Ragged Lady — Complete

XXXVI.

The next morning Clementina watched for the vice-consul from her balcony. She knew he would not send; she knew he would come; but it was nearly noon before she saw him coming. They caught sight of each other almost at the same moment, and he stood up in his boat, and waved something white in his hand, which must be a dispatch for her.

It acknowledged her telegram and reported George still improving; his father would meet her steamer in New York. It was very reassuring, it was every thing hopeful; but when she had read it she gave it to the vice-consul for encouragement.

“It's all right, Miss Claxon,” he said, stoutly. “Don't you be troubled about Mr. Hinkle's not coming to meet you himself. He can't keep too quiet for a while yet.”

“Oh, yes,” said Clementina, patiently.

“If you really want somebody to worry about, you can help Mr. Orson to worry about himself!” the vice-consul went on, with the grimness he had formerly used in speaking of Mrs. Lander. “He's sick, or he thinks he's going to be. He sent round for me this morning, and I found him in bed. You may have to go home alone. But I guess he's more scared than hurt.”

Her heart sank, and then rose in revolt against the mere idea of delay. “I wonder if I ought to go and see him,” she said.

“Well, it would be a kindness,” returned the vice-consul, with a promptness that unmasked the apprehension he felt for the sick man.

He did not offer to go with her, and she took Maddalena. She found the minister seated in his chair beside his bed. A three days' beard heightened the gauntness of his face; he did not move when his padrona announced her.

“I am not any better,” he answered when she said that she was glad to see him up. “I am merely resting; the bed is hard. I regret to say,” he added, with a sort of formal impersonality, “that I shall be unable to accompany you home, Miss Claxon. That is, if you still think of taking the steamer this week.”

Her whole being had set homeward in a tide that already seemed to drift the vessel from its moorings. “What—what do you mean?” she gasped.

“I didn't know,” he returned, “but that in view of the circumstances—all the circumstances—you might be intending to defer your departure to some later steamer.”

“No, no, no! I must go, now. I couldn't wait a day, an hour, a minute after the first chance of going. You don't know what you are saying! He might die if I told him I was not coming; and then what should I do?” This was what Clementina said to herself; but what she said to Mr. Orson, with an inspiration from her terror at his suggestion was, “Don't you think a little chicken broth would do you good, Mr. Osson? I don't believe but what it would.”

A wistful gleam came into the preacher's eyes. “It might,” he admitted, and then she knew what must be his malady. She sent Maddalena to a trattoria for the soup, and she did not leave him, even after she had seen its effect upon him. It was not hard to persuade him that he had better come home with her; and she had him there, tucked away with his few poor belongings, in the most comfortable room the padrone could imagine, when the vice-consul came in the evening.

“He says he thinks he can go, now,” she ended, when she had told the vice-consul. “And I know he can. It wasn't anything but poor living.”

“It looks more like no living,” said the vice-consul. “Why didn't the old fool let some one know that he was short of money?” He went on with a partial transfer of his contempt of the preacher to her, “I suppose if he'd been sick instead of hungry, you'd have waited over till the next steamer for him.”

She cast down her eyes. “I don't know what you'll think of me. I should have been sorry for him, and I should have wanted to stay.” She lifted her eyes and looked the vice-consul defiantly in the face. “But he hadn't the fust claim on me, and I should have gone—I couldn't have helped it!—I should have gone, if he had been dying!”

“Well, you've got more horse-sense,” said the vice-consul, “than any ten men I ever saw,” and he testified his admiration of her by putting his arms round her, where she stood before him, and kissing her. “Don't you mind,” he explained. “If my youngest girl had lived, she would have been about your age.”

“Oh, it's all right, Mr. Bennam,” said Clementina.

When the time came for them to leave Venice, Mr. Orson was even eager to go. The vice-consul would have gone with them in contempt of the official responsibilities which he felt to be such a thankless burden, but there was really no need of his going, and he and Clementina treated the question with the matter-of-fact impartiality which they liked in each other. He saw her off at the station where Maddalena had come to take the train for Florence in token of her devotion to the signorina, whom she would not outstay in Venice. She wept long and loud upon Clementina's neck, so that even Clementina was once moved to put her handkerchief to her tearless eyes.

At the last moment she had a question which she referred to the vice consul. “Should you tell him?” she asked.

“Tell who what?” he retorted.

