Florence in the spring, and he will keep
+his word. Every act, every word, every thought of his is regulated by
+conscience. It is terrible, but it is beautiful.” All the time, the
+Russian was fanning Clementina, with every outward appearance of
+flirtation. “Will you dance again? No? I should like to draw such a
+character as his in a romance.”
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+It was six o'clock in the morning before Miss Milray sent Clementina
+home in her carriage. She would have kept her to breakfast, but
+Clementina said she ought to go on Mrs. Lander's account, and she wished
+to go on her own.
+
+She thought she would steal to bed without waking her, but she was
+stopped by the sound of groans when she entered their apartment; the
+light gushed from Mrs. Lander's door. Maddalena came out, and blessed
+the name of her Latin deity (so much more familiar and approachable than
+the Anglo-Saxon divinity) that Clementina had come at last, and poured
+upon her the story of a night of suffering for Mrs. Lander. Through her
+story came the sound of Mrs. Lander's voice plaintively reproachful,
+summoning Clementina to her bedside. “Oh, how could you go away and
+leave me? I've been in such misery the whole night long, and the docta
+didn't do a thing for me. I'm puffectly wohn out, and I couldn't make
+my wants known with that Italian crazy-head. If it hadn't been for the
+portyary comin' in and interpretin', when the docta left, I don't know
+what I should have done. I want you should give him a twenty-leary note
+just as quick as you see him; and oh, isn't the docta comin'?”
+
+Clementina set about helping Maddalena put the room, which was in an
+impassioned disorder, to rights; and she made Mrs. Lander a cup of her
+own tea, which she had brought from S. S. Pierces in passing through
+Boston; it was the first thing, the sufferer said, that had saved her
+life. Clementina comforted her, and promised her that the doctor should
+be there very soon; and before Mrs. Lander fell away to sleep, she was
+so far out of danger as to be able to ask how Clementina had enjoyed
+herself, and to be glad that she had such a good time.
+
+The doctor would not wake her when he came; he said that she had been
+through a pretty sharp gastric attack, which would not recur, if she ate
+less of the most unwholesome things she could get, and went more into
+the air, and walked a little. He did not seem alarmed, and he made
+Clementina tell him about the dance, which he had been called from to
+Mrs. Lander's bed of pain. He joked her for not having missed him; in
+the midst of their fun, she caught herself in the act of yawning, and
+the doctor laughed, and went away.
+
+Maddalena had to call her, just before dinner, when Mrs. Lander had been
+awake long enough to have sent for the doctor to explain the sort of
+gone feeling which she was now the victim of. It proved, when he came,
+to be hunger, and he prescribed tea and toast and a small bit of steak.
+Before he came she had wished to arrange for going home at once, and
+dying in her own country. But his opinion so far prevailed with her that
+she consented not to telegraph for berths. “I presume,” she said, “it'll
+do, any time before the icebugs begin to run. But I d' know, afta this,
+Clementina, as I can let you leave me quite as you be'n doin'. There was
+a lot of flowas come for you, this aftanoon, but I made Maddalena put
+'em on the balcony, for I don't want you should get poisoned with 'em in
+your sleep; I always head they was dangerous in a person's 'bed room. I
+d' know as they are, eitha.”
+
+Maddalena seemed to know that Mrs. Lander was speaking of the flowers.
+She got them and gave them to Clementina, who found they were from some
+of the men she had danced with. Mr. Hinkle had sent a vast bunch of
+violets, which presently began to give out their sweetness in the warmth
+of the room, and the odor brought him before her with his yellow hair,
+scrupulously parted at the side, and smoothly brushed, showing his
+forehead very high up. Most of the gentlemen wore their hair parted in
+the middle, or falling in a fringe over their brows; the Russian's was
+too curly to part, and Lord Lioncourt had none except at the sides.
+
+She laughed, and Mrs. Lander said, “Tell about it, Clementina,” and she
+began with Mr. Hinkle, and kept coming back to him from the others. Mrs.
+Lander wished most to know how that lord had got down to Florence; and
+Clementina said he was coming to see her.
+
+“Well, I hope to goodness he won't come to-day, I a'n't fit to see
+anybody.”
+
+“Oh, I guess he won't come till to-morrow,” said Clementina; she
+repeated some of the compliments she had got, and she told of all Miss
+Milray's kindness to her, but Mrs. Lander said, “Well, the next time,
+I'll thank her not to keep you so late.” She was astonished to hear
+that Mr. Ewins was there, and “Any of the nasty things out of the hotel
+the'e?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” Clementina said, “the'e we'e, and some of them we'e very nice.
+They wanted to know if I wouldn't join them, and have an aftanoon of our
+own here in the hotel, so that people could come to us all at once.”
+
+She went back to the party, and described the rest of it. When she came
+to the part about the Russian, she told what he had said of American
+girls being fond of money, and wanting to marry foreign noblemen.
+
+Mrs. Lander said, “Well, I hope you a'n't a going to get married in a
+hurry, anyway, and when you do I hope you'll pick out a nice American.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Clementina.
+
+Mrs. Lander had their dinner brought to their apartment. She cheered
+up, and she was in some danger of eating too much, but with Clementina's
+help she denied herself. Their short evening was one of the gayest;
+Clementina declared she was not the least sleepy, but she went to bed at
+nine, and slept till nine the next day.
+
+Mrs. Lander, the doctor confessed, the second morning, was more shaken
+up by her little attack than he had expected; but she decided to see
+the gentleman who had asked to call on Clementina. Lord Lioncourt did
+not come quite so soon as she was afraid he might, and when he came he
+talked mostly to Clementina. He did not get to Mrs. Lander until just
+before he was going. She hospitably asked him what his hurry was, and
+then he said that he was off for Rome, that evening at seven. He was
+nice about hoping she was comfortable in the hotel, and he sympathized
+with her in her wish that there was a set-bowl in her room; she told him
+that she always tried to have one, and he agreed that it must be very
+convenient where any one was, as she said, sick so much.
+
+Mr. Hinkle came a day later; and then it appeared that he had a mother
+whose complaints almost exactly matched Mrs. Lander's. He had her
+photograph with him, and showed it; he said if you had no wife to carry
+round a photograph of, you had better carry your mother's; and Mrs.
+Lander praised him for being a good son. A good son, she added, always
+made a good husband; and he said that was just what he told the young
+ladies himself, but it did not seem to make much impression on them. He
+kept Clementina laughing; and he pretended that he was going to bring
+a diagram of his patent right for her to see, because she would be
+interested in a gleaner like that; and he said he wished her father
+could see it, for it would be sure to interest the kind of man Mrs.
+Lander described him to be. “I'll be along up there just about the time
+you get home, Miss Clementina. When did you say it would be?”
+
+“I don't know; pretty ea'ly in the spring, I guess.”
+
+She looked at Mrs. Lander, who said, “Well, it depends upon how I git up
+my health. I couldn't bea' the voyage now.”
+
+Mr. Hinkle said, “No, best look out for your health, if it takes all
+summer. I shouldn't want you to hurry on my account. Your time is my
+time. All I want is for Miss Clementina, here, to personally conduct
+me to her father. If I could get him to take hold of my gleaner in New
+England, we could make the blueberry crop worth twice what it is.”
+
+Mrs. Lander perceived that he was joking; and she asked what he wanted
+to run away for when the young Russian's card came up. He said, “Oh,
+give every man a chance,” and he promised that he would look in every
+few days, and see how she was getting along. He opened the door after he
+had gone out, and put his head in to say in confidence to Mrs. Lander,
+but so loud that Clementina could hear, “I suppose she's told you who
+the belle of the ball was, the other night? Went out to supper with
+a lord!” He seemed to think a lord was such a good joke that if you
+mentioned one you had to laugh.
+
+The Russian's card bore the name Baron Belsky, with the baron crossed
+out in pencil, and he began to attack in Mrs. Lander the demerits of the
+American character, as he had divined them. He instructed her that
+her countrymen existed chiefly to make money; that they were more
+shopkeepers than the English and worse snobs; that their women were
+trivial and their men sordid; that their ambition was to unite their
+families with the European aristocracies; and their doctrine of liberty
+and equality was a shameless hypocrisy. This followed hard upon her
+asking, as she did very promptly, why he had scratched out the title on
+his card. He told her that he wished to be known solely as an artist,
+and he had to explain to her that he was not a painter, but was going to
+be a novelist. She taxed him with never having been in America, but he
+contended that as all America came to Europe he had the materials for a
+study of the national character at hand, without the trouble of crossing
+the ocean. In return she told him that she had not been the least
+sea-sick during the voyage, and that it was no trouble at all; then he
+abruptly left her and went over to beg a cup of tea from Clementina, who
+sat behind the kettle by the window.
+
+“I have heard this morning from that American I met in Pompeii” he
+began. “He is coming northward, and I am going down to meet him in
+Rome.”
+
+Mrs. Lander caught the word, and called across the room, “Why, a'n't
+that whe'e that lo'd's gone?”
+
+Clementina said yes, and while the kettle boiled, she asked if Baron
+Belsky were going soon.
+
+“Oh, in a week or ten days, perhaps. I shall know when he arrives. Then
+I shall go. We write to each other every day.” He drew a letter from his
+breast pocket. “This will give you the idea of his character,” and he
+read, “If we believe that the hand of God directs all our actions, how
+can we set up our theories of conduct against what we feel to be his
+inspiration?”
+
+“What do you think of that?” he demanded.
+
+“I don't believe that God directs our wrong actions,” said Clementina.
+
+“How! Is there anything outside of God?
+
+“I don't know whether there is or not. But there is something that
+tempts me to do wrong, sometimes, and I don't believe that is God.”
+
+The Russian seemed struck. “I will write that to him!”
+
+“No,” said Clementina, “I don't want you to say anything about me to
+him.”
+
+“No, no!” said Baron Belsky, waving his band reassuringly. “I would not
+mention your name!”
+
+Mr. Ewins came in, and the Russian said he must go. Mrs. Lander tried
+to detain him, too, as she had tried to keep Mr. Hinkle, but he was
+inexorable. Mr. Ewins looked at the door when it had closed upon him.
+Mrs. Lander said, “That is one of the gentlemen that Clementina met the
+otha night at the dance. He is a baron, but he scratches it out. You'd
+ought to head him go on about Americans.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Ewins coldly. “He's at our hotel, and he airs
+his peculiar opinions at the table d'hote pretty freely. He's a
+revolutionist of some kind, I fancy.” He pronounced the epithet with
+an abhorrence befitting the citizen of a state born of revolution and a
+city that had cradled the revolt. “He's a Nihilist, I believe.”
+
+Mrs. Lander wished to know what that was, and he explained that it was a
+Russian who wanted to overthrow the Czar, and set up a government of the
+people, when they were not prepared for liberty.
+
+“Then, maybe he isn't a baron at all,” said Mrs. Lander.
+
+“Oh, I believe he has a right to his title,” Ewins answered. “It's a
+German one.”
+
+He said he thought that sort of man was all the more mischievous on
+account of his sincerity. He instanced a Russian whom a friend of his
+knew in Berlin, a man of rank like this fellow: he got to brooding
+upon the condition of working people and that kind of thing, till he
+renounced his title and fortune and went to work in an iron foundry.
+
+Mr. Ewins also spoke critically of Mrs. Milray. He had met her in Egypt;
+but you soon exhausted the interest of that kind of woman. He professed
+a great concern that Clementina should see Florence in just the right
+way, and he offered his services in showing her the place.
+
+The Russian came the next day, and almost daily after that, in the
+interest with which Clementina's novel difference from other American
+girls seemed to inspire him. His imagination had transmuted her simple
+Yankee facts into something appreciable to a Slav of his temperament. He
+conceived of her as the daughter of a peasant, whose beauty had charmed
+the widow of a rich citizen, and who was to inherit the wealth of her
+adoptive mother. He imagined that the adoption had taken place at a
+much earlier period than the time when Clementina's visit to Mrs. Lander
+actually began, and that all which could be done had been done to efface
+her real character by indulgence and luxury.
+
+His curiosity concerning her childhood, her home, her father and mother,
+her brothers and sisters, and his misunderstanding of everything she
+told him, amused her. But she liked him, and she tried to give him some
+notion of the things he wished so much to know. It always ended in a
+dissatisfaction, more or less vehement, with the outcome of American
+conditions as he conceived them.
+
+“But you,” he urged one day, “you who are a daughter of the fields and
+woods, why should you forsake that pure life, and come to waste yourself
+here?”
+
+“Why, don't you think it's very nice in Florence?” she asked, with eyes
+of innocent interest.
+
+“Nice! Nice! Do we live for what is nice? Is it enough that you have
+what you Americans call a nice time?”
+
+Clementina reflected. “I wasn't doing much of anything at home, and
+I thought I might as well come with Mrs. Lander, if she wanted me so
+much.” She thought in a certain way, that he was meddling with what was
+not his affair, but she believed that he was sincere in his zeal for
+the ideal life he wished her to lead, and there were some things she had
+heard about him that made her pity and respect him; his self-exile and
+his renunciation of home and country for his principles, whatever they
+were; she did not understand exactly. She would not have liked never
+being able to go back to Middlemount, or to be cut off from all her
+friends as this poor young Nihilist was, and she said, now, “I didn't
+expect that it was going to be anything but a visit, and I always
+supposed we should go back in the spring; but now Mrs. Lander is
+beginning to think she won't be well enough till fall.”
+
+“And why need you stay with her?”
+
+“Because she's not very well,” answered Clementina, and she smiled, a
+little triumphantly as well as tolerantly.
+
+“She could hire nurses and doctors, all she wants with her money.”
+
+“I don't believe it would be the same thing, exactly, and what should I
+do if I went back?”
+
+“Do? Teach! Uplift the lives about you.”
+
+“But you say it is better for people to live simply, and not read and
+think so much.”
+
+“Then labor in the fields with them.”
+
+Clementina laughed outright. “I guess if anyone saw me wo'king in the
+fields they would think I was a disgrace to the neighbahood.”
+
+Belsky gave her a stupified glare through his spectacles. “I cannot
+understand you Americans.”
+
+“Well, you must come ova to America, then, Mr. Belsky”--he had asked her
+not to call him by his title--“and then you would.”
+
+“No, I could not endure the disappointment. You have the great
+opportunity of the earth. You could be equal and just, and simple and
+kind. There is nothing to hinder you. But all you try to do is to get
+more and more money.”
+
+“Now, that isn't faia, Mr. Belsky, and you know it.”
+
+“Well, then, you joke, joke--always joke. Like that Mr. Hinkle. He wants
+to make money with his patent of a gleaner, that will take the last
+grain of wheat from the poor, and he wants to joke--joke!”
+
+Clementina said, “I won't let you say that about Mr. Hinkle. You don't
+know him, or you wouldn't. If he jokes, why shouldn't he?”
+
+Belsky made a gesture of rejection. “Oh, you are an American, too.”
+
+She had not grown less American, certainly, since she had left home;
+even the little conformities to Europe that she practiced were traits of
+Americanism. Clementina was not becoming sophisticated, but perhaps she
+was becoming more conventionalized. The knowledge of good and evil in
+things that had all seemed indifferently good to her once, had crept
+upon her, and she distinguished in her actions. She sinned as little
+as any young lady in Florence against the superstitions of society; but
+though she would not now have done a skirt-dance before a shipful of
+people, she did not afflict herself about her past errors. She put on
+the world, but she wore it simply and in most matters unconsciously.
+Some things were imparted to her without her asking or wishing, and
+merely in virtue of her youth and impressionability. She took them from
+her environment without knowing it, and in this way she was coming by an
+English manner and an English tone; she was only the less American for
+being rather English without trying, when other Americans tried so hard.
+In the region of harsh nasals, Clementina had never spoken through her
+nose, and she was now as unaffected in these alien inflections as in the
+tender cooings which used to rouse the misgivings of her brother Jim.
+When she was with English people she employed them involuntarily, and
+when she was with Americans she measurably lost them, so that after half
+an hour with Mr. Hinkle, she had scarcely a trace of them, and with Mrs.
+Lander she always spoke with her native accent.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+One Sunday night, toward the end of Lent, Mrs. Lander had another of
+her attacks; she now began to call them so as if she had established an
+ownership in them. It came on from her cumulative over-eating, again,
+but the doctor was not so smiling as he had been with regard to the
+first. Clementina had got ready to drive out to Miss Milray's for one of
+her Sunday teas, but she put off her things, and prepared to spend the
+night at Mrs. Lander's bedside. “Well, I should think you would want
+to,” said the sufferer. “I'm goin' to do everything for you, and you'd
+ought to be willing to give up one of youa junketin's for me. I'm sure I
+don't know what you see in 'em, anyway.”
+
+“Oh, I am willing, Mrs. Lander; I'm glad I hadn't stahted before it
+began.” Clementina busied herself with the pillows under Mrs. Lander's
+dishevelled head, and the bedclothes disordered by her throes, while
+Mrs. Lander went on.
+
+“I don't see what's the use of so much gaddin', anyway. I don't see as
+anything comes of it, but just to get a passal of wo'thless fellas afta
+you that think you'a going to have money. There's such a thing as two
+sides to everything, and if the favas is goin' to be all on one side I
+guess there'd betta be a clear undastandin' about it. I think I got a
+right to a little attention, as well as them that ha'n't done anything;
+and if I'm goin' to be left alone he'e to die among strangers every time
+one of my attacks comes on--”
+
+The doctor interposed, “I don't think you're going to have a very bad
+attack, this time, Mrs. Lander.”
+
+“Oh, thank you, thank you, docta! But you can undastand, can't you,
+how I shall want to have somebody around that can undastand a little
+English?”
+
+The doctor said, “Oh yes. And Miss Claxon and I can understand a good
+deal, between us, and we're going to stay, and see how a little morphine
+behaves with you.”
+
+Mrs. Lander protested, “Oh, I can't bea' mo'phine, docta.”
+
+“Did you ever try it?” he asked, preparing his little instrument to
+imbibe the solution.
+
+“No; but Mr. Landa did, and it 'most killed him; it made him sick.”
+
+“Well, you're about as sick as you can be, now, Mrs. Lander, and if you
+don't die of this pin-prick”--he pushed the needle-point under the skin
+of her massive fore-arm--“I guess you'll live through it.”
+
+She shrieked, but as the pain began to abate, she gathered courage, and
+broke forth joyfully. “Why, it's beautiful, a'n't it? I declare it wo'ks
+like a cha'm. Well, I shall always keep mo'phine around after this, and
+when I feel one of these attacks comin' on--”
+
+“Send for a physician, Mrs. Lander,” said Dr. Welwright, “and he'll know
+what to do.”
+
+“I an't so sure of that,” returned Mrs. Lander fondly. “He would if you
+was the one. I declare I believe I could get up and walk right off, I
+feel so well.”
+
+“That's good. If you'll take a walk day after tomorrow it will help you
+a great deal more.”
+
+“Well, I shall always say that you've saved my life, this time, doctor;
+and Clementina she's stood by, nobly; I'll say that for her.” She
+twisted her big head round on the pillow to get sight of the girl. “I'm
+all right, now; and don't you mind what I said. It's just my misery
+talkin'; I don't know what I did say; I felt so bad. But I'm fustrate,
+now, and I believe I could drop off to sleep, this minute. Why don't you
+go to your tea? You can, just as well as not!”
+
+“Oh, I don't want to go, now, Mrs. Lander; I'd ratha stay.”
+
+“But there a'n't any more danger now, is the'e, docta?” Mrs. Lander
+appealed.
+
+“No. There wasn't any danger before. But when you're quite yourself, I
+want to have a little talk with you, Mrs. Lander, about your diet. We
+must look after that.”
+
+“Why, docta, that's what I do do, now. I eat all the healthy things I
+lay my hands on, don't I, Clementina? And ha'n't you always at me about
+it?”
+
+Clementina did not answer, and the doctor laughed. “Well, I should like
+to know what more I could do!”
+
+“Perhaps you could do less. We'll see about that. Better go to sleep,
+now, if you feel like it.”
+
+“Well, I will, if you'll make this silly child go to her tea. I s'pose
+she won't because I scolded her. She's an awful hand to lay anything up
+against you. You know you ah', Clementina! But I can say this, doctor:
+a betta child don't breathe, and I just couldn't live without her. Come
+he'e, Clementina, I want to kiss you once, before I go to sleep, so's
+to make su'a you don't bea' malice.” She pulled Clementina down to kiss
+her, and babbled on affectionately and optimistically, till her talk
+became the voice of her dreams, and then ceased altogether.
+
+“You could go, perfectly well, Miss Claxon,” said the doctor.
+
+“No, I don't ca'e to go,” answered Clementina. “I'd ratha stay. If she
+should wake--”
+
+“She won't wake, until long after you've got back; I'll answer for that.
+I'm going to stay here awhile. Go! I'll take the responsibility.”
+
+Clementina's face brightened. She wanted very much to go. She should
+meet some pleasant people; she always did, at Miss Milray's. Then the
+light died out of her gay eyes, and she set her lips. “No, I told her I
+shouldn't go.”
+
+“I didn't hear you,” said Dr. Welwright. “A doctor has no eyes and ears
+except for the symptoms of his patients.”
+
+“Oh, I know,” said Clementina. She had liked Dr. Welwright from the
+first, and she thought it was very nice of him to stay on, after he
+left Mrs. Lander's bedside, and help to make her lonesome evening pass
+pleasantly in the parlor. He jumped up finally, and looked at his
+watch. “Bless my soul!” he said, and he went in for another look at Mrs.
+Lander. When he came back, he said, “She's all right. But you've made me
+break an engagement, Miss Claxon. I was going to tea at Miss Milray's.
+She promised me I should meet you there.”
+
+It seemed a great joke; and Clementina offered to carry his excuses to
+Miss Milray, when she went to make her own.
+
+She went the next morning. Mrs. Lander insisted that she should go; she
+said that she was not going to have Miss Milray thinking that she wanted
+to keep her all to herself.
+
+Miss Milray kissed the girl in full forgiveness, but she asked, “Did Dr.
+Welwright think it a very bad attack?”
+
+“Has he been he'a?” returned Clementina.
+
+Miss Milray laughed. “Doctors don't betray their patients--good doctors.
+No, he hasn't been here, if that will help you. I wish it would help me,
+but it won't, quite. I don't like to think of that old woman using you
+up, Clementina.”
+
+“Oh, she doesn't, Miss Milray. You mustn't think so. You don't know how
+good she is to me.”
+
+“Does she ever remind you of it?”
+
+Clementina's eyes fell. “She isn't like herself when she doesn't feel
+well.”
+
+“I knew it!” Miss Milray triumphed. “I always knew that she was a
+dreadful old tabby. I wish you were safely out of her clutches. Come and
+live with me, my dear, when Mrs. Lander gets tired of you. But she'll
+never get tired of you. You're just the kind of helpless mouse that
+such an old tabby would make her natural prey. But she sha'n't, even
+if another sort of cat has to get you! I'm sorry you couldn't come
+last night. Your little Russian was here, and went away early and very
+bitterly because you didn't come. He seemed to think there was nobody,
+and said so, in everything but words.”
+
+“Oh!” said Clementina. “Don't you think he's very nice, Miss Milray?”
+
+“He's very mystical, or else so very simple that he seems so. I hope you
+can make him out.”
+
+Don't you think he's very much in ea'nest?
+
+“Oh, as the grave, or the asylum. I shouldn't like him to be in earnest
+about me, if I were you.”
+
+“But that's just what he is!” Clementina told how the Russian had
+lectured her, and wished her to go back to the country and work in the
+fields.
+
+“Oh, if that's all!” cried Miss Milray. “I was afraid it was another
+kind of earnestness: the kind I shouldn't like if I were you.”
+
+“There's no danger of that, I guess.” Clementina laughed, and Miss
+Milray went on:
+
+“Another of your admirers was here; but he was not so inconsolable,
+or else he found consolation in staying on and talking about you, or
+joking.”
+
+“Oh, yes; Mr. Hinkle,” cried Clementina with the smile that the thought
+of him always brought. “He's lovely.”
+
+“Lovely? Well, I don't know why it isn't the word. It suits him a great
+deal better than some insipid girls that people give it to. Yes, I could
+really fall in love with Mr. Hinkle. He's the only man I ever saw who
+would know how to break the fall!”
+
+It was lunch-time before their talk had begun to run low, and it swelled
+again over the meal. Miss Milray returned to Mrs. Lander, and she made
+Clementina confess that she was a little trying sometimes. But she
+insisted that she was always good, and in remorse she went away as soon
+as Miss Milray rose from table.
+
+She found Mrs. Lander very much better, and willing to have had her
+stay the whole afternoon with Miss Milray. “I don't want she should have
+anything to say against me, to you, Clementina; she'd be glad enough to.
+But I guess it's just as well you'a back. That scratched-out baron has
+been he'e twice, and he's waitin' for you in the pahla', now. I presume
+he'll keep comin' till you do see him. I guess you betta have it ova;
+whatever it is.”
+
+“I guess you're right, Mrs. Lander.”
+
+Clementina found the Russian walking up and down the room, and as soon
+as their greeting was over, he asked leave to continue his promenade,
+but he stopped abruptly before her when she had sunk upon a sofa.
+
+“I have come to tell you a strange story,” he said.
+
+“It is the story of that American friend of mine. I tell it to you
+because I think you can understand, and will know what to advise, what
+to do.”
+
+He turned upon his heel, and walked the length of the room and back
+before he spoke again.
+
+“Since several years,” he said, growing a little less idiomatic in his
+English as his excitement mounted, “he met a young girl, a child,
+when he was still not a man's full age. It was in the country, in the
+mountains of America, and--he loved her. Both were very poor; he, a
+student, earning the means to complete his education in the university.
+He had dedicated himself to his church, and with the temperament of
+the Puritans, he forbade himself all thoughts of love. But he was of a
+passionate and impulsive nature, and in a moment of abandon he confessed
+his love. The child was bewildered, frightened; she shrank from his
+avowal, and he, filled with remorse for his self-betrayal, bade her let
+it be as if it had not been; he bade her think of him no more.”
+
+Clementina sat as if powerless to move, staring at Belsky. He paused in
+his walk, and allowed an impressive silence to ensue upon his words.
+
+“Time passed: days, months, years; and he did not see her again. He
+pursued his studies in the university; at their completion, he entered
+upon the course of divinity, and he is soon to be a minister of his
+church. In all that time the image of the young girl has remained in his
+heart, and has held him true to the only love he has ever known. He will
+know no other while he lives.”
+
+Again he stopped in front of Clementina; she looked helplessly up at
+him, and he resumed his walk.
