Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Clementina sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s so resting.”

  “Then that settles it. From first to last, what we poor women want is rest. It would be a wicked thing for you to throw your life away on some one who would worry you out of it. I don’t wish to say any thing against Mr. Gregory. I dare say he is good — and conscientious; but life is a struggle, at the best, and it’s your duty to take the best chance for resting.”

  Clementina did not look altogether convinced, whether it was Miss Milray’s logic or her morality that failed to convince her. She said, after a moment, “I should like to see Mr. Gregory again.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “Why, then I should know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Whether I didn’t really ca’e for him any more — or so much.”

  “Clementina,” said Miss Milray, “you mustn’t make me lose patience with you—”

  “No. But I thought you said that it was my duty to do what I wished.”

  “Well, yes. That is what I said,” Miss Milray consented. “But I supposed that you knew already.”

  “No,” said Clementina, candidly, “I don’t believe I do.”

  “And what if you don’t see him?”

  “I guess I shall have to wait till I do. The’e will be time enough.”

  Miss Milray sighed, and then she laughed. “You ARE young!”

  XXXII.

  Miss Milray went from Clementina to call upon her sister-in-law, and found her brother, which was perhaps what she hoped might happen.

  “Do you know,” she said, “that that old wretch is going to defraud that poor thing, after all, and leave her money to her husband’s half-sister’s children?”

  “You wish me to infer the Mrs. Lander — Clementina situation?” Milray returned.

  “Yes!”

  “I’m glad you put it in terms that are not actionable, then; for your words are decidedly libellous.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve just been writing Mrs. Lander’s will for her, and she’s left all her property to Clementina, except five thousand apiece to the half-sister’s three children.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Well,” said Milray, with his gentle smile, “I think that’s safe ground for you. Mrs. Lander will probably have time enough to change her will as well as her mind several times yet before she dies. The half-sister’s children may get their rights yet.”

  “I wish they might!” said Miss Milray, with an impassioned sigh. “Then perhaps I should get Clementina — for a while.”

  Her brother laughed. “Isn’t there somebody else wants Clementina?

  “Oh, plenty. But she’s not sure she wants anybody else.”

  “Does she want you?”

  “No, I can’t say she does. She wants to go home.”

  “That’s not a bad scheme. I should like to go home myself if I had one. What would you have done with Clementina if you had got her, Jenny?”

  “What would any one have done with her? Married her brilliantly, of course.”

  “But you say she isn’t sure she wishes to be married at all?”

  Miss Milray stated the case of Clementina’s divided mind, and her belief that she would take Hinkle in the end, together with the fear that she might take Gregory. “She’s very odd,” Miss Milray concluded. “She puzzles me. Why did you ever send her to me?”

  Milray laughed. “I don’t know. I thought she would amuse you, and I thought it would be a pleasure to her.”

  They began to talk of some affairs of their own, from which Miss Milray returned to Clementina with the ache of an imperfectly satisfied intention. If she had meant to urge her brother to seek justice for the girl from Mrs. Lander, she was not so well pleased to have found justice done already. But the will had been duly signed and witnessed before the American vice-consul, and she must get what good she could out of an accomplished fact. It was at least a consolation to know that it put an end to her sister-in-law’s patronage of the girl, and it would be interesting to see Mrs. Milray adapt her behavior to Clementina’s fortunes. She did not really dislike her sister-in-law enough to do her a wrong; she was only willing that she should do herself a wrong. But one of the most disappointing things in all hostile operations is that you never can know what the enemy would be at; and Mrs. Milray’s manoeuvres were sometimes dictated by such impulses that her strategy was peculiarly baffling. The thought of her past unkindness to Clementina may still have rankled in her, or she may simply have felt the need of outdoing Miss Milray by an unapproachable benefaction. It is certain that when Baron Belsky came to Venice a few weeks after her own arrival, they began to pose at each other with reference to Clementina; she with a measure of consciousness, he with the singleness of a nature that was all pose. In his forbearance to win Clementina from Gregory he had enjoyed the distinction of an unique suffering; and in allowing the fact to impart itself to Mrs. Milray, he bathed in the warmth of her flattering sympathy. Before she withdrew this, as she must when she got tired of him, she learned from him where Gregory was; for it seemed that Gregory had so far forgiven the past that they had again written to each other.

