The people who came to the Middlemount in July were ordinarily the
nicest, but that year the August folks were nicer than usual and there
were some students among them, and several graduates just going into
business, who chose to take their outing there instead of going to the
sea-side or the North Woods. This was a chance that might not happen in
years again, and it made the house very gay for the young ladies; they
ceased to pay court to the clerk, and asked him for letters only at
mail-time. Five or six couples were often on the floor together, at the
hops, and the young people sat so thick upon the stairs that one could
scarcely get up or down.
So many young men made it gay not only for the young ladies, but also
for a certain young married lady, when she managed to shirk her
rather filial duties to her husband, who was much about the verandas,
purblindly feeling his way with a stick, as he walked up and down, or
sitting opaque behind the glasses that preserved what was left of his
sight, while his wife read to him. She was soon acquainted with a good
many more people than he knew, and was in constant request for such
occasions as needed a chaperon not averse to mountain climbing, or
drives to other hotels for dancing and supper and return by moonlight,
or the more boisterous sorts of charades; no sheet and pillow case party
was complete without her; for welsh-rarebits her presence was essential.
The event of the conflict between these social claims and her duties to
her husband was her appeal to Mrs. Atwell on a point which the landlady
referred to Clementina.
“She wants somebody to read to her husband, and I don't believe but what
you could do it, Clem. You're a good reader, as good as I want to hear,
and while you may say that you don't put in a great deal of elocution,
I guess you can read full well enough. All he wants is just something to
keep him occupied, and all she wants is a chance to occupy herself with
otha folks. Well, she is moa their own age. I d'know as the's any hahm
in her. And my foot's so much betta, now, that I don't need you the
whole while, any moa.”
“Did you speak to her about me?” asked the girl.
“Well, I told her I'd tell you. I couldn't say how you'd like.”
“Oh, I guess I should like,” said Clementina, with her eyes shining.
“But--I should have to ask motha.”
“I don't believe but what your motha'd be willin',” said Mrs. Atwell.
“You just go down and see her about it.”
The next day Mrs. Milray was able to take leave of her husband, in
setting off to matronize a coaching party, with an exuberance of good
conscience that she shared with the spectators. She kissed him with
lively affection, and charged him not to let the child read herself to
death for him. She captioned Clementina that Mr. Milray never knew when
he was tired, and she had better go by the clock in her reading, and not
trust to any sign from him.
Clementina promised, and when the public had followed Mrs. Milray away,
to watch her ascent to the topmost seat of the towering coach, by
means of the ladder held in place by two porters, and by help of the
down-stretched hands of all the young men on the coach, Clementina
opened the book at the mark she found in it, and began to read to Mr.
Milray.
The book was a metaphysical essay, which he professed to find a lighter
sort of reading than fiction; he said most novelists were too seriously
employed in preventing the marriage of the lovers, up to a certain
point, to be amusing; but you could always trust a metaphysician for
entertainment if he was very much in earnest, and most metaphysicians
were. He let Clementina read on a good while in her tender voice, which
had still so many notes of childhood in it, before he manifested any
consciousness of being read to. He kept the smile on his delicate face
which had come there when his wife said at parting, “I don't believe I
should leave her with you if you could see how prettty she was,” and he
held his head almost motionlessly at the same poise he had given it in
listening to her final charges. It was a fine head, still well covered
with soft hair, which lay upon it in little sculpturesque masses, like
chiseled silver, and the acquiline profile had a purity of line in the
arch of the high nose and the jut of the thin lips and delicate chin,
which had not been lost in the change from youth to age. One could never
have taken it for the profile of a New York lawyer who had early found
New York politics more profitable than law, and after a long time passed
in city affairs, had emerged with a name shadowed by certain doubtful
transactions. But this was Milray's history, which in the rapid progress
of American events, was so far forgotten that you had first to remind
people of what he had helped do before you could enjoy their surprise
in realizing that this gentle person, with the cast of intellectual
refinement which distinguished his face, was the notorious Milray,
who was once in all the papers. When he made his game and retired from
politics, his family would have sacrificed itself a good deal to reclaim
him socially, though they were of a severer social than spiritual
conscience, in the decay of some ancestral ideals. But he had rendered
their willingness hopeless by marrying, rather late in life, a young
girl from the farther West who had come East with a general purpose
to get on. She got on very well with Milray, and it was perhaps not
altogether her own fault that she did not get on so well with his
family, when she began to substitute a society aim for the artistic
ambition that had brought her to New York. They might have forgiven him
for marrying her, but they could not forgive her for marrying him. They
were of New England origin and they were perhaps a little more critical
with her than if they had been New Yorkers of Dutch strain. They said
that she was a little Western hoyden, but that the stage would have been
a good place for her if she could have got over her Pike county accent;
in the hush of family councils they confided to one another the belief
that there were phases of the variety business in which her accent would
have been no barrier to her success, since it could not have been heard
in the dance, and might have been disguised in the song.