+
+“He, with his dreams of renunciation, of abnegation, had thought some
+day to return to her and ask her to be his. He believed her capable of
+equal sacrifice with himself, and he hoped to win her not for himself
+alone, but for the religion which he put before himself. He would have
+invited her to join her fate with his that they might go together on
+some mission to the pagan--in the South Seas, in the heart of Africa,
+in the jungle of India. He had always thought of her as gay but good,
+unworldly in soul, and exalted in spirit. She has remained with him a
+vision of angelic loveliness, as he had seen her last in the moonlight,
+on the banks of a mountain torrent. But he believes that he has
+disgraced himself before her; that the very scruple for her youth, her
+ignorance, which made him entreat her to forget him, must have made her
+doubt and despise him. He has never had the courage to write to her
+one word since all those years, but he maintains himself bound to her
+forever.” He stopped short before Clementina and seized her hands. “If
+you knew such a girl, what would you have her do? Should she bid him
+hope again? Would you have her say to him that she, too, had been
+faithful to their dream, and that she too--”
+
+“Let me go, Mr. Belsky, let me go, I say!” Clementina wrenched her hands
+from him, and ran out of the room. Belsky hesitated, then he found his
+hat, and after a glance at his face in the mirror, left the house.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+The tide of travel began to set northward in April. Many English,
+many Americans appeared in Florence from Naples and Rome; many who had
+wintered in Florence went on to Venice and the towns of northern Italy,
+on their way to Switzerland and France and Germany.
+
+The spring was cold and rainy, and the irresolute Italian railroads were
+interrupted by the floods. A tawny deluge rolled down from the mountains
+through the bed of the Arno, and kept the Florentine fire-department
+on the alert night and day. “It is a curious thing about this country,”
+ said Mr. Hinkle, encountering Baron Belsky on the Ponte Trinita, “that
+the only thing they ever have here for a fire company to put out is a
+freshet. If they had a real conflagration once, I reckon they would want
+to bring their life-preservers.”
+
+The Russian was looking down over the parapet at the boiling river. He
+lifted his head as if he had not heard the American, and stared at him
+a moment before he spoke. “It is said that the railway to Rome is broken
+at Grossetto.”
+
+“Well, I'm not going to Rome,” said Hinkle, easily. “Are you?”
+
+“I was to meet a friend there; but he wrote to me that he was starting
+to Florence, and now--”
+
+“He's resting on the way? Well, he'll get here about as quick as he
+would in the ordinary course of travel. One good thing about Italy is,
+you don't want to hurry; if you did, you'd get left.”
+
+Belsky stared at him in the stupefaction to which the American humor
+commonly reduced him. “If he gets left on the Grossetto line, he can go
+back and come up by Orvieto, no?”
+
+“He can, if he isn't in a hurry,” Hinkle assented.
+
+“It's a good way, if you've got time to burn.”
+
+Belsky did not attempt to explore the American's meaning. “Do you
+know,” he asked, “whether Mrs. Lander and her young friend are still in
+Florence?
+
+“I guess they are.”
+
+“It was said they were going to Venice for the summer.”
+
+“That's what the doctor advised for the old lady. But they don't start
+for a week or two yet.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“Are you going to Miss Milray's, Sunday night? Last of the season, I
+believe.”
+
+Belsky seemed to recall himself from a distance.
+
+“No--no,” he said, and he moved away, forgetful of the ceremonious
+salutation which he commonly used at meeting and parting. Hinkle
+looked after him with the impression people have of a difference in the
+appearance and behavior of some one whose appearance and behavior do not
+particularly concern them.
+
+The day that followed, Belsky haunted the hotel where Gregory was to
+arrive with his pupil, and where the pupil's family were waiting for
+them. That night, long after their belated train was due, they came; the
+pupil was with his father and mother, and Gregory was alone, when Belsky
+asked for him, the fourth or fifth time.
+
+“You are not well,” he said, as they shook hands. “You are fevered!”
+
+“I'm tired,” said Gregory. “We've bad a bad time getting through.”
+
+“I come inconveniently! You have not dined, perhaps?”
+
+“Yes, Yes. I've had dinner. Sit down. How have you been yourself?”
+
+“Oh, always well.” Belsky sat down, and the friends stared at each
+other. “I have strange news for you.”
+
+“For me?”
+
+“You. She is here.”
+
+“She?”
+
+“Yes. The young girl of whom you told me. If I had not forbidden myself
+by my loyalty to you--if I had not said to myself every moment in her
+presence, 'No, it is for your friend alone that she is beautiful and
+good!'--But you will have nothing to reproach me in that regard.”
+
+“What do you mean?” demanded Gregory.
+
+“I mean that Miss Claxon is in Florence, with her protectress, the rich
+Mrs. Lander. The most admired young lady in society, going everywhere,
+and everywhere courted and welcomed; the favorite of the fashionable
+Miss Milray. But why should this surprise you?”
+
+“You said nothing about it in your letters. You--”
+
+“I was not sure it was she; you never told me her name. When I had
+divined the fact, I was so soon to see you, that I thought best to keep
+it till we met.”
+
+Gregory tried to speak, but he let Belsky go on.
+
+“If you think that the world has spoiled her, that she will be different
+from what she was in her home among your mountains, let me reassure you.
+In her you will find the miracle of a woman whom no flattery can turn
+the head. I have watched her in your interest; I have tested her. She is
+what you saw her last.”
+
+“Surely,” asked Gregory, in an anguish for what he now dreaded, “you
+haven't spoken to her of me?”
+
+“Not by name, no. I could not have that indiscretion--”
+
+“The name is nothing. Have you said that you knew me--Of course not! But
+have you hinted at any knowledge--Because--”
+
+“You will hear!” said Belsky; and he poured out upon Gregory the story
+of what he had done. “She did not deny anything. She was greatly moved,
+but she did not refuse to let me bid you hope--”
+
+“Oh!” Gregory took his head between his hands. “You have spoiled my
+life!”
+
+“Spoiled” Belsky stopped aghast.
+
+“I told you my story in a moment of despicable weakness--of impulsive
+folly. But how could I dream that you would ever meet her? How could I
+imagine that you would speak to her as you have done?” He groaned, and
+began to creep giddily about the room in his misery. “Oh, oh, oh! What
+shall I do?”
+
+“But I do not understand!” Belsky began. “If I have committed an
+error--”
+
+“Oh, an error that never could be put right in all eternity!”
+
+“Then let me go to her--let me tell her--”
+
+“Keep away from her!” shouted Gregory. “Do you hear? Never go near her
+again!”
+
+“Gregory!”
+
+“Ah, I beg your pardon! I don't know what I'm doing--saying. What will
+she think--what will she think of me!” He had ceased to speak to Belsky;
+he collapsed into a chair, and hid his face in his arms stretched out on
+the table before him.
+
+Belsky watched him in the stupefaction which the artistic nature feels
+when life proves sentient under its hand, and not the mere material of
+situations and effects. He could not conceive the full measure of the
+disaster he had wrought, the outrage of his own behavior had been lost
+to him in his preoccupation with the romantic end to be accomplished. He
+had meant to be the friend, the prophet, to these American lovers, whom
+he was reconciling and interpreting to each other; but in some point he
+must have misunderstood. Yet the error was not inexpiable; and in his
+expiation he could put the seal to his devotion. He left the room, where
+Gregory made no effort to keep him.
+
+He walked down the street from the hotel to the Arno, and in a few
+moments he stood on the bridge, where he had talked with that joker in
+the morning, as they looked down together on the boiling river. He had
+a strange wish that the joker might have been with him again, to learn
+that there were some things which could not be joked away.
+
+The night was blustering, and the wind that blew the ragged clouds
+across the face of the moon, swooped in sudden gusts upon the bridge,
+and the deluge rolling under it and hoarsely washing against its piers.
+Belsky leaned over the parapet and looked down into the eddies and
+currents as the fitful light revealed them. He had a fantastic pleasure
+in studying them, and choosing the moment when he should leap the
+parapet and be lost in them. The incident could not be used in any novel
+of his, and no one else could do such perfect justice to the situation,
+but perhaps afterwards, when the facts leading to his death should be
+known through the remorse of the lovers whom he had sought to serve,
+some other artist-nature could distil their subtlest meaning in a memoir
+delicate as the aroma of a faded flower.
+
+He was willing to make this sacrifice, too, and he stepped back a pace
+from the parapet when the fitful blast caught his hat from his head, and
+whirled it along the bridge. The whole current of his purpose changed,
+and as if it had been impossible to drown himself in his bare head, he
+set out in chase of his hat, which rolled and gamboled away, and escaped
+from his clutch whenever he stooped for it, till a final whiff of wind
+flung it up and tossed it over the bridge into the river, where he
+helplessly watched it floating down the flood, till it was carried out
+of sight.
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+Gregory did not sleep, and he did not find peace in the prayers he put
+up for guidance. He tried to think of some one with whom he might take
+counsel; but he knew no one in Florence except the parents of his pupil,
+and they were impossible. He felt himself abandoned to the impulse which
+he dreaded, in going to Clementina, and he went without hope, willing
+to suffer whatever penalty she should visit upon him, after he had
+disavowed Belsky's action, and claimed the responsibility for it.
+
+He was prepared for her refusal to see him; he had imagined her wounded
+and pathetic; he had fancied her insulted and indignant; but she met him
+eagerly and with a mystifying appeal in her welcome. He began at once,
+without attempting to bridge the time since they had met with any
+formalities.
+
+“I have come to speak to you about--that--Russian, about Baron Belsky--”
+
+“Yes, yes!” she returned, anxiously. “Then you have hea'd”
+
+“He came to me last night, and--I want to say that I feel myself to
+blame for what he has done.”
+
+“You?”
+
+“Yes; I. I never spoke of you by name to him; I didn't dream of his ever
+seeing you, or that he would dare to speak to you of what I told him.
+But I believe he meant no wrong; and it was I who did the harm, whether
+I authorized it or not.”
+
+“Yes, yes!” she returned, with the effect of putting his words aside as
+something of no moment. “Have they head anything more?”
+
+“How, anything more?” he returned, in a daze.
+
+“Then, don't you know? About his falling into the river? I know he
+didn't drown himself.”
+
+Gregory shook his head. “When--what makes them think”--He stopped and
+stared at her.
+
+“Why, they know that he went down to the Ponte Trinity last night;
+somebody saw him going. And then that peasant found his hat with his
+name in it in the drift-wood below the Cascine--”
+
+“Yes,” said Gregory, lifelessly. He let his arms drop forward, and his
+helpless hands hang over his knees; his gaze fell from her face to the
+floor.
+
+Neither spoke for a time that seemed long, and then it was Clementina
+who spoke. “But it isn't true!”
+
+“Oh, yes, it is,” said Gregory, as before.
+
+“Mr. Hinkle doesn't believe it is,” she urged.
+
+“Mr. Hinkle?”
+
+“He's an American who's staying in Florence. He came this mo'ning to
+tell me about it. Even if he's drowned Mr. Hinkle believes he didn't
+mean to; he must have just fallen in.”
+
+“What does it matter?” demanded Gregory, lifting his heavy eyes.
+“Whether he meant it or not, I caused it. I drove him to it.”
+
+“You drove him?”
+
+“Yes. He told me what he had said to you, and I--said that he had
+spoiled my life--I don't know!”
+
+“Well, he had no right to do it; but I didn't blame you,” Clementina
+began, compassionately.
+
+“It's too late. It can't be helped now.” Gregory turned from the mercy
+that could no longer save him. He rose dizzily, and tried to get himself
+away.
+
+“You mustn't go!” she interposed. “I don't believe you made him do it.
+Mr. Hinkle will be back soon, and he will--”
+
+“If he should bring word that it was true?” Gregory asked.
+
+“Well,” said Clementina, “then we should have to bear it.”
+
+A sense of something finer than the surface meaning of her words pierced
+his morbid egotism. “I'm ashamed,” he said. “Will you let me stay?”
+
+“Why, yes, you must,” she said, and if there was any censure of him at
+the bottom of her heart, she kept it there, and tried to talk him away
+from his remorse, which was in his temperament, perhaps, rather than his
+conscience; she made the time pass till there came a knock at the door,
+and she opened it to Hinkle.
+
+“I didn't send up my name; I thought I wouldn't stand upon ceremony just
+now,” he said.
+
+“Oh, no!” she returned. “Mr. Hinkle, this is Mr. Gregory. Mr. Gregory
+knew Mr. Belsky, and he thinks--”
+
+She turned to Gregory for prompting, and he managed to say, “I don't
+believe he was quite the sort of person to--And yet he might--he was in
+trouble--”
+
+“Money trouble?” asked Hinkle. “They say these Russians have a perfect
+genius for debt. I had a little inspiration, since I saw you, but there
+doesn't seems to be anything in it, so far.” He addressed himself to
+Clementina, but he included Gregory in what he said. “It struck me that
+he might have been running his board, and had used this drowning episode
+as a blind. But I've been around to his hotel, and he's settled up,
+all fair and square enough. The landlord tried to think of something he
+hadn't paid, but he couldn't; and I never saw a man try harder, either.”
+ Clementina smiled; she put her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing;
+but Gregory frowned his distress in the untimely droning.
+
+“I don't give up my theory that it's a fake of some kind, though. He
+could leave behind a good many creditors besides his landlord. The
+authorities have sealed up his effects, and they've done everything but
+call out the fire department; that's on duty looking after the freshet,
+and it couldn't be spared. I'll go out now and slop round a little
+more in the cause,” Hinkle looked down at his shoes and his drabbled
+trousers, and wiped the perspiration from his face, “but I thought I'd
+drop in, and tell you not to worry about it, Miss Clementina. I would
+stake anything you pleased on Mr. Belsky's safety. Mr. Gregory, here,
+looks like he would be willing to take odds,” he suggested.
+
+Gregory commanded himself from his misery to say, “I wish I could
+believe--I mean--”
+
+“Of course, we don't want to think that the man's a fraud, any more than
+that he's dead. Perhaps we might hit upon some middle course. At any
+rate, it's worth trying.”
+
+“May I--do you object to my joining you?” Gregory asked.
+
+“Why, come!” Hinkle hospitably assented. “Glad to have you. I'll be back
+again, Miss Clementina!”
+
+Gregory was going away without any form of leavetaking; but he turned
+back to ask, “Will you let me come back, too?”
+
+“Why, suttainly, Mr. Gregory,” said Clementina, and she went to find
+Mrs. Lander, whom she found in bed.
+
+“I thought I'd lay down,” she explained. “I don't believe I'm goin' to
+be sick, but it's one of my pooa days, and I might just as well be in
+bed as not.” Clementina agreed with her, and Mrs. Lander asked: “You
+hea'd anything moa?”
+
+“No. Mr. Hinkle has just been he'a, but he hadn't any news.”
+
+Mrs. Lander turned her face toward the wall. “Next thing, he'll be
+drownin' himself. I neva wanted you should have anything to do with the
+fellas that go to that woman's. There ain't any of 'em to be depended
+on.”
+
+It was the first time that her growing jealousy of Miss Milray had
+openly declared itself; but Clementina had felt it before, without
+knowing how to meet it. As an escape from it now she was almost willing
+to say, “Mrs. Lander, I want to tell you that Mr. Gregory has just been
+he'a, too.”
+
+“Mr. Gregory?”
+
+“Yes. Don't you remember? At the Middlemount? The first summa? He was
+the headwaita--that student.”
+
+Mrs. Lander jerked her head round on the pillow. “Well, of all the--What
+does he want, over he'a?”
+
+“Nothing. That is--he's travelling with a pupil that he's preparing for
+college, and--he came to see us--”
+
+“D'you tell him I couldn't see him?”
+
+“Yes”
+
+“I guess he'd think I was a pretty changed pusson! Now, I want you
+should stay with me, Clementina, and if anybody else comes--”
+
+Maddalena entered the room with a card which she gave to the girl.
+
+“Who is it?” Mrs. Lander demanded.
+
+“Miss Milray.”
+
+“Of cou'se! Well, you may just send wo'd that you can't--Or, no; you
+must! She'd have it all ova the place, by night, that I wouldn't let
+you see her. But don't you make any excuse for me! If she asks after me,
+don't you say I'm sick! You say I'm not at home.”
+
+“I've come about that little wretch,” Miss Milray began, after kissing
+Clementina. “I didn't know but you had heard something I hadn't, or
+I had heard something you hadn't. You know I belong to the Hinkle
+persuasion: I think Belsky's run his board--as Mr. Hinkle calls it.”
+
+Clementina explained how this part of the Hinkle theory had failed, and
+then Miss Milray devolved upon the belief that he had run his tailor's
+bill or his shoemaker's. “They are delightful, those Russians, but
+they're born insolvent. I don't believe he's drowned himself. How,”
+ she broke off to ask, in a burlesque whisper, “is-the-old-tabby?” She
+laughed, for answer to her own question, and then with another sudden
+diversion she demanded of a look in Clementina's face which would not be
+laughed away, “Well, my dear, what is it?”
+
+“Miss Milray,” said the girl, “should you think me very silly, if I told
+you something--silly?”
+
+“Not in the least!” cried Miss Milray, joyously. “It's the final proof
+of your wisdom that I've been waiting for?”
+
+“It's because Mr. Belsky is all mixed up in it,” said Clementina, as
+if some excuse were necessary, and then she told the story of her love
+affair with Gregory. Miss Milray punctuated the several facts with vivid
+nods, but at the end she did not ask her anything, and the girl somehow
+felt the freer to add: “I believe I will tell you his name. It is Mr.
+Gregory--Frank Gregory--”
+
+“And he's been in Egypt?”
+
+“Yes, the whole winta.”
+
+“Then he's the one that my sister-in-law has been writing me about!”
+
+“Oh, did he meet her the'a?”
+
+“I should think so! And he'll meet her here, very soon. She's coming,
+with my poor brother. I meant to tell you, but this ridiculous Belsky
+business drove it out of my head.”
+
+“And do you think,” Clementina entreated, “that he was to blame?”
+
+“Why, I don't believe he's done it, you know.”
+
+“Oh, I didn't mean Mr. Belsky. I meant--Mr. Gregory. For telling Mr.
+Belsky?”
+
+“Certainly not. Men always tell those things to some one, I suppose.
+Nobody was to blame but Belsky, for his meddling.”
+
+Miss Milray rose and shook out her plumes for flight, as if she were
+rather eager for flight, but at the little sigh with which Clementina
+said, “Yes, that is what I thought,” she faltered.
+
+“I was going to run away, for I shouldn't like to mix myself up in your
+affair--it's certainly a very strange one--unless I was sure I could
+help you. But if you think I can--”
+
+Clementina shook her head. “I don't believe you can,” she said, with a
+candor so wistful that Miss Milray stopped quite short. “How does Mr.
+Gregory take this Belsky business?” she asked.
+
+“I guess he feels it moa than I do,” said the girl.
+
+“He shows his feeling more?”
+
+“Yes--no--He believes he drove him to it.”
+
+Miss Milray took her hand, for parting, but did not kiss her. “I won't
+advise you, my dear. In fact, you haven't asked me to. You'll know what
+to do, if you haven't done it already; girls usually have, when they
+want advice. Was there something you were going to say?”
+
+“Oh, no. Nothing. Do you think,” she hesitated, appealingly, “do you
+think we are--engaged?”
+
+“If he's anything of a man at all, he must think he is.”
+
+“Yes,” said Clementina, wistfully, “I guess he does.”
+
+Miss Milray looked sharply at her. “And does he think you are?”
+
+“I don't know--he didn't say.”
+
+“Well,” said Miss Milray, rather dryly, “then it's something for you to
+think over pretty carefully.”
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+Hinkle came back in the afternoon to make a hopeful report of his
+failure to learn anything more of Belsky, but Gregory did not come with
+him. He came the next morning long before Clementina expected visitors,
+and he was walking nervously up and down the room when she appeared. As
+if he could not speak, he held toward her without speaking a telegram in
+English, dated that day in Rome:
+
+     “Deny report of my death. Have written.
+
+                  “Belsky.”
+
+She looked up at Gregory from the paper, when she had read it, with
+joyful eyes. “Oh, I am so glad for you! I am so glad he is alive.”
+
+He took the dispatch from her hand. “I brought it to you as soon as it
+came.”
+
+“Yes, yes! Of cou'se!”
+
+“I must go now and do what he says--I don't know how yet.” He stopped,
+and then went on from a different impulse. “Clementina, it isn't a
+question now of that wretch's life and death, and I wish I need
+never speak of him again. But what he told you was true.” He looked
+steadfastly at her, and she realized how handsome he was, and how
+well dressed. His thick red hair seemed to have grown darker above his
+forehead; his moustache was heavier, and it curved in at the corners of
+his mouth; he bore himself with a sort of self-disdain that enhanced his
+splendor. “I have never changed toward you; I don't say it to make favor
+with you; I don't expect to do that now; but it is true. That night,
+there at Middlemount, I tried to take back what I said, because I
+believed that I ought.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I knew that,” said Clementina, in the pause he made.
+
+“We were both too young; I had no prospect in life; I saw, the instant
+after I had spoken, that I had no right to let you promise anything.
+I tried to forget you; I couldn't. I tried to make you forget me.” He
+faltered, and she did not speak, but her head drooped a little. “I won't
+ask how far I succeeded. I always hoped that the time would come when
+I could speak to you again. When I heard from Fane that you were at
+Woodlake, I wished to come out and see you, but I hadn't the courage,
+I hadn't the right. I've had to come to you without either, now. Did he
+speak to you about me?”
+
+“I thought he was beginning to, once; but he neva did.”
+
+“It didn't matter; it could only have made bad worse. It can't help me
+to say that somehow I was wishing and trying to do what was right; but I
+was.”
+
+“Oh, I know that, Mr. Gregory,” said Clementina, generously.
+
+“Then you didn't doubt me, in spite of all?”
+
+“I thought you would know what to do. No, I didn't doubt you, exactly.”
+
+“I didn't deserve your trust!” he cried. “How came that man to mention
+me?” he demanded, abruptly, after a moment's silence.
+
+“Mr. Belsky? It was the first night I saw him, and we were talking about
+Americans, and he began to tell me about an American friend of his, who
+was very conscientious. I thought it must be you the fust moment,” said
+Clementina, smiling with an impersonal pleasure in the fact.
+
+“From the conscientiousness?” he asked, in bitter self-irony.
+
+“Why, yes,” she returned, simply. “That was what made me think of you.
+And the last time when he began to talk about you, I couldn't stop him,
+although I knew he had no right to.”
+
+“He had no right. But I gave him the power to do it! He meant no harm,
+but I enabled him to do all the harm.”
+
+“Oh, if he's only alive, now, there is no harm!”
+
+He looked into her eyes with a misgiving from which he burst
+impetuously. “Then you do care for me still, after all that I have done
+to make you detest me?” He started toward her, but she shrank back.
+
+“I didn't mean that,” she hesitated.
+
+“You know that I love you,--that I have always loved you?”
+
+“Yes,” she assented. “But you might be sorry again that you had said
+it.” It sounded like coquetry, but he knew it was not coquetry.
+
+“Never! I've wished to say it again, ever since that night at
+Middlemount; I have always felt bound by what I said then, though I took
+back my words for your sake. But the promise was always there, and my
+life was in it. You believe that?”
+
+“Why, I always believed what you said, Mr. Gregory.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+Clementina paused, with her head seriously on one side. “I should want
+to think about it before I said anything.”
+
+“You are right,” he submitted, dropping his outstretched arms to his
+side. “I have been thinking only of myself, as usual.”
+
+“No,” she protested, compassionately. “But doesn't it seem as if we
+ought to be su'a, this time? I did ca'e for you then, but I was very
+young, and I don't know yet--I thought I had always felt just as you
+did, but now--Don't you think we had both betta wait a little while till
+we ah' moa suttain?”
+
+They stood looking at each other, and he said, with a kind of passionate
+self-denial, “Yes, think it over for me, too. I will come back, if you
+will let me.”
+
+“Oh, thank you!” she cried after him, gratefully, as if his forbearance
+were the greatest favor.
+
+When he was gone she tried to release herself from the kind of abeyance
+in which she seemed to have gone back and been as subject to him as in
+the first days when he had awed her and charmed her with his superiority
+at Middlemount, and he again older and freer as she had grown since.
+
+He came back late in the afternoon, looking jaded and distraught.
+Hinkle, who looked neither, was with him. “Well,” he began, “this is the
+greatest thing in my experience. Belsky's not only alive and well, but
+Mr. Gregory and I are both at large. I did think, one time, that the
+police would take us into custody on account of our morbid interest in
+the thing, and I don't believe we should have got off, if the Consul
+hadn't gone bail for us, so to speak. I thought we had better take the
+Consul in, on our way, and it was lucky we did.”
+
+Clementina did not understand all the implications, but she was willing
+to take Mr. Hinkle's fun on trust. “I don't believe you'll convince Mrs.
+Landa that Mr. Belsky's alive and well, till you bring him back to say
+so.”
+
+“Is that so!” said Hinkle. “Well, we must have him brought back by the
+authorities, then. Perhaps they'll bring him, anyway. They can't try him
+for suicide, but as I understand the police, here, a man can't lose his
+hat over a bridge in Florence with impunity, especially in a time of
+high water. Anyway, they're identifying Belsky by due process of law in
+Rome, now, and I guess Mr. Gregory”--he nodded toward Gregory, who
+sat silent and absent “will be kept under surveillance till the whole
+mystery is cleared up.”
+
+Clementina responded gayly still, but with less and less sincerity, and
+she let Hinkle go at last with the feeling that he knew she wished him
+to go. He made a brave show of not seeing this, and when he was gone,
+she remembered that she had not thanked him for the trouble he had
+taken on her account, and her heart ached after him with a sense of his
+sweetness and goodness, which she had felt from the first through his
+quaint drolling. It was as if the door which closed upon him shut her
+out of the life she had been living of late, and into the life of the
+past where she was subject again to the spell of Gregory's mood; it was
+hardly his will.
+
+He began at once: “I wished to make you say something this morning that
+I have no right to hear you say, yet; and I have been trying ever since
+to think how I could ask you whether you could share my life with
+me, and yet not ask you to do it. But I can't do anything without
+knowing--You may not care for what my life is to be, at all!”
+
+Clementina's head drooped a little, but she answered distinctly, “I do
+ca'e, Mr. Gregory.”
+
+“Thank you for that much; I don't count upon more than you have said.
+Clementina, I am going to be a missionary. I think I shall ask to be
+sent to China; I've not decided yet. My life will be hard; it will be
+full of danger and privation; it will be exile. You will have to think
+of sharing such a life if you think--”
+
+He stopped; the time had come for her to speak, and she said, “I knew
+you wanted to be a missionary--”
+
+“And--and--you would go with me? You would”--He started toward her,
+and she did not shrink from him, now; but he checked himself. “But you
+mustn't, you know, for my sake.”
+
+“I don't believe I quite undastand,” she faltered.