  During the fortnight of Belsky’s stay in Venice Mrs. Lander was much worse, and Clementina met him only once, very briefly — She felt that he had behaved like a very silly person, but that was all over now, and she had no wish to punish him for it. At the end of his fortnight he went northward into the Austrian Tyrol, and a few days later Gregory came down from the Dolomites to Venice.

  It was in his favor with Clementina that he yielded to the impulse he had to come directly to her; and that he let her know with the first words that he had acted upon hopes given him through Belsky from Mrs. Milray. He owned that he doubted the authority of either to give him these hopes, but he said he could not abandon them without a last effort to see her, and learn from her whether they were true or false.

  If she recognized the design of a magnificent reparation in what Mrs. Milray had done, she did not give it much thought. Her mind was upon distant things as she followed Gregory’s explanation of his presence, and in the muse in which she listened she seemed hardly to know when he ceased speaking.

  “I know it must seem to take something for granted which I’ve no right to take for granted. I don’t believe you could think that I cared for anything but you, or at all for what Mrs. Lander has done for you.”

  “Do you mean her leaving me her money?” asked Clementina, with that boldness her sex enjoys concerning matters of finance and affection.

  “Yes,” said Gregory, blushing for her. “As far as I should ever have a right to care, I could wish there were no money. It could bring no blessing to our life. We could do no good with it; nothing but the sacrifice of ourselves in poverty could be blessed to us.”

  “That is what I thought, too,” Clementina replied.

  “Oh, then you did think—”

  “But afterwards, I changed my Mind. If she wants to give me her money I shall take it.”

  Gregory was blankly silent again.

  “I shouldn’t know how to refuse, and I don’t know as I should have any right to.” Gregory shrank a little from her reyankeefied English, as well as from the apparent cynicism of her speech; but he shrank in silence still. She startled him by asking with a kindness that was almost tenderness, “Mr. Gregory, how do you think anything has changed?”

  “Changed?”

  “You know how it was when you went away from Florence. Do you think differently now? I don’t. I don’t think I ought to do something for you, and pretend that I was doing it for religion. I don’t believe the way you do; and I know I neva shall. Do you want me in spite of my saying that I can neva help you in your work because I believe in it?”

  “But if you believe in me—”

  She shook her head compassionately. “You know we ahgued that out before. We are just whe’e we were. I am sorry. Nobody had any right to tell you to come he
’e. But I am glad you came—” She saw the hope that lighted up his face, but she went on unrelentingly— “I think we had betta be free.”

  “Free?”

  “Yes, from each other. I don’t know how you have felt, but I have not felt free. It has seemed to me that I promised you something. If I did, I want to take my promise back and be free.”

  Her frankness appealed to his own. “You are free. I never held you bound to me in my fondest hopes. You have always done right.”

  “I have tried to. And I am not going to let you go away thinking that the reason I said is the only reason. It isn’t. I wish to be free because — there is some one else, now.” It was hard to tell him this, but she knew that she must not do less; and the train that carried him from Venice that night bore a letter from her to Hinkle.

  XXXIII.

  Clementina told Miss Milray what had happened, but with Mrs. Milray the girl left the sudden departure of Gregory to account for itself.

  They all went a week later, and Mrs. Milray having now done her whole duty to Clementina had the easiest mind concerning her. Miss Milray felt that she was leaving her to greater trials than ever with Mrs. Lander; but since there was nothing else, she submitted, as people always do with the trials of others, and when she was once away she began to forget her.

