Lander came into his wife's room between ten and eleven o'clock, and
found her still in bed, but with her half-finished breakfast on a tray
before her. As soon as he opened the door she said, “I do wish you would
take some of that heat-tonic of mine, Albe't, that the docta left for
me in Boston. You'll find it in the upper right bureau box, the'a; and
I know it'll be the very thing for you. It'll relieve you of that
suffocatin' feeling that I always have, comin' up stars. Dea'! I don't
see why they don't have an elevata; they make you pay enough; and I wish
you'd get me a little more silva, so's't I can give to the chambamaid
and the bell-boy; I do hate to be out of it. I guess you been up and
out long ago. They did make that polonaise of mine too tight after all
I said, and I've been thinkin' how I could get it alt'ed; but I presume
there ain't a seamstress to be had around he'e for love or money. Well,
now, that's right, Albe't; I'm glad to see you doin' it.”
Lander had opened the lid of the bureau box, and uncorked a bottle from
it, and tilted this to his lips.
“Don't take too much,” she cautioned him, “or you'll lose the effects.
When I take too much of a medicine, it's wo'se than nothing, as fah's I
can make out. When I had that spell in Thomasville spring before last,
I believe I should have been over it twice as quick if I had taken just
half the medicine I did. You don't really feel anyways bad about the
heat, do you, Albe't?”
“I'm all right,” said Lander. He put back the bottle in its place and
sat down.
Mrs. Lander lifted herself on her elbow and looked over at him. “Show me
on the bottle how much you took.”
He got the bottle out again and showed her with his thumb nail a point
which he chose at random.
“Well, that was just about the dose for you,” she said; and she sank
down in bed again with the air of having used a final precaution. “You
don't want to slow your heat up too quick.”
Lander did not put the bottle back this time. He kept it in his hand,
with his thumb on the cork, and rocked it back and forth on his knees as
he spoke. “Why don't you get that woman to alter it for you?”
“What woman alta what?”
“Your polonaise. The one whe'e we stopped yestaday.”
“Oh! Well, I've been thinkin' about that child, Albe't; I did before I
went to sleep; and I don't believe I want to risk anything with her.
It would be a ca'e,” said Mrs. Lander with a sigh, “and I guess I don't
want to take any moa ca'e than what I've got now. What makes you think
she could alta my polonaise?”
“Said she done dress-makin',” said Lander, doggedly.
“You ha'n't been the'a?”
He nodded.
“You didn't say anything to her about her daughta?”
“Yes, I did,” said Lander.
“Well, you ce'tainly do equal anything,” said his wife. She lay still
awhile, and then she roused herself with indignant energy. “Well, then,
I can tell you what, Albe't Landa: you can go right straight and take
back everything you said. I don't want the child, and I won't have her.
I've got care enough to worry me now, I should think; and we should have
her whole family on our hands, with that shiftless father of hers, and
the whole pack of her brothas and sistas. What made you think I wanted
you to do such a thing?”
“You wanted me to do it last night. Wouldn't ha'dly let me go to bed.”
“Yes! And how many times have I told you nova to go off and do a thing
that I wanted you to, unless you asked me if I did? Must I die befo'e
you can find out that there is such a thing as talkin', and such anotha
thing as doin'? You wouldn't get yourself into half as many scrapes if
you talked more and done less, in this wo'ld.” Lander rose.
“Wait! Hold on! What are you going to say to the pooa thing? She'll be
so disappointed!”
“I don't know as I shall need to say anything myself,” answered the
little man, at his dryest. “Leave that to you.”
“Well, I can tell you,” returned his wife, “I'm not goin' nea' them
again; and if you think--What did you ask the woman, anyway?”
“I asked her,” he said, “if she wanted to let the gul come and see you
about some sewing you had to have done, and she said she did.”
“And you didn't speak about havin' her come to live with us?”
“No.”
“Well, why in the land didn't you say so before, Albe't?”
“You didn't ask me. What do you want I should say to her now?”
“Say to who?”
“The gul. She's down in the pahlor, waitin'.”