+
+“You must not do it for me, but for what makes me do it. Without that
+our life, our work, could have no consecration.”
+
+She gazed at him in patient, faintly smiling bewilderment, as if it were
+something he would unriddle for her when he chose.
+
+“We mustn't err in this; it would be worse than error; it would be
+sin.” He took a turn about the room, and then stopped before her. “Will
+you--will you join me in a prayer for guidance, Clementina?”
+
+“I--I don't know,” she hesitated. “I will, but--do you think I had
+betta?”
+
+He began, “Why, surely”--After a moment he asked gravely, “You believe
+that our actions will be guided aright, if we seek help?”
+
+“Oh, yes--yes--”
+
+“And that if we do not, we shall stumble in our ignorance?”
+
+“I don't know. I never thought of that.”
+
+“Never thought of it--”
+
+“We never did it in our family. Father always said that if we really
+wanted to do right we could find the way.” Gregory looked daunted, and
+then he frowned darkly. “Are you provoked with me? Do you think what I
+have said is wrong?”
+
+“No, no! You must say what you believe. It would be double hypocrisy in
+me if I prevented you.”
+
+“But I would do it, if you wanted me to,” she said.
+
+“Oh, for me, for ME!” he protested. “I will try to tell you what I mean,
+and why you must not, for that very reason.” But he had to speak of
+himself, of the miracle of finding her again by the means which should
+have lost her to him forever; and of the significance of this. Then it
+appeared to him that he could not reject such a leading without error,
+without sin. “Such a thing could not have merely happened.”
+
+It seemed so to Clementina, too; she eagerly consented that this was
+something they must think of, as well. But the light waned, the
+dark thickened in the room before he left her to do so. Then he said
+fervently, “We must not doubt that everything will come right,” and his
+words seemed an effect of inspiration to them both.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+After Gregory was gone a misgiving began in Clementina's mind, which
+grew more distinct, through all the difficulties of accounting to Mrs.
+Lander for his long stay, The girl could see that it was with an obscure
+jealousy that she pushed her questions, and said at last, “That Mr.
+Hinkle is about the best of the lot. He's the only one that's eva had
+the mannas to ask after me, except that lo'd. He did.”
+
+Clementina could not pretend that Gregory had asked, but she could not
+blame him for a forgetfulness of Mrs. Lander which she had shared with
+him. This helped somehow to deepen the misgiving which followed her from
+Mrs. Lander's bed to her own, and haunted her far into the night. She
+could escape from it only by promising herself to deal with it the
+first thing in the morning. She did this in terms much briefer than she
+thought she could have commanded. She supposed she would have to write a
+very long letter, but she came to the end of all she need say, in a very
+few lines.
+
+   DEAR MR. GREGORY:
+
+   “I have been thinking about what you said yesterday, and I have to
+   tell you something. Then you can do what is right for both of us;
+   you will know better than I can. But I want you to understand that
+   if I go with you in your missionary life, I shall do it for you, and
+   not for anything else. I would go anywhere and live anyhow for you,
+   but it would be for you; I do not believe that I am religious, and I
+   know that I should not do it for religion.
+
+   “That is all; but I could not get any peace till I let you know just
+   how I felt.
+
+                       “CLEMENTINA CLAXON.”
+
+The letter went early in the morning, though not so early but it was put
+in Gregory's hand as he was leaving his hotel to go to Mrs. Lander's. He
+tore it open, and read it on the way, and for the first moment it seemed
+as if it were Providence leading him that he might lighten Clementina's
+heart of its doubts with the least delay. He had reasoned that if she
+would share for his sake the life that he should live for righteousness'
+sake they would be equally blest in it, and it would be equally
+consecrated in both. But this luminous conclusion faded in his thought
+as he hurried on, and he found himself in her presence with something
+like a hope that she would be inspired to help him.
+
+His soul lifted at the sound of the gay voice in which she asked, “Did
+you get my letta?” and it seemed for the instant as if there could be no
+trouble that their love could not overcome.
+
+“Yes,” he said, and he put his arms around her, but with a
+provisionality in his embrace which she subtly perceived.
+
+“And what did you think of it?” she asked. “Did you think I was silly?”
+
+He was aware that she had trusted him to do away her misgiving. “No,
+no,” he answered, guiltily. “Wiser than I am, always. I--I want to talk
+with you about it, Clementina. I want you to advise me.”
+
+He felt her shrink from him, and with a pang he opened his arms to free
+her. But it was right; he must. She had been expecting him to say that
+there was nothing in her misgiving, and he could not say it.
+
+“Clementina,” he entreated, “why do you think you are not religious?”
+
+“Why, I have never belonged to chu'ch,” she answered simply. He looked
+so daunted, that she tried to soften the blow after she had dealt it.
+“Of course, I always went to chu'ch, though father and motha didn't. I
+went to the Episcopal--to Mr. Richling's. But I neva was confirmed.”
+
+“But--you believe in God?”
+
+“Why, certainly!”
+
+“And in the Bible?”
+
+“Why, of cou'se!”
+
+“And that it is our duty to bear the truth to those who have never heard
+of it?”
+
+“I know that is the way you feel about it; but I am not certain that
+I should feel so myself if you didn't want me to. That's what I got to
+thinking about last night.” She added hopefully, “But perhaps it isn't
+so great a thing as I--”
+
+“It's a very great thing,” he said, and from standing in front of her,
+he now sat down beyond a little table before her sofa. “How can I ask
+you to share my life if you don't share my faith?”
+
+“Why, I should try to believe everything that you do, of cou'se.”
+
+“Because I do?”
+
+“Well-yes.”
+
+“You wring my heart! Are you willing to study--to look into these
+questions--to--to”--It all seemed very hopeless, very absurd, but she
+answered seriously:
+
+“Yes, but I believe it would all come back to just where it is, now.”
+
+“What you say, Clementina, makes me so happy; but it ought to make
+me--miserable! And you would do all this, be all this for me, a wretched
+and erring creature of the dust, and yet not do it for--God?”
+
+Clementina could only say, “Perhaps if He meant me to do it for Him, He
+would have made me want to. He made you.”
+
+“Yes,” said Gregory, and for a long time he could not say any more. He
+sat with his elbow on the table, and his head against his lifted hand.
+
+“You see,” she began, gently, “I got to thinking that even if I eva
+came to believe what you wanted me to, I should be doing it after all,
+because you wanted me to--”
+
+“Yes, yes,” he answered, desolately. “There is no way out of it. If you
+only hated me, Clementina, despised me--I don't mean that. But if you
+were not so good, I could have a more hope for you--for myself. It's
+because you are so good that I can't make myself wish to change you,
+and yet I know--I am afraid that if you told me my life and objects were
+wrong, I should turn from them, and be whatever you said. Do you tell me
+that?”
+
+“No, indeed!” cried Clementina, with abhorrence. “Then I should despise
+you.”
+
+He seemed not to heed her. He moved his lips as if he were talking to
+himself, and he pleaded, “What shall we do?”
+
+“We must try to think it out, and if we can't--if you can't let me give
+up to you unless I do it for the same reason that you do; and if I
+can't let you give up for me, and I know I could neva do that; then--we
+mustn't!”
+
+“Do you mean, we must part? Not see each other again?”
+
+“What use would it be?”
+
+“None,” he owned. She had risen, and he stood up perforce. “May I--may I
+come back to tell you?”
+
+“Tell me what?” she asked.
+
+“You are right! If I can't make it right, I won't come. But I won't say
+good bye. I--can't.”
+
+She let him go, and Maddalena came in at the door. “Signorina,” she
+said, “the signora is not well. Shall I send for the doctor?”
+
+“Yes, yes, Maddalena. Run!” cried Clementina, distractedly. She hurried
+to Mrs. Lander's room, where she found her too sick for reproaches, for
+anything but appeals for help and pity. The girl had not to wait for
+Doctor Welwright's coming to understand that the attack was severer than
+any before.
+
+It lasted through the day, and she could see that he was troubled. It
+had not followed upon any imprudeuce, as Mrs. Lander pathetically called
+Clementina to witness when her pain had been so far quelled that she
+could talk of her seizure.
+
+He found her greatly weakened by it the next day, and he sat looking
+thoughtfully at her before he said that she needed toning up. She caught
+at the notion. “Yes, yes! That's what I need, docta! Toning up! That's
+what I need.”
+
+He suggested, “How would you like to try the sea air, and the baths--at
+Venice?”
+
+“Oh, anything, anywhere, to get out of this dreadful hole! I ha'n't had
+a well minute since I came. And Clementina,” the sick woman whimpered,
+“is so taken up all the time, he'a, that I can't get the right
+attention.”
+
+The doctor looked compassionately away from the girl, and said, “Well,
+we must arrange about getting you off, then.”
+
+“But I want you should go with me, doctor, and see me settled all right.
+You can, can't you? I sha'n't ca'e how much it costs?”
+
+The doctor said gravely he thought he could manage it and he ignored the
+long unconscious sigh of relief that Clementina drew.
+
+In all her confusing anxieties for Mrs. Lander, Gregory remained at
+the bottom of her heart a dumb ache. When the pressure of her fears was
+taken from her she began to suffer for him consciously; then a letter
+came from him:
+
+   “I cannot make it right. It is where it was, and I feel that I must
+   not see you again. I am trying to do right, but with the fear that
+   I am wrong. Send some word to help me before I go away to-morrow.
+   F. G.”
+
+It was what she had expected, she knew now, but it was none the less to
+be borne because of her expectation. She wrote back:
+
+   “I believe you are doing the best you can, and I shall always
+   believe that.”
+
+Her note brought back a long letter from him. He said that whatever he
+did, or wherever he went, he should try to be true to her ideal of him.
+If they renounced their love now for the sake of what seemed higher than
+their love, they might suffer, but they could not choose but do as they
+were doing.
+
+Clementina was trying to make what she could of this when Miss Milray's
+name came up, and Miss Milray followed it.
+
+“I wanted to ask after Mrs. Lander, and I want you to tell her I did.
+Will you? Dr. Welwright says he's going to take her to Venice. Well,
+I'm sorry--sorry for your going, Clementina, and I'm truly sorry for
+the cause of it. I shall miss you, my dear, I shall indeed. You know I
+always wanted to steal you, but you'll do me the justice to say I never
+did, and I won't try, now.”
+
+“Perhaps I wasn't worth stealing,” Clementina suggested, with a
+ruefulness in her smile that went to Miss Milray's heart.
+
+She put her arms round her and kissed her. “I wasn't very kind to you,
+the other day, Clementina, was I?”
+
+“I don't know,” Clementina faltered, with half-averted face.
+
+“Yes, you do! I was trying to make-believe that I didn't want to meddle
+with your affairs; but I was really vexed that you hadn't told me your
+story before. It hasn't taken me all this time to reflect that you
+couldn't, but it has to make myself come and confess that I had been dry
+and cold with you.” She hesitated. “It's come out all right, hasn't it,
+Clementina?” she asked, tenderly. “You see I want to meddle, now.”
+
+“We ah' trying to think so,” sighed the girl.
+
+“Tell me about it!” Miss Milray pulled her down on the sofa with her,
+and modified her embrace to a clasp of Clementina's bands.
+
+“Why, there isn't much to tell,” she began, but she told what there was,
+and Miss Milray kept her countenance concerning the scruple that had
+parted Clementina and her lover. “Perhaps he wouldn't have thought of
+it,” she said, in a final self-reproach, “if I hadn't put it into his
+head.”
+
+“Well, then, I'm not sorry you put it into his head,” cried Miss Milray.
+“Clementina, may I say what I think of Mr. Gregory's performance?”
+
+“Why, certainly, Miss Milray!”
+
+“I think he's not merely a gloomy little bigot, but a very hard-hearted
+little wretch, and I'm glad you're rid of him. No, stop! Let me go on!
+You said I might!” she persisted, at a protest which imparted itself from
+Clementina's restive hands. “It was selfish and cruel of him to let you
+believe that he had forgotten you. It doesn't make it right now, when an
+accident has forced him to tell you that he cared for you all along.”
+
+“Why, do you look at it that way, Miss Milray? If he was doing it on my
+account?”
+
+“He may think he was doing it on your account, but I think he was doing
+it on his own. In such a thing as that, a man is bound by his mistakes,
+if he has made any. He can't go back of them by simply ignoring them.
+It didn't make it the same for you when he decided for your sake that he
+would act as if he had never spoken to you.”
+
+“I presume he thought that it would come right, sometime,” Clementina
+urged. “I did.”
+
+“Yes, that was very well for you, but it wasn't at all well for him. He
+behaved cruelly; there's no other word for it.”
+
+“I don't believe he meant to be cruel, Miss Milray,” said Clementina.
+
+“You're not sorry you've broken with him?” demanded Miss Milray,
+severely, and she let go of Clementina's hands.
+
+“I shouldn't want him to think I hadn't been fai'a.”
+
+“I don't understand what you mean by not being fair,” said Miss Milray,
+after a study of the girl's eyes.
+
+“I mean,” Clementina explained, “that if I let him think the religion
+was all the'e was, it wouldn't have been fai'a.”
+
+“Why, weren't you sincere about that?”
+
+“Of cou'se I was!” returned the girl, almost indignantly. “But if the'e
+was anything else, I ought to have told him that, too; and I couldn't.”
+
+“Then you can't tell me, of course?” Miss Milray rose in a little pique.
+
+“Perhaps some day I will,” the girl entreated. “And perhaps that was
+all.”
+
+Miss Milray laughed. “Well, if that was enough to end it, I'm satisfied,
+and I'll let you keep your mystery--if it is one--till we meet in
+Venice; I shall be there early in June. Good bye, dear, and say good bye
+to Mrs. Lander for me.”
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+Dr. Welwright got his patient a lodging on the Grand Canal in Venice,
+and decided to stay long enough to note the first effect of the air and
+the baths, and to look up a doctor to leave her with.
+
+This took something more than a week, which could not all be spent in
+Mrs. Lander's company, much as she wished it. There were hours which he
+gave to going about in a gondola with Clementina, whom he forbade to
+be always at the invalid's side. He tried to reassure her as to Mrs.
+Lander's health, when he found her rather mute and absent, while they
+drifted in the silvery sun of the late April weather, just beginning to
+be warm, but not warm enough yet for the tent of the open gondola. He
+asked her about Mrs. Lander's family, and Clementina could only tell him
+that she had always said she had none. She told him the story of her own
+relation to her, and he said, “Yes, I heard something of that from Miss
+Milray.” After a moment of silence, during which he looked curiously
+into the girl's eyes, “Do you think you can bear a little more care,
+Miss Claxon?”
+
+“I think I can,” said Clementina, not very courageously, but patiently.
+
+“It's only this, and I wouldn't tell you if I hadn't thought you equal
+to it. Mrs. Lander's case puzzles me. But I shall leave Dr. Tradonico
+watching it, and if it takes the turn that there's a chance it may take,
+he will tell you, and you'd better find out about her friends, and--let
+them know. That's all.”
+
+“Yes,” said Clementina, as if it were not quite enough. Perhaps she
+did not fully realize all that the doctor had intended; life alone is
+credible to the young; life and the expectation of it.
+
+The night before he was to return to Florence there was a full moon; and
+when he had got Mrs. Lander to sleep he asked Clementina if she would
+not go out on the lagoon with him. He assigned no peculiar virtue to the
+moonlight, and he had no new charge to give her concerning his patient
+when they were embarked. He seemed to wish her to talk about herself,
+and when she strayed from the topic, he prompted her return. Then he
+wished to know how she liked Florence, as compared with Venice, and all
+the other cities she had seen, and when she said she had not seen any
+but Boston and New York, and London for one night, he wished to know
+whether she liked Florence as well. She said she liked it best of all,
+and he told her he was very glad, for he liked it himself better than
+any place he had ever seen. He spoke of his family in America, which
+was formed of grownup brothers and sisters, so that he had none of the
+closest and tenderest ties obliging him to return; there was no reason
+why he should not spend all his days in Florence, except for some brief
+visits home. It would be another thing with such a place as Venice; he
+could never have the same settled feeling there: it was beautiful, but
+it was unreal; it would be like spending one's life at the opera. Did
+not she think so?
+
+She thought so, oh, yes; she never could have the home-feeling at Venice
+that she had at Florence.
+
+“Exactly; that's what I meant--a home-feeling; I'm glad you had it.” He
+let the gondola dip and slide forward almost a minute before he added,
+with an effect of pulling a voice up out of his throat somewhere, “How
+would you like to live there--with me--as my wife?”
+
+“Why, what do you mean, Dr. Welwright?” asked Clementina, with a vague
+laugh.
+
+Dr. Welwright laughed, too; but not vaguely; there was a mounting
+cheerfulness in his laugh. “What I say. I hope it isn't very
+surprising.”
+
+“No; but I never thought of such a thing.”
+
+“Perhaps you will think of it now.”
+
+“But you're not in ea'nest!”
+
+“I'm thoroughly in earnest,” said the doctor, and he seemed very much
+amused at her incredulity.
+
+“Then; I'm sorry,” she answered. “I couldn't.”
+
+“No?” he said, still with amusement, or with a courage that took that
+form. “Why not?”
+
+“Because I am--not free.”
+
+For an interval they were so silent that they could hear each other
+breathe: Then, after he had quietly bidden the gondolier go back to
+their hotel, he asked, “If you had been free you might have answered me
+differently?”
+
+“I don't know,” said Clementina, candidly. “I never thought of it.”
+
+“It isn't because you disliked me?”
+
+“Oh, no!”
+
+“Then I must get what comfort I can out of that. I hope, with all my
+heart, that you may be happy.”
+
+“Why, Dr. Welwright!” said Clementina. “Don't you suppose that I should
+be glad to do it, if I could? Any one would!”
+
+“It doesn't seem very probable, just now,” he answered, humbly. “But
+I'll believe it if you say so.”
+
+“I do say so, and I always shall.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+Dr. Welwright professed himself ready for his departure, at breakfast
+next morning and he must have made his preparations very late or very
+early. He was explicit in his charges to Clementina concerning Mrs.
+Lander, and at the end of them, he said, “She will not know when she
+is asking too much of you, but you will, and you must act upon your
+knowledge. And remember, if you are in need of help, of any kind, you're
+to let me know. Will you?”
+
+“Yes, I will, Dr. Welwright.”
+
+“People will be going away soon, and I shall not be so busy. I can come
+back if Dr. Tradonico thinks it necessary.”
+
+He left Mrs. Lander full of resolutions to look after her own welfare in
+every way, and she went out in her gondola the same morning. She was not
+only to take the air as much as possible, but she was to amuse herself,
+and she decided that she would have her second breakfast at the Caffe
+Florian. Venice was beginning to fill up with arrivals from the south,
+and it need not have been so surprising to find Mr. Hinkle there over a
+cup of coffee. He said he had just that moment been thinking of her,
+and meaning to look her up at the hotel. He said that he had stopped at
+Venice because it was such a splendid place to introduce his gleaner; he
+invited Mrs. Lander to become a partner in the enterprise; he promised
+her a return of fifty per cent. on her investment. If he could once
+introduce his gleaner in Venice, he should be a made man. He asked Mrs.
+Lander, with real feeling, how she was; as for Miss Clementina, he need
+not ask.
+
+“Oh, indeed, the docta thinks she wants a little lookin' after, too,”
+ said Mrs. Lander.
+
+“Well, about as much as you do, Mrs. Lander,” Hinkle allowed,
+tolerantly. “I don't know how it affects you, ma'am, such a meeting of
+friends in these strange waters, but it's building me right up. It's
+made another man of me, already, and I've got the other man's appetite,
+too. Mind my letting him have his breakfast here with me at your table?”
+ He bade the waiter just fetch his plate. He attached himself to them;
+he spent the day with them. Mrs. Lander asked him to dinner at her
+lodgings, and left him to Clementina over the coffee.
+
+“She's looking fine, doesn't the doctor think? This air will do
+everything for her.”
+
+“Oh, yes; she's a great deal betta than she was befo'e we came.”
+
+“That's right. Well, now, you've got me here, you must let me make
+myself useful any way I can. I've got a spare month that I can put in
+here in Venice, just as well as not; I sha'n't want to push north till
+the frost's out of the ground. They wouldn't have a chance to try my
+gleaner, on the other side of the Alps much before September, anyway.
+Now, in Ohio, the part I come from, we cut our wheat in June. When is
+your wheat harvest at Middlemount?”
+
+Clementina laughed. “I don't believe we've got any. I guess it's all
+grass.”
+
+“I wish you could see our country out there, once.”
+
+“Is it nice?”
+
+“Nice? We're right in the centre of the state, measuring from north to
+south, on the old National Road.” Clementina had never heard of this
+road, but she did not say so. “About five miles back from the Ohio
+River, where the coal comes up out of the ground, because there's so
+much of it there's no room for it below. Our farm's in a valley, along
+a creek bottom, what you Yankees call an intervals; we've got three
+hundred acres. My grandfather took up the land, and then he went back
+to Pennsylvania to get the girl he'd left there--we were Pennsylvania
+Dutch; that's where I got my romantic name--they drove all the way out
+to Ohio again in his buggy, and when he came in sight of our valley with
+his bride, he stood up in his buggy and pointed with his whip. 'There!
+As far as the sky is blue, it's all ours!'”
+
+Clementina owned the charm of his story as he seemed to expect, but when
+he said, “Yes, I want you to see that country, some day,” she answered
+cautiously.
+
+“It must be lovely. But I don't expect to go West, eva.”
+
+“I like your Eastern way of saying everr,” said Hinkle, and he said it
+in his Western way. “I like New England folks.”
+
+Clementina smiled discreetly. “They have their faults like everybody
+else, I presume.”
+
+“Ah, that's a regular Yankee word: presume,” said Hinkle. “Our teacher,
+my first one, always said presume. She was from your State, too.”
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+In the time of provisional quiet that followed for Clementina, she
+was held from the remorses and misgivings that had troubled her before
+Hinkle came. She still thought that she had let Dr. Welwright go
+away believing that she had not cared enough for the offer which had
+surprised her so much, and she blamed herself for not telling him how
+doubly bound she was to Gregory; though when she tried to put her sense
+of this in words to herself she could not make out that she was any more
+bound to him than she had been before they met in Florence, unless she
+wished to be so. Yet somehow in this time of respite, neither the regret
+for Dr. Welwright nor the question of Gregory persisted very strongly,
+and there were whole days when she realized before she slept that she
+had not thought of either.
+
+She was in full favor again with Mrs. Lander, whom there was no one
+to embitter in her jealous affection. Hinkle formed their whole social
+world, and Mrs. Lander made the most of him. She was always having him
+to the dinners which her landlord served her from a restaurant in her
+apartment, and taking him out with Clementina in her gondola. He came
+into a kind of authority with them both which was as involuntary with
+him as with them, and was like an effect of his constant wish to be
+doing something for them.
+
+One morning when they were all going out in Mrs. Lander's gondola, she
+sent Clementina back three times to their rooms for outer garments of
+differing density. When she brought the last Mrs. Lander frowned.
+
+“This won't do. I've got to have something else--something lighter and
+warma.”
+
+“I can't go back any moa, Mrs. Landa,” cried the girl, from the
+exasperation of her own nerves.
+
+“Then I will go back myself,” said Mrs. Lander with dignity, “and we
+sha'n't need the gondoler any more this mo'ning,” she added, “unless you
+and Mr. Hinkle wants to ride.”
+
+She got ponderously out of the boat with the help of the gondolier's
+elbow, and marched into the house again, while Clementina followed her.
+She did not offer to help her up the stairs; Hinkle had to do it, and he
+met the girl slowly coming up as he returned from delivering Mrs. Lander
+over to Maddalena.
+
+“She's all right, now,” he ventured to say, tentatively.
+
+“Is she?” Clementina coldly answered.
+
+In spite of her repellent air, he persisted, “She's a pretty sick woman,
+isn't she?”
+
+“The docta doesn't say.”
+
+“Well, I think it would be safe to act on that supposition. Miss
+Clementina--I think she wants to see you.”
+
+“I'm going to her directly.”
+
+Hinkle paused, rather daunted. “She wants me to go for the doctor.”
+
+“She's always wanting the docta.” Clementina lifted her eyes and looked
+very coldly at him.
+
+“If I were you I'd go up right away,” he said, boldly.
+
+She felt that she ought to resent his interference, but the mild
+entreaty of his pale blue eyes, or the elder-brotherly injunction of his
+smile, forbade her. “Did she ask for me?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I'll go to her,” she said, and she kept herself from smiling at the
+long sigh of relief he gave as she passed him on the stairs.
+
+Mrs. Lander began as soon as she entered her room, “Well, I was just
+wonderin' if you was goin' to leave me here all day alone, while you
+staid down the'e, carryin' on with that simpleton. I don't know what's
+got into the men.”
+
+“Mr. Hinkle has gone for the docta,” said Clementina, trying to get into
+her voice the kindness she was trying to feel.
+
+“Well, if I have one of my attacks, now, you'll have yourself to thank
+for it.”
+
+By the time Dr. Tradonico appeared Mrs. Lander was so much better that
+in her revulsion of feeling she was all day rather tryingly affectionate
+in her indirect appeals for Clementina's sympathy.
+
+“I don't want you should mind what I say, when I a'n't feelin'
+just right,” she began that evening, after she had gone to bed, and
+Clementina sat looking out of the open window, on the moonlit lagoon.
+
+“Oh, no,” the girl answered, wearily.
+
+Mrs. Lander humbled herself farther. “I'm real sorry I plagued you so,
+to-day, and I know Mr. Hinkle thought I was dreadful, but I couldn't
+help it. I should like to talk with you, Clementina, about something
+that's worryin' me, if you a'n't busy.”
+
+“I'm not busy, now, Mrs. Lander,” said Clementina, a little coldly, and
+relaxing the clasp of her hands; to knit her fingers together had been
+her sole business, and she put even this away.
+
+She did not come nearer the bed, and Mrs. Lander was obliged to speak
+without the advantage of noting the effect of her words upon her in her
+face. “It's like this: What am I agoin' to do for them relations of Mr.
+Landa's out in Michigan?”
+
+“I don't know. What relations?”
+
+“I told you about 'em: the only ones he's got: his half-sista's
+children. He neva saw 'em, and he neva wanted to; but they're his kin,
+and it was his money. It don't seem right to pass 'em ova. Do you think
+it would yourself, Clementina?”
+
+“Why, of cou'se not, Mrs. Lander. It wouldn't be right at all.”
+
+Mrs. Lander looked relieved, and she said, as if a little surprised,
+“I'm glad you feel that way; I should feel just so, myself. I mean to do
+by you just what I always said I should. I sha'n't forget you, but whe'e
+the'e's so much I got to thinkin' the'e'd ought to some of it go to his
+folks, whetha he ca'ed for 'em or not. It's worried me some, and I guess
+if anything it's that that's made me wo'se lately.”
