Ragged Lady, Complete

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"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 Florid?"

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.

RAGGED LADY

By William Dean Howells

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."

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