Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  XXXIX.

  Six years after Miss Milray parted with Clementina in Venice she found herself, towards the close of the summer, at Middlemount. She had definitely ceased to live in Florence, where she had meant to die, and had come home to close her eyes. She was in no haste to do this, and in the meantime she was now at Middlemount with her brother, who had expressed a wish to revisit the place in memory of Mrs. Milray. It was the second anniversary of her divorce, which had remained, after a married life of many vicissitudes, almost the only experience untried in that relation, and which had been happily accomplished in the courts of Dacotah, upon grounds that satisfied the facile justice of that State. Milray had dealt handsomely with his widow, as he unresentfully called her, and the money he assigned her was of a destiny perhaps as honored as its origin. She employed it in the negotiation of a second marriage, in which she redressed the balance of her first by taking a husband somewhat younger than herself.

  Both Milray and his sister had a wish which was much more than a curiosity to know what had become of Clementina; they had heard that her husband was dead, and that she had come back to Middlemount; and Miss Milray was going to the office, the afternoon following their arrival, to ask the landlord about her, when she was arrested at the door of the ball-room by a sight that she thought very pretty. At the bottom of the room, clearly defined against the long windows behind her, stood the figure of a lady in the middle of the floor. In rows on either side sat little girls and little boys who left their places one after another, and turned at the door to make their manners to her. In response to each obeisance the lady dropped a curtsey, now to this side, now to that, taking her skirt between her finger tips on either hand and spreading it delicately, with a certain elegance of movement, and a grace that was full of poetry, and to Miss Milray, somehow, full of pathos. There remained to the end a small mite of a girl, who was the last to leave her place and bow to the lady. She did not quit the room then, like the others, but advanced toward the lady who came to meet her, and lifted her and clasped her to her breast with a kind of passion. She walked down toward the door where Miss Milray stood, gently drifting over the polished floor, as if still moved by the music that had ceased, and as she drew near, Miss Milray gave a cry of joy, and ran upon her. “Why, Clementina!” she screamed, and caught her and the child both in her arms.

  She began to weep, but Clementina smiled instead of weeping, as she always used to do. She returned Miss Milray’s affectionate greeting with a tenderness as great as her own, but with a sort of authority, such as sometimes comes to those who have suffered. She quieted the older woman with her own serenity, and met the torrent of her questions with as many answers as their rush permitted, when they were both presently in Miss Milray’s room talking in their old way. From time to time Miss Milray broke from the talk to kiss the little girl, whom she declared to be Clementina all over again, and then returned to her better behavior with an effect of shame for her want of self-control, as if Clementina’s mood had abashed her. Sometimes this was almost severe in its quiet; that was her mother coming to her share in her; but again she was like her father, full of the sunny gayety of self-forgetfulness, and then Miss Milray said, “Now you are the old Clementina!”

  Upon the whole she listened with few interruptions to the story which she exacted. It was mainly what we know. After her husband’s death Clementina had gone back to his family for a time, and each year since she had spent part of the winter with them; but it was very lonesome for her, and she began to be home-sick for Middlemount. They saw it and considered it. “They ah’ the best people, Miss Milray!” she said, and her voice, which was firm when she spoke of her husband, broke in the words of minor feeling. Besides being a little homesick, she ended, she was not willing to live on there, doing nothing for herself, and so she had come back.

  “And you are here, doing just what you planned when you talked your life over with me in Venice!”

  “Yes, but life isn’t eva just what we plan it to be, Miss Milray.”

  “Ah, don’t I know it!”

  Clementina surprised Miss Milray by adding, “In a great many things — I don’t know but in most — it’s better. I don’t complain of mine—”

  “You poor child! You never complained of anything — not even of Mrs. Lander!”

  “But it’s different from what I expected; and it’s — strange.”

  “Yes; life is very strange.”