+
+“Why by Mrs. Landa,” said the girl, “Why don't you give it all to them?”
+
+“You don't know what you'a talkin' about,” said Mrs. Lander, severely.
+“I guess if I give 'em five thousand or so amongst'em, it's full moa
+than they eve' thought of havin', and it's moa than they got any right
+to. Well, that's all right, then; and we don't need to talk about it
+any moa. Yes,” she resumed, after a moment, “that's what I shall do.
+I hu'n't eva felt just satisfied with that last will I got made, and I
+guess I shall tear it up, and get the fust American lawyer that comes
+along to make me a new one. The prop'ty's all goin' to you, but I guess
+I shall leave five thousand apiece to the two families out the'e. You
+won't miss it, any, and I presume it's what Mr. Landa would expect I
+should do; though why he didn't do it himself, I can't undastand, unless
+it was to show his confidence in me.”
+
+She began to ask Clementina how she felt about staying in Venice all
+summer; she said she had got so much better there already that she
+believed she should be well by fall if she stayed on. She was certain
+that it would put her all back if she were to travel now, and in Europe,
+where it was so hard to know how to get to places, she did not see how
+they could pick out any that would suit them as well as Venice did.
+
+Clementina agreed to it all, more or less absentmindedly, as she sat
+looking into the moonlight, and the day that had begun so stormily ended
+in kindness between them.
+
+The next morning Mrs. Lander did not wish to go out, and she sent
+Clementina and Hinkle together as a proof that they were all on
+good terms again. She did not spare the girl this explanation in his
+presence, and when they were in the gondola he felt that he had to say,
+“I was afraid you might think I was rather meddlesome yesterday.”
+
+“Oh, no,” she answered. “I was glad you did.”
+
+“Yes,” he returned, “I thought you would be afterwards.” He looked at
+her wistfully with his slanted eyes and his odd twisted smile and they
+both gave way in the same conscious laugh. “What I like,” he explained
+further, “is to be understood when I've said something that doesn't mean
+anything, don't you? You know anybody can understand you if you really
+mean something; but most of the time you don't, and that's when a friend
+is useful. I wish you'd call on me if you're ever in that fix.”
+
+“Oh, I will, Mr. Hinkle,” Clementina promised, gayly.
+
+“Thank you,” he said, and her gayety seemed to turn him graver. “Miss
+Clementina, might I go a little further in this direction, without
+danger?”
+
+“What direction?” she added, with a flush of sudden alarm.
+
+“Mrs. Lander.”
+
+“Why, suttainly!” she answered, in quick relief.
+
+“I wish you'd let me do some of the worrying about her for you, while
+I'm here. You know I haven't got anything else to do!”
+
+“Why, I don't believe I worry much. I'm afraid I fo'get about her when
+I'm not with her. That's the wo'st of it.”
+
+“No, no,” he entreated, “that's the best of it. But I want to do the
+worrying for you even when you're with her. Will you let me?”
+
+“Why, if you want to so very much.”
+
+“Then it's settled,” he said, dismissing the subject.
+
+But she recurred to it with a lingering compunction.
+
+“I presume that I don't remember how sick she is because I've neva been
+sick at all, myself.”
+
+“Well,” he returned, “You needn't be sorry for that altogether. There
+are worse things than being well, though sick people don't always think
+so. I've wasted a good deal of time the other way, though I've reformed,
+now.”
+
+They went on to talk about themselves; sometimes they talked about
+others, in excursions which were more or less perfunctory, and were
+merely in the way of illustration or instance. She got so far in one of
+these as to speak of her family, and he seemed to understand them. He
+asked about them all, and he said he believed in her father's unworldly
+theory of life. He asked her if they thought at home that she was like
+her father, and he added, as if it followed, “I'm the worldling of my
+family. I was the youngest child, and the only boy in a flock of girls.
+That always spoils a boy.”
+
+“Are you spoiled?” she asked.
+
+“Well, I'm afraid they'd be surprised if I didn't come to grief
+somehow--all but--mother; she expects I'll be kept from harm.”
+
+“Is she religious?”
+
+“Yes, she's a Moravian. Did you ever hear of them?” Clementina shook
+her head. “They're something like the Quakers, and something like the
+Methodists. They don't believe in war; but they have bishops.”
+
+“And do you belong to her church?”
+
+“No,” said the young man. “I wish I did, for her sake. I don't belong to
+any. Do you?”
+
+“No, I go to the Episcopal, at home. Perhaps I shall belong sometime.
+But I think that is something everyone must do for themselves.” He
+looked a little alarmed at the note of severity in her voice, and she
+explained. “I mean that if you try to be religious for anything besides
+religion, it isn't being religious;--and no one else has any right to
+ask you to be.”
+
+“Oh, that's what I believe, too,” he said, with comic relief. “I didn't
+know but I'd been trying to convert you without knowing it.” They both
+laughed, and were then rather seriously silent.
+
+He asked, after a moment, in a fresh beginning, “Have you heard from
+Miss Milray since you left Florence?”
+
+“Oh, yes, didn't I tell you? She's coming here in June.”
+
+“Well, she won't have the pleasure of seeing me, then. I'm going the
+last of May.”
+
+“I thought you were going to stay a month!” she protested.
+
+“That will be a month; and more, too.”
+
+“So it will,” she owned.
+
+“I'm glad it doesn't seem any longer--say a year--Miss Clementina!”
+
+“Oh, not at all,” she returned. “Miss Milray's brother and his wife are
+coming with her. They've been in Egypt.”
+
+“I never saw them,” said Hinkle. He paused, before he added, “Well,
+it would seem rather crowded after they get here, I suppose,” and he
+laughed, while Clementina said nothing.
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+Hinkle came every morning now, to smoothe out the doubts and
+difficulties that had accumulated in Mrs. Lander's mind over night, and
+incidentally to propose some pleasure for Clementina, who could feel
+that he was pitying her in her slavery to the sick woman's whims, and
+yet somehow entreating her to bear them. He saw them together in what
+Mrs. Lander called her well days; but there were other days when he saw
+Clementina alone, and then she brought him word from Mrs. Lander, and
+reported his talk to her after he went away. On one of these she sent
+him a cheerfuller message than usual, and charged the girl to explain
+that she was ever so much better, but had not got up because she felt
+that every minute in bed was doing her good. Clementina carried back his
+regrets and congratulation, and then told Mrs. Lander that he had asked
+her to go out with him to see a church, which he was sorry Mrs.
+Lander could not see too. He professed to be very particular about his
+churches, for he said he had noticed that they neither of them had any
+great gift for sights, and he had it on his conscience to get the best
+for them. He told Clementina that the church he had for them now could
+not be better if it had been built expressly for them, instead of
+having been used as a place of worship for eight or ten generations of
+Venetians before they came. She gave his invitation to Mrs. Lander, who
+could not always be trusted with his jokes, and she received it in the
+best part.
+
+“Well, you go!” she said. “Maddalena can look after me, I guess. He's
+the only one of the fellas, except that lo'd, that I'd give a cent
+for.” She added, with a sudden lapse from her pleasure in Hinkle to her
+severity with Clementina, “But you want to be ca'eful what you' doin'.”
+
+“Ca'eful?”
+
+“Yes!--About Mr. Hinkle. I a'n't agoin' to have you lead him on, and
+then say you didn't know where he was goin'. I can't keep runnin' away
+everywhe'e, fo' you, the way I done at Woodlake.”
+
+Clementina's heart gave a leap, whether joyful or woeful; but she
+answered indignantly, “How can you say such a thing to me, Mrs. Lander.
+I'm not leading him on!”
+
+“I don't know what you call it. You're round with him in the gondoler,
+night and day, and when he's he'e, you'a settin' with him half the time
+on the balcony, and it's talk, talk, the whole while.” Clementina took
+in the fact with silent recognition, and Mrs. Lander went on. “I ain't
+sayin' anything against it. He's the only one I don't believe is afta
+the money he thinks you'a goin' to have; but if you don't want him, you
+want to look what you're about.”
+
+The girl returned to Hinkle in the embarrassment which she was helpless
+to hide, and without the excuse which she could not invent for refusing
+to go with him. “Is Mrs. Lander worse--or anything?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, no. She's quite well,” said Clementina; but she left it for him
+to break the constraint in which they set out. He tried to do so at
+different points, but it seemed to close upon them--the more inflexibly.
+At last he asked, as they were drawing near the church, “Have you ever
+seen anything of Mr. Belsky since you left Florence?”
+
+“No,” she said, with a nervous start. “What makes you ask?”
+
+“I don't know. But you see nearly everybody again that you meet in your
+travels. That friend of his--that Mr. Gregory--he seems to have dropped
+out, too. I believe you told me you used to know him in America.”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, briefly; she could not say more; and Hinkle went
+on. “It seemed to me, that as far as I could make him out, he was about
+as much of a crank in his way as the Russian. It's curious, but when you
+were talking about religion, the other day, you made me think of him!”
+ The blood went to Clementina's heart. “I don't suppose you had him in
+mind, but what you said fitted him more than anyone I know of. I could
+have almost believed that he had been trying to convert you!” She stared
+at him, and he laughed. “He tackled me one day there in Florence all of
+a sudden, and I didn't know what to say, exactly. Of course, I respected
+his earnestness; but I couldn't accept his view of things and I tried to
+tell him so. I had to say just where I stood, and why, and I mentioned
+some books that helped to get me there. He said he never read anything
+that went counter to his faith; and I saw that he didn't want to save
+me, so much as he wanted to convince me. He didn't know it, and I didn't
+tell him that I knew it, but I got him to let me drop the subject. He
+seems to have been left over from a time when people didn't reason about
+their beliefs, but only argued. I didn't think there was a man like that
+to be found so late in the century, especially a young man. But that was
+just where I was mistaken. If there was to be a man of that kind at all,
+it would have to be a young one. He'll be a good deal opener-minded when
+he's older. He was conscientious; I could see that; and he did take the
+Russian's death to heart as long as he was dead. But I'd like to talk
+with him ten years from now; he wouldn't be where he is.”
+
+Clementina was still silent, and she walked up the church steps from the
+gondola without the power to speak. She made no show of interest in the
+pictures and statues; she never had really cared much for such things,
+and now his attempts to make her look at them failed miserably. When
+they got back again into the boat he began, “Miss Clementina, I'm afraid
+I oughtn't to have spoken as I did of that Mr. Gregory. If he is a
+friend of yours--”
+
+“He is,” she made herself answer.
+
+“I didn't mean anything against him. I hope you don't think I wanted to
+be unfair?”
+
+“You were not unfair. But I oughtn't to have let you say it, Mr. Hinkle.
+I want to tell you something--I mean, I must”--She found herself panting
+and breathless. “You ought to know it--Mr. Gregory is--I mean we are--”
+
+She stopped and she saw that she need not say more.
+
+In the days that followed before the time that Hinkle had fixed to leave
+Venice, he tried to come as he had been coming, to see Mrs. Lander,
+but he evaded her when she wished to send him out with Clementina. His
+quaintness had a heartache in it for her; and he was boyishly simple in
+his failure to hide his suffering. He had no explicit right to suffer,
+for he had asked nothing and been denied nothing, but perhaps for this
+reason she suffered the more keenly for him.
+
+A senseless resentment against Gregory for spoiling their happiness
+crept into her heart; and she wished to show Hinkle how much she valued
+his friendship at any risk and any cost. When this led her too far she
+took herself to task with a severity which hurt him too. In the midst
+of the impulses on which she acted, there were times when she had a
+confused longing to appeal to him for counsel as to how she ought to
+behave toward him.
+
+There was no one else whom she could appeal to. Mrs. Lander, after her
+first warning, had not spoken of him again, though Clementina could feel
+in the grimness with which she regarded her variable treatment of him
+that she was silently hoarding up a sum of inculpation which would crush
+her under its weight when it should fall upon her. She seemed to be
+growing constantly better, now, and as the interval since her last
+attack widened behind her, she began to indulge her appetite with a
+recklessness which Clementina, in a sense of her own unworthiness, was
+helpless to deal with. When she ventured to ask her once whether she
+ought to eat of something that was very unwholesome for her, Mrs. Lander
+answered that she had taken her case into her own hands, now, for she
+knew more about it than all the doctors. She would thank Clementina not
+to bother about her; she added that she was at least not hurting anybody
+but herself, and she hoped Clementina would always be able to say as
+much.
+
+Clementina wished that Hinkle would go away, but not before she had
+righted herself with him, and he lingered his month out, and seemed as
+little able to go as she to let him. She had often to be cheerful for
+both, when she found it too much to be cheerful for herself. In
+his absence she feigned free and open talks with him, and explained
+everything, and experienced a kind of ghostly comfort in his imagined
+approval and forgiveness, but in his presence, nothing really happened
+except the alternation of her kindness and unkindness, in which she was
+too kind and then too unkind.
+
+The morning of the day he was at last to leave Venice, he came to say
+good bye. He did not ask for Mrs. Lander, when the girl received him,
+and he did not give himself time to lose courage before he began, “Miss
+Clementina, I don't know whether I ought to speak to you after what I
+understood you to mean about Mr. Gregory.” He looked steadfastly at her
+but she did not answer, and he went on. “There's just one chance in a
+million, though, that I didn't understand you rightly, and I've made up
+my mind that I want to take that chance. May I?” She tried to speak,
+but she could not. “If I was wrong--if there was nothing between you and
+him--could there ever be anything between you and me?”
+
+His pleading looks entreated her even more than his words.
+
+“There was something,” she answered, “with him.”
+
+“And I mustn't know what,” the young man said patiently.
+
+“Yes--yes!” she returned eagerly. “Oh, yes! I want you to know--I want
+to tell you. I was only sixteen yea's old, and he said that he oughtn't
+to have spoken; we were both too young. But last winta he spoke again.
+He said that he had always felt bound”--She stopped, and he got infirmly
+to his feet. “I wanted to tell you from the fust, but--”
+
+“How could you? You couldn't. I haven't anything more to say, if you are
+bound to him.”
+
+“He is going to be a missionary and he wanted me to say that I would
+believe just as he did; and I couldn't. But I thought that it would come
+right; and--yes, I felt bound to him, too. That is all--I can't explain
+it!”
+
+“Oh, I understand!” he returned, listlessly.
+
+“And do you blame me for not telling before?” She made an involuntary
+movement toward him, a pathetic gesture which both entreated and
+compassionated.
+
+“There's nobody to blame. You have tried to do just right by me, as well
+as him. Well, I've got my answer. Mrs. Lander--can I--”
+
+“Why, she isn't up yet, Mr. Hinkle.” Clementina put all her pain for him
+into the expression of their regret.
+
+“Then I'll have to leave my good-bye for her with you. I don't believe
+I can come back again.” He looked round as if he were dizzy. “Good-bye,”
+ he said, and offered his hand. It was cold as clay.
+
+When he was gone, Clementina went into Mrs. Lander's room, and gave her
+his message.
+
+“Couldn't he have come back this aftanoon to see me, if he ain't goin'
+till five?” she demanded jealously.
+
+“He said he couldn't come back,” Clementina answered sadly.
+
+The woman turned her head on her pillow and looked at the girl's face.
+“Oh!” she said for all comment.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+The Milrays came a month later, to seek a milder sun than they had left
+burning in Florence. The husband and wife had been sojourning there
+since their arrival from Egypt, but they had not been his sister's
+guests, and she did not now pretend to be of their party, though the
+same train, even the same carriage, had brought her to Venice with them.
+They went to a hotel, and Miss Milray took lodgings where she always
+spent her Junes, before going to the Tyrol for the summer.
+
+“You are wonderfully improved, every way,” Mrs. Milray said to
+Clementina when they met. “I knew you would be, if Miss Milray took you
+in hand; and I can see she has. What she doesn't know about the world
+isn't worth knowing! I hope she hasn't made you too worldly? But if
+she has, she's taught you how to keep from showing it; you're just as
+innocent-looking as ever, and that's the main thing; you oughtn't to
+lose that. You wouldn't dance a skirt dance now before a ship's company,
+but if you did, no one would suspect that you knew any better. Have you
+forgiven me, yet? Well, I didn't use you very well, Clementina, and I
+never pretended I did. I've eaten a lot of humble pie for that, my dear.
+Did Miss Milray tell you that I wrote to her about it? Of course you
+won't say how she told you; but she ought to have done me the justice
+to say that I tried to be a friend at court with her for you. If she
+didn't, she wasn't fair.”
+
+“She neva said anything against you, Mrs. Milray,” Clementina answered.
+
+“Discreet as ever, my dear! I understand! And I hope you understand
+about that old affair, too, by this time. It was a complication. I had
+to get back at Lioncourt somehow; and I don't honestly think now that
+his admiration for a young girl was a very wholesome thing for her. But
+never mind. You had that Boston goose in Florence, too, last winter,
+and I suppose he gobbled up what little Miss Milray had left of me. But
+she's charming. I could go down on my knees to her art when she really
+tries to finish any one.”
+
+Clementina noticed that Mrs. Milray had got a new way of talking. She
+had a chirpiness, and a lift in her inflections, which if it was not
+exactly English was no longer Western American. Clementina herself in
+her association with Hinkle had worn off her English rhythm, and in her
+long confinement to the conversation of Mrs. Lander, she had reverted to
+her clipped Yankee accent. Mrs. Milray professed to like it, and said
+it brought back so delightfully those pleasant days at Middlemount, when
+Clementina really was a child. “I met somebody at Cairo, who seemed very
+glad to hear about you, though he tried to seem not. Can you guess who
+it was? I see that you never could, in the world! We got quite chummy
+one day, when we were going out to the pyramids together, and he gave
+himself away, finely. He's a simple soul! But when they're in love
+they're all so! It was a little queer, colloguing with the ex-headwaiter
+on society terms; but the head-waitership was merely an episode, and the
+main thing is that he is very talented, and is going to be a minister.
+It's a pity he's so devoted to his crazy missionary scheme. Some one
+ought to get hold of him, and point him in the direction of a rich New
+York congregation. He'd find heathen enough among them, and he could do
+the greatest amount of good with their money; I tried to talk it into
+him. I suppose you saw him in Florence, this spring?” she suddenly
+asked.
+
+“Yes,” Clementina answered briefly.
+
+“And you didn't make it up together. I got that much out of Miss Milray.
+Well, if he were here, I should find out why. But I don't suppose you
+would tell me.” She waited a moment to see if Clementina would, and then
+she said, “It's a pity, for I've a notion I could help you, and I think
+I owe you a good turn, for the way I behaved about your dance. But if
+you don't want my help, you don't.”
+
+“I would say so if I did, Mrs. Milray,” said Clementina. “I was hu't, at
+the time; but I don't care anything for it, now. I hope you won't think
+about it any more!”
+
+“Thank you,” said Mrs. Milray, “I'll try not to,” and she laughed. “But
+I should like to do something to prove my repentance.”
+
+Clementina perceived that for some reason she would rather have more
+than less cause for regret; and that she was mocking her; but she was
+without the wish or the power to retaliate, and she did not try to
+fathom Mrs. Milray's motives. Most motives in life, even bad motives,
+lie nearer the surface than most people commonly pretend, and she might
+not have had to dig deeper into Mrs. Milray's nature for hers than that
+layer of her consciousness where she was aware that Clementina was a
+pet of her sister-in-law. For no better reason she herself made a pet
+of Mrs. Lander, whose dislike of Miss Milray was not hard to divine, and
+whose willingness to punish her through Clementina was akin to her own.
+The sick woman was easily flattered back into her first belief in Mrs.
+Milray and accepted her large civilities and small services as proof
+of her virtues. She began to talk them into Clementina, and to contrast
+them with the wicked principles and actions of Miss Milray.
+
+The girl had forgiven Mrs. Milray, but she could not go back to any
+trust in her; and she could only passively assent to her praise. When
+Mrs. Lander pressed her for anything more explicit she said what she
+thought, and then Mrs. Lander accused her of hating Mrs. Milray, who
+was more her friend than some that flattered her up for everything, and
+tried to make a fool of her.
+
+“I undastand now,” she said one day, “what that recta meant by wantin'
+me to make life ba'd for you; he saw how easy you was to spoil. Miss
+Milray is one to praise you to your face, and disgrace you be hind your
+back, and so I tell you. When Mrs. Milray thought you done wrong she
+come and said so; and you can't forgive her.”
+
+Clementina did not answer. She had mastered the art of reticence in her
+relations with Mrs. Lander, and even when Miss Milray tempted her one
+day to give way, she still had strength to resist. But she could not
+deny that Mrs. Lander did things at times to worry her, though she ended
+compassionately with the reflection: “She's sick.”
+
+“I don't think she's very sick, now,” retorted her friend.
+
+“No; that's the reason she's so worrying. When she's really sick, she's
+betta.”
+
+“Because she's frightened, I suppose. And how long do you propose to
+stand it?
+
+“I don't know,” Clementina listlessly answered.
+
+“She couldn't get along without me. I guess I can stand it till we go
+home; she says she is going home in the fall.”
+
+Miss Milray sat looking at the girl a moment.
+
+“Shall you be glad to go home?”
+
+“Oh yes, indeed!”
+
+“To that place in the woods?”
+
+“Why, yes! What makes you ask?”
+
+“Nothing. But Clementina, sometimes I think you don't quite understand
+yourself. Don't you know that you are very pretty and very charming?
+I've told you that often enough! But shouldn't you like to be a great
+success in the world? Haven't you ever thought of that? Don't you care
+for society?”
+
+The girl sighed. “Yes, I think that's all very nice I did ca'e, one
+while, there in Florence, last winter!”
+
+“My dear, you don't know how much you were admired. I used to tell you,
+because I saw there was no spoiling you; but I never told you half. If
+you had only had the time for it you could have been the greatest sort
+of success; you were formed for it. It wasn't your beauty alone; lots
+of pretty girls don't make anything of their beauty; it was your
+temperament. You took things easily and naturally, and that's what the
+world likes. It doesn't like your being afraid of it, and you were not
+afraid, and you were not bold; you were just right.” Miss Milray grew
+more and more exhaustive in her analysis, and enjoyed refining upon it.
+“All that you needed was a little hard-heartedness, and that would
+have come in time; you would have learned how to hold your own, but the
+chance was snatched from you by that old cat! I could weep over you when
+I think how you have been wasted on her, and now you're actually willing
+to go back and lose yourself in the woods!”
+
+“I shouldn't call it being lost, Miss Milray.”
+
+“I don't mean that, and you must excuse me, my dear. But surely your
+people--your father and mother--would want to have you get on in the
+world--to make a brilliant match--”
+
+Clementina smiled to think how far such a thing was from their
+imaginations. “I don't believe they would ca'e. You don't undastand
+about them, and I couldn't make you. Fatha neva liked the notion of my
+being with such a rich woman as Mrs. Lander, because it would look as if
+we wanted her money.”
+
+“I never could have imagined that of you, Clementina!”
+
+“I didn't think you could,” said the girl gratefully. “But now, if I
+left her when she was sick and depended on me, it would look wohse,
+yet--as if I did it because she was going to give her money to Mr.
+Landa's family. She wants to do that, and I told her to; I think that
+would be right; don't you?”
+
+“It would be right for you, Clementina, if you preferred it--and--I
+should prefer it. But it wouldn't be right for her. She has given you
+hopes--she has made promises--she has talked to everybody.”
+
+“I don't ca'e for that. I shouldn't like to feel beholden to any one,
+and I think it really belongs to his relations; it was HIS.”
+
+Miss Milray did not say anything to this. She asked, “And if you went
+back, what would you do there? Labor in the fields, as poor little
+Belsky advised?”
+
+Clementina laughed. “No; but I expect you'll think it's almost as crazy.
+You know how much I like dancing? Well, I think I could give dancing
+lessons at the Middlemount. There are always a good many children, and
+girls that have not grown up, and I guess I could get pupils enough,
+as long as the summa lasted; and come winter, I'm not afraid but what I
+could get them among the young folks at the Center. I used to teach them
+before I left home.”
+
+Miss Milray sat looking at her. “I don't know about such things; but it
+sounds sensible--like everything about you, my dear. It sounds queer,
+perhaps because you're talking of such a White Mountain scheme here in
+Venice.”
+
+“Yes, don't it?” said Clementina, sympathetically. “I was thinking of
+that, myself. But I know I could do it. I could go round to different
+hotels, different days. Yes, I should like to go home, and they would
+be glad to have me. You can't think how pleasantly we live; and we're
+company enough for each other. I presume I should miss the things I've
+got used to ova here, at fust; but I don't believe I should care a great
+while. I don't deny but what the wo'ld is nice; but you have to pay for
+it; I don't mean that you would make me--”
+
+“No, no! We understand each other. Go on!”
+
+Miss Milray leaned towards her and pressed the girl's arm reassuringly.
+
+As often happens with people when they are told to go on, Clementina
+found that she had not much more to say. “I think I could get along in
+the wo'ld, well enough. Yes, I believe I could do it. But I wasn't bohn
+to it, and it would be a great deal of trouble--a great deal moa than
+if I had been bohn to it. I think it would be too much trouble. I would
+rather give it up and go home, when Mrs. Landa wants to go back.”
+
+Miss Milray did not speak for a time. “I know that you are serious,
+Clementina; and you're wise always, and good--”
+
+“It isn't that, exactly,” said Clementina. “But is it--I don't know how
+to express it very well--is it wo'th while?”
+
+Miss Milray looked at her as if she doubted the girl's sincerity. Even
+when the world, in return for our making it our whole life, disappoints
+and defeats us with its prizes, we still question the truth of those who
+question the value of these prizes; we think they must be hopeless of
+them, or must be governed by some interest momentarily superior.
+
+Clementina pursued, “I know that you have had all you wanted of the
+wo'ld--”
+
+“Oh, no!” the woman broke out, almost in anguish. “Not what I wanted!
+What I tried for. It never gave me what I wanted. It--couldn't!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“It isn't worth while in that sense. But if you can't have what you
+want,--if there's been a hollow left in your life--why the world goes
+a great way towards filling up the aching void.” The tone of the last
+words was lighter than their meaning, but Clementina weighed them
+aright.
+
+“Miss Milray,” she said, pinching the edge of the table by which she
+sat, a little nervously, and banging her head a little, “I think I can
+have what I want.”
+
+“Then, give the whole world for it, child!”
+
+“There is something I should like to tell you.”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“For you to advise me about.”
+
+“I will, my dear, gladly and truly!”
+
+“He was here before you came. He asked me--”
+
+Miss Milray gave a start of alarm. She said, to gain time: “How did he
+get here? I supposed he was in Germany with his--”
+
+“No; he was here the whole of May.”
+
+“Mr. Gregory!”
