Ragged Lady — Complete

XXX.

Hinkle came every morning now, to smoothe out the doubts and difficulties that had accumulated in Mrs. Lander's mind over night, and incidentally to propose some pleasure for Clementina, who could feel that he was pitying her in her slavery to the sick woman's whims, and yet somehow entreating her to bear them. He saw them together in what Mrs. Lander called her well days; but there were other days when he saw Clementina alone, and then she brought him word from Mrs. Lander, and reported his talk to her after he went away. On one of these she sent him a cheerfuller message than usual, and charged the girl to explain that she was ever so much better, but had not got up because she felt that every minute in bed was doing her good. Clementina carried back his regrets and congratulation, and then told Mrs. Lander that he had asked her to go out with him to see a church, which he was sorry Mrs. Lander could not see too. He professed to be very particular about his churches, for he said he had noticed that they neither of them had any great gift for sights, and he had it on his conscience to get the best for them. He told Clementina that the church he had for them now could not be better if it had been built expressly for them, instead of having been used as a place of worship for eight or ten generations of Venetians before they came. She gave his invitation to Mrs. Lander, who could not always be trusted with his jokes, and she received it in the best part.

“Well, you go!” she said. “Maddalena can look after me, I guess. He's the only one of the fellas, except that lo'd, that I'd give a cent for.” She added, with a sudden lapse from her pleasure in Hinkle to her severity with Clementina, “But you want to be ca'eful what you' doin'.”

“Ca'eful?”

“Yes!—About Mr. Hinkle. I a'n't agoin' to have you lead him on, and then say you didn't know where he was goin'. I can't keep runnin' away everywhe'e, fo' you, the way I done at Woodlake.”

Clementina's heart gave a leap, whether joyful or woeful; but she answered indignantly, “How can you say such a thing to me, Mrs. Lander. I'm not leading him on!”

“I don't know what you call it. You're round with him in the gondoler, night and day, and when he's he'e, you'a settin' with him half the time on the balcony, and it's talk, talk, the whole while.” Clementina took in the fact with silent recognition, and Mrs. Lander went on. “I ain't sayin' anything against it. He's the only one I don't believe is afta the money he thinks you'a goin' to have; but if you don't want him, you want to look what you're about.”

The girl returned to Hinkle in the embarrassment which she was helpless to hide, and without the excuse which she could not invent for refusing to go with him. “Is Mrs. Lander worse—or anything?” he asked.

“Oh, no. She's quite well,” said Clementina; but she left it for him to break the constraint in which they set out. He tried to do so at different points, but it seemed to close upon them—the more inflexibly. At last he asked, as they were drawing near the church, “Have you ever seen anything of Mr. Belsky since you left Florence?”

“No,” she said, with a nervous start. “What makes you ask?”

“I don't know. But you see nearly everybody again that you meet in your travels. That friend of his—that Mr. Gregory—he seems to have dropped out, too. I believe you told me you used to know him in America.”

“Yes,” she answered, briefly; she could not say more; and Hinkle went on. “It seemed to me, that as far as I could make him out, he was about as much of a crank in his way as the Russian. It's curious, but when you were talking about religion, the other day, you made me think of him!” The blood went to Clementina's heart. “I don't suppose you had him in mind, but what you said fitted him more than anyone I know of. I could have almost believed that he had been trying to convert you!” She stared at him, and he laughed. “He tackled me one day there in Florence all of a sudden, and I didn't know what to say, exactly. Of course, I respected his earnestness; but I couldn't accept his view of things and I tried to tell him so. I had to say just where I stood, and why, and I mentioned some books that helped to get me there. He said he never read anything that went counter to his faith; and I saw that he didn't want to save me, so much as he wanted to convince me. He didn't know it, and I didn't tell him that I knew it, but I got him to let me drop the subject. He seems to have been left over from a time when people didn't reason about their beliefs, but only argued. I didn't think there was a man like that to be found so late in the century, especially a young man. But that was just where I was mistaken. If there was to be a man of that kind at all, it would have to be a young one. He'll be a good deal opener-minded when he's older. He was conscientious; I could see that; and he did take the Russian's death to heart as long as he was dead. But I'd like to talk with him ten years from now; he wouldn't be where he is.”

Clementina was still silent, and she walked up the church steps from the gondola without the power to speak. She made no show of interest in the pictures and statues; she never had really cared much for such things, and now his attempts to make her look at them failed miserably. When they got back again into the boat he began, “Miss Clementina, I'm afraid I oughtn't to have spoken as I did of that Mr. Gregory. If he is a friend of yours—”

“He is,” she made herself answer.