  “I don’t mean — losing him. That had to be. I can see, now, that it had to be almost from the beginning. It seems to me that I knew it had to be from the fust minute I saw him in New Yo’k; but he didn’t, and I am glad of that. Except when he was getting wohse, he always believed he should get well; and he was getting well, when he—”

  Miss Milray did not violate the pause she made with any question, though it was apparent that Clementina had something on her mind that she wished to say, and could hardly say of herself.

  She began again, “I was glad through everything that I could live with him so long. If there is nothing moa, here or anywhe’a, that was something. But it is strange. Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if it had happened.”

  “I think I can understand, Clementina.”

  “I feel sometimes as if I hadn’t happened myself.” She stopped, with a patient little sigh, and passed her hand across the child’s forehead, in a mother’s fashion, and smoothed her hair from it, bending over to look down into her face. “We think she has her fatha’s eyes,” she said.

  “Yes, she has,” Miss Milray assented, noting the upward slant of the child’s eyes, which gave his quaintness to her beauty. “He had fascinating eyes.”

  After a moment Clementina asked, “Do you believe that the looks are all that ah’ left?”

  Miss Milray reflected. “I know what you mean. I should say character was left, and personality — somewhere.”

  “I used to feel as if it we’e left here, at fust — as if he must come back. But that had to go.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything seems to go. After a while even the loss of him seemed to go.”

  “Yes, losses go with the rest.”

  “That’s what I mean by its seeming as if it never any of it happened. Some things before it are a great deal more real.”

  “Little things?”

  “Not exactly. But things when I was very young.” Miss Milray did not know quite what she intended, but she knew that Clementina was feeling her way to something she wanted to say, and she let her alone. “When it was all over, and I knew that as long as I lived he would be somewhere else, I tried to be paht of the wo’ld I was left in. Do you think that was right?”

  “It was wise; and, yes, it was best,” said Miss Milray, and for relief from the tension which was beginning to tell upon her own nerves, she asked, “I suppose you know about my poor brother? I’d better tell you to keep you from asking for Mrs. Milray, though I don’t know that it’s so very painful with him. There isn’t any Mrs. Milray now,” she added, and she explained why.

  Neither of them cared for Mrs. Milray, and they did not pretend to be concerned about her, but Clementina said, vaguely, as if in recognition of Mrs. Milray’s latest experiment, “Do you believe in second marriages?”

  Miss Milray laughed, “Well, not that kind exactly.”

  “No,” Clementina assented, and she colored a little.

  Miss Milray was moved to add, “But if you mean another kind, I don’t see why not. My own mother was married twice.”

  “Was she?” Clementina looked relieved and encouraged, but she did not say any more at once. Then she asked, “Do you know what ever became of Mr. Belsky?”

  “Yes. He’s taken his title again, and gone back to live in Russia; he’s made peace with the Czar; I believe.”

  “That’s nice,” said Clementina; and Miss Milray made bold to ask:

  “And what has become of Mr. Gregory?”

  Clementina answered, as Miss Milray thought, tentatively and obl
iquely: “You know his wife died.”

  “No, I never knew that she lived.”

  “Yes. They went out to China, and she died the’a.”

  “And is he there yet? But of course! He could never have given up being a missionary.”

  “Well,” said Clementina, “he isn’t in China. His health gave out, and he had to come home. He’s in Middlemount Centa.”

  Miss Milray suppressed the “Oh!” that all but broke from her lips. “Preaching to the heathen, there?” she temporized.

  “To the summa folks,” Clementina explained, innocent of satire. “They have got a Union Chapel the’a, now, and Mr. Gregory has been preaching all summa.” There seemed nothing more that Miss Milray could prompt her to say, but it was not quite with surprise that she heard Clementina continue, as if it were part of the explanation, and followed from the fact she had stated, “He wants me to marry him.”

  Miss Milray tried to emulate her calm in asking, “And shall you?”