  By this time, however, it was really better for her. With no one to suspect of tampering with her allegiance, Mrs. Lander returned to her former fondness for the girl, and they were more peaceful if not happier together again. They had long talks, such as they used to have, and in the first of these Clementina told her how and why she had written to Mr. Hinkle. Mrs. Lander said that it suited her exactly.

  “There ha’n’t but just two men in Europe behaved like gentlemen to me, and one is Mr. Hinkle, and the other is that lo’d; and between the two I ratha you’d have Mr. Hinkle; I don’t know as I believe much in American guls marryin’ lo’ds, the best of ‘em.”

  Clementina laughed. “Why, Mrs. Landa, Lo’d Lioncou’t never thought of me in the wo’ld!”

  “You can’t eva know. Mrs. Milray was tellin’ that he’s what they call a pooa lo’d, and that he was carryin’ on with the American girls like everything down there in Egypt last winta. I guess if it comes to money you’d have enough to buy him and sell him again.”

  The mention of money cast a chill upon their talk; and Mrs. Lander said gloomily, “I don’t know as I ca’e so much for that will Mr. Milray made for me, after all. I did want to say ten thousand apiece for Mr. Landa’s relations; but I hated to befo’e him; I’d told the whole kit of ’em so much about you, and I knew what they would think.”

  She looked at Clementina with recurring grudge, and the girl could not bear it.

  “Then why don’t you tear it up, and make another? I don’t want anything, unless you want me to have it; and I’d ratha not have anything.”

  “Yes, and what would folks say, afta youa taken’ care of me?”

  “Do you think I do it fo’ that?”

  “What do you do it fo’?”

  “What did you want me to come with you fo’?”

  “That’s true.” Mrs. Lander brightened and warmed again. “I guess it’s all right. I guess I done right, and I got to be satisfied. I presume I could get the consul to make me a will any time.”

  Clementina did not relent so easily. “Mrs. Landa, whateva you do I don’t ca’e to know it; and if you talk to me again about this I shall go home. I would stay with you as long as you needed me, but I can’t if you keep bringing this up.”

  “I suppose you think you don’t need me any moa! Betta not be too su’a.”

  The girl jumped to her feet, and Mrs. Lander interposed. “Well, the’a! I didn’t mean anything, and I won’t pesta you about it any moa. But I think it’s pretty ha’d. Who am I going to talk it ova with, then?”

  “You can talk it ova with the vice-consul,” paid Clementina, at random.

  “Well, that’s so.” Mrs. Lander let Clementina get her ready for the night, in sign of returning amity; when she was angry with her she always refused her help, and made her send Maddalena.

  The summer heat increased, and the sick woman suffered from it, but she could not be persuaded that she had strength to get away, though the vice-consul, whom she advised with, used all his logic with her. He was a gaunt and weary widower, who described himself as being officially between hay and grass; the consul who appointed him had resigned after going home, and a new consul had not yet been sent out to remove him. On what she called her well days Mrs. Lander went to visit him, and she did not mind his being in his shirt-sleeves, in the bit of garden where she commonly found him, with his collar and cravat off, and clouded in his own smoke; when she was sick she sent for him, to visit her. He made excuses as often as hhe could, and if he saw Mrs. Lander’s gondola coming down the Grand Canal to his house he hurried on his cast clothing, and escaped to the Piazza, at whatever discomfort and risk from the heat.

  “I don’t know how you stand it, Miss Claxon,” he complained to Clementina, as soon as he learned that she was not a blood relation of Mrs. Lander’s, and divined that she had her own reservations concerning her. “But that woman will be the death of me if she keeps this up. What does she think I’m here for? If this goes on much longer I’ll resign. The salary won’t begin to pay for it. What am I going to do? I don’t want to hurt her feelings, or not to help her; but I know ten times as much about Mrs. Lander’s liver as I do about my own, now.”

  He treated Clementina as a person of mature judgment and a sage discretion, and he accepted what comfort she could offer him when she explained that it was everything for Mrs. Lander to have him to talk with. “She gets tied of talking to me,” she urged, “and there’s nobody else, now.”

