Ragged Lady — Complete

IV.

Mrs. Lander had taken twice of a specific for what she called her nerve-fag before her husband came with Clementina, and had rehearsed aloud many of the things she meant to say to the girl. In spite of her preparation, they were all driven out of her head when Clementina actually appeared, and gave her a bow like a young birch's obeisance in the wind.

“Take a chaia,” said Lander, pushing her one, and the girl tilted over toward him, before she sank into it. He went out of the room, and left Mrs. Lander to deal with the problem alone. She apologized for being in bed, but Clementina said so sweetly, “Mr. Landa told me you were not feeling very well, 'm,” that she began to be proud of her ailments, and bragged of them at length, and of the different doctors who had treated her for them. While she talked she missed one thing or another, and Clementina seemed to divine what it was she wanted, and got it for her, with a gentle deference which made the elder feel her age cushioned by the girl's youth. When she grew a little heated from the interest she took in her personal annals, and cast off one of the folds of her bed clothing, Clementina got her a fan, and asked her if she should put up one of the windows a little.

“How you do think of things!” said Mrs. Lander. “I guess I will let you. I presume you get used to thinkin' of othas in a lahge family like youas. I don't suppose they could get along without you very well,” she suggested.

“I've neva been away except last summa, for a little while.”

“And where was you then?”

“I was helping Mrs. Atwell.”

“Did you like it?”

“I don't know,” said Clementina. “It's pleasant to be whe'e things ah' going on.”

“Yes—for young folks,” said Mrs. Lander, whom the going on of things had long ceased to bring pleasure.

“It's real nice at home, too,” said Clementina. “We have very good times—evenings in the winta; in the summer it's very nice in the woods, around there. It's safe for the children, and they enjoy it, and fatha likes to have them. Motha don't ca'e so much about it. I guess she'd ratha have the house fixed up more, and the place. Fatha's going to do it pretty soon. He thinks the'e's time enough.”

“That's the way with men,” said Mrs. Lander. “They always think the's time enough; but I like to have things over and done with. What chuhch do you 'tend?”

“Well, there isn't any but the Episcopal,” Clementina answered. “I go to that, and some of the children go to the Sunday School. I don't believe fatha ca'es very much for going to chuhch, but he likes Mr. Richling; he's the recta. They take walks in the woods; and they go up the mountains togetha.”

“They want,” said Mrs. Lander, severely, “to be ca'eful how they drink of them cold brooks when they're heated. Mr. Richling a married man?”

“Oh, yes'm! But they haven't got any family.”

“If I could see his wife, I sh'd caution her about lettin' him climb mountains too much. A'n't your father afraid he'll ovado?”

“I don't know. He thinks he can't be too much in the open air on the mountains.”

“Well, he may not have the same complaint as Mr. Landa; but I know if I was to climb a mountain,' it would lay me up for a yea'.”

The girl did not urge anything against this conviction. She smiled politely and waited patiently for the next turn Mrs. Lander's talk should take, which was oddly enough toward the business Clementina had come upon.

“I declare I most forgot about my polonaise. Mr. Landa said your motha thought she could do something to it for me.”

“Yes'm.”

“Well, I may as well let you see it. If you'll reach into that fuhthest closet, you'll find it on the last uppa hook on the right hand, and if you'll give it to me, I'll show you what I want done. Don't mind the looks of that closet; I've just tossed my things in, till I could get a little time and stren'th to put 'em in odda.”

Clementina brought the polonaise to Mrs. Lander, who sat up and spread it before her on the bed, and had a happy half hour in telling the girl where she had bought the material and where she had it made up, and how it came home just as she was going away, and she did not find out that it was all wrong till a week afterwards when she tried it on. By the end of this time the girl had commended herself so much by judicious and sympathetic assent, that Mrs. Lander learned with a shock of disappointment that her mother expected her to bring the garment home with her, where Mrs. Lander was to come and have it fitted over for the alterations she wanted made.

“But I supposed, from what Mr. Landa said, that your motha would come here and fit me!” she lamented.

“I guess he didn't undastand, 'm. Motha doesn't eva go out to do wo'k,” said Clementina gently but firmly.

“Well, I might have known Mr. Landa would mix it up, if it could be mixed;” Mrs. Lander's sense of injury was aggravated by her suspicion that he had brought the girl in the hope of pleasing her, and confirming her in the wish to have her with them; she was not a woman who liked to have her way in spite of herself; she wished at every step to realize that she was taking it, and that no one else was taking it for her.

“Well,” she said dryly, “I shall have to see about it. I'm a good deal of an invalid, and I don't know as I could go back and fo'th to try on. I'm moa used to havin' the things brought to me.”

“Yes'm,” said Clementina. She moved a little from the bed, on her way to the door, to be ready for Mrs. Lander in leave-taking.

“I'm real sorry,” said Mrs. Lander. “I presume it's a disappointment for you, too.”

“Oh, not at all,” answered Clementina. “I'm sorry we can't do the wo'k he'a; but I know mocha wouldn't like to. Good-mo'ning, 'm!”

