Ragged Lady — Complete

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.