+
+“Mr. Gregory?” Clementina's face flushed and drooped Still lower. “I
+meant Mr. Hinkle. But if you think I oughtn't--”
+
+“I don't think anything; I'm so glad! I supposed from what you said
+about the world, that it must be--But if it isn't, all the better. If
+it's Mr. Hinkle that you can have--”
+
+“I'm not sure I can. I should like to tell you just how it is, and then
+you will know.” It needed fewer words for this than she expected, and
+then Clementina took a letter from her pocket, and gave it to Miss
+Milray. “He wrote it on the train, going away, and it's not very plain;
+but I guess you can make it out.”
+
+Miss Milray received the penciled leaves, which seemed to be pages torn
+out of a note-book. They were dated the day Hinkle left Venice, and the
+envelope bore the postmark of Verona. They were not addressed, but began
+abruptly: “I believe I have made a mistake; I ought not to have given
+you up till I knew something that no one but you can tell me. You are
+not bound to any body unless you wish to be so. That is what I see now,
+and I will not give you up if I can help it. Even if you had made a
+promise, and then changed your mind, you would not be bound in such
+a thing as this. I say this, and I know you will not believe I say it
+because I want you. I do want you, but I would not urge you to break
+your faith. I only ask you to realize that if you kept your word when
+your heart had gone out of it, you would be breaking your faith; and if
+you broke your word you would be keeping your faith. But if your heart
+is still in your word, I have no more to say. Nobody knows but you. I
+would get out and take the first train back to Venice if it were not for
+two things. I know it would be hard on me; and I am afraid it might
+be hard on you. But if you will write me a line at Milan, when you get
+this, or if you will write to me at London before July; or at New York
+at any time--for I expect to wait as long as I live--”
+
+The letter ended here in the local addresses which the writer gave.
+
+Miss Milray handed the leaves back to Clementina, who put them into her
+pocket, and apparently waited for her questions.
+
+“And have you written?”
+
+“No,” said the girl, slowly and thoughtfully, “I haven't. I wanted to,
+at fust; and then, I thought that if he truly meant what he said he
+would be willing to wait.”
+
+“And why did you want to wait?”
+
+Clementina replied with a question of her own. “Miss Milray, what do you
+think about Mr. Gregory?”
+
+“Oh, you mustn't ask me that, my dear! I was afraid I had told you too
+plainly, the last time.”
+
+“I don't mean about his letting me think he didn't ca'e for me, so long.
+But don't you think he wants to do what is right! Mr. Gregory, I mean.”
+
+“Well, if you put me on my honor, I'm afraid I do.”
+
+“You see,” Clementina resumed. “He was the fust one, and I did ca'e for
+him a great deal; and I might have gone on caring for him, if--When I
+found out that I didn't care any longer, or so much, it seemed to me as
+if it must be wrong. Do you think it was?”
+
+“No--no.”
+
+“When I got to thinking about some one else at fust it was only not
+thinking about him--I was ashamed. Then I tried to make out that I was
+too young in the fust place, to know whether I really ca'ed for any
+one in the right way; but after I made out that I was, I couldn't feel
+exactly easy--and I've been wanting to ask you, Miss Milray--”
+
+“Ask me anything you like, my dear!”
+
+“Why, it's only whether a person ought eva to change.”
+
+“We change whether we ought, or not. It isn't a matter of duty, one way
+or another.”
+
+“Yes, but ought we to stop caring for somebody, when perhaps we
+shouldn't if somebody else hadn't come between? That is the question.”
+
+“No,” Miss Milray retorted, “that isn't at all the question. The
+question is which you want and whether you could get him. Whichever you
+want most it is right for you to have.”
+
+“Do you truly think so?”
+
+“I do, indeed. This is the one thing in life where one may choose safest
+what one likes best; I mean if there is nothing bad in the man himself.”
+
+“I was afraid it would be wrong! That was what I meant by wanting to be
+fai'a with Mr. Gregory when I told you about him there in Florence. I
+don't believe but what it had begun then.”
+
+“What had begun?”
+
+“About Mr. Hinkle.”
+
+Miss Milray burst into a laugh. “Clementina, you're delicious!” The
+girl looked hurt, and Miss Milray asked seriously, “Why do you like Mr.
+Hinkle best--if you do?”
+
+Clementina sighed. “Oh, I don't know. He's so resting.”
+
+“Then that settles it. From first to last, what we poor women want is
+rest. It would be a wicked thing for you to throw your life away on some
+one who would worry you out of it. I don't wish to say any thing against
+Mr. Gregory. I dare say he is good--and conscientious; but life is a
+struggle, at the best, and it's your duty to take the best chance for
+resting.”
+
+Clementina did not look altogether convinced, whether it was Miss
+Milray's logic or her morality that failed to convince her. She said,
+after a moment, “I should like to see Mr. Gregory again.”
+
+“What good would that do?”
+
+“Why, then I should know.”
+
+“Know what?”
+
+“Whether I didn't really ca'e for him any more--or so much.”
+
+“Clementina,” said Miss Milray, “you mustn't make me lose patience with
+you--”
+
+“No. But I thought you said that it was my duty to do what I wished.”
+
+“Well, yes. That is what I said,” Miss Milray consented. “But I supposed
+that you knew already.”
+
+“No,” said Clementina, candidly, “I don't believe I do.”
+
+“And what if you don't see him?”
+
+“I guess I shall have to wait till I do. The'e will be time enough.”
+
+Miss Milray sighed, and then she laughed. “You ARE young!”
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+Miss Milray went from Clementina to call upon her sister-in-law, and
+found her brother, which was perhaps what she hoped might happen.
+
+“Do you know,” she said, “that that old wretch is going to defraud
+that poor thing, after all, and leave her money to her husband's
+half-sister's children?”
+
+“You wish me to infer the Mrs. Lander--Clementina situation?” Milray
+returned.
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“I'm glad you put it in terms that are not actionable, then; for your
+words are decidedly libellous.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I've just been writing Mrs. Lander's will for her, and she's left
+all her property to Clementina, except five thousand apiece to the
+half-sister's three children.”
+
+“I can't believe it!”
+
+“Well,” said Milray, with his gentle smile, “I think that's safe ground
+for you. Mrs. Lander will probably have time enough to change her will
+as well as her mind several times yet before she dies. The half-sister's
+children may get their rights yet.”
+
+“I wish they might!” said Miss Milray, with an impassioned sigh. “Then
+perhaps I should get Clementina--for a while.”
+
+Her brother laughed. “Isn't there somebody else wants Clementina?
+
+“Oh, plenty. But she's not sure she wants anybody else.”
+
+“Does she want you?”
+
+“No, I can't say she does. She wants to go home.”
+
+“That's not a bad scheme. I should like to go home myself if I had one.
+What would you have done with Clementina if you had got her, Jenny?”
+
+“What would any one have done with her? Married her brilliantly, of
+course.”
+
+“But you say she isn't sure she wishes to be married at all?”
+
+Miss Milray stated the case of Clementina's divided mind, and her belief
+that she would take Hinkle in the end, together with the fear that
+she might take Gregory. “She's very odd,” Miss Milray concluded. “She
+puzzles me. Why did you ever send her to me?”
+
+Milray laughed. “I don't know. I thought she would amuse you, and I
+thought it would be a pleasure to her.”
+
+They began to talk of some affairs of their own, from which Miss
+Milray returned to Clementina with the ache of an imperfectly satisfied
+intention. If she had meant to urge her brother to seek justice for the
+girl from Mrs. Lander, she was not so well pleased to have found justice
+done already. But the will had been duly signed and witnessed before
+the American vice-consul, and she must get what good she could out of an
+accomplished fact. It was at least a consolation to know that it put
+an end to her sister-in-law's patronage of the girl, and it would
+be interesting to see Mrs. Milray adapt her behavior to Clementina's
+fortunes. She did not really dislike her sister-in-law enough to do her
+a wrong; she was only willing that she should do herself a wrong. But
+one of the most disappointing things in all hostile operations is
+that you never can know what the enemy would be at; and Mrs. Milray's
+manoeuvres were sometimes dictated by such impulses that her strategy
+was peculiarly baffling. The thought of her past unkindness to
+Clementina may still have rankled in her, or she may simply have felt
+the need of outdoing Miss Milray by an unapproachable benefaction. It is
+certain that when Baron Belsky came to Venice a few weeks after her own
+arrival, they began to pose at each other with reference to Clementina;
+she with a measure of consciousness, he with the singleness of a nature
+that was all pose. In his forbearance to win Clementina from Gregory he
+had enjoyed the distinction of an unique suffering; and in allowing the
+fact to impart itself to Mrs. Milray, he bathed in the warmth of her
+flattering sympathy. Before she withdrew this, as she must when she got
+tired of him, she learned from him where Gregory was; for it seemed that
+Gregory had so far forgiven the past that they had again written to each
+other.
+
+During the fortnight of Belsky's stay in Venice Mrs. Lander was much
+worse, and Clementina met him only once, very briefly--She felt that he
+had behaved like a very silly person, but that was all over now, and she
+had no wish to punish him for it. At the end of his fortnight he went
+northward into the Austrian Tyrol, and a few days later Gregory came
+down from the Dolomites to Venice.
+
+It was in his favor with Clementina that he yielded to the impulse he
+had to come directly to her; and that he let her know with the first
+words that he had acted upon hopes given him through Belsky from Mrs.
+Milray. He owned that he doubted the authority of either to give him
+these hopes, but he said he could not abandon them without a last effort
+to see her, and learn from her whether they were true or false.
+
+If she recognized the design of a magnificent reparation in what Mrs.
+Milray had done, she did not give it much thought. Her mind was upon
+distant things as she followed Gregory's explanation of his presence,
+and in the muse in which she listened she seemed hardly to know when he
+ceased speaking.
+
+“I know it must seem to take something for granted which I've no right
+to take for granted. I don't believe you could think that I cared for
+anything but you, or at all for what Mrs. Lander has done for you.”
+
+“Do you mean her leaving me her money?” asked Clementina, with that
+boldness her sex enjoys concerning matters of finance and affection.
+
+“Yes,” said Gregory, blushing for her. “As far as I should ever have
+a right to care, I could wish there were no money. It could bring no
+blessing to our life. We could do no good with it; nothing but the
+sacrifice of ourselves in poverty could be blessed to us.”
+
+“That is what I thought, too,” Clementina replied.
+
+“Oh, then you did think--”
+
+“But afterwards, I changed my Mind. If she wants to give me her money I
+shall take it.”
+
+Gregory was blankly silent again.
+
+“I shouldn't know how to refuse, and I don't know as I should have any
+right to.” Gregory shrank a little from her reyankeefied English, as
+well as from the apparent cynicism of her speech; but he shrank in
+silence still. She startled him by asking with a kindness that was
+almost tenderness, “Mr. Gregory, how do you think anything has changed?”
+
+“Changed?”
+
+“You know how it was when you went away from Florence. Do you think
+differently now? I don't. I don't think I ought to do something for you,
+and pretend that I was doing it for religion. I don't believe the way
+you do; and I know I neva shall. Do you want me in spite of my saying
+that I can neva help you in your work because I believe in it?”
+
+“But if you believe in me--”
+
+She shook her head compassionately. “You know we ahgued that out before.
+We are just whe'e we were. I am sorry. Nobody had any right to tell you
+to come he'e. But I am glad you came--” She saw the hope that lighted up
+his face, but she went on unrelentingly--“I think we had betta be free.”
+
+“Free?”
+
+“Yes, from each other. I don't know how you have felt, but I have not
+felt free. It has seemed to me that I promised you something. If I did,
+I want to take my promise back and be free.”
+
+Her frankness appealed to his own. “You are free. I never held you bound
+to me in my fondest hopes. You have always done right.”
+
+“I have tried to. And I am not going to let you go away thinking that
+the reason I said is the only reason. It isn't. I wish to be free
+because--there is some one else, now.” It was hard to tell him this, but
+she knew that she must not do less; and the train that carried him from
+Venice that night bore a letter from her to Hinkle.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+Clementina told Miss Milray what had happened, but with Mrs. Milray the
+girl left the sudden departure of Gregory to account for itself.
+
+They all went a week later, and Mrs. Milray having now done her whole
+duty to Clementina had the easiest mind concerning her. Miss Milray felt
+that she was leaving her to greater trials than ever with Mrs. Lander;
+but since there was nothing else, she submitted, as people always do
+with the trials of others, and when she was once away she began to
+forget her.
+
+By this time, however, it was really better for her. With no one to
+suspect of tampering with her allegiance, Mrs. Lander returned to her
+former fondness for the girl, and they were more peaceful if not happier
+together again. They had long talks, such as they used to have, and in
+the first of these Clementina told her how and why she had written to
+Mr. Hinkle. Mrs. Lander said that it suited her exactly.
+
+“There ha'n't but just two men in Europe behaved like gentlemen to me,
+and one is Mr. Hinkle, and the other is that lo'd; and between the two I
+ratha you'd have Mr. Hinkle; I don't know as I believe much in American
+guls marryin' lo'ds, the best of 'em.”
+
+Clementina laughed. “Why, Mrs. Landa, Lo'd Lioncou't never thought of me
+in the wo'ld!”
+
+“You can't eva know. Mrs. Milray was tellin' that he's what they call
+a pooa lo'd, and that he was carryin' on with the American girls like
+everything down there in Egypt last winta. I guess if it comes to money
+you'd have enough to buy him and sell him again.”
+
+The mention of money cast a chill upon their talk; and Mrs. Lander said
+gloomily, “I don't know as I ca'e so much for that will Mr. Milray made
+for me, after all. I did want to say ten thousand apiece for Mr. Landa's
+relations; but I hated to befo'e him; I'd told the whole kit of 'em so
+much about you, and I knew what they would think.”
+
+She looked at Clementina with recurring grudge, and the girl could not
+bear it.
+
+“Then why don't you tear it up, and make another? I don't want anything,
+unless you want me to have it; and I'd ratha not have anything.”
+
+“Yes, and what would folks say, afta youa taken' care of me?”
+
+“Do you think I do it fo' that?”
+
+“What do you do it fo'?”
+
+“What did you want me to come with you fo'?”
+
+“That's true.” Mrs. Lander brightened and warmed again. “I guess it's
+all right. I guess I done right, and I got to be satisfied. I presume I
+could get the consul to make me a will any time.”
+
+Clementina did not relent so easily. “Mrs. Landa, whateva you do I don't
+ca'e to know it; and if you talk to me again about this I shall go home.
+I would stay with you as long as you needed me, but I can't if you keep
+bringing this up.”
+
+“I suppose you think you don't need me any moa! Betta not be too su'a.”
+
+The girl jumped to her feet, and Mrs. Lander interposed. “Well, the'a!
+I didn't mean anything, and I won't pesta you about it any moa. But I
+think it's pretty ha'd. Who am I going to talk it ova with, then?”
+
+“You can talk it ova with the vice-consul,” paid Clementina, at random.
+
+“Well, that's so.” Mrs. Lander let Clementina get her ready for the
+night, in sign of returning amity; when she was angry with her she
+always refused her help, and made her send Maddalena.
+
+The summer heat increased, and the sick woman suffered from it, but she
+could not be persuaded that she had strength to get away, though the
+vice-consul, whom she advised with, used all his logic with her. He was
+a gaunt and weary widower, who described himself as being officially
+between hay and grass; the consul who appointed him had resigned after
+going home, and a new consul had not yet been sent out to remove him. On
+what she called her well days Mrs. Lander went to visit him, and she did
+not mind his being in his shirt-sleeves, in the bit of garden where she
+commonly found him, with his collar and cravat off, and clouded in his
+own smoke; when she was sick she sent for him, to visit her. He made
+excuses as often as he could, and if he saw Mrs. Lander's gondola
+coming down the Grand Canal to his house he hurried on his cast
+clothing, and escaped to the Piazza, at whatever discomfort and risk
+from the heat.
+
+“I don't know how you stand it, Miss Claxon,” he complained to
+Clementina, as soon as he learned that she was not a blood relation of
+Mrs. Lander's, and divined that she had her own reservations concerning
+her. “But that woman will be the death of me if she keeps this up. What
+does she think I'm here for? If this goes on much longer I'll resign.
+The salary won't begin to pay for it. What am I going to do? I don't
+want to hurt her feelings, or not to help her; but I know ten times as
+much about Mrs. Lander's liver as I do about my own, now.”
+
+He treated Clementina as a person of mature judgment and a sage
+discretion, and he accepted what comfort she could offer him when she
+explained that it was everything for Mrs. Lander to have him to talk
+with. “She gets tied of talking to me,” she urged, “and there's nobody
+else, now.”
+
+“Why don't she hire a valet de place, and talk to him? I'd hire one
+myself for her. It would be a good deal cheaper for me. It's as much as
+I can do to stand this weather as it is.”
+
+The vice-consul laughed forlornly in his exasperation, but he agreed
+with Clementina when she said, in further excuse, that Mrs. Lander was
+really very sick. He pushed back his hat, and scratched his head with a
+grimace.
+
+“Of course, we've got to remember she's sick, and I shall need a little
+sympathy myself if she keeps on at me this way. I believe I'll tell
+her about my liver next time, and see how she likes it. Look here, Miss
+Claxon! Couldn't we get her off to some of those German watering places
+that are good for her complaints? I believe it would be the best thing
+for her--not to mention me.”
+
+Mrs. Lander was moved by the suggestion which he made in person
+afterwards; it appealed to her old nomadic instinct; but when the consul
+was gone she gave it up. “We couldn't git the'e, Clementina. I got to
+stay he'e till I git up my stren'th. I suppose you'd be glad enough to
+have me sta't, now the'e's nobody he'e but me,” she added, suspiciously.
+“You git this scheme up, or him?”
+
+Clementina did not defend herself, and Mrs. Lander presently came to
+her defence. “I don't believe but what he meant it fo' the best--or you,
+whichever it was, and I appreciate it; but all is I couldn't git off.
+I guess this aia will do me as much good as anything, come to have it a
+little coola.”
+
+They went every afternoon to the Lido, where a wheeled chair met them,
+and Mrs. Lander was trundled across the narrow island to the beach. In
+the evenings they went to the Piazza, where their faces and figures had
+become known, and the Venetians gossipped them down to the last fact
+of their relation with an accuracy creditable to their ingenuity in the
+affairs of others. To them Mrs. Lander was the sick American, very rich,
+and Clementina was her adoptive daughter, who would have her millions
+after her. Neither knew the character they bore to the amiable and
+inquisitive public of the Piazza, or cared for the fine eyes that aimed
+their steadfast gaze at them along the tubes of straw-barreled Virginia
+cigars, or across little cups of coffee. Mrs. Lander merely remarked
+that the Venetians seemed great for gaping, and Clementina was for the
+most part innocent of their stare.
+
+She rested in the choice she had made in a content which was qualified
+by no misgiving. She was sorry for Gregory, when she remembered him; but
+her thought was filled with some one else, and she waited in faith and
+patience for the answer which should come to the letter she had written.
+She did not know where her letter would find him, or when she should
+hear from him; she believed that she should hear, and that was enough.
+She said to herself that she would not lose hope if no answer came for
+months; but in her heart she fixed a date for the answer by letter, and
+an earlier date for some word by cable; but she feigned that she did not
+depend upon this; and when no word came she convinced herself that she
+had not expected any.
+
+It was nearing the end of the term which she had tacitly given her lover
+to make the first sign by letter, when one morning Mrs. Lander woke her.
+She wished to say that she had got the strength to leave Venice at
+last, and she was going as soon as their trunks could be packed. She had
+dressed herself, and she moved about restless and excited. Clementina
+tried to reason her out of her haste; but she irritated her, and fixed
+her in her determination. “I want to get away, I tell you; I want to get
+away,” she answered all persuasion, and there seemed something in her
+like the wish to escape from more than the oppressive environment,
+though she spoke of nothing but the heat and the smell of the canal. “I
+believe it's that, moa than any one thing, that's kept me sick he'e,”
+ she said. “I tell you it's the malariar, and you'll be down, too, if you
+stay.”
+
+She made Clementina go to the banker's, and get money to pay their
+landlord's bill, and she gave him notice that they were going that
+afternoon. Clementina wished to delay till they had seen the vice-consul
+and the doctor; but Mrs. Lander broke out, “I don't want to see 'em,
+either of 'em. The docta wants to keep me he'e and make money out of
+me; I undastand him; and I don't believe that consul's a bit too good
+to take a pussentage. Now, don't you say a wo'd to either of 'em. If you
+don't do exactly what I tell you I'll go away and leave you he'e. Now,
+will you?”
+
+Clementina promised, and broke her word. She went to the vice-consul and
+told him she had broken it, and she agreed with him that he had better
+not come unless Mrs. Lander sent for him. The doctor promptly imagined
+the situation and said he would come in casually during the morning, so
+as not to alarm the invalid's suspicions. He owned that Mrs. Lander was
+getting no good from remaining in Venice, and if it were possible for
+her to go, he said she had better go somewhere into cooler and higher
+air.
+
+His opinion restored him to Mrs. Lander's esteem, when it was expressed
+to her, and as she was left to fix the sum of her debt to him, she
+made it handsomer than anything he had dreamed of. She held out against
+seeing the vice-consul till the landlord sent in his account. This was
+for the whole month which she had just entered upon, and it included
+fantastic charges for things hitherto included in the rent, not only for
+the current month, but for the months past when, the landlord explained,
+he had forgotten to note them. Mrs. Lander refused to pay these demands,
+for they touched her in some of those economies which the gross rich
+practice amidst their profusion. The landlord replied that she could not
+leave his house, either with or without her effects, until she had paid.
+He declared Clementina his prisoner, too, and he would not send for the
+vice-consul at Mrs. Lander's bidding. How far he was within his rights
+in all this they could not know, but he was perhaps himself doubtful,
+and he consented to let them send for the doctor, who, when he came,
+behaved like anything but the steadfast friend that Mrs. Lander supposed
+she had bought in him. He advised paying the account without regard to
+its justice, as the shortest and simplest way out of the trouble; but
+Mrs. Lander, who saw him talking amicably and even respectfully with the
+landlord, when he ought to have treated him as an extortionate scamp,
+returned to her former ill opinion of him; and the vice-consul now
+appeared the friend that Doctor Tradonico had falsely seemed. The doctor
+consented, in leaving her to her contempt of him, to carry a message to
+the vice-consul, though he came back, with his finger at the side of his
+nose, to charge her by no means to betray his bold championship to the
+landlord.
+
+The vice-consul made none of those shows of authority which Mrs. Lander
+had expected of him. She saw him even exchanging the common decencies
+with the landlord, when they met; but in fact it was not hard to treat
+the smiling and courteous rogue well. In all their disagreement he had
+looked as constantly to the comfort of his captives as if they had been
+his chosen guests. He sent Mrs. Lander a much needed refreshment at the
+stormiest moment of her indignation, and he deprecated without retort
+the denunciations aimed at him in Italian which did not perhaps carry
+so far as his conscience. The consul talked with him in a calm scarcely
+less shameful than that of Dr. Tradonico; and at the end of their parley
+which she had insisted upon witnessing, he said:
+
+“Well, Mrs. Lander, you've got to stand this gouge or you've got to
+stand a law suit. I think the gouge would be cheaper in the end. You
+see, he's got a right to his month's rent.”
+
+“It ain't the rent I ca'e for: it's the candles, and the suvvice, and
+the things he says we broke. It was undastood that everything was to be
+in the rent, and his two old chaias went to pieces of themselves when
+we tried to pull 'em out from the wall; and I'll neva pay for 'em in the
+wo'ld.”
+
+“Why,” the vice-consul pleaded, “it's only about forty francs for the
+whole thing--”
+
+“I don't care if it's only fotty cents. And I must say, Mr. Bennam,
+you're about the strangest vice-consul, to want me to do it, that I eva
+saw.”
+
+The vice-consul laughed unresentfully. “Well, shall I send you a
+lawyer?”
+
+“No!” Mrs. Lander retorted; and after a moment's reflection she added,
+“I'm goin' to stay my month, and so you may tell him, and then I'll see
+whetha he can make me pay for that breakage and the candles and suvvice.
+I'm all wore out, as it is, and I ain't fit to travel, now, and I don't
+know when I shall be. Clementina, you can go and tell Maddalena to stop
+packin'. Or, no! I'll do it.”
+
+She left the room without further notice of the consul, who said
+ruefully to Clementina, “Well, I've missed my chance, Miss Claxon, but I
+guess she's done the wisest thing for herself.”
+
+“Oh, yes, she's not fit to go. She must stay, now, till it's coola. Will
+you tell the landlo'd, or shall--”
+
+“I'll tell him,” said the vice-consul, and he had in the landlord. He
+received her message with the pleasure of a host whose cherished guests
+have consented to remain a while longer, and in the rush of his good
+feeling he offered, if the charge for breakage seemed unjust to the
+vice-consul, to abate it; and since the signora had not understood
+that she was to pay extra for the other things, he would allow the
+vice-consul to adjust the differences between them; it was a trifle, and
+he wished above all things to content the signora, for whom he professed
+a cordial esteem both on his own part and the part of all his family.
+
+“Then that lets me out for the present,” said the vice-consul, when
+Clementina repeated Mrs. Lander's acquiescence in the landlord's
+proposals, and he took his straw hat, and called a gondola from the
+nearest 'traghetto', and bargained at an expense consistent with his
+salary, to have himself rowed back to his own garden-gate.
+
+The rest of the day was an era of better feeling between Mrs. Lander and
+her host than they had ever known, and at dinner he brought in with his
+own hand a dish which he said he had caused to be specially made for
+her. It was so tempting in odor and complexion that Mrs. Lander declared
+she must taste it, though as she justly said, she had eaten too much
+already; when it had once tasted it she ate it all, against Clementina's
+protestations; she announced at the end that every bite had done her
+good, and that she never felt better in her life. She passed a happy
+evening, with renewed faith in the air of the lagoon; her sole regret
+now was that Mr. Lander had not lived to try it with her, for if he had
+she was sure he would have been alive at that moment.
+
+She allowed herself to be got to bed rather earlier than usual; before
+Clementina dropped asleep she heard her breathing with long, easy, quiet
+respirations, and she lost the fear of the landlord's dish which had
+haunted her through the evening. She was awakened in the morning by a
+touch on her shoulder. Maddalena hung over her with a frightened face,
+and implored her to come and look at the signora, who seemed not at all
+well. Clementina ran into her room, and found her dead. She must have
+died some hours before without a struggle, for the face was that of
+sleep, and it had a dignity and beauty which it had not worn in her life
+of self-indulgent wilfulness for so many years that the girl had never
+seen it look so before.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+The vice-consul was not sure how far his powers went in the situation
+with which Mrs. Lander had finally embarrassed him. But he met the new
+difficulties with patience, and he agreed with Clementina that they
+ought to see if Mrs. Lander had left any written expression of her
+wishes concerning the event. She had never spoken of such a chance, but
+had always looked forward to getting well and going home, so far as the
+girl knew, and the most careful search now brought to light nothing that
+bore upon it. In the absence of instructions to the contrary, they did
+what they must, and the body, emptied of its life of senseless worry and
+greedy care, was laid to rest in the island cemetery of Venice.