“Mr. Osson—that I wouldn't have stayed for him.”

“Do you think it would make you feel any better?” asked the consul, upon reflection.

“I believe he ought to know.”

“Well, then, I guess I should do it.”

The time did not come for her confession till they had nearly reached the end of their voyage. It followed upon something like a confession from the minister himself, which he made the day he struggled on deck with her help, after spending a week in his berth.

“Here is something,” he said, “which appears to be for you, Miss Claxon. I found it among some letters for Mrs. Lander which Mr. Bennam gave me after my arrival, and I only observed the address in looking over the papers in my valise this morning.” He handed her a telegram. “I trust that it is nothing requiring immediate attention.”

Clementina read it at a glance. “No,” she answered, and for a while she could not say anything more; it was a cable message which Hinkle's sister must have sent her after writing. No evil had come of its failure to reach her, and she recalled without bitterness the suffering which would have been spared her if she had got it before. It was when she thought of the suffering of her lover from the silence which must have made him doubt her, that she could not speak. As soon as she governed herself against her first resentment she said, with a little sigh, “It is all right, now, Mr. Osson,” and her stress upon the word seemed to trouble him with no misgiving. “Besides, if you're to blame for not noticing, so is Mr. Bennam, and I don't want to blame any one.” She hesitated a moment before she added: “I have got to tell you something, now, because I think you ought to know it. I am going home to be married, Mr. Osson, and this message is from the gentleman I am going to be married to. He has been very sick, and I don't know yet as he'll be able to meet me in New Yo'k; but his fatha will.”

Mr. Orson showed no interest in these facts beyond a silent attention to her words, which might have passed for an open indifference. At his time of life all such questions, which are of permanent importance to women, affect men hardly more than the angels who neither marry nor are given in marriage. Besides, as a minister he must have had a surfeit of all possible qualities in the love affairs of people intending matrimony. As a casuist he was more reasonably concerned in the next fact which Clementina laid before him.

“And the otha day, there in Venice when you we'e sick, and you seemed to think that I might put off stahting home till the next steamer, I don't know but I let you believe I would.”

“I supposed that the delay of a week or two could make no material difference to you.”

“But now you see that it would. And I feel as if I ought to tell you—I spoke to Mr. Bennam about it, and he didn't tell me not to—that I shouldn't have staid, no not for anything in the wo'ld. I had to do what I did at the time, but eva since it has seemed as if I had deceived you, and I don't want to have it seem so any longer. It isn't because I don't hate to tell you; I do; but I guess if it was to happen over again I couldn't feel any different. Do you want I should tell the deck-stewahd to bring you some beef-tea?”

“I think I could relish a small portion,” said Mr. Orson, cautiously, and he said nothing more.

Clementina left him with her nerves in a flutter, and she did not come back to him until she decided that it was time to help him down to his cabin. He suffered her to do this in silence, but at the door he cleared his throat and began:

“I have reflected upon what you told me, and I have tried to regard the case from all points. I believe that I have done so, without personal feeling, and I think it my duty to say, fully and freely, that I believe you would have done perfectly right not to remain.”

“Yes,” said Clementina, “I thought you would think so.”

They parted emotionlessly to all outward effect, and when they met again it was without a sign of having passed through a crisis of sentiment. Neither referred to the matter again, but from that time the minister treated Clementina with a deference not without some shadows of tenderness such as her helplessness in Venice had apparently never inspired. She had cast out of her mind all lingering hardness toward him in telling him the hard truth, and she met his faint relentings with a grateful gladness which showed itself in her constant care of him.

This helped her a little to forget the strain of the anxiety that increased upon her as the time shortened between the last news of her lover and the next; and there was perhaps no more exaggeration in the import than in the terms of the formal acknowledgment which Mr. Orson made her as their steamer sighted Fire Island Light, and they both knew that their voyage had ended: “I may not be able to say to you in the hurry of our arrival in New York that I am obliged to you for a good many little attentions, which I should be pleased to reciprocate if opportunity offered. I do not think I am going too far in saying that they are such as a daughter might offer a parent.”

“Oh, don't speak of it, Mr. Osson!” she protested. “I haven't done anything that any one wouldn't have done.”

“I presume,” said the minister, thoughtfully, as if retiring from an extreme position, “that they are such as others similarly circumstanced, might have done, but it will always be a source of satisfaction for you to reflect that you have not neglected them.”