“No, no! Don't go yet a minute! Won't you just give me my hand bag off the bureau the'a?” Mrs. Lander entreated, and when the girl gave her the bag she felt about among the bank-notes which she seemed to have loose in it, and drew out a handful of them without regard to their value. “He'a!” she said, and she tried to put the notes into Clementina's hand, “I want you should get yourself something.”

The girl shrank back. “Oh, no'm,” she said, with an effect of seeming to know that her refusal would hurt, and with the wish to soften it. “I—couldn't; indeed I couldn't.”

“Why couldn't you? Now you must! If I can't let you have the wo'k the way you want, I don't think it's fair, and you ought to have the money for it just the same.”

Clementina shook her head smiling. “I don't believe motha would like to have me take it.”

“Oh, now, pshaw!” said Mrs. Lander, inadequately. “I want you should take this for youaself; and if you don't want to buy anything to wea', you can get something to fix your room up with. Don't you be afraid of robbin' us. Land! We got moa money! Now you take this.”

Mrs. Lander reached the money as far toward Clementina as she could and shook it in the vehemence of her desire.

“Thank you, I couldn't take it,” Clementina persisted. “I'm afraid I must be going; I guess I must bid you good-mo'ning.”

“Why, I believe the child's sca'ed of me! But you needn't be. Don't you suppose I know how you feel? You set down in that chai'a there, and I'll tell you how you feel. I guess we've been pooa, too—I don't mean anything that a'n't exactly right—and I guess I've had the same feelin's. You think it's demeanin' to you to take it. A'n't that it?” Clementina sank provisionally upon the edge of the chair. “Well, it did use to be so consid'ed. But it's all changed, nowadays. We travel pretty nee' the whole while, Mr. Lander and me, and we see folks everywhere, and it a'n't the custom to refuse any moa. Now, a'n't there any little thing for your own room, there in your nice new house? Or something your motha's got her heat set on? Or one of your brothas? My, if you don't have it, some one else will! Do take it!”

The girl kept slipping toward the door. “I shouldn't know what to tell them, when I got home. They would think I must be—out of my senses.”

“I guess you mean they'd think I was. Now, listen to me a minute!” Mrs. Lander persisted.

“You just take this money, and when you get home, you tell your mother every word about it, and if she says, you bring it right straight back to me. Now, can't you do that?”

“I don't know but I can,” Clementina faltered. “Well, then take it!” Mrs. Lander put the bills into her hand but she did not release her at once. She pulled Clementina down and herself up till she could lay her other arm on her neck. “I want you should let me kiss you. Will you?”

“Why, certainly,” said Clementina, and she kissed the old woman.

“You tell your mother I'm comin' to see her before I go; and I guess,” said Mrs. Lander in instant expression of the idea that came into her mind, “we shall be goin' pretty soon, now.”

“Yes'm,” said Clementina.

She went out, and shortly after Lander came in with a sort of hopeful apathy in his face.

Mrs. Lander turned her head on her pillow, and so confronted him. “Albe't, what made you want me to see that child?”

Lander must have perceived that his wife meant business, and he came to it at once. “I thought you might take a fancy to her, and get her to come and live with us.”

“Yes?”

“We're both of us gettin' pretty well on, and you'd ought to have somebody to look after you if—I'm not around. You want somebody that can do for you; and keep you company, and read to you, and talk to you—well, moa like a daughta than a suvvant—somebody that you'd get attached to, maybe—”

“And don't you see,” Mrs. Lander broke out severely upon him, “what a ca'e that would be? Why, it's got so already that I can't help thinkin' about her the whole while, and if I got attached to her I'd have her on my mind day and night, and the moa she done for me the more I should be tewin' around to do for her. I shouldn't have any peace of my life any moa. Can't you see that?”

“I guess if you see it, I don't need to,” said Lander.

“Well, then, I want you shouldn't eva mention her to me again. I've had the greatest escape! But I've got her off home, and I've give her money enough! had a time with her about it—so that they won't feel as if we'd made 'em trouble for nothing, and now I neva want to hear of her again. I don't want we should stay here a great while longer; I shall be frettin' if I'm in reach of her, and I shan't get any good of the ai'a. Will you promise?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then!” Mrs. Lander turned her face upon the pillow again in the dramatization of her exhaustion; but she was not so far gone that she was insensible to the possible interest that a light rap at the door suggested. She once more twisted her head in that direction and called, “Come in!”

The door opened and Clementina came in. She advanced to the bedside smiling joyously, and put the money Mrs. Lander had given her down upon the counterpane.

“Why, you haven't been home, child?”

“No'm,” said Clementina, breathlessly. “But I couldn't take it. I knew they wouldn't want me to, and I thought you'd like it better if I just brought it back myself. Good-mo'ning.” She slipped out of the door. Mrs. Lander swept the bank-notes from the coverlet and pulled it over her head, and sent from beneath it a stifled wail. “Now we got to go! And it's all youa fault, Albe't.”

Lander took the money from the floor, and smoothed each bill out, and then laid them in a neat pile on the corner of the bureau. He sighed profoundly but left the room without an effort to justify himself.