+
+When all was over, the vice-consul ventured an observation which he had
+hitherto delicately withheld. The question of Mrs. Lander's kindred had
+already been discussed between him and Clementina, and he now felt that
+another question had duly presented itself. “You didn't notice,” he
+suggested, “anything like a will when we went over the papers?” He
+had looked carefully for it, expecting that there might have been some
+expression of Mrs. Lander's wishes in it. “Because,” he added, “I happen
+to know that Mr. Milray drew one up for her; I witnessed it.”
+
+“No,” said Clementina, “I didn't see anything of it. She told me she had
+made a will; but she didn't quite like it, and sometimes she thought she
+would change it. She spoke of getting you to do it; I didn't know but
+she had.”
+
+The vice-consul shook his head. “No. And these relations of her
+husband's up in Michigan; you don't know where they live, exactly?”
+
+“No. She neva told me; she wouldn't; she didn't like to talk about them;
+I don't even know their names.”
+
+The vice-consul thoughtfully scratched a corner of his chin through his
+beard. “If there isn't any will, they're the heirs. I used to be a sort
+of wild-cat lawyer, and I know that much law.”
+
+“Yes,” said Clementina. “She left them five thousand dollas apiece. She
+said she wished she had made it ten.”
+
+“I guess she's made it a good deal more, if she's made it anything. Miss
+Claxon, don't you understand that if no will turns up, they come in for
+all her money.
+
+“Well, that's what I thought they ought to do,” said Clementina.
+
+“And do you understand that if that's so, you don't come in for
+anything? You must excuse me for mentioning it; but she has told
+everybody that you were to have it, and if there is no will--”
+
+He stopped and bent an eye of lack-lustre compassion on the girl, who
+replied, “Oh, yes. I know that; it's what I always told her to do. I
+didn't want it.”
+
+“You didn't want it?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well!” The vice-consul stared at her, but he forbore the comment that
+her indifference inspired. He said after a pause, “Then what we've got
+to do is to advertise for the Michigan relations, and let 'em take any
+action they want to.”
+
+“That's the only thing we could do, I presume.”
+
+This gave the vice-consul another pause. At the end of it he got to his
+feet. “Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Claxon?”
+
+She went to her portfolio and produced Mrs. Lander's letter of credit.
+It had been made out for three thousand pounds, in Clementina's name as
+well as her own; but she had lived wastefully since she had come abroad,
+and little money remained to be taken up. With the letter Clementina
+handed the vice-consul the roll of Italian and Austrian bank-notes which
+she had drawn when Mrs. Lander decided to leave Venice; they were to the
+amount of several thousand lire and golden. She offered them with the
+insensibility to the quality of money which so many women have, and
+which is always so astonishing to men. “What must I do with these?” she
+asked.
+
+“Why, keep them! returned the vice-consul on the spur of his surprise.
+
+“I don't know as I should have any right to,” said Clementina. “They
+were hers.”
+
+“Why, but”--The vice-consul began his protest, but he could not end it
+logically, and he did not end it at all. He insisted with Clementina
+that she had a right to some money which Mrs. Lander had given her
+during her life; he took charge of the bank-notes in the interest of the
+possible heirs, and gave her his receipt for them. In the meantime he
+felt that he ought to ask her what she expected to do.
+
+“I think,” she said, “I will stay in Venice awhile.”
+
+The vice-consul suppressed any surprise he might have felt at a decision
+given with mystifying cheerfulness. He answered, Well, that was right;
+and for the second time he asked her if there was anything he could do
+for her.
+
+“Why, yes,” she returned. “I should like to stay on in the house here,
+if you could speak for me to the padrone.”
+
+“I don't see why you shouldn't, if we can make the padrone understand
+it's different.”
+
+“You mean about the price?” The vice-consul nodded. “That's what I want
+you should speak to him about, Mr. Bennam, if you would. Tell him that
+I haven't got but a little money now, and he would have to make it very
+reasonable. That is, if you think it would be right for me to stay, afta
+the way he tried to treat Mrs. Lander.”
+
+The vice-consul gave the point some thought, and decided that the
+attempted extortion need not make any difference with Clementina, if she
+could get the right terms. He said he did not believe the padrone was a
+bad fellow, but he liked to take advantage of a stranger when he could;
+we all did. When he came to talk with him he found him a man of heart if
+not of conscience. He entered into the case with the prompt intelligence
+and vivid sympathy of his race, and he made it easy for Clementina to
+stay till she had heard from her friends in America. For himself and
+for his wife, he professed that she could not stay too long, and they
+proposed that if it would content the signorina still further they would
+employ Maddalena as chambermaid till she wished to return to Florence;
+she had offered to remain if the signorina stayed.
+
+“Then that is settled,” said Clementina with a sigh of relief; and she
+thanked the vice-consul for his offer to write to the Milrays for her,
+and said that she would rather write herself.
+
+She meant to write as soon as she heard from Mr. Hinkle, which could
+not be long now, for then she could be independent of the offers of help
+which she dreaded from Miss Milray, even more than from Mrs. Milray; it
+would be harder to refuse them; and she entered upon a passage of her
+life which a nature less simple would have found much more trying.
+But she had the power of taking everything as if it were as much to be
+expected as anything else. If nothing at all happened she accepted the
+situation with implicit resignation, and with a gayety of heart which
+availed her long, and never wholly left her.
+
+While the suspense lasted she could not write home as frankly as before,
+and she sent off letters to Middlemount which treated of her delay in
+Venice with helpless reticence. They would have set another sort of
+household intolerably wondering and suspecting, but she had the comfort
+of knowing that her father would probably settle the whole matter by
+saying that she would tell what she meant when she got round to it; and
+apart from this she had mainly the comfort of the vice-consul's society.
+He had little to do besides looking after her, and he employed himself
+about this in daily visits which the padrone and his wife regarded as
+official, and promoted with a serious respect for the vice-consular
+dignity. If the visits ended, as they often did, in a turn on the Grand
+Canal, and an ice in the Piazza, they appealed to the imagination of
+more sophisticated witnesses, who decided that the young American girl
+had inherited the millions of the sick lady, and become the betrothed
+of the vice-consul, and that they were thus passing the days of their
+engagement in conformity to the American custom, however much at
+variance with that of other civilizations.
+
+This view of the affair was known to Maddalena, but not to Clementina,
+who in those days went back in many things to the tradition of her life
+at Middlemount. The vice-consul was of a tradition almost as simple, and
+his longer experience set no very wide interval between them. It
+quickly came to his telling her all about his dead wife and his married
+daughters, and how, after his home was broken up, he thought he would
+travel a little and see what that would do for him. He confessed that
+it had not done much; he was always homesick, and he was ready to go as
+soon as the President sent out a consul to take his job off his hands.
+He said that he had not enjoyed himself so much since he came to Venice
+as he was doing now, and that he did not know what he should do if
+Clementina first got her call home. He betrayed no curiosity as to
+the peculiar circumstances of her stay, but affected to regard it as
+something quite normal, and he watched over her in every way with a
+fatherly as well as an official vigilance which never degenerated into
+the semblance of any other feeling. Clementina rested in his care in
+entire security. The world had quite fallen from her, or so much of it
+as she had seen at Florence, and in her indifference she lapsed into
+life as it was in the time before that with a tender renewal of
+her allegiance to it. There was nothing in the conversation of the
+vice-consul to distract her from this; and she said and did the things
+at Venice that she used to do at Middlemount, as nearly as she could; to
+make the days of waiting pass more quickly, she tried to serve herself
+in ways that scandalized the proud affection of Maddalena. It was not
+fit for the signorina to make her bed or sweep her room; she might sew
+and knit if she would; but these other things were for servants like
+herself. She continued in the faith of Clementina's gentility, and saw
+her always as she had seen her first in the brief hour of her social
+splendor in Florence. Clementina tried to make her understand how
+she lived at Middlemount, but she only brought before Maddalena the
+humiliating image of a contadina, which she rejected not only in
+Clementina's behalf, but that of Miss Milray. She told her that she was
+laughing at her, and she was fixed in her belief when the girl laughed
+at that notion. Her poverty she easily conceived of; plenty of signorine
+in Italy were poor; and she protected her in it with the duty she did
+not divide quite evenly between her and the padrone.
+
+The date which Clementina had fixed for hearing from Hinkle by cable
+had long passed, and the time when she first hoped to hear from him by
+letter had come and gone. Her address was with the vice-consul as Mrs.
+Lander's had been, and he could not be ignorant of her disappointment
+when he brought her letters which she said were from home. On the
+surface of things it could only be from home that she wished to hear,
+but beneath the surface he read an anxiety which mounted with each
+gratification of this wish. He had not seen much of the girl while
+Hinkle was in Venice; Mrs. Lander had not begun to make such constant
+use of him until Hinkle had gone; Mrs. Milray had told him of
+Clementina's earlier romance, and it was to Gregory that the vice-consul
+related the anxiety which he knew as little in its nature as in its
+object.
+
+Clementina never doubted the good faith or constancy of her lover; but
+her heart misgave her as to his well-being when it sank at each failure
+of the vice-consul to bring her a letter from him. Something must have
+happened to him, and it must have been something very serious to keep
+him from writing; or there was some mistake of the post-office. The
+vice-consul indulged himself in personal inquiries to make sure that the
+mistake was not in the Venetian post-office; but he saw that he brought
+her greater distress in ascertaining the fact. He got to dreading a look
+of resolute cheerfulness that came into her face, when he shook his
+head in sign that there were no letters, and he suffered from the covert
+eagerness with which she glanced at the superscriptions of those he
+brought and failed to find the hoped-for letter among them. Ordeal for
+ordeal, he was beginning to regret his trials under Mrs. Lander. In them
+he could at least demand Clementina's sympathy, but against herself this
+was impossible. Once she noted his mute distress at hers, and broke into
+a little laugh that he found very harrowing.
+
+“I guess you hate it almost as much as I do, Mr. Bennam.”
+
+“I guess I do. I've half a mind to write the letter you want, myself.”
+
+“I've half a mind to let you--or the letter I'd like to write.”
+
+It had come to her thinking she would write again to Hinkle; but she
+could not bring herself to do it. She often imagined doing it; she had
+every word of such a letter in her mind; and she dramatized every fact
+concerning it from the time she should put pen to paper, to the time
+when she should get back the answer that cleared the mystery of his
+silence away. The fond reveries helped her to bear her suspense; they
+helped to make the days go by, to ease the doubt with which she lay down
+at night, and the heartsick hope with which she rose up in the morning.
+
+One day, at the hour of his wonted visit, she saw the vice-consul from
+her balcony coming, as it seemed to her, with another figure in his
+gondola, and a thousand conjectures whirled through her mind, and then
+centred upon one idea. After the first glance she kept her eyes down,
+and would not look again while she told herself incessantly that it
+could not be, and that she was a fool and a goose and a perfect coot, to
+think of such a thing for a single moment. When she allowed herself, or
+forced herself, to look a second time; as the boat drew near, she had to
+cling to the balcony parapet for support, in her disappointment.
+
+The person whom the vice-consul helped out of the gondola was an elderly
+man like himself, and she took a last refuge in the chance that he might
+be Hinkle's father, sent to bring her to him because he could not come
+to her; or to soften some terrible news to her. Then her fancy fluttered
+and fell, and she waited patiently for the fact to reveal itself.
+There was something countrified in the figure of the man, and something
+clerical in his face, though there was nothing in his uncouth best
+clothes that confirmed this impression. In both face and figure there
+was a vague resemblance to some one she had seen before, when the
+vice-consul said:
+
+“Miss Claxon, I want to introduce the Rev. Mr. James B. Orson, of
+Michigan.” Mr. Orson took Clementina's hand into a dry, rough grasp,
+while he peered into her face with small, shy eyes. The vice-consul
+added with a kind of official formality, “Mr. Orson is the half-nephew
+of Mr. Lander,” and then Clementina now knew whom it was that he
+resembled. “He has come to Venice,” continued the vice-consul, “at
+the request of Mrs. Lander; and he did not know of her death until I
+informed him of the fact. I should have said that Mr. Orson is the son
+of Mr. Lander's half-sister. He can tell you the balance himself.” The
+vice-consul pronounced the concluding word with a certain distaste, and
+the effect of gladly retiring into the background.
+
+“Won't you sit down?” said Clementina, and she added with one of the
+remnants of her Middlemount breeding, “Won't you let me take your hat?”
+
+Mr. Orson in trying to comply with both her invitations, knocked his
+well worn silk hat from the hand that held it, and sent it rolling
+across the room, where Clementina pursued it and put it on the table.
+
+“I may as well say at once,” he began in a flat irresonant voice, “that
+I am the representative of Mrs. Lander's heirs, and that I have a letter
+from her enclosing her last will and testament, which I have shown to
+the consul here--”
+
+“Vice-consul,” the dignitary interrupted with an effect of rejecting any
+part in the affair.
+
+“Vice-consul, I should say,--and I wish to lay them both before you, in
+order that--”
+
+“Oh, that is all right,” said Clementina sweetly. “I'm glad there is a
+will. I was afraid there wasn't any at all. Mr. Bennam and I looked for
+it everywhe'e.” She smiled upon the Rev. Mr. Orson, who silently handed
+her a paper. It was the will which Milray had written for Mrs. Lander,
+and which, with whatever crazy motive, she had sent to her husband's
+kindred. It provided that each of them should be given five thousand
+dollars out of the estate, and that then all should go to Clementina. It
+was the will Mrs. Lander told her she had made, but she had never seen
+the paper before, and the legal forms hid the meaning from her so
+that she was glad to have the vice-consul make it clear. Then she said
+tranquilly, “Yes, that is the way I supposed it was.”
+
+Mr. Orson by no means shared her calm. He did not lift his voice, but
+on the level it had taken it became agitated. “Mrs. Lander gave me the
+address of her lawyer in Boston when she sent me the will, and I made a
+point of calling on him when I went East, to sail. I don't know why she
+wished me to come out to her, but being sick, I presume she naturally
+wished to see some of her own family.”
+
+He looked at Clementina as if he thought she might dispute this, but she
+consented at her sweetest, “Oh, yes, indeed,” and he went on:
+
+“I found her affairs in a very different condition from what she
+seemed to think. The estate was mostly in securities which had not been
+properly looked after, and they had depreciated until they were some of
+them not worth the paper they were printed on. The house in Boston is
+mortgaged up to its full value, I should say; and I should say that Mrs.
+Lander did not know where she stood. She seemed to think that she was a
+very rich woman, but she lived high, and her lawyer said he never could
+make her understand how the money was going. Mr. Lander seemed to
+lose his grip, the year he died, and engaged in some very unfortunate
+speculations; I don't know whether he told her. I might enter into
+details--”
+
+“Oh, that is not necessary,” said Clementina, politely, witless of the
+disastrous quality of the facts which Mr. Orson was imparting.
+
+“But the sum and substance of it all is that there will not be more than
+enough to pay the bequests to her own family, if there is that.”
+
+Clementina looked with smiling innocence at the vice-consul.
+
+“That is to say,” he explained, “there won't be anything at all for you,
+Miss Claxon.”
+
+“Well, that's what I always told Mrs. Lander I ratha, when she brought
+it up. I told her she ought to give it to his family,” said Clementina,
+with a satisfaction in the event which the vice-consul seemed unable to
+share, for he remained gloomily silent. “There is that last money I drew
+on the letter of credit, you can give that to Mr. Orson.”
+
+“I have told him about that money,” said the vice-consul, dryly. “It
+will be handed over to him when the estate is settled, if there isn't
+enough to pay the bequests without it.”
+
+“And the money which Mrs. Landa gave me before that,” she pursued,
+eagerly. Mr. Orson had the effect of pricking up his ears, though it was
+in fact merely a gleam of light that came into his eyes.
+
+“That's yours,” said the vice-consul, sourly, almost savagely. “She
+didn't give it to you without she wanted you to have it, and she didn't
+expect you to pay her bequests with it. In my opinion,” he burst out,
+in a wrathful recollection of his own sufferings from Mrs. Lander, “she
+didn't give you a millionth part of your due for all the trouble she
+made you; and I want Mr. Orson to understand that, right here.”
+
+Clementina turned her impartial gaze upon Mr. Orson as if to verify the
+impression of this extreme opinion upon him; he looked as if he neither
+accepted nor rejected it, and she concluded the sentence which the
+vice-consul had interrupted. “Because I ratha not keep it, if there
+isn't enough without it.”
+
+The vice-consul gave way to violence. “It's none of your business
+whether there's enough or not. What you've got to do is to keep what
+belongs to you, and I'm going to see that you do. That's what I'm here
+for.” If this assumption of official authority did not awe Clementina,
+at least it put a check upon her headlong self-sacrifice. The
+vice-consul strengthened his hold upon her by asking, “What would you
+do. I should like to know, if you gave that up?”
+
+“Oh, I should get along,” she returned, light-heartedly, but upon
+questioning herself whether she should turn to Miss Milray for help,
+or appeal to the vice-consul himself, she was daunted a little, and she
+added, “But just as you say, Mr. Bennam.”
+
+“I say, keep what fairly belongs to you. It's only two or three hundred
+dollars at the outside,” he explained to Mr. Orson's hungry eyes; but
+perhaps the sum did not affect the country minister's imagination as
+trifling; his yearly salary must sometimes have been little more.
+
+The whole interview left the vice-consul out of humor with both parties
+to the affair; and as to Clementina, between the ideals of a perfect
+little saint, and a perfect little simpleton he remained for the present
+unable to class her.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+Clementina and the Vice-Consul afterwards agreed that Mrs. Lander must
+have sent the will to Mr. Orson in one of those moments of suspicion
+when she distrusted everyone about her, or in that trouble concerning
+her husband's kindred which had grown upon her more and more, as a means
+of assuring them that they were provided for.
+
+“But even then,” the vice-consul concluded, “I don't see why she wanted
+this man to come out here. The only explanation is that she was a little
+off her base towards the last. That's the charitable supposition.”
+
+“I don't think she was herself, some of the time,” Clementina assented
+in acceptance of the kindly construction.
+
+The vice-consul modified his good will toward Mrs. Lander's memory so
+far as to say, “Well, if she'd been somebody else most of the time, it
+would have been an improvement.”
+
+The talk turned upon Mr. Orson, and what he would probably do. The
+vice-consul had found him a cheap lodging, at his request, and he seemed
+to have settled down at Venice either without the will or without the
+power to go home, but the vice-consul did not know where he ate, or what
+he did with himself except at the times when he came for letters.
+Once or twice when he looked him up he found him writing, and then the
+minister explained that he had promised to “correspond” for an organ of
+his sect in the Northwest; but he owned that there was no money in it.
+He was otherwise reticent and even furtive in his manner. He did not
+seem to go much about the city, but kept to his own room; and if he was
+writing of Venice it must have been chiefly from his acquaintance
+with the little court into which his windows looked. He affected the
+vice-consul as forlorn and helpless, and he pitied him and rather liked
+him as a fellow-victim of Mrs. Lander.
+
+One morning Mr. Orson came to see Clementina, and after a brief passage
+of opinion upon the weather, he fell into an embarrassed silence from
+which he pulled himself at last with a visible effort. “I hardly know
+how to lay before you what I have to say, Miss Claxon,” he began, “and
+I must ask you to put the best construction upon it. I have never been
+reduced to a similar distress before. You would naturally think that I
+would turn to the vice-consul, on such an occasion; but I feel, through
+our relation to the--to Mrs. Lander--ah--somewhat more at home with
+you.”
+
+He stopped, as if he wished to be asked his business, and she entreated
+him, “Why, what is it, Mr. Osson? Is there something I can do? There
+isn't anything I wouldn't!”
+
+A gleam, watery and faint, which still could not be quite winked away,
+came into his small eyes. “Why, the fact is, could you--ah--advance me
+about five dollars?”
+
+“Why, Mr. Orson!” she began, and he seemed to think she wished to
+withdraw her offer of help, for he interposed.
+
+“I will repay it as soon as I get an expected remittance from home.
+I came out on the invitation of Mrs. Lander, and as her guest, and I
+supposed--”
+
+“Oh, don't say a wo'd!” cried Clementina, but now that he had begun he
+was powerless to stop.
+
+“I would not ask, but my landlady has pressed me for her rent--I suppose
+she needs it--and I have been reduced to the last copper--”
+
+The girl whose eyes the tears of self pity so rarely visited, broke into
+a sob that seemed to surprise her visitor. But she checked herself as
+with a quick inspiration: “Have you been to breakfast?”
+
+“Well--ah--not this morning,” Mr. Orson admitted, as if to imply that
+having breakfasted some other morning might be supposed to serve the
+purpose.
+
+She left him and ran to the door. “Maddalena, Maddalena!” she called;
+and Maddalena responded with a frightened voice from the direction of
+the kitchen:
+
+“Vengo subito!”
+
+She hurried out with the coffee-pot in her hand, as if she had just
+taken it up when Clementina called; and she halted for the whispered
+colloquy between them which took place before she set it down on the
+table already laid for breakfast; then she hurried out of the room
+again. She came back with a cantaloupe and grapes, and cold ham, and put
+them before Clementina and her guest, who both ignored the hunger with
+which he swept everything before him. When his famine had left nothing,
+he said, in decorous compliment:
+
+“That is very good coffee, I should think the genuine berry, though I am
+told that they adulterate coffee a great deal in Europe.”
+
+“Do they?” asked Clementina. “I didn't know it.”
+
+She left him still sitting before the table, and came back with some
+bank-notes in her hand. “Are you sure you hadn't betta take moa?” she
+asked.
+
+“I think that five dollars will be all that I shall require,” he
+answered, with dignity. “I should be unwilling to accept more. I shall
+undoubtedly receive some remittances soon.”
+
+“Oh, I know you will,” Clementina returned, and she added, “I am waiting
+for lettas myself; I don't think any one ought to give up.”
+
+The preacher ignored the appeal which was in her tone rather than her
+words, and went on to explain at length the circumstances of his having
+come to Europe so unprovided against chances. When he wished to excuse
+his imprudence, she cried out, “Oh, don't say a wo'd! It's just like my
+own fatha,” and she told him some things of her home which apparently
+did not interest him very much. He had a kind of dull, cold
+self-absorption in which he was indeed so little like her father
+that only her kindness for the lonely man could have justified her in
+thinking there was any resemblance.
+
+She did not see him again for a week, and meantime she did not tell the
+vice-consul of what had happened. But an anxiety for the minister began
+to mingle with her anxieties for herself; she constantly wondered why
+she did not hear from her lover, and she occasionally wondered whether
+Mr. Orson were not falling into want again. She had decided to betray
+his condition to the vice-consul, when he came, bringing the money she
+had lent him. He had received a remittance from an unexpected source;
+and he hoped she would excuse his delay in repaying her loan. She wished
+not to take the money, at least till he was quite sure he should not
+want it, but he insisted.
+
+“I have enough to keep me, now, till I hear from other sources, with the
+means for returning home. I see no object in continuing here, under the
+circumstances.”
+
+In the relief which she felt for him Clementina's heart throbbed with a
+pain which was all for herself. Why should she wait any longer either?
+For that instant she abandoned the hope which had kept her up so long; a
+wave of homesickness overwhelmed her.
+
+“I should like to go back, too,” she said. “I don't see why I'm
+staying.”
+
+“Mr. Osson, why can't you let me”--she was going to say--“go home with
+you?” But she really said what was also in her heart, “Why can't you let
+me give you the money to go home? It is all Mrs. Landa's money, anyway.”
+
+“There is certainly that view of the matter,” he assented with
+a promptness that might have suggested a lurking grudge for the
+vice-consul's decision that she ought to keep the money Mrs. Lander had
+given her.
+
+But Clementina urged unsuspiciously: “Oh, yes, indeed! And I shall feel
+better if you take it. I only wish I could go home, too!”
+
+The minister was silent while he was revolving, with whatever scruple
+or reluctance, a compromise suitable to the occasion. Then he said, “Why
+should we not return together?”
+
+“Would you take me?” she entreated.
+
+“That should be as you wished. I am not much acquainted with the usages
+in such matters, but I presume that it would be entirely practicable. We
+could ask the vice-consul.”
+
+“Yes--”
+
+“He must have had considerable experience in cases of the kind. Would
+your friends meet you in New York, or--”
+
+“I don't know,” said Clementina with a pang for the thought of a meeting
+she had sometimes fancied there, when her lover had come out for her,
+and her father had been told to come and receive them. “No,” she sighed,
+“the'e wouldn't be time to let them know. But it wouldn't make
+any difference. I could get home from New Yo'k alone,” she added,
+listlessly. Her spirits had fallen again. She saw that she could not
+leave Venice till she had heard in some sort from the letter she had
+written. “Perhaps it couldn't be done, after all. But I will see Mr.
+Bennam about it, Mr. Osson; and I know he will want you to have that
+much of the money. He will be coming he'e, soon.”
+
+He rose upon what he must have thought her hint, and said, “I should not
+wish to have him swayed against his judgment.”
+
+The vice-consul came not long after the minister had left her, and she
+began upon what she wished to do for him.
+
+The vice-consul was against it. “I would rather lend him the money out
+of my own pocket. How are you going to get along yourself, if you let
+him have so much?”
+
+She did not answer at once. Then she said, hopelessly, “I've a great
+mind to go home with him. I don't believe there's any use waiting here
+any longa.” The vice-consul could not say anything to this. She added,
+“Yes, I believe I will go home. We we'e talking about it, the other day,
+and he is willing to let me go with him.”
+
+“I should think he would be,” the vice-consul retorted in his
+indignation for her. “Did you offer to pay for his passage?”
+
+“Yes,” she owned, “I did,” and again the vice-consul could say nothing.
+“If I went, it wouldn't make any difference whether it took it all or
+not. I should have plenty to get home from New York with.”
+
+“Well,” the vice-consul assented, dryly, “it's for you to say.”
+
+“I know you don't want me to do it!”
+
+“Well, I shall miss you,” he answered, evasively.
+
+“And I shall miss you, too, Mr. Bennam. Don't you believe it? But if I
+don't take this chance to get home, I don't know when I shall eva have
+anotha. And there isn't any use waiting--no, there isn't!”
+
+The vice-consul laughed at the sort of imperative despair in her tone.
+“How are you going? Which way, I mean.”
