“What did she say?” he asked Clementina, slanting the down-pulled brim of his soft hat purblindly toward her.
She said she had not understood, and then Milray asked, “What sort of person is that Boston youth of Mrs. Milray’s? Is he a donkey or a lamb?”
Clementina said ingenuously, “Oh, she’s walking with that English gentleman now — that lo’d.”
“Ah, yes,” said Milray. “He’s not very much to look at, I hear.”
“Well, not very much,” Clementina admitted; she did not like to talk against people.
“Lords are sometimes disappointing, Clementina,” Milray said, “but then, so are other great men. I’ve seen politicians on our side who were disappointing, and there are clergymen and gamblers who don’t look it.” He laughed sadly. “That’s the way people talk who are a little disappointing themselves. I hope you don’t expect too much of yourself, Clementina?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, stiffening with a suspicion that he might be going to make fun of her.
He laughed more gayly. “Well, I mean we must hold the other fellows up to their duty, or we can’t do our own. We need their example. Charity may begin at home, but duty certainly begins abroad.” He went on, as if it were a branch of the same inquiry, “Did you ever meet my sisters? They came to the hotel in New York to see Mrs. Milray.”
“Yes, I was in the room once when they came in.”
“Did you like them?”
“Yes — I sca’cely spoke to them — I only stayed a moment.”
“Would you like to see any more of the family?”
“Why, of cou’se!” Clementina was amused at his asking, but he seemed in earnest.
“One of my sisters lives in Florence, and Mrs. Milray says you think of going there, too.”
“Mrs. Landa thought it would be a good place to spend the winter. Is it a pleasant place?”
“Oh, delightful! Do you know much about Italy?”
“Not very much, I don’t believe.”
“Well, my sister has lived a good while in Florence. I should like to give you a letter to her.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Clementina.
Milray smiled at her spare acknowledgment, but inquired gravely: “What do you expect to do in Florence?”
“Why, I presume, whateva Mrs. Landa wants to do.”
“Do you think Mrs. Lander will want to go into society?”
This question had not occurred to Clementina. “I don’t believe she will,” she said, thoughtfully.
“Shall you?”
Clementina laughed, “Why, do you think,” she ventured, “that society would want me to?”
“Yes, I think it would, if you’re as charming as you’ve tried to make me believe. Oh, I don’t mean, to your own knowledge; but some people have ways of being charming without knowing it. If Mrs. Lander isn’t going into society, and there should be a way found for you to go, don’t refuse, will you?”
“I shall wait and see if I’m asked, fust.”
“Yes, that will be best,” said Milray. “But I shall give you a letter to my sister. She and I used to be famous cronies, and we went to a great many parties together when we were young people. We thought the world was a fine thing, then. But it changes.”
He fell into a muse, and they were both sitting quite silent when Mrs. Milray came round the corner of the music room in the course of her twentieth or thirtieth compass of the deck, and introduced her lord to her husband and to Clementina. He promptly ignored Milray, and devoted himself to the girl, leaning over her with his hand against the bulkhead behind her and talking down upon her.
Lord Lioncourt must have been about thirty, but he had the heated and broken complexion of a man who has taken more than is good for him in twice that number of years. This was one of the wrongs nature had done him in apparent resentment of the social advantages he was born to, for he was rather abstemious, as Englishmen go. He looked a very shy person till he spoke, and then you found that he was not in the least shy. He looked so English that you would have expected a strong English accent of him, but his speech was more that of an American, without the nasality. This was not apparently because he had been much in America; he was returning from his first visit to the States, which had been spent chiefly in the Territories; after a brief interval of Newport he had preferred the West; he liked rather to hunt than to be hunted, though even in the West his main business had been to kill time, which he found more plentiful there than other game. The natives, everywhere, were much the same thing to him; if he distinguished it was in favor of those who did not suppose themselves cultivated. If again he had a choice it was for the females; they seemed to him more amusing than the males, who struck him as having an exaggerated reputation for humor. He did not care much for Clementina’s past, as he knew it from Mrs. Milray, and if it did not touch his fancy, it certainly did not offend his taste. A real artistocracy is above social prejudice, when it will; he had known some of his order choose the mothers of their heirs from the music halls, and when it came to a question of distinctions among Americans, he could not feel them. They might be richer or poorer; but they could not be more patrician or more plebeian.