“I didn't mean anything against him. I hope you don't think I wanted to be unfair?”

“You were not unfair. But I oughtn't to have let you say it, Mr. Hinkle. I want to tell you something—I mean, I must”—She found herself panting and breathless. “You ought to know it—Mr. Gregory is—I mean we are—”

She stopped and she saw that she need not say more.

In the days that followed before the time that Hinkle had fixed to leave Venice, he tried to come as he had been coming, to see Mrs. Lander, but he evaded her when she wished to send him out with Clementina. His quaintness had a heartache in it for her; and he was boyishly simple in his failure to hide his suffering. He had no explicit right to suffer, for he had asked nothing and been denied nothing, but perhaps for this reason she suffered the more keenly for him.

A senseless resentment against Gregory for spoiling their happiness crept into her heart; and she wished to show Hinkle how much she valued his friendship at any risk and any cost. When this led her too far she took herself to task with a severity which hurt him too. In the midst of the impulses on which she acted, there were times when she had a confused longing to appeal to him for counsel as to how she ought to behave toward him.

There was no one else whom she could appeal to. Mrs. Lander, after her first warning, had not spoken of him again, though Clementina could feel in the grimness with which she regarded her variable treatment of him that she was silently hoarding up a sum of inculpation which would crush her under its weight when it should fall upon her. She seemed to be growing constantly better, now, and as the interval since her last attack widened behind her, she began to indulge her appetite with a recklessness which Clementina, in a sense of her own unworthiness, was helpless to deal with. When she ventured to ask her once whether she ought to eat of something that was very unwholesome for her, Mrs. Lander answered that she had taken her case into her own hands, now, for she knew more about it than all the doctors. She would thank Clementina not to bother about her; she added that she was at least not hurting anybody but herself, and she hoped Clementina would always be able to say as much.

Clementina wished that Hinkle would go away, but not before she had righted herself with him, and he lingered his month out, and seemed as little able to go as she to let him. She had often to be cheerful for both, when she found it too much to be cheerful for herself. In his absence she feigned free and open talks with him, and explained everything, and experienced a kind of ghostly comfort in his imagined approval and forgiveness, but in his presence, nothing really happened except the alternation of her kindness and unkindness, in which she was too kind and then too unkind.

The morning of the day he was at last to leave Venice, he came to say good bye. He did not ask for Mrs. Lander, when the girl received him, and he did not give himself time to lose courage before he began, “Miss Clementina, I don't know whether I ought to speak to you after what I understood you to mean about Mr. Gregory.” He looked steadfastly at her but she did not answer, and he went on. “There's just one chance in a million, though, that I didn't understand you rightly, and I've made up my mind that I want to take that chance. May I?” She tried to speak, but she could not. “If I was wrong—if there was nothing between you and him—could there ever be anything between you and me?”

His pleading looks entreated her even more than his words.

“There was something,” she answered, “with him.”

“And I mustn't know what,” the young man said patiently.

“Yes—yes!” she returned eagerly. “Oh, yes! I want you to know—I want to tell you. I was only sixteen yea's old, and he said that he oughtn't to have spoken; we were both too young. But last winta he spoke again. He said that he had always felt bound”—She stopped, and he got infirmly to his feet. “I wanted to tell you from the fust, but—”

“How could you? You couldn't. I haven't anything more to say, if you are bound to him.”

“He is going to be a missionary and he wanted me to say that I would believe just as he did; and I couldn't. But I thought that it would come right; and—yes, I felt bound to him, too. That is all—I can't explain it!”

“Oh, I understand!” he returned, listlessly.

“And do you blame me for not telling before?” She made an involuntary movement toward him, a pathetic gesture which both entreated and compassionated.

“There's nobody to blame. You have tried to do just right by me, as well as him. Well, I've got my answer. Mrs. Lander—can I—”

“Why, she isn't up yet, Mr. Hinkle.” Clementina put all her pain for him into the expression of their regret.

“Then I'll have to leave my good-bye for her with you. I don't believe I can come back again.” He looked round as if he were dizzy. “Good-bye,” he said, and offered his hand. It was cold as clay.

When he was gone, Clementina went into Mrs. Lander's room, and gave her his message.

“Couldn't he have come back this aftanoon to see me, if he ain't goin' till five?” she demanded jealously.

“He said he couldn't come back,” Clementina answered sadly.

The woman turned her head on her pillow and looked at the girl's face. “Oh!” she said for all comment.