+
+They counted up Clementina's debts and assets, and they found that if
+she took the next steamer from Genoa, which was to sail in four days,
+she would have enough to pay her own way and Mr. Orson's to New York,
+and still have some thirty dollars over, for her expenses home to
+Middlemount. They allowed for a second cabin-passage, which the
+vice-consul said was perfectly good on the Genoa steamers. He rather
+urged the gentility and comfort of the second cabin-passage, but his
+reasons in favor of it were wasted upon Clementina's indifference;
+she wished to get home, now, and she did not care how. She asked the
+vice-consul to see the minister for her, and if he were ready and
+willing, to telegraph for their tickets. He transacted the business so
+promptly that he was able to tell her when he came in the evening that
+everything was in train. He excused his coming; he said that now she
+was going so soon, he wanted to see all he could of her. He offered no
+excuse when he came the next morning; but he said he had got a letter
+for her and thought she might want to have it at once.
+
+He took it out of his hat and gave it to her. It was addressed in
+Hinkle's writing; her answer had come at last; she stood trembling with
+it in her hand.
+
+The vice-consul smiled. “Is that the one?”
+
+“Yes,” she whispered back.
+
+“All right.” He took his hat, and set it on the back of his head before
+he left her without other salutation.
+
+Then Clementina opened her letter. It was in a woman's hand, and the
+writer made haste to explain at the beginning that she was George W.
+Hinkle's sister, and that she was writing for him; for though he was
+now out of danger, he was still very weak, and they had all been anxious
+about him. A month before, he had been hurt in a railroad collision,
+and had come home from the West, where the accident happened, suffering
+mainly from shock, as his doctor thought; he had taken to his bed at
+once, and had not risen from it since. He had been out of his head a
+great part of the time, and had been forbidden everything that could
+distress or excite him. His sister said that she was writing for him now
+as soon as he had seen Clementina's letter; it had been forwarded from
+one address to another, and had at last found him there at his home in
+Ohio. He wished to say that he would come out for Clementina as soon as
+he was allowed to undertake the journey, and in the meantime she must
+let him know constantly where she was. The letter closed with a few
+words of love in his own handwriting.
+
+Clementina rose from reading it, and put on her hat in a bewildered
+impulse to go to him at once; she knew, in spite of all the cautions and
+reserves of the letter that he must still be very sick. When she came
+out of her daze she found that she could only go to the vice-consul. She
+put the letter in his hands to let it explain itself. “You'll undastand,
+now,” she said. “What shall I do?”
+
+When he had read it, he smiled and answered, “I guess I understood
+pretty well before, though I wasn't posted on names. Well, I suppose
+you'll want to layout most of your capital on cables, now?”
+
+“Yes,” she laughed, and then she suddenly lamented, “Why didn't they
+telegraph?”
+
+“Well, I guess he hadn't the head for it,” said the vice-consul, “and
+the rest wouldn't think of it. They wouldn't, in the country.”
+
+Clementina laughed again; in joyous recognition of the fact, “No, my
+fatha wouldn't, eitha!”
+
+The vice-consul reached for his hat, and he led the way to Clementina's
+gondola at his garden gate, in greater haste than she. At the telegraph
+office he framed a dispatch which for expansive fullness and precision
+was apparently unexampled in the experience of the clerk who took it
+and spelt over its English with them. It asked an answer in the
+vice-consul's care, and, “I'll tell you what, Miss Claxon,” he said with
+a husky weakness in his voice, “I wish you'd let this be my treat.”
+
+She understood. “Do you really, Mr. Bennam?”
+
+“I do indeed.”
+
+“Well, then, I will,” she said, but when he wished to include in his
+treat the dispatch she sent home to her father announcing her coming,
+she would not let him.
+
+He looked at his watch, as they rowed away. “It's eight o'clock here,
+now, and it will reach Ohio about six hours earlier; but you can't
+expect an answer tonight, you know.”
+
+“No”--She had expected it though, he could see that.
+
+“But whenever it comes, I'll bring it right round to you. Now it's all
+going to be straight, don't you be afraid, and you're going home the
+quickest way you can get there. I've been looking up the sailings, and
+this Genoa boat will get you to New York about as soon as any could from
+Liverpool. Besides there's always a chance of missing connections and
+losing time between here and England. I should stick to the Genoa boat.”
+
+“Oh I shall,” said Clementina, far less fidgetted than he. She was,
+in fact, resting securely again in the faith which had never really
+deserted her, and had only seemed for a little time to waver from her
+when her hope went. Now that she had telegraphed, her heart was at
+peace, and she even laughed as she answered the anxious vice-consul.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+The next morning Clementina watched for the vice-consul from her
+balcony. She knew he would not send; she knew he would come; but it was
+nearly noon before she saw him coming. They caught sight of each other
+almost at the same moment, and he stood up in his boat, and waved
+something white in his hand, which must be a dispatch for her.
+
+It acknowledged her telegram and reported George still improving; his
+father would meet her steamer in New York. It was very reassuring, it
+was every thing hopeful; but when she had read it she gave it to the
+vice-consul for encouragement.
+
+“It's all right, Miss Claxon,” he said, stoutly. “Don't you be troubled
+about Mr. Hinkle's not coming to meet you himself. He can't keep too
+quiet for a while yet.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Clementina, patiently.
+
+“If you really want somebody to worry about, you can help Mr. Orson to
+worry about himself!” the vice-consul went on, with the grimness he had
+formerly used in speaking of Mrs. Lander. “He's sick, or he thinks he's
+going to be. He sent round for me this morning, and I found him in bed.
+You may have to go home alone. But I guess he's more scared than hurt.”
+
+Her heart sank, and then rose in revolt against the mere idea of delay.
+“I wonder if I ought to go and see him,” she said.
+
+“Well, it would be a kindness,” returned the vice-consul, with a
+promptness that unmasked the apprehension he felt for the sick man.
+
+He did not offer to go with her, and she took Maddalena. She found
+the minister seated in his chair beside his bed. A three days' beard
+heightened the gauntness of his face; he did not move when his padrona
+announced her.
+
+“I am not any better,” he answered when she said that she was glad to
+see him up. “I am merely resting; the bed is hard. I regret to say,” he
+added, with a sort of formal impersonality, “that I shall be unable to
+accompany you home, Miss Claxon. That is, if you still think of taking
+the steamer this week.”
+
+Her whole being had set homeward in a tide that already seemed to drift
+the vessel from its moorings. “What--what do you mean?” she gasped.
+
+“I didn't know,” he returned, “but that in view of the
+circumstances--all the circumstances--you might be intending to defer
+your departure to some later steamer.”
+
+“No, no, no! I must go, now. I couldn't wait a day, an hour, a minute
+after the first chance of going. You don't know what you are saying! He
+might die if I told him I was not coming; and then what should I do?”
+ This was what Clementina said to herself; but what she said to Mr.
+Orson, with an inspiration from her terror at his suggestion was, “Don't
+you think a little chicken broth would do you good, Mr. Osson? I don't
+believe but what it would.”
+
+A wistful gleam came into the preacher's eyes. “It might,” he admitted,
+and then she knew what must be his malady. She sent Maddalena to a
+trattoria for the soup, and she did not leave him, even after she had
+seen its effect upon him. It was not hard to persuade him that he had
+better come home with her; and she had him there, tucked away with his
+few poor belongings, in the most comfortable room the padrone could
+imagine, when the vice-consul came in the evening.
+
+“He says he thinks he can go, now,” she ended, when she had told the
+vice-consul. “And I know he can. It wasn't anything but poor living.”
+
+“It looks more like no living,” said the vice-consul. “Why didn't the
+old fool let some one know that he was short of money?” He went on with
+a partial transfer of his contempt of the preacher to her, “I suppose if
+he'd been sick instead of hungry, you'd have waited over till the next
+steamer for him.”
+
+She cast down her eyes. “I don't know what you'll think of me. I should
+have been sorry for him, and I should have wanted to stay.” She lifted
+her eyes and looked the vice-consul defiantly in the face. “But he
+hadn't the fust claim on me, and I should have gone--I couldn't have
+helped it!--I should have gone, if he had been dying!”
+
+“Well, you've got more horse-sense,” said the vice-consul, “than any ten
+men I ever saw,” and he testified his admiration of her by putting his
+arms round her, where she stood before him, and kissing her. “Don't you
+mind,” he explained. “If my youngest girl had lived, she would have been
+about your age.”
+
+“Oh, it's all right, Mr. Bennam,” said Clementina.
+
+When the time came for them to leave Venice, Mr. Orson was even eager
+to go. The vice-consul would have gone with them in contempt of the
+official responsibilities which he felt to be such a thankless burden,
+but there was really no need of his going, and he and Clementina treated
+the question with the matter-of-fact impartiality which they liked in
+each other. He saw her off at the station where Maddalena had come to
+take the train for Florence in token of her devotion to the signorina,
+whom she would not outstay in Venice. She wept long and loud upon
+Clementina's neck, so that even Clementina was once moved to put her
+handkerchief to her tearless eyes.
+
+At the last moment she had a question which she referred to the vice
+consul. “Should you tell him?” she asked.
+
+“Tell who what?” he retorted.
+
+“Mr. Osson--that I wouldn't have stayed for him.”
+
+“Do you think it would make you feel any better?” asked the consul, upon
+reflection.
+
+“I believe he ought to know.”
+
+“Well, then, I guess I should do it.”
+
+The time did not come for her confession till they had nearly reached
+the end of their voyage. It followed upon something like a confession
+from the minister himself, which he made the day he struggled on deck
+with her help, after spending a week in his berth.
+
+“Here is something,” he said, “which appears to be for you, Miss Claxon.
+I found it among some letters for Mrs. Lander which Mr. Bennam gave me
+after my arrival, and I only observed the address in looking over the
+papers in my valise this morning.” He handed her a telegram. “I trust
+that it is nothing requiring immediate attention.”
+
+Clementina read it at a glance. “No,” she answered, and for a while
+she could not say anything more; it was a cable message which Hinkle's
+sister must have sent her after writing. No evil had come of its failure
+to reach her, and she recalled without bitterness the suffering which
+would have been spared her if she had got it before. It was when she
+thought of the suffering of her lover from the silence which must have
+made him doubt her, that she could not speak. As soon as she governed
+herself against her first resentment she said, with a little sigh, “It
+is all right, now, Mr. Osson,” and her stress upon the word seemed to
+trouble him with no misgiving. “Besides, if you're to blame for not
+noticing, so is Mr. Bennam, and I don't want to blame any one.” She
+hesitated a moment before she added: “I have got to tell you something,
+now, because I think you ought to know it. I am going home to be
+married, Mr. Osson, and this message is from the gentleman I am going to
+be married to. He has been very sick, and I don't know yet as he'll be
+able to meet me in New Yo'k; but his fatha will.”
+
+Mr. Orson showed no interest in these facts beyond a silent attention to
+her words, which might have passed for an open indifference. At his time
+of life all such questions, which are of permanent importance to women,
+affect men hardly more than the angels who neither marry nor are given
+in marriage. Besides, as a minister he must have had a surfeit of all
+possible qualities in the love affairs of people intending matrimony.
+As a casuist he was more reasonably concerned in the next fact which
+Clementina laid before him.
+
+“And the otha day, there in Venice when you we'e sick, and you seemed to
+think that I might put off stahting home till the next steamer, I don't
+know but I let you believe I would.”
+
+“I supposed that the delay of a week or two could make no material
+difference to you.”
+
+“But now you see that it would. And I feel as if I ought to tell you--I
+spoke to Mr. Bennam about it, and he didn't tell me not to--that I
+shouldn't have staid, no not for anything in the wo'ld. I had to do what
+I did at the time, but eva since it has seemed as if I had deceived you,
+and I don't want to have it seem so any longer. It isn't because I don't
+hate to tell you; I do; but I guess if it was to happen over again I
+couldn't feel any different. Do you want I should tell the deck-stewahd
+to bring you some beef-tea?”
+
+“I think I could relish a small portion,” said Mr. Orson, cautiously,
+and he said nothing more.
+
+Clementina left him with her nerves in a flutter, and she did not come
+back to him until she decided that it was time to help him down to his
+cabin. He suffered her to do this in silence, but at the door he cleared
+his throat and began:
+
+“I have reflected upon what you told me, and I have tried to regard the
+case from all points. I believe that I have done so, without personal
+feeling, and I think it my duty to say, fully and freely, that I believe
+you would have done perfectly right not to remain.”
+
+“Yes,” said Clementina, “I thought you would think so.”
+
+They parted emotionlessly to all outward effect, and when they met again
+it was without a sign of having passed through a crisis of sentiment.
+Neither referred to the matter again, but from that time the minister
+treated Clementina with a deference not without some shadows of
+tenderness such as her helplessness in Venice had apparently never
+inspired. She had cast out of her mind all lingering hardness toward him
+in telling him the hard truth, and she met his faint relentings with a
+grateful gladness which showed itself in her constant care of him.
+
+This helped her a little to forget the strain of the anxiety that
+increased upon her as the time shortened between the last news of her
+lover and the next; and there was perhaps no more exaggeration in the
+import than in the terms of the formal acknowledgment which Mr. Orson
+made her as their steamer sighted Fire Island Light, and they both knew
+that their voyage had ended: “I may not be able to say to you in the
+hurry of our arrival in New York that I am obliged to you for a good
+many little attentions, which I should be pleased to reciprocate if
+opportunity offered. I do not think I am going too far in saying that
+they are such as a daughter might offer a parent.”
+
+“Oh, don't speak of it, Mr. Osson!” she protested. “I haven't done
+anything that any one wouldn't have done.”
+
+“I presume,” said the minister, thoughtfully, as if retiring from an
+extreme position, “that they are such as others similarly circumstanced,
+might have done, but it will always be a source of satisfaction for you
+to reflect that you have not neglected them.”
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+In the crowd which thronged the steamer's dock at Hoboken, Clementina
+strained her eyes to make out some one who looked enough like her lover
+to be his father, and she began to be afraid that they might miss each
+other when she failed. She walked slowly down the gangway, with the
+people that thronged it, glad to be hidden by them from her failure, but
+at the last step she was caught aside by a small blackeyed, black-haired
+woman, who called out “Isn't this Miss Claxon? I'm Georrge's sisterr.
+Oh, you'rre just like what he said! I knew it! I knew it!” and then
+hugged her and kissed her, and passed her to the little lean dark old
+man next her. “This is fatherr. I knew you couldn't tell us, because I
+take afterr him, and Georrge is exactly like motherr.”
+
+George's father took her hand timidly, but found courage to say to
+his daughter, “Hadn't you betterr let her own fatherr have a chance at
+herr?” and amidst a tempest of apologies and self blame from the sister,
+Claxon showed himself over the shoulders of the little man.
+
+“Why, there wa'n't no hurry, as long as she's he'a,” he said, in prompt
+enjoyment of the joke, and he and Clementina sparely kissed each other.
+
+“Why, fatha!” she said. “I didn't expect you to come to New Yo'k to meet
+me.”
+
+“Well, I didn't ha'dly expect it myself; but I'd neva been to Yo'k, and
+I thought I might as well come. Things ah' ratha slack at home, just
+now, anyway.”
+
+She did not heed his explanation. “We'e you sca'ed when you got my
+dispatch?”
+
+“No, we kind of expected you'd come any time, the way you wrote afta
+Mrs. Landa died. We thought something must be up.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, absently. Then, “Whe'e's motha?” she asked.
+
+“Well, I guess she thought she couldn't get round to it, exactly,” said
+the father. “She's all right. Needn't ask you!”
+
+“No, I'm fust-rate,” Clementina returned, with a silent joy in her
+father's face and voice. She went back in it to the girl of a year ago,
+and the world which had come between them since their parting rolled
+away as if it had never been there.
+
+Neither of them said anything about that. She named over her brothers
+and sisters, and he answered, “Yes, yes,” in assurance of their
+well-being, and then he explained, as if that were the only point
+of real interest, “I see your folks waitin' he'e fo' somebody, and I
+thought I'd see if it wa'n't the same one, and we kind of struck up an
+acquaintance on your account befo'e you got he'e, Clem.”
+
+“Your folks!” she silently repeated to herself. “Yes, they ah' mine!”
+ and she stood trying to realize the strange fact, while George's sister
+poured out a voluminous comment upon Claxon's spare statement, and
+George's father admired her volubility with the shut smile of toothless
+age. She spoke with the burr which the Scotch-Irish settlers have
+imparted to the whole middle West, but it was music to Clementina, who
+heard now and then a tone of her lover in his sister's voice. In the
+midst of it all she caught sight of a mute unfriended figure just
+without their circle, his traveling shawl hanging loose upon his
+shoulders, and the valise which had formed his sole baggage in the
+voyage to and from Europe pulling his long hand out of his coat sleeve.
+
+“Oh, yes,” she said, “here is Mr. Osson that came ova with me, fatha;
+he's a relation of Mr. Landa's,” and she presented him to them all.
+
+He shifted his valise to the left hand, and shook hands with each,
+asking, “What name?” and then fell motionless again.
+
+“Well,” said her father, “I guess this is the end of this paht of the
+ceremony, and I'm goin' to see your baggage through the custom-house,
+Clementina; I've read about it, and I want to know how it's done. I want
+to see what you ah' tryin' to smuggle in.”
+
+“I guess you won't find much,” she said. “But you'll want the keys,
+won't you?” She called to him, as he was stalking away.
+
+“Well, I guess that would be a good idea. Want to help, Miss Hinkle?”
+
+“I guess we might as well all help,” said Clementina, and Mr. Orson
+included himself in the invitation. He seemed unable to separate himself
+from them, though the passage of Clementina's baggage through the
+customs, and its delivery to an expressman for the hotel where the
+Hinkles said they were staying might well have severed the last tie
+between them.
+
+“Ah' you going straight home, Mr. Osson?” she asked, to rescue him from
+the forgetfulness into which they were all letting him fall.
+
+“I think I will remain over a day,” he answered. “I may go on to Boston
+before starting West.”
+
+“Well, that's right,” said Clementina's father with the wish to approve
+everything native to him, and an instinctive sense of Clementina's wish
+to befriend the minister. “Betta come to oua hotel. We're all goin' to
+the same one.”
+
+“I presume it is a good one?” Mr. Orson assented.
+
+“Well,” said Claxon, “you must make Miss Hinkle, he'a, stand it if it
+ain't. She's got me to go to it.”
+
+Mr. Orson apparently could not enter into the joke; but he accompanied
+the party, which again began to forget him, across the ferry and up
+the elevated road to the street car that formed the last stage of their
+progress to the hotel. At this point George's sister fell silent, and
+Clementina's father burst out, “Look he'a! I guess we betta not keep
+this up any longa; I don't believe much in supprises, and I guess she
+betta know it now!”
+
+He looked at George's sister as if for authority to speak further, and
+Clementina looked at her, too, while George's father nervously moistened
+his smiling lips with the tip of his tongue, and let his twinkling eyes
+rest upon Clementina's face.
+
+“Is he at the hotel?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” said his sister, monosyllabic for once.
+
+“I knew it,” said Clementina, and she was only half aware of the
+fullness with which his sister now explained how he wanted to come so
+much that the doctor thought he had better, but that they had made him
+promise he would not try to meet her at the steamer, lest it should be
+too great a trial of his strength.
+
+“Yes,” Clementina assented, when the story came to an end and was
+beginning over again.
+
+She had an inexplicable moment when she stood before her lover in the
+room where they left her to meet him alone. She faltered and he waited
+constrained by her constraint.
+
+“Is it all a mistake, Clementina?” he asked, with a piteous smile.
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“Am I so much changed?”
+
+“No; you are looking better than I expected.”
+
+“And you are not sorry--for anything?”
+
+“No, I am--Perhaps I have thought of you too much! It seems so strange.”
+
+“I understand,” he answered. “We have been like spirits to each other,
+and now we find that we are alive and on the earth like other people;
+and we are not used to it.”
+
+“It must be something like that.”
+
+“But if it's something else--if you have the least regret,--if you would
+rather”--He stopped, and they remained looking at each other a moment.
+Then she turned her head, and glanced out of the window, as if something
+there had caught her sight.
+
+“It's a very pleasant view, isn't it?” she said; and she lifted her
+hands to her head, and took off her hat, with an effect of having got
+home after absence, to stay.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+It was possibly through some sense finer than any cognition that
+Clementina felt in meeting her lover that she had taken up a new burden
+rather than laid down an old one. Afterwards, when they once recurred to
+that meeting, and she tried to explain for him the hesitation which she
+had not been able to hide, she could only say, “I presume I didn't want
+to begin unless I was sure I could carry out. It would have been silly.”
+
+Her confession, if it was a confession, was made when one of his returns
+to health, or rather one of the arrests of his unhealth, flushed them
+with hope and courage; but before that first meeting was ended she knew
+that he had overtasked his strength, in coming to New York, and he must
+not try it further. “Fatha,” she said to Claxon, with the authority of a
+woman doing her duty, “I'm not going to let Geo'ge go up to Middlemount,
+with all the excitement. It will be as much as he can do to get home.
+You can tell mother about it; and the rest. I did suppose it would be
+Mr. Richling that would marry us, and I always wanted him to, but I
+guess somebody else can do it as well.”
+
+“Just as you say, Clem,” her father assented. “Why not Brother Osson,
+he'a?” he suggested with a pleasure in the joke, whatever it was, that
+the minister's relation to Clementina involved. “I guess he can put off
+his visit to Boston long enough.”
+
+“Well, I was thinking of him,” said Clementina. “Will you ask him?”
+
+“Yes. I'll get round to it, in the mohning.”
+
+“No--now; right away. I've been talking with Geo'ge about it; and the'e's
+no sense in putting it off. I ought to begin taking care of him at
+once.”
+
+“Well, I guess when I tell your motha how you're layin' hold, she won't
+think it's the same pusson,” said her father, proudly.
+
+“But it is; I haven't changed a bit.”
+
+“You ha'n't changed for the wohse, anyway.”
+
+“Didn't I always try to do what I had to?”
+
+“I guess you did, Clem.”
+
+“Well, then!”
+
+Mr. Orson, after a decent hesitation, consented to perform the ceremony.
+It took place in a parlor of the hotel, according to the law of New
+York, which facilitates marriage so greatly in all respects that it is
+strange any one in the State should remain single. He had then a luxury
+of choice between attaching himself to the bridal couple as far as Ohio
+on his journey home to Michigan, or to Claxon who was going to take the
+boat for Boston the next day on his way to Middlemount. He decided
+for Claxon, since he could then see Mrs. Lander's lawyer at once, and
+arrange with him for getting out of the vice-consul's hands the money
+which he was holding for an authoritative demand. He accepted without
+open reproach the handsome fee which the elder Hinkle gave him for his
+services, and even went so far as to say, “If your son should ever be
+blest with a return to health, he has got a helpmeet such as there are
+very few of.” He then admonished the young couple, in whatever trials
+life should have in store for them, to be resigned, and always to be
+prepared for the worst. When he came later to take leave of them, he was
+apparently not equal to the task of fitly acknowledging the return which
+Hinkle made him of all the money remaining to Clementina out of the sum
+last given her by Mrs. Lander, but he hid any disappointment he might
+have suffered, and with a brief, “Thank you,” put it in his pocket.
+
+Hinkle told Clementina of the apathetic behavior of Mr. Orson; he added
+with a laugh like his old self, “It's the best that he doesn't seem
+prepared for.”
+
+“Yes,” she assented. “He wasn't very chee'ful. But I presume that he
+meant well. It must be a trial for him to find out that Mrs. Landa
+wasn't rich, after all.”
+
+It was apparently never a trial to her. She went to Ohio with her
+husband and took up her life on the farm, where it was wisely judged
+that he had the best chance of working out of the wreck of his health
+and strength. There was often the promise and always the hope of this,
+and their love knew no doubt of the future. Her sisters-in-law delighted
+in all her strangeness and difference, while they petted her as
+something not to be separated from him in their petting of their
+brother; to his mother she was the darling which her youngest had never
+ceased to be; Clementina once went so far as to say to him that if she
+was ever anything she would like to be a Moravian.
+
+The question of religion was always related in their minds to the
+question of Gregory, to whom they did justice in their trust of each
+other. It was Hinkle himself who reasoned out that if Gregory was
+narrow, his narrowness was of his conscience and not of his heart or his
+mind. She respected the memory of her first lover; but it was as if he
+were dead, now, as well as her young dream of him, and she read with a
+curious sense of remoteness, a paragraph which her husband found in the
+religious intelligence of his Sunday paper, announcing the marriage of
+the Rev. Frank Gregory to a lady described as having been a frequent
+and bountiful contributor to the foreign missions. She was apparently
+a widow, and they conjectured that she was older than he. His departure
+for his chosen field of missionary labor in China formed part of the
+news communicated by the rather exulting paragraph.
+
+“Well, that is all right,” said Clementina's husband. “He is a good man,
+and he is where he can do nothing but good. I am glad I needn't feel
+sorry for him, any more.”
+
+Clementina's father must have given such a report of Hinkle and his
+family, that they felt easy at home in leaving her to the lot she had
+chosen. When Claxon parted from her, he talked of coming out with her
+mother to see her that fall; but it was more than a year before they got
+round to it. They did not come till after the birth of her little girl,
+and her father then humorously allowed that perhaps they would not have
+got round to it at all if something of the kind had not happened. The
+Hinkles and her father and mother liked one another, so much that in the
+first glow of his enthusiasm Claxon talked of settling down in Ohio, and
+the older Hinkle drove him about to look at some places that were for
+sale. But it ended in his saying one day that he missed the hills, and
+he did not believe that he would know enough to come in when it rained
+if he did not see old Middlemount with his nightcap on first. His wife
+and he started home with the impatience of their years, rather earlier
+than they had meant to go, and they were silent for a little while after
+they left the flag-station where Hinkle and Clementina had put them
+aboard their train.
+
+“Well?” said Claxon, at last.
+
+“Well?” echoed his wife, and then she did not speak for a little while
+longer. At last she asked,
+
+“D'he look that way when you fust see him in New Yo'k?”
+
+Claxon gave his honesty time to get the better of his optimism. Even
+then he answered evasively, “He doos look pootty slim.”
+
+“The way I cypher it out,” said his wife, “he no business to let her
+marry him, if he wa'n't goin' to get well. It was throwin' of herself
+away, as you may say.”
+
+“I don't know about that,” said Claxon, as if the point had occurred to
+him, too, and had been already argued in his mind. “I guess they must
+'a' had it out, there in New York before they got married--or she had.
+I don't believe but what he expected to get well, right away. It's the
+kind of a thing that lingas along, and lingas along. As fah fo'th as
+Clem went, I guess there wa'n't any let about it. I guess she'd made
+up her mind from the staht, and she was goin' to have him if she had to
+hold him on his feet to do it. Look he'a! What would you done?”