The passengers, he told Clementina, were getting up, at this point of the ship’s run, an entertainment for the benefit of the seaman’s hospital in Liverpool, that well-known convention of ocean-travel, which is sure at some time or other, to enlist all the talent on board every English steamer in some sort of public appeal. He was not very clear how he came to be on the committee for drumming up talent for the occasion; his distinction seemed to have been conferred by a popular vote in the smoking room, as nearly as he could make out; but here he was, and he was counting upon Miss Claxon to help him out. He said Mrs. Milray had told him about that charming affair they had got up in the mountains, and he was sure they could have something of the kind again. “Perhaps not a coaching party; that mightn’t be so easy to manage at sea. But isn’t there something else — some tableaux or something? If we couldn’t have the months of the year we might have the points of the compass, and you could take your choice.”
He tried to get something out of the notion, but nothing came of it that Mrs. Milray thought possible. She said, across her husband, on whose further side she had sunk into a chair, that they must have something very informal; everybody must do what they could, separately. “I know you can do anything you like, Clementina. Can’t you play something, or sing?” At Clementina’s look of utter denial, she added, desperately, “Or dance something?” A light came into the girl’s face at which she caught. “I know you can dance something! Why, of course! Now, what is it?”
Clementina smiled at her vehemence. “Why, it’s nothing. And I don’t know whether I should like to.”
“Oh, yes,” urged Lord Lioncourt. “Such a good cause, you know.”
“What is it?” Mrs. Milray insisted. “Is it something you could do alone?”
“It’s just a dance that I learned at Woodlake. The teacha said that all the young ladies we’e leaning it. It’s a skut-dance—”
“The very thing!” Mrs. Milray shouted. “It’ll be the hit of the evening.”
“But I’ve never done it before any one,” Clementina faltered.
“They’ll all be doing their turns,” the Englishman said. “Speaking, and singing, and playing.”
Clementina felt herself giving way, and she pleaded in final reluctance, “But I haven’t got a pleated skut in my steama trunk.”
“No matter! We can manage that.” Mrs. Milray jumped to her feet and took Lord Lioncourt’s arm. “Now we must go and drum up somebody else.” He did not seem eager to go, but he started. “Then that’s all settled,” she shouted over her shoulder to Clementina.
“No, no, Mrs. Milray!” Clementina called after her. “The ship tilts so—”
“Nonsense! It’s the smoothest run she ever made in December. And I’ll engage to have the sea as steady as a rock for you. Remember,
now, you’ve promised.”
Mrs. Milray whirled her Englishman away, and left Clementina sitting beside her husband.
“Did you want to dance for them, Clementina?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, with the vague smile of one to whom a pleasant hope has occurred.
“I thought perhaps you were letting Mrs. Milray bully you into it. She’s a frightful tyrant.”
“Oh, I guess I should like to do it, if you think it would be — nice.”
“I dare say it will be the nicest thing at their ridiculous show.” Milray laughed as if her willingness to do the dance had defeated a sentimental sympathy in him.
“I don’t believe it will be that,” said Clementina, beaming joyously. “But I guess I shall try it, if I can find the right kind of a dress.”
“Is a pleated skirt absolutely necessary,” asked Milray, gravely.
“I don’t see how I could get on without it,” said Clementina.
She was so serious still when she went down to her state-room that Mrs. Lander was distracted from her potential ailments to ask: “What is it, Clementina?”
“Oh, nothing. Mrs. Milray has got me to say that I would do something at a concert they ah’ going to have on the ship.” She explained, “It’s that skut dance I learnt at Woodlake of Miss Wilson.”