  “I don’t know. I told him I would see; he only asked me last night. It would be kind of natural. He was the fust. You may think it is strange—”

  Miss Milray, in the superstition of her old-maidenhood concerning love, really thought it cold-blooded and shocking; but she said, “Oh, no.”

  Clementina resumed: “And he says that if it was right for me to stop caring for him when I did, it is right now for me to ca’e for him again, where the’e’s no one to be hu’t by it. Do you think it is?”

  “Yes; why not?” Miss Milray was forced to the admission against what she believed the finer feelings of her nature.

  Clementina sighed, “I suppose he’s right. I always thought he was good. Women don’t seem to belong very much to themselves in this wo’ld, do they?”

  “No, they seem to belong to the men, either because they want the men, or the men want them; it comes to the same thing. I suppose you don’t wish me to advise you, my dear?”

  “No. I presume it’s something I’ve got to think out for myself.”

  “But I think he’s good, too. I ought to say that much, for I didn’t always stand his friend with you. If Mr. Gregory has any fault it’s being too scrupulous.”

  “You mean, about that old trouble — our not believing just the same?” Miss Milray meant something much more temperamental than that, but she allowed Clementina to limit her meaning, and Clementina went on. “He’s changed all round now. He thinks it’s all in the life. He says that in China they couldn’t understand what he believed, but they could what he lived. And he knows I neva could be very religious.”

  It was in Miss Milray’s heart to protest, “Clementina, I think you are one of the most religious persons I ever knew,” but she forebore, because the praise seemed to her an invasion of Clementina’s dignity. She merely said, “Well, I am glad he is one of those who grow more liberal as they grow older. That is a good sign for your happiness. But I dare say it’s more of his happiness you think.”

  “Oh, I should like to be happy, too. There would be no sense in it if I wasn’t.”

  “No, certainly not.”

  “Miss Milray,” said Clementina, with a kind of abruptness, “do you eva hear anything from Dr. Welwright?”

  “No! Why?” Miss Milray fastened her gaze vividly upon her.

  “Oh, nothing. He wanted me to promise him, there in Venice, too.”

  “I didn’t know it.”

  “Yes. But — I couldn’t, then. And now — he’s written to me. He wants me to let him come ova, and see me.”

  “And — and will you?” asked Miss Milray, rather breathlessly.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know as I’d ought. I should like to see him, so as to be puffectly su’a. But if I let him come, and then didn’t — It wouldn’t be right! I always felt as if I’d ought to have seen then that he ca’ed for me, and stopped him; but I didn’t. No, I didn’t,” she repeated, nervously. “I respected him, and I liked him; but I neva” — She stopped, and then she asked, “What do you think I’d ought to do, Miss Milray?”

  Miss Milray hesitated. She was thinking superficially that she had never heard Clementina say had ought, so much, if ever before. Interiorly she was recurring to a sense of something like all this before, and to the feeling which she had then that Clementina was really cold-blooded and self-seeking. But she remembered that in her former decision, Clementina had finally acted from her heart and her conscience, and she rose from her suspicion with a rebound. She dismissed as unworthy of Clementina any theory which did not account for an ideal of scrupulous and unselfish justice in her.

  “That is something that nobody can say but yourself, Clementina,” she answered, gravely.

  “Yes,” sighed Clementina, “I presume that is so.”

  She rose, and took her little girl from Miss Milray’s knee. “Say good-bye,” she bade, looking tenderly down at her.

  Miss Milray expected the child to put up her lips to be kissed. But she let go her mother’s hand, took her tiny skirts between her finger-tips, and dropped a curtsey.

  “You little witch!” cried Miss Milray. “I want a hug,” and she crushed her to her breast, while the child twisted her face round and anxiously questioned her mother’s for her approval. “Tell her it’s all right, Clementina!” cried Miss Milray. “When she’s as old as you were in Florence, I’m going to make you give her to me.”

  “Ah’ you going back to Florence?” asked Clementina, provisionally.

