Ragged Lady, Complete

W >> William Dean Howells >> Ragged Lady, Complete

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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.

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