“Well, I guess if you’re worryin’ about that you needn’t to.”
“Oh, I’m not worrying about the dance. I was just thinking what I should wear. If I could only get at the trunks!”
“It won’t make any matte what you wear,” said Mrs. Lander. “It’ll be the greatest thing; and if ‘t wa’n’t for this sea-sickness that I have to keep fightin’ off he’a, night and day, I should come up and see you myself. You ah’ just lovely in that dance, Clementina.”
“Do you think so, Mrs. Landa?” asked the girl, gratefully. “Well, Mr. Milray didn’t seem to think that I need to have a pleated skut. Any rate, I’m going to look over my things, and see if I can’t make something else do.”
XVII.
The entertainment was to be the second night after that, and Mrs. Milray at first took the whole affair into her own hands. She was willing to let the others consult with her, but she made all the decisions, and she became so prepotent that she drove Lord Lioncourt to rebellion in the case of some theatrical people whom he wanted in the programme. He wished her to let them feel that they were favoring rather than favored, and she insisted that it should be quite the other way. She professed a scruple against having theatrical people in the programme at all, which she might not have felt if her own past had been different, and she spoke with an abhorrence of the stage which he could by no means tolerate in the case. She submitted with dignity when she could not help it. Perhaps she submitted with too much dignity. Her concession verged upon hauteur; and in her arrogant meekness she went back to another of her young men, whom she began to post again as the companion of her promenades.
He had rather an anxious air in the enjoyment of the honor, but the Englishman seemed unconscious of its loss, or else he chose to ignore it. He frankly gave his leisure to Clementina, and she thought he was very pleasant. There was something different in his way from that of any of the other men she had met; something very natural and simple, a way of being easy in what he was, and not caring whether he was like others or not; he was not ashamed of being ignorant of anything he did not know, and she was able to instruct him on some points. He took her quite seriously when she told him about Middlemount, and how her family came to settle there, and then how she came to be going to Europe with Mrs. Lander. He said Mrs. Milray had spoken about it; but he had not understood quite how it was before; and he hoped Mrs. Lander was coming to the entertainment.
He did not seem aware that Mrs. Milray was leaving the affair more and more to him. He went forward with it and was as amiable with her as she would allow. He was so amiable with everybody that he reconciled many true Americans to his leadership, who felt that as nearly all the passengers were Americans, the chief patron of the entertainment ought to have been some distinguished American. The want of an American who was very distinguished did something to pacify them; but the behavior of an English lord who put on no airs was the main agency. When the night came they filled the large music room of the ‘Asia Minor’, and stood about in front of the sofas and chairs so many deep that it was hard to see or hear through them.
They each paid a shilling admittance; they were prepared to give munificently besides when the hat came round; and after the first burst of blundering from Lord Lioncourt, they led the magnanimous applause. He said he never minded making a bad speech in a good cause, and he made as bad a one as very well could be. He closed it by telling Mark Twain’s whistling story so that those who knew it by heart missed the point; but that might have been because he hurried it, to get himself out of the way of the others following. When he had done, one of the most ardent of the Americans proposed three cheers for him.
The actress whom he had secured in spite of Mrs. Milray appeared in woman’s dress contrary to her inveterate professional habit, and followed him with great acceptance in her favorite variety-stage song; and then her husband gave imitations of Sir Henry Irving, and of Miss Maggie Kline in “T’row him down, McCloskey,” with a cockney accent. A frightened little girl, whose mother had volunteered her talent, gasped a ballad to her mother’s accompaniment, and two young girls played a duet on the mandolin and guitar. A gentleman of cosmopolitan military tradition, who sold the pools in the smoking-room, and was the friend of all the men present, and the acquaintance of several, gave selections of his autobiography prefatory to bellowing in a deep bass voice, “They’re hanging Danny Deaver,” and then a lady interpolated herself into the programme with a kindness which Lord Lioncourt acknowledged, in saying “The more the merrier,” and sang Bonnie Dundee, thumping the piano out of all proportion to her size and apparent strength.