“Well, of all the men!” cried Mrs. Lander. But she seemed to find
herself, upon reflection, less able to cope with Lander personally than
with the situation generally. “Will you send her up, Albe't?” she asked,
very patiently, as if he might be driven to further excesses, if not
delicately handled. As soon as he had gone out of the room she wished
that she had told him to give her time to dress and have her room put in
order, before he sent the child up; but she could only make the best of
herself in bed with a cap and a breakfast jacket, arranged with the help
of a handglass. She had to get out of bed to put her other clothes away
in the closet and she seized the chance to push the breakfast tray out
of the door, and smooth up the bed, while she composed her features and
her ideas to receive her visitor. Both, from long habit rather than from
any cause or reason, were of a querulous cast, and her ordinary tone
was a snuffle expressive of deep-seated affliction. She was at once
plaintive and voluable, and in moments of excitement her need of freeing
her mind was so great that she took herself into her own confidence, and
found a more sympathetic listener than when she talked to her husband.
As she now whisked about her room in her bed-gown with an activity not
predicable of her age and shape, and finally plunged under the covering
and drew it up to her chin with one hand while she pressed it out
decorously over her person with the other, she kept up a rapid flow of
lamentation and conjecture. “I do suppose he'll be right back with her
before I'm half ready; and what the man was thinkin' of to do such a
thing anyway, I don't know. I don't know as she'll notice much, comin'
out of such a lookin' place as that, and I don't know as I need to care
if she did. But if the'e's care anywhe's around, I presume I'm the one
to have it. I presume I did take a fancy to her, and I guess I shall be
glad to see how I like her now; and if he's only told her I want some
sewin' done, I can scrape up something to let her carry home with her.
It's well I keep my things where I can put my hand on 'em at a time like
this, and I don't believe I shall sca'e the child, as it is. I do hope
Albe't won't hang round half the day before he brings her; I like to
have a thing ova.”
Lander wandered about looking for the girl through the parlors and the
piazzas, and then went to the office to ask what had become of her.
The landlord came out of his room at his question to the clerk. “Oh, I
guess she's round in my wife's room, Mr. Landa. She always likes to see
Clementina, and I guess they all do. She's a so't o' pet amongst 'em.”
“No hurry,” said Lander, “I guess my wife ain't quite ready for her
yet.”
“Well, she'll be right out, in a minute or so,” said the landlord.
The old man tilted his hat forward over his eyes, and went to sit on
the veranda and look at the landscape while he waited. It was one of the
loveliest landscapes in the mountains; the river flowed at the foot of
an abrupt slope from the road before the hotel, stealing into and out of
the valley, and the mountains, gray in the farther distance, were draped
with folds of cloud hanging upon their flanks and tops. But Lander was
tired of nearly all kinds of views and prospects, though he put' up
with them, in his perpetual movement from place to place, in the same
resignation that he suffered the limitations of comfort in parlor cars
and sleepers, and the unwholesomeness of hotel tables. He was chained to
the restless pursuit of an ideal not his own, but doomed to suffer for
its impossibility as if he contrived each of his wife's disappointments
from it. He did not philosophize his situation, but accepted it as in an
order of Providence which it would be useless for him to oppose; though
there were moments when he permitted himself to feel a modest doubt of
its justice. He was aware that when he had a house of his own he was
master in it, after a fashion, and that as long as he was in business he
was in some sort of authority. He perceived that now he was a slave to
the wishes of a mistress who did not know what she wanted, and that he
was never farther from pleasing her than when he tried to do what she
asked. He could not have told how all initiative had been taken from
him, and he had fallen into the mere follower of a woman guided only by
her whims, who had no object in life except to deprive it of all object.
He felt no rancor toward her for this; he knew that she had a tender
regard for him, and that she believed she was considering him first in
her most selfish arrangements. He always hoped that sometime she would
get tired of her restlessness, and be willing to settle down again in
some stated place; and wherever it was, he meant to get into some kind
of business again. Till this should happen he waited with an apathetic
patience of which his present abeyance was a detail. He would hardly
have thought it anything unfit, and certainly nothing surprising, that
the landlady should have taken the young girl away from where he had
left her, and then in the pleasure of talking with her, and finding her
a centre of interest for the whole domestic force of the hotel, should
have forgotten to bring her back.
The Middlemount House had just been organized on the scale of a first
class hotel, with prices that had risen a little in anticipation of
the other improvements. The landlord had hitherto united in himself the
functions of clerk and head waiter, but he had now got a senior, who was
working his way through college, to take charge of the dining-room, and
had put in the office a youth of a year's experience as under clerk at
a city hotel. But he meant to relinquish no more authority than his wife
who frankly kept the name as well as duty of house-keeper. It was in
making her morning inspection of the dusting that she found Clementina
in the parlor where Lander had told her to sit down till he should come
for her.