  “Why don’t she hire a valet de place, and talk to him? I’d hire one myself for her. It would be a good deal cheaper for me. It’s as much as I can do to stand this weather as it is.”

  The vice-consul laughed forlornly in his exasperation, but he agreed with Clementina when she said, in further excuse, that Mrs. Lander was really very sick. He pushed back his hat, and scratched his head with a grimace.

  “Of course, we’ve got to remember she’s sick, and I shall need a little sympathy myself if she keeps on at me this way. I believe I’ll tell her about my liver next time, and see how she likes it. Look here, Miss Claxon! Couldn’t we get her off to some of those German watering places that are good for her complaints? I believe it would be the best thing for her — not to mention me.”

  Mrs. Lander was moved by the suggestion which he made in person afterwards; it appealed to her old nomadic instinct; but when the consul was gone she gave it up. “We couldn’t git the’e, Clementina. I got to stay he’e till I git up my stren’th. I suppose you’d be glad enough to have me sta’t, now the’e’s nobody he’e but me,” she added, suspiciously. “You git this scheme up, or him?”

  Clementina did not defend herself, and Mrs. Lander presently came to her defence. “I don’t believe but what he meant it fo’ the best — or you, whichever it was, and I appreciate it; but all is I couldn’t git off. I guess this aia will do me as much good as anything, come to have it a little coola.”

  They went every afternoon to the Lido, where a wheeled chair met them, and Mrs. Lander was trundled across the narrow island to the beach. In the evenings they went to the Piazza, where their faces and figures had become known, and the Venetians gossipped them down to the last fact of their relation with an accuracy creditable to their ingenuity in the affairs of others. To them Mrs. Lander was the sick American, very rich, and Clementina was her adoptive daughter, who would have her millions after her. Neither knew the character they bore to the amiable and inquisitive public of the Piazza, or cared for the fine eyes that aimed their steadfast gaze at them along the tubes of straw-barreled Virginia cigars, or across little cups of coffee. Mrs. Lander merely remarked that the Venetians seemed great for gaping, and Clementina was for the most p
art innocent of their stare.

  She rested in the choice she had made in a content which was qualified by no misgiving. She was sorry for Gregory, when she remembered him; but her thought was filled with some one else, and she waited in faith and patience for the answer which should come to the letter she had written. She did not know where her letter would find him, or when she should hear from him; she believed that she should hear, and that was enough. She said to herself that she would not lose hope if no answer came for months; but in her heart she fixed a date for the answer by letter, and an earlier date for some word by cable; but she feigned that she did not depend upon this; and when no word came she convinced herself that she had not expected any.

  It was nearing the end of the term which she had tacitly given her lover to make the first sign by letter, when one morning Mrs. Lander woke her. She wished to say that she had got the strength to leave Venice at last, and she was going as soon as their trunks could be packed. She had dressed herself, and she moved about restless and excited. Clementina tried to reason her out of her haste; but she irritated her, and fixed her in her determination. “I want to get away, I tell you; I want to get away,” she answered all persuasion, and there seemed something in her like the wish to escape from more than the oppressive environment, though she spoke of nothing but the heat and the smell of the canal. “I believe it’s that, moa than any one thing, that’s kept me sick he’e,” she said. “I tell you it’s the malariar, and you’ll be down, too, if you stay.”

  She made Clementina go to the banker’s, and get money to pay their landlord’s bill, and she gave him notice that they were going that afternoon. Clementina wished to delay till they had seen the vice-consul and the doctor; but Mrs. Lander broke out, “I don’t want to see ‘em, either of ‘em. The docta wants to keep me he’e and make money out of me; I undastand him; and I don’t believe that consul’s a bit too good to take a pussentage. Now, don’t you say a wo’d to either of ‘em. If you don’t do exactly what I tell you I’ll go away and leave you he’e. Now, will you?”