  “Oh, no! You can’t go back to anything. That’s what makes New York so impossible. I think we shall go to Los Angeles.”

  XL.

  On her way home Clementina met a man walking swiftly forward. A sort of impassioned abstraction expressed itself in his gait and bearing. They had both entered the shadow of the deep pine woods that flanked the way on either side, and the fallen needles helped with the velvety summer dust of the roadway to hush their steps from each other. She saw him far off, but he was not aware of her till she was quite near him.

  “Oh!” he said, with a start. “You filled my mind so full that I couldn’t have believed you were anywhere outside of it. I was coming to get you — I was coming to get my answer.”

  Gregory had grown distinctly older. Sickness and hardship had left traces in his wasted face, but the full beard he wore helped to give him an undue look of age.

  “I don’t know,” said Clementina, slowly, “as I’ve got an answa fo’ you, Mr. Gregory — yet.”

  “No answer is better that the one I am afraid of!”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure of that,” she said, with gentle perplexity, as she stood, holding the hand of her little girl, who stared shyly at the intense face of the man before her.

  “I am,” he retorted. “I have been thinking it all over, Clementina. I’ve tried not to think selfishly about it, but I can’t pretend that my wish isn’t selfish. It is! I want you for myself, and because I’ve always wanted you, and not for any other reason. I never cared for any one but you in the way I cared for you, and—”

  “Oh!” she grieved. “I never ca’ed at all for you after I saw him.”

  “I know it must be shocking to you; I haven’t told you with any wretched hope that it would commend me to you!”

  “I don’t say it was so very bad,” said Clementina, reflectively, “if it was something you couldn’t help.”

  “It was something I couldn’t help. Perhaps I didn’t try.”

  “Did — she know it?”

  “She knew it from the first; I told her before we were married.”

  Clementina drew back a little, insensibly pulling her child with her. “I don’t believe I exactly like it.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t! If I could have thought you would, I hope I shouldn’t have wished — and feared — so much to tell you.”

  “Oh, I know you always wanted to do what you believed was right, Mr. Gregory,” she answered. “But I haven’t quite thought it out yet. You mustn’t hurry me.”

  “No, no! Heaven
forbid.” He stood aside to let her pass.

  “I was just going home,” she added.

  “May I go with you?”

  “Yes, if you want to. I don’t know but you betta; we might as well; I want to talk with you. Don’t you think it’s something we ought to talk about — sensibly?”

  “Why, of course! And I shall try to be guided by you; I should always submit to be ruled by you, if—”

  “That’s not what I mean, exactly. I don’t want to do the ruling. You don’t undastand me.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” he assented, humbly.

  “If you did, you wouldn’t say that — so.” He did not venture to make any answer, and they walked on without speaking, till she asked, “Did you know that Miss Milray was at the Middlemount?”

  “Miss Milray! Of Florence?”

  “With her brother. I didn’t see him; Mrs. Milray is not he’a; they ah’ divo’ced. Miss Milray used to be very nice to me in Florence. She isn’t going back there any moa. She says you can’t go back to anything. Do you think we can?”

  She had left moments between her incoherent sentences where he might interrupt her if he would, but he waited for her question. “I hoped we might; but perhaps—”

  “No, no. We couldn’t. We couldn’t go back to that night when you threw the slippas into the riva, no’ to that time in Florence when we gave up, no’ to that day in Venice when I had to tell you that I ca’ed moa fo’ some one else. Don’t you see?”

  “Yes, I see,” he said, in quick revulsion from the hope he had expressed. “The past is full of the pain and shame of my errors!”

  “I don’t want to go back to what’s past, eitha,” she reasoned, without gainsaying him.

  She stopped again, as if that were all, and he asked, “Then is that my answer?”

  “I don’t believe that even in the otha wo’ld we shall want to go back to the past, much, do you?” she pursued, thoughtfully.

  Once Gregory would have answered confidently; he even now checked an impulse to do so. “I don’t know,” he owned, meekly.