Mrs. Lander went to a hotel in New York where she had been in the habit
of staying with her husband, on their way South or North. The clerk knew
her, and shook hands with her across the register, and said she could
have her old rooms if she wanted them; the bell-boy who took up their
hand-baggage recalled himself to her; the elevator-boy welcomed her with
a smile of remembrance.
Since she was already up, from coming off the sleeping-car, she had no
excuse for not going to breakfast like other people; and she went with
Clementina to the dining-room, where the head-waiter, who found them
places, spoke with an outlandish accent, and the waiter who served
them had a parlance that seemed superficially English, but was inwardly
something else; there was even a touch in the cooking of the familiar
dishes, that needed translation for the girl's inexperienced palate.
She was finding a refuge in the strangeness of everything, when she was
startled by the sound of a familiar voice calling, “Clementina Claxon!
Well, I was sure all along it was you, and I determined I wouldn't stand
it another minute. Why, child, how you have changed! Why, I declare you
are quite a woman! When did you come? How pretty you are!” Mrs. Milray
took Clementina in her arms and kissed her in proof of her admiration
before the whole breakfast room. She was very nice to Mrs. Lander, too,
who, when Clementina introduced them, made haste to say that Clementina
was there on a visit with her. Mrs. Milray answered that she envied her
such a visitor as Miss Claxon, and protested that she should steal her
away for a visit to herself, if Mr. Milray was not so much in love with
her that it made her jealous. “Mr. Milray has to have his breakfast in
his room,” she explained to Clementina. “He's not been so well, since he
lost his mother. Yes,” she said, with decorous solemnity, “I'm still in
mourning for her,” and Clementina saw that she was in a tempered black.
“She died last year, and now I'm taking Mr. Milray abroad to see if it
won't cheer him up a little. Are you going South for the winter?” she
inquired, politely, of Mrs. Lander. “I wish I was going,” she said, when
Mrs. Lander guessed they should go, later on. “Well, you must come in
and see me all you can, Clementina; and I shall have the pleasure of
calling upon you,” she added to Mrs. Lander with state that was lost in
the soubrette-like volatility of her flight from them the next moment.
“Goodness, I forgot all about Mr. Milray's breakfast!” She ran back to
the table she had left on the other side of the room.
“Who is that, Clementina?” asked Mrs. Lander, on their way to their
rooms. Clementina explained as well as she could, and Mrs. Lander summed
up her feeling in the verdict, “Well, she's a lady, if ever I saw a
lady; and you don't see many of 'em, nowadays.”
The girl remembered how Mrs. Milray had once before seemed very fond of
her, and had afterwards forgotten the pretty promises and professions
she had made her. But she went with Mrs. Lander to see her, and she saw
Mr. Milray, too, for a little while. He seemed glad of their meeting,
but still depressed by the bereavement which Mrs. Milray supported
almost with gayety. When he left them she explained that he was a good
deal away from her, with his family, as she approved of his being,
though she had apparently no wish to join him in all the steps of the
reconciliation which the mother's death had brought about among them.
Sometimes his sisters came to the hotel to see her, but she amused
herself perfectly without them, and she gave much more of her leisure to
Clementina and Mrs. Lander.
She soon knew the whole history of the relation between them, and the
first time that Clementina found her alone with Mrs. Lander she could
have divined that Mrs. Lander had been telling her of the Fane affair,
even if Mrs. Milray had not at once called out to her, “I know all about
it; and I'll tell you what, Clementina, I'm going to take you over
with me and marry you to an English Duke. Mrs. Lander and I have been
planning it all out, and I'm going to send down to the steamer office,
and engage your passage. It's all settled!”
When she was gone, Mrs. Lander asked, “What do you s'pose your folks
would say to your goin' to Europe, anyway, Clementina?” as if the matter
had been already debated between them.
Clementina hesitated. “I should want to be su'a, Mrs. Milray really
wanted me to go ova with her.”
“Why, didn't you hear her say so?” demanded Mrs. Lander.
“Yes,” sighed Clementina. “Mrs. Lander, I think Mrs. Milray means what
she says, at the time, but she is one that seems to forget.”
“She thinks the wo'ld of you,” Mrs. Lander urged.
“She was very nice to me that summer at Middlemount. I guess maybe she
would like to have us go with her,” the girl relented.