“Why, Clem!” she said, “I didn't know you! You have grown so! Youa folks
all well? I decla'e you ah' quite a woman now,” she added, as the girl
stood up in her slender, graceful height. “You look as pretty as a pink
in that hat. Make that dress youaself? Well, you do beat the witch! I
want you should come to my room with me.”
Mrs. Atwell showered other questions and exclamations on the girl, who
explained how she happened to be there, and said that she supposed she
must stay where she was for fear Mr. Lander should come back and find
her gone; but Mrs. Atwell overruled her with the fact that Mrs. Lander's
breakfast had just gone up to her; and she made her come out and see
the new features of the enlarged house-keeping. In the dining-room there
were some of the waitresses who had been there the summer before, and
recognitions of more or less dignity passed between them and Clementina.
The place was now shut against guests, and the head-waiter was having
it put in order for the one o'clock dinner. As they came near him, Mrs.
Atwell introduced him to Clementina, and he behaved deferentially, as
if she were some young lady visitor whom Mrs. Atwell was showing the
improvements, but he seemed harassed and impatient, as if he were
anxious about his duties, and eager to get at them again. He was a
handsome little fellow, with hair lighter than Clementina's and a
sanguine complexion, and the color coming and going.
“He's smaht,” said Mrs. Atwell, when they had left him--he held the
dining-room door open for them, and bowed them out. “I don't know but he
worries almost too much. That'll wear off when he gets things runnin' to
suit him. He's pretty p'tic'la'. Now I'll show you how they've made the
office over, and built in a room for Mr. Atwell behind it.”
The landlord welcomed Clementina as if she had been some acceptable
class of custom, and when the tall young clerk came in to ask him
something, and Mrs. Atwell said, “I want to introduce you to Miss
Claxon, Mr. Fane,” the clerk smiled down upon her from the height of his
smooth, acquiline young face, which he held bent encouragingly upon one
side.
“Now, I want you should come in and see where I live, a minute,” said
Mrs. Atwell. She took the girl from the clerk, and led her to the
official housekeeper's room which she said had been prepared for her so
that folks need not keep running to her in her private room where she
wanted to be alone with her children, when she was there. “Why, you
a'n't much moa than a child youaself, Clem, and here I be talkin' to you
as if you was a mother in Israel. How old ah' you, this summa? Time does
go so!”
“I'm sixteen now,” said Clementina, smiling.
“You be? Well, I don't see why I say that, eitha! You're full lahge
enough for your age, but not seein' you in long dresses before, I didn't
realize your age so much. My, but you do all of you know how to do
things!”
“I'm about the only one that don't, Mrs. Atwell,” said the girl. “If it
hadn't been for mother, I don't believe I could have eva finished this
dress.” She began to laugh at something passing in her mind, and Mrs.
Atwell laughed too, in sympathy, though she did not know what at till
Clementina said, “Why, Mrs. Atwell, nea'ly the whole family wo'ked on
this dress. Jim drew the patte'n of it from the dress of one of the
summa boa'das that he took a fancy to at the Centa, and fatha cut it
out, and I helped motha make it. I guess every one of the children
helped a little.”
“Well, it's just as I said, you can all of you do things,” said Mrs.
Atwell. “But I guess you ah' the one that keeps 'em straight. What did
you say Mr. Landa said his wife wanted of you?”
“He said some kind of sewing that motha could do.”
“Well, I'll tell you what! Now, if she ha'n't really got anything that
your motha'll want you to help with, I wish you'd come here again and
help me. I tuned my foot, here, two-three weeks back, and I feel it,
times, and I should like some one to do about half my steppin' for me.
I don't want to take you away from her, but IF. You sha'n't go int' the
dinin'room, or be under anybody's oddas but mine. Now, will you?”
“I'll see, Mrs. Atwell. I don't like to say anything till I know what
Mrs. Landa wants.”
“Well, that's right. I decla'e, you've got moa judgment! That's what
I used to say about you last summa to my husband: she's got judgment.
Well, what's wanted?” Mrs. Atwell spoke to her husband, who had opened
her door and looked in, and she stopped rocking, while she waited his
answer.
“I guess you don't want to keep Clementina from Mr. Landa much longa.
He's settin' out there on the front piazza waitin' for her.”
“Well, the'a!” cried Mrs. Atwell. “Ain't that just like me? Why didn't
you tell me sooner, Alonzo? Don't you forgit what I said, Clem!”