“Will you kindly read that passage over again?” Milray asked as
Clementina paused at the end of a certain paragraph. She read it, while
he listened attentively. “Could you tell me just what you understand by
that?” he pursued, as if he really expected Clementina to instruct him.
She hesitated a moment before she answered, “I don't believe I undastand
anything at all.”
“Do you know,” said Milray, “that's exactly my own case? And I've an
idea that the author is in the same box,” and Clementina perceived she
might laugh, and laughed discreetly.
Milray seemed to feel the note of discreetness in her laugh, and he
asked, smiling, “How old did you tell me you were?”
“I'm sixteen,” said Clementina.
“It's a great age,” said Milray. “I remember being sixteen myself; I
have never been so old since. But I was very old for my age, then. Do
you think you are?”
“I don't believe I am,” said Clementina, laughing again, but still very
discreetly.
“Then I should like to tell you that you have a very agreeable voice. Do
you sing?”
“No'm--no, sir--no,” said Clementina, “I can't sing at all.”
“Ah, that's very interesting,” said Milray, “but it's not surprising.
I wish I could see your face distinctly; I've a great curiosity about
matching voices and faces; I must get Mrs. Milray to tell me how you
look. Where did you pick up your pretty knack at reading? In school,
here?”
“I don't know,” answered Clementina. “Do I read-the way you want?”
“Oh, perfectly. You let the meaning come through--when there is any.”
“Sometimes,” said Clementina ingenuously, “I read too fast; the children
ah' so impatient when I'm reading to them at home, and they hurry me.
But I can read a great deal slower if you want me to.”
“No, I'm impatient, too,” said Milray. “Are there many of them,--the
children?”
“There ah' six in all.”
“And are you the oldest?”
“Yes,” said Clementina. She still felt it very blunt not to say sir,
too, but she tried to make her tone imply the sir, as Mr. Gregory had
bidden her.
“You've got a very pretty name.”
Clementina brightened. “Do you like it? Motha gave it to me; she took it
out of a book that fatha was reading to her.”
“I like it very much,” said Milray. “Are you tall for your age?”
“I guess I am pretty tall.”
“You're fair, of course. I can tell that by your voice; you've got a
light-haired voice. And what are your eyes?”
“Blue!” Clementina laughed at his pursuit.
“Ah, of course! It isn't a gray-eyed blonde voice. Do you think--has
anybody ever told you-that you were graceful?”
“I don't know as they have,” said Clementina, after thinking.
“And what is your own opinion?” Clementina began to feel her dignity
infringed; she did not answer, and now Milray laughed. “I felt the
little tilt in your step as you came up. It's all right. Shall we try
for our friend's meaning, now?”
Clementina began again, and again Milray stopped her. “You mustn't bear
malice. I can hear the grudge in your voice; but I didn't mean to laugh
at you. You don't like being made fun of, do you?”
“I don't believe anybody does,” said Clementina.
“No, indeed,” said Milray. “If I had tried such a thing I should be
afraid you would make it uncomfortable for me. But I haven't, have I?”
“I don't know,” said Clementina, reluctantly.
Milray laughed gleefully. “Well, you'll forgive me, because I'm an old
fellow. If I were young, you wouldn't, would you?”
Clementina thought of the clerk; she had certainly never forgiven him.
“Shall I read on?” she asked.
“Yes, yes. Read on,” he said, respectfully. Once he interrupted her to
say that she pronounced admirable, but he would like now and then to
differ with her about a word if she did not mind. She answered, Oh no,
indeed; she should like it ever so much, if he would tell her when
she was wrong. After that he corrected her, and he amused himself by
studying forms of respect so delicate that they should not alarm her
pride; Clementina reassured him in terms as fine as his own. She did not
accept his instructions implicitly; she meant to bring them to the bar
of Gregory's knowledge. If he approved of them, then she would submit.
Milray easily possessed himself of the history of her life and of all
its circumstances, and he said he would like to meet her father and make
the acquaintance of a man whose mind, as Clementina interpreted it to
him, he found so original.
He authorized his wife to arrange with Mrs. Atwell for a monopoly of
Clementina's time while he stayed at Middlemount, and neither he nor
Mrs. Milray seemed surprised at the good round sum, as the landlady
thought it, which she asked in the girl's behalf.