“I guess we'll wait and see,” said Mrs. Lander. “I shouldn't want she
should change her mind when it was too late, as you say.” They were
both silent for a time, and then Mrs. Lander resumed, “But I presume she
ha'n't got the only steams that's crossin'. What should you say about
goin' over on some otha steams? I been South a good many wintas, and I
should feel kind of lonesome goin' round to the places where I been with
Mr. Landa. I felt it since I been here in this hotel, some, and I can't
seem to want to go ova the same ground again, well, not right away.”
Clementina said, “Why, of cou'se, Mrs. Landa.”
“Should you be willin',” asked Mrs. Lander, after another little pause,
“if your folks was willin', to go ova the'a, to some of them European
countries, to spend the winta?”
“Oh yes, indeed!” said Clementina.
They discussed the matter in one of the full talks they both liked. At
the end Mrs. Lander said, “Well, I guess you betta write home, and ask
your motha whetha you can go, so't if we take the notion we can go any
time. Tell her to telegraph, if she'll let you, and do write all the ifs
and ands, so't she'll know just how to answa, without havin' to have you
write again.”
That evening Mrs. Milray came to their table from where she had been
dining alone, and asked in banter: “Well, have you made up your minds to
go over with me?”
Mrs. Lander said bluntly, “We can't ha'dly believe you really want us
to, Mrs. Milray.”
“I don't want you? Who put such an idea into your head! Oh, I know!” She
threatened Clementina with the door-key, which she was carrying in her
hand. “It was you, was it? What an artful, suspicious thing! What's got
into you, child? Do you hate me?” She did not give Clementina time to
protest. “Well, now, I can just tell you I do want you, and I'll be
quite heart-broken if you don't come.”
“Well, she wrote to her friends this mohning,” Mrs. Lander said, “but I
guess she won't git an answa in time for youa steamer, even if they do
let her go.”
“Oh, yes she will,” Mrs. Milray protested. “It's all right, now; you've
got to go, and there's no use trying to get out of it.”
She came to them whenever she could find them in the dining-room, and
she knocked daily at their door till she knew that Clementina had heard
from home. The girl's mother wrote, without a punctuation mark in her
letter, but with a great deal of sense, that such a thing as her going
to Europe could not be settled by telegraph. She did not think it worth
while to report all the facts of a consultation with the rector which
they had held upon getting Clementina's request, and which had renewed
all the original question of her relations with Mrs. Lander in an
intensified form. He had disposed of this upon much the same terms as
before; and they had yielded more readily because the experiment had so
far succeeded. Clementina had apparently no complaint to make of Mrs.
Lander; she was eager to go, and the rector and his wife, who had been
invited to be of the council, were both of the opinion that a course of
European travel would be of the greatest advantage to the girl, if she
wished to fit herself for teaching. It was an opportunity that they
must not think of throwing away. If Mrs. Lander went to Florence, as
it seemed from Clementina's letter she thought of doing, the girl would
pass a delightful winter in study of one of the most interesting cities
in the world, and she would learn things which would enable her to do
better for herself when she came home than she could ever hope to do
otherwise. She might never marry, Mr. Richling suggested, and it was
only right and fair that she should be equipped with as much culture as
possible for the struggle of life; Mrs. Richling agreed with this rather
vague theory, but she was sure that Clementina would get married to
greater advantage in Florence than anywhere else. They neither of them
really knew anything at first hand about Florence; the rector's opinion
was grounded on the thought of the joy that a sojourn in Italy would
have been to him; his wife derived her hope of a Florentine marriage for
Clementina from several romances in which love and travel had gone hand
in hand, to the lasting credit of triumphant American girlhood.
The Claxons were not able to enter into their view of the case, but if
Mrs. Lander wanted to go to Florence instead of Florida they did not see
why Clementina should not go with her to one place as well as the other.
They were not without a sense of flattery from the fact that their
daughter was going to Europe; but they put that as far from them as they
could, the mother severely and the father ironically, as something too
silly, and they tried not to let it weigh with them in making up their
mind, but to consider only Clementina's best good, and not even
to regard her pleasure. Her mother put before her the most crucial
questions she could think of, in her letter, and then gave her full
leave from her father as well as herself to go if she wished.
Clementina had rather it had been too late to go with the Milrays, but
she felt bound to own her decision when she reached it; and Mrs. Milray,
whatever her real wish was, made it a point of honor to help get Mrs.
Lander berths on her steamer. It did not require much effort; there
are plenty of berths for the latest-comers on a winter passage, and
Clementina found herself the fellow passenger of Mrs. Milray.