+
+“Oh, I presume we're all fools!” said Mrs. Claxon, impatient of a sex
+not always so frank with itself. “But that don't excuse him.”
+
+“I don't say it doos,” her husband admitted. “But I presume he was
+expectin' to get well right away, then. And I don't believe,” he added,
+energetically, “but what he will, yet. As I undastand, there ain't
+anything ogganic about him. It's just this he'e nuvvous prostration,
+resultin' from shock, his docta tells me; and he'll wo'k out of that all
+right.”
+
+They said no more, and Mrs. Claxon did not recur to any phase of the
+situation till she undid the lunch which the Hinkles had put up for
+them, and laid out on the napkin in her lap the portions of cold ham and
+cold chicken, the buttered biscuit, and the little pot of apple-butter,
+with the large bottle of cold coffee. Then she sighed, “They live well.”
+
+“Yes,” said her husband, glad of any concession, “and they ah' good
+folks. And Clem's as happy as a bud with 'em, you can see that.”
+
+“Oh, she was always happy enough, if that's all you want. I presume
+she was happy with that hectorin' old thing that fooled her out of her
+money.”
+
+“I ha'n't ever regretted that money, Rebecca,” said Claxon, stiffly,
+almost sternly, “and I guess you a'n't, eitha.”
+
+“I don't say I have,” retorted Mrs. Claxon. “But I don't like to be made
+a fool of. I presume,” she added, remotely, but not so irrelevantly,
+“Clem could ha' got 'most anybody, ova the'a.”
+
+“Well,” said Claxon, taking refuge in the joke, “I shouldn't want her to
+marry a crowned head, myself.”
+
+It was Clementina who drove the clay-bank colt away from the station
+after the train had passed out of sight. Her husband sat beside her, and
+let her take the reins from his nerveless grasp; and when they got into
+the shelter of the piece of woods that the road passed through he put up
+his hands to his face, and broke into sobs. She allowed him to weep on,
+though she kept saying, “Geo'ge, Geo'ge,” softly, and stroking his knee
+with the hand next him. When his sobbing stopped, she said, “I guess
+they've had a pleasant visit; but I'm glad we'a together again.” He took
+up her hand and kissed the back of it, and then clutched it hard, but
+did not speak. “It's strange,” she went on, “how I used to be home-sick
+for father and motha”--she had sometimes lost her Yankee accent in her
+association with his people, and spoke with their Western burr, but she
+found it in moments of deeper feeling--“when I was there in Europe, and
+now I'm glad to have them go. I don't want anybody to be between us; and
+I want to go back to just the way we we'e befo'e they came. It's been
+a strain on you, and now you must throw it all off and rest, and get up
+your strength. One thing, I could see that fatha noticed the gain you
+had made since he saw you in New Yo'k. He spoke about it to me the fust
+thing, and he feels just the way I do about it. He don't want you to
+hurry and get well, but take it slowly, and not excite yourself. He
+believes in your gleaner, and he knows all about machinery. He says the
+patent makes it puffectly safe, and you can take your own time about
+pushing it; it's su'a to go. And motha liked you. She's not one to talk
+a great deal--she always leaves that to father and me--but she's got
+deep feelings, and she just worshipped the baby! I neva saw her take a
+child in her ahms before; but she seemed to want to hold the baby all
+the time.” She stopped, and then added, tenderly, “Now, I know what you
+ah' thinking about, Geo'ge, and I don't want you to think about it any
+more. If you do, I shall give up.”
+
+They had come to a bad piece of road where a slough of thick mud forced
+the wagon-way over the stumps of a turnout in the woods. “You had better
+let me have the reins, Clementina,” he said. He drove home over the
+yellow leaves of the hickories and the crimson leaves of the maples,
+that heavy with the morning dew, fell slanting through the still air;
+and on the way he began to sing; his singing made her heart ache. His
+father came out to put up the colt for him; and Hinkle would not have
+his help.
+
+He unhitched the colt himself, while his father trembled by with bent
+knees; he clapped the colt on the haunch and started him through the
+pasture-bars with a gay shout, and then put his arm round Clementina's
+waist, and walked her into the kitchen amidst the grins of his mother
+and sisters, who said he ought to be ashamed.
+
+The winter passed, and in the spring he was not so well as he had been
+in the fall. It was the out-door life which was best for him, and he
+picked up again in the summer. When another autumn came, it was thought
+best for him not to risk the confinement of another winter in the North.
+The prolongation of the summer in the South would complete his cure, and
+Clementina took her baby and went with him to Florida. He was very well,
+there, and courageous letters came to Middlemount and Ohio, boasting of
+the gains he had made. One day toward spring he came in languid from the
+damp, unnatural heat, and the next day he had a fever, which the doctor
+would not, in a resort absolutely free from malaria, pronounce malarial.
+After it had once declared itself, in compliance with this reluctance,
+a simple fever, Hinkle was delirious, and he never knew Clementina
+again for the mother of his child. They were once more at Venice in his
+ravings, and he was reasoning with her that Belsky was not drowned.
+
+The mystery of his malady deepened into the mystery of his death. With
+that his look of health and youth came back, and as she gazed upon his
+gentle face, it wore to her the smile of quaint sweetness that she had
+seen it wear the first night it won her fancy at Miss Milray's horse in
+Florence.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+Six years after Miss Milray parted with Clementina in Venice she found
+herself, towards the close of the summer, at Middlemount. She had
+definitely ceased to live in Florence, where she had meant to die, and
+had come home to close her eyes. She was in no haste to do this, and
+in the meantime she was now at Middlemount with her brother, who had
+expressed a wish to revisit the place in memory of Mrs. Milray. It
+was the second anniversary of her divorce, which had remained, after a
+married life of many vicissitudes, almost the only experience untried in
+that relation, and which had been happily accomplished in the courts of
+Dacotah, upon grounds that satisfied the facile justice of that State.
+Milray had dealt handsomely with his widow, as he unresentfully called
+her, and the money he assigned her was of a destiny perhaps as honored
+as its origin. She employed it in the negotiation of a second marriage,
+in which she redressed the balance of her first by taking a husband
+somewhat younger than herself.
+
+Both Milray and his sister had a wish which was much more than a
+curiosity to know what had become of Clementina; they had heard that her
+husband was dead, and that she had come back to Middlemount; and Miss
+Milray was going to the office, the afternoon following their arrival,
+to ask the landlord about her, when she was arrested at the door of the
+ball-room by a sight that she thought very pretty. At the bottom of the
+room, clearly defined against the long windows behind her, stood the
+figure of a lady in the middle of the floor. In rows on either side sat
+little girls and little boys who left their places one after another,
+and turned at the door to make their manners to her. In response to each
+obeisance the lady dropped a curtsey, now to this side, now to that,
+taking her skirt between her finger tips on either hand and spreading
+it delicately, with a certain elegance of movement, and a grace that
+was full of poetry, and to Miss Milray, somehow, full of pathos. There
+remained to the end a small mite of a girl, who was the last to leave
+her place and bow to the lady. She did not quit the room then, like the
+others, but advanced toward the lady who came to meet her, and lifted
+her and clasped her to her breast with a kind of passion. She walked
+down toward the door where Miss Milray stood, gently drifting over the
+polished floor, as if still moved by the music that had ceased, and as
+she drew near, Miss Milray gave a cry of joy, and ran upon her. “Why,
+Clementina!” she screamed, and caught her and the child both in her
+arms.
+
+She began to weep, but Clementina smiled instead of weeping, as she
+always used to do. She returned Miss Milray's affectionate greeting with
+a tenderness as great as her own, but with a sort of authority, such as
+sometimes comes to those who have suffered. She quieted the older woman
+with her own serenity, and met the torrent of her questions with as many
+answers as their rush permitted, when they were both presently in Miss
+Milray's room talking in their old way. From time to time Miss Milray
+broke from the talk to kiss the little girl, whom she declared to be
+Clementina all over again, and then returned to her better behavior with
+an effect of shame for her want of self-control, as if Clementina's mood
+had abashed her. Sometimes this was almost severe in its quiet; that
+was her mother coming to her share in her; but again she was like her
+father, full of the sunny gayety of self-forgetfulness, and then Miss
+Milray said, “Now you are the old Clementina!”
+
+Upon the whole she listened with few interruptions to the story which
+she exacted. It was mainly what we know. After her husband's death
+Clementina had gone back to his family for a time, and each year since
+she had spent part of the winter with them; but it was very lonesome
+for her, and she began to be home-sick for Middlemount. They saw it and
+considered it. “They ah' the best people, Miss Milray!” she said, and
+her voice, which was firm when she spoke of her husband, broke in the
+words of minor feeling. Besides being a little homesick, she ended, she
+was not willing to live on there, doing nothing for herself, and so she
+had come back.
+
+“And you are here, doing just what you planned when you talked your life
+over with me in Venice!”
+
+“Yes, but life isn't eva just what we plan it to be, Miss Milray.”
+
+“Ah, don't I know it!”
+
+Clementina surprised Miss Milray by adding, “In a great many things--I
+don't know but in most--it's better. I don't complain of mine--”
+
+“You poor child! You never complained of anything--not even of Mrs.
+Lander!”
+
+“But it's different from what I expected; and it's--strange.”
+
+“Yes; life is very strange.”
+
+“I don't mean--losing him. That had to be. I can see, now, that it had
+to be almost from the beginning. It seems to me that I knew it had to be
+from the fust minute I saw him in New Yo'k; but he didn't, and I am glad
+of that. Except when he was getting wohse, he always believed he should
+get well; and he was getting well, when he--”
+
+Miss Milray did not violate the pause she made with any question, though
+it was apparent that Clementina had something on her mind that she
+wished to say, and could hardly say of herself.
+
+She began again, “I was glad through everything that I could live
+with him so long. If there is nothing moa, here or anywhe'a, that was
+something. But it is strange. Sometimes it doesn't seem as if it had
+happened.”
+
+“I think I can understand, Clementina.”
+
+“I feel sometimes as if I hadn't happened myself.” She stopped, with a
+patient little sigh, and passed her hand across the child's forehead, in
+a mother's fashion, and smoothed her hair from it, bending over to look
+down into her face. “We think she has her fatha's eyes,” she said.
+
+“Yes, she has,” Miss Milray assented, noting the upward slant of
+the child's eyes, which gave his quaintness to her beauty. “He had
+fascinating eyes.”
+
+After a moment Clementina asked, “Do you believe that the looks are all
+that ah' left?”
+
+Miss Milray reflected. “I know what you mean. I should say character was
+left, and personality--somewhere.”
+
+“I used to feel as if it we'e left here, at fust--as if he must come
+back. But that had to go.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Everything seems to go. After a while even the loss of him seemed to
+go.”
+
+“Yes, losses go with the rest.”
+
+“That's what I mean by its seeming as if it never any of it happened.
+Some things before it are a great deal more real.”
+
+“Little things?”
+
+“Not exactly. But things when I was very young.” Miss Milray did not
+know quite what she intended, but she knew that Clementina was feeling
+her way to something she wanted to say, and she let her alone. “When it
+was all over, and I knew that as long as I lived he would be somewhere
+else, I tried to be paht of the wo'ld I was left in. Do you think that
+was right?”
+
+“It was wise; and, yes, it was best,” said Miss Milray, and for relief
+from the tension which was beginning to tell upon her own nerves, she
+asked, “I suppose you know about my poor brother? I'd better tell you to
+keep you from asking for Mrs. Milray, though I don't know that it's so
+very painful with him. There isn't any Mrs. Milray now,” she added, and
+she explained why.
+
+Neither of them cared for Mrs. Milray, and they did not pretend to be
+concerned about her, but Clementina said, vaguely, as if in recognition
+of Mrs. Milray's latest experiment, “Do you believe in second
+marriages?”
+
+Miss Milray laughed, “Well, not that kind exactly.”
+
+“No,” Clementina assented, and she colored a little.
+
+Miss Milray was moved to add, “But if you mean another kind, I don't see
+why not. My own mother was married twice.”
+
+“Was she?” Clementina looked relieved and encouraged, but she did not
+say any more at once. Then she asked, “Do you know what ever became of
+Mr. Belsky?”
+
+“Yes. He's taken his title again, and gone back to live in Russia; he's
+made peace with the Czar; I believe.”
+
+“That's nice,” said Clementina; and Miss Milray made bold to ask:
+
+“And what has become of Mr. Gregory?”
+
+Clementina answered, as Miss Milray thought, tentatively and obliquely:
+“You know his wife died.”
+
+“No, I never knew that she lived.”
+
+“Yes. They went out to China, and she died the'a.”
+
+“And is he there yet? But of course! He could never have given up being
+a missionary.”
+
+“Well,” said Clementina, “he isn't in China. His health gave out, and he
+had to come home. He's in Middlemount Centa.”
+
+Miss Milray suppressed the “Oh!” that all but broke from her lips.
+“Preaching to the heathen, there?” she temporized.
+
+“To the summa folks,” Clementina explained, innocent of satire. “They
+have got a Union Chapel the'a, now, and Mr. Gregory has been preaching
+all summa.” There seemed nothing more that Miss Milray could prompt her
+to say, but it was not quite with surprise that she heard Clementina
+continue, as if it were part of the explanation, and followed from the
+fact she had stated, “He wants me to marry him.”
+
+Miss Milray tried to emulate her calm in asking, “And shall you?”
+
+“I don't know. I told him I would see; he only asked me last night.
+It would be kind of natural. He was the fust. You may think it is
+strange--”
+
+Miss Milray, in the superstition of her old-maidenhood concerning love,
+really thought it cold-blooded and shocking; but she said, “Oh, no.”
+
+Clementina resumed: “And he says that if it was right for me to stop
+caring for him when I did, it is right now for me to ca'e for him again,
+where the'e's no one to be hu't by it. Do you think it is?”
+
+“Yes; why not?” Miss Milray was forced to the admission against what she
+believed the finer feelings of her nature.
+
+Clementina sighed, “I suppose he's right. I always thought he was good.
+Women don't seem to belong very much to themselves in this wo'ld, do
+they?”
+
+“No, they seem to belong to the men, either because they want the men,
+or the men want them; it comes to the same thing. I suppose you don't
+wish me to advise you, my dear?”
+
+“No. I presume it's something I've got to think out for myself.”
+
+“But I think he's good, too. I ought to say that much, for I didn't
+always stand his friend with you. If Mr. Gregory has any fault it's
+being too scrupulous.”
+
+“You mean, about that old trouble--our not believing just the same?”
+ Miss Milray meant something much more temperamental than that, but she
+allowed Clementina to limit her meaning, and Clementina went on. “He's
+changed all round now. He thinks it's all in the life. He says that in
+China they couldn't understand what he believed, but they could what he
+lived. And he knows I neva could be very religious.”
+
+It was in Miss Milray's heart to protest, “Clementina, I think you
+are one of the most religious persons I ever knew,” but she forebore,
+because the praise seemed to her an invasion of Clementina's dignity.
+She merely said, “Well, I am glad he is one of those who grow more
+liberal as they grow older. That is a good sign for your happiness. But
+I dare say it's more of his happiness you think.”
+
+“Oh, I should like to be happy, too. There would be no sense in it if I
+wasn't.”
+
+“No, certainly not.”
+
+“Miss Milray,” said Clementina, with a kind of abruptness, “do you eva
+hear anything from Dr. Welwright?”
+
+“No! Why?” Miss Milray fastened her gaze vividly upon her.
+
+“Oh, nothing. He wanted me to promise him, there in Venice, too.”
+
+“I didn't know it.”
+
+“Yes. But--I couldn't, then. And now--he's written to me. He wants me to
+let him come ova, and see me.”
+
+“And--and will you?” asked Miss Milray, rather breathlessly.
+
+“I don't know. I don't know as I'd ought. I should like to see him,
+so as to be puffectly su'a. But if I let him come, and then didn't--It
+wouldn't be right! I always felt as if I'd ought to have seen then
+that he ca'ed for me, and stopped him; but I didn't. No, I didn't,” she
+repeated, nervously. “I respected him, and I liked him; but I neva”--She
+stopped, and then she asked, “What do you think I'd ought to do, Miss
+Milray?”
+
+Miss Milray hesitated. She was thinking superficially that she had never
+heard Clementina say had ought, so much, if ever before. Interiorly she
+was recurring to a sense of something like all this before, and to the
+feeling which she had then that Clementina was really cold-blooded and
+self-seeking. But she remembered that in her former decision, Clementina
+had finally acted from her heart and her conscience, and she rose from
+her suspicion with a rebound. She dismissed as unworthy of Clementina
+any theory which did not account for an ideal of scrupulous and
+unselfish justice in her.
+
+“That is something that nobody can say but yourself, Clementina,” she
+answered, gravely.
+
+“Yes,” sighed Clementina, “I presume that is so.”
+
+She rose, and took her little girl from Miss Milray's knee. “Say
+good-bye,” she bade, looking tenderly down at her.
+
+Miss Milray expected the child to put up her lips to be kissed. But she
+let go her mother's hand, took her tiny skirts between her finger-tips,
+and dropped a curtsey.
+
+“You little witch!” cried Miss Milray. “I want a hug,” and she crushed
+her to her breast, while the child twisted her face round and anxiously
+questioned her mother's for her approval. “Tell her it's all right,
+Clementina!” cried Miss Milray. “When she's as old as you were in
+Florence, I'm going to make you give her to me.”
+
+“Ah' you going back to Florence?” asked Clementina, provisionally.
+
+“Oh, no! You can't go back to anything. That's what makes New York so
+impossible. I think we shall go to Los Angeles.”
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+On her way home Clementina met a man walking swiftly forward. A sort of
+impassioned abstraction expressed itself in his gait and bearing. They
+had both entered the shadow of the deep pine woods that flanked the way
+on either side, and the fallen needles helped with the velvety summer
+dust of the roadway to hush their steps from each other. She saw him far
+off, but he was not aware of her till she was quite near him.
+
+“Oh!” he said, with a start. “You filled my mind so full that I couldn't
+have believed you were anywhere outside of it. I was coming to get
+you--I was coming to get my answer.”
+
+Gregory had grown distinctly older. Sickness and hardship had left
+traces in his wasted face, but the full beard he wore helped to give him
+an undue look of age.
+
+“I don't know,” said Clementina, slowly, “as I've got an answa fo' you,
+Mr. Gregory--yet.”
+
+“No answer is better that the one I am afraid of!”
+
+“Oh, I'm not so sure of that,” she said, with gentle perplexity, as
+she stood, holding the hand of her little girl, who stared shyly at the
+intense face of the man before her.
+
+“I am,” he retorted. “I have been thinking it all over, Clementina. I've
+tried not to think selfishly about it, but I can't pretend that my wish
+isn't selfish. It is! I want you for myself, and because I've always
+wanted you, and not for any other reason. I never cared for any one but
+you in the way I cared for you, and--”
+
+“Oh!” she grieved. “I never ca'ed at all for you after I saw him.”
+
+“I know it must be shocking to you; I haven't told you with any wretched
+hope that it would commend me to you!”
+
+“I don't say it was so very bad,” said Clementina, reflectively, “if it
+was something you couldn't help.”
+
+“It was something I couldn't help. Perhaps I didn't try.”
+
+“Did--she know it?”
+
+“She knew it from the first; I told her before we were married.”
+
+Clementina drew back a little, insensibly pulling her child with her. “I
+don't believe I exactly like it.”
+
+“I knew you wouldn't! If I could have thought you would, I hope I
+shouldn't have wished--and feared--so much to tell you.”
+
+“Oh, I know you always wanted to do what you believed was right, Mr.
+Gregory,” she answered. “But I haven't quite thought it out yet. You
+mustn't hurry me.”
+
+“No, no! Heaven forbid.” He stood aside to let her pass.
+
+“I was just going home,” she added.
+
+“May I go with you?”
+
+“Yes, if you want to. I don't know but you betta; we might as well; I
+want to talk with you. Don't you think it's something we ought to talk
+about--sensibly?”
+
+“Why, of course! And I shall try to be guided by you; I should always
+submit to be ruled by you, if--”
+
+“That's not what I mean, exactly. I don't want to do the ruling. You
+don't undastand me.”
+
+“I'm afraid I don't,” he assented, humbly.
+
+“If you did, you wouldn't say that--so.” He did not venture to make any
+answer, and they walked on without speaking, till she asked, “Did you
+know that Miss Milray was at the Middlemount?”
+
+“Miss Milray! Of Florence?”
+
+“With her brother. I didn't see him; Mrs. Milray is not he'a; they ah'
+divo'ced. Miss Milray used to be very nice to me in Florence. She isn't
+going back there any moa. She says you can't go back to anything. Do you
+think we can?”
+
+She had left moments between her incoherent sentences where he might
+interrupt her if he would, but he waited for her question. “I hoped we
+might; but perhaps--”
+
+“No, no. We couldn't. We couldn't go back to that night when you threw
+the slippas into the riva, no' to that time in Florence when we gave up,
+no' to that day in Venice when I had to tell you that I ca'ed moa fo'
+some one else. Don't you see?”
+
+“Yes, I see,” he said, in quick revulsion from the hope he had
+expressed. “The past is full of the pain and shame of my errors!”
+
+“I don't want to go back to what's past, eitha,” she reasoned, without
+gainsaying him.
+
+She stopped again, as if that were all, and he asked, “Then is that my
+answer?”
+
+“I don't believe that even in the otha wo'ld we shall want to go back to
+the past, much, do you?” she pursued, thoughtfully.
+
+Once Gregory would have answered confidently; he even now checked an
+impulse to do so. “I don't know,” he owned, meekly.
+
+“I do like you, Mr. Gregory!” she relented, as if touched by his
+meekness, to the confession. “You know I do--moa than I ever expected to
+like anybody again. But it's not because I used to like you, or because
+I think you always acted nicely. I think it was cruel of you, if you
+ca'ed for me, to let me believe you didn't, afta that fust time. I can't
+eva think it wasn't, no matta why you did it.”
+
+“It was atrocious. I can see that now.”
+
+“I say it, because I shouldn't eva wish to say it again. I know that
+all the time you we'e betta than what you did, and I blame myself a good
+deal moa fo' not knowing when you came to Florence that I had begun to
+ca'e fo' some one else. But I did wait till I could see you again, so
+as to be su'a which I ca'ed for the most. I tried to be fai'a, before I
+told you that I wanted to be free. That is all,” she said, gently, and
+Gregory perceived that the word was left definitely to him.
+
+He could not take it till he had disciplined himself to accept
+unmurmuringly his sentence as he understood it. “At any rate,” he began,
+“I can thank you for rating my motive above my conduct.”
+
+“Oh,” she said. “I don't think either of us acted very well. I didn't
+know till aftawa'ds that I was glad to have you give up, the way you did
+in Florence. I was--bewild'ed. But I ought to have known, and I want
+you to undastand everything, now. I don't ca'e for you because I used
+to when I was almost a child, and I shouldn't want you to ca'e for me
+eitha, because you did then. That's why I wish you had neva felt that
+you had always ca'ed fo' me.”
+
+“Yes,” said Gregory. He let fall his head in despair.
+
+“That is what I mean,” said Clementina. “If we ah' going to begin
+togetha, now, it's got to be as if we had neva begun before. And you
+mustn't think, or say, or look as if the'e had been anything in oua
+lives but ouaselves. Will you? Do you promise?” She stopped, and put her
+hand on his breast, and pushed against it with a nervous vehemence.
+
+“No!” he said. “I don't promise, for I couldn't keep my promise. What
+you ask is impossible. The past is part of us; it can't be ignored any
+more than it can be destroyed. If we take each other, it must be for all
+that we have been as well as all that we are. If we haven't the courage
+for that we must part.”
+
+He dropped the little one's hand which he had been holding, and moved a
+few steps aside. “Don't!” she said. “They'll think I've made you,” and
+he took the child's hand again.
+
+They had emerged from the shadow of the woods, and come in sight of her
+father's house. Claxon was standing coatless before the door in full
+enjoyment of the late afternoon air; his wife beside him, at sight of
+Gregory, quelled a natural impulse to run round the corner of the house
+from the presence of strangers.
+
+“I wonda what they'a sayin',” she fretted.
+
+“It looks some as if she was sayin' yes,” said Claxon, with an
+impersonal enjoyment of his conjecture. “I guess she saw he was bound
+not to take no for an answa.”
+
+“I don't know as I should like it very much,” his wife relucted. “Clem's
+doin' very well, as it is. She no need to marry again.”
+
+“Oh, I guess it a'n't that altogetha. He's a good man.” Claxon mused
+a moment upon the figures which had begun to advance again, with the
+little one between them, and then gave way in a burst of paternal pride,
+“And I don't know as I should blame him so very much for wantin' Clem.
+She always did want to be of moa use--But I guess she likes him too.”
+
+
+PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+    All in all to each other
+    Chained to the restless pursuit of an ideal not his own
+    Composed her features and her ideas to receive her visitor
+    Didn't reason about their beliefs, but only argued
+    Dull, cold self-absorption
+    Everything seems to go
+    Gift of waiting for things to happen
+    Going on of things had long ceased to bring pleasure
+    He a'n't a do-nothin'; he's a do-everything
+    He's so resting
+    Hopeful apathy in his face
+    I'm moa used to havin' the things brought to me
+    Inexhaustible flow of statement, conjecture and misgiving
+    It's the best that he doesn't seem prepared for
+    Kept her talking vacuities when her heart was full
+    Led a life of public seclusion
+    Life alone is credible to the young
+    Luxury of helplessness
+    Morbid egotism
+    Motives lie nearer the surface than most people commonly pretend
+    New England necessity of blaming some one
+    No object in life except to deprive it of all object
+    One time where one may choose safest what one likes best
+    Only man I ever saw who would know how to break the fall
+    Perverse reluctance to find out where they were
+    Provisional reprehension of possible shiftlessness
+    Real artistocracy is above social prejudice
+    Scant sleep of an elderly man
+    Seldom talked, but there came times when he would'nt even listen
+    Singleness of a nature that was all pose
+    Submitted, as people always do with the trials of others
+    Sunny gayety of self-forgetfulness
+    Thrown mainly upon the compassion of the chambermaids
+    Tone was a snuffle expressive of deep-seated affliction
+    Unaware that she was a selfish or foolish person
+    Under a fire of conjecture and asseveration
+    Understood when I've said something that doesn't mean anything
+    We change whether we ought, or not
+    Weak in his double letters
+    When she's really sick, she's better
+    Willing that she should do herself a wrong
+    Wishes of a mistress who did not know what she wanted
+    Women don't seem to belong very much to themselves
+    You can't go back to anything
+    You were not afraid, and you were not bold; you were just right
+    You've got a light-haired voice
+    You've got a light-haired voice
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Ragged Lady, Complete, by William Dean Howells
+
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