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Georg Ebers - "The Sisters, v3"

Gilbert Parker - "The Lane That Had No Turning, Volume 2."

Georg Ebers - "The Story of My Life, Volume 6."

Georg Ebers - "The Story of My Life, Volume 2."

Ragged Lady, Complete

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




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.

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