Some advances which Clementina had made for Mrs. Milray’s help about the dress she should wear in her dance met with bewildering indifference, and she had fallen back upon her own devices. She did not think of taking back her promise, and she had come to look forward to her part with a happiness which the good weather and the even sway of the ship encouraged. But her pulses fluttered, as she glided into the music room, and sank into a chair next Mrs. Milray. She had on an accordion skirt which she had been able to get out of her trunk in the hold, and she felt that the glance of Mrs. Milray did not refuse it approval.
“That will do nicely, Clementina,” she said. She added, in careless acknowledgement of her own failure to direct her choice, “I see you didn’t need my help after all,” and the thorny point which Clementina felt in her praise was rankling, when Lord Lioncourt began to introduce her.
He made rather a mess of it, but as soon as he came to an end of his well-meant blunders, she stood up and began her poses and paces. It was all very innocent, with something courageous as well as appealing. She had a kind of tender dignity in her dance, and the delicate beauty of her face translated itself into the grace of her movements. It was not impersonal; there was her own quality of sylvan, of elegant in it; but it was unconscious, and so far it was typical, it was classic; Mrs. Milray’s Bostonian achieved a snub from her by saying it was like a Botticelli; and in fact it was merely the skirt-dance which society had borrowed from the stage at that period, leaving behind the footlights its more acrobatic phases, but keeping its pretty turns and bows and bends. Clementina did it not only with tender dignity, but when she was fairly launched in it, with a passion to which her sense of Mrs. Milray’s strange unkindness lent defiance. The dance was still so new a thing then, that it had a surprise to which the girl’s gentleness lent a curious charm, and it had some adventitious fascinations from the necessity she was in of weaving it in and out among the stationary armchairs and sofas which still further cramped the narrow space where she gave it. Her own delight in it shone from her smiling face, which was appealingly ha
ppy. Just before it should have ended, one of those wandering waves that roam the smoothest sea struck the ship, and Clementina caught herself skilfully from falling, and reeled to her seat, while the room rang with the applause and sympathetic laughter for the mischance she had baffled. There was a storm of encores, but Clementina called out, “The ship tilts so!” and her naivete won her another burst of favor, which was at its height when Lord Lioncourt had an inspiration.
He jumped up and said, “Miss Claxon is going to oblige us with a little bit of dramatics, now, and I’m sure you’ll all enjoy that quite as much as her beautiful dancing. She’s going to take the principal part in the laughable after-piece of Passing round the Hat, and I hope the audience will — a — a — a — do the rest. She’s consented on this occasion to use a hat — or cap, rather — of her own, the charming Tam O’Shanter in which we’ve all seen her, and — a — admired her about the ship for the week past.”
He caught up the flat woolen steamer-cap which Clementina had left in her seat beside Mrs. Milray when she rose to dance, and held it aloft. Some one called out, “Chorus! For he’s a jolly good fellow,” and led off in his praise. Lord Lioncourt shouted through the uproar the announcement that while Miss Claxon was taking up the collection, Mr. Ewins, of Boston, would sing one of the student songs of Cambridge — no! Harvard — University; the music being his own.
Everyone wanted to make some joke or some compliment to Clementina about the cap which grew momently heavier under the sovereigns and half sovereigns, half crowns and half dollars, shillings, quarters, greenbacks and every fraction of English and American silver; and the actor who had given the imitations, made bold, as he said, to ask his lordship if the audience might not hope, before they dispersed, for something more from Miss Claxon. He was sure she could do something more; he for one would be glad of anything; and Clementina turned from putting her cap into Mrs. Milray’s lap, to find Lord Lioncourt bowing at her elbow, and offering her his arm to lead her to the spot where she had stood in dancing.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 648
