Ragged Lady, Complete

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

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"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 fob, 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.

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