In the crowd which thronged the steamer's dock at Hoboken, Clementina
strained her eyes to make out some one who looked enough like her lover
to be his father, and she began to be afraid that they might miss each
other when she failed. She walked slowly down the gangway, with the
people that thronged it, glad to be hidden by them from her failure, but
at the last step she was caught aside by a small blackeyed, black-haired
woman, who called out “Isn't this Miss Claxon? I'm Georrge's sisterr.
Oh, you'rre just like what he said! I knew it! I knew it!” and then
hugged her and kissed her, and passed her to the little lean dark old
man next her. “This is fatherr. I knew you couldn't tell us, because I
take afterr him, and Georrge is exactly like motherr.”
George's father took her hand timidly, but found courage to say to
his daughter, “Hadn't you betterr let her own fatherr have a chance at
herr?” and amidst a tempest of apologies and self blame from the sister,
Claxon showed himself over the shoulders of the little man.
“Why, there wa'n't no hurry, as long as she's he'a,” he said, in prompt
enjoyment of the joke, and he and Clementina sparely kissed each other.
“Why, fatha!” she said. “I didn't expect you to come to New Yo'k to meet
me.”
“Well, I didn't ha'dly expect it myself; but I'd neva been to Yo'k, and
I thought I might as well come. Things ah' ratha slack at home, just
now, anyway.”
She did not heed his explanation. “We'e you sca'ed when you got my
dispatch?”
“No, we kind of expected you'd come any time, the way you wrote afta
Mrs. Landa died. We thought something must be up.”
“Yes,” she said, absently. Then, “Whe'e's motha?” she asked.
“Well, I guess she thought she couldn't get round to it, exactly,” said
the father. “She's all right. Needn't ask you!”
“No, I'm fust-rate,” Clementina returned, with a silent joy in her
father's face and voice. She went back in it to the girl of a year ago,
and the world which had come between them since their parting rolled
away as if it had never been there.
Neither of them said anything about that. She named over her brothers
and sisters, and he answered, “Yes, yes,” in assurance of their
well-being, and then he explained, as if that were the only point
of real interest, “I see your folks waitin' he'e fo' somebody, and I
thought I'd see if it wa'n't the same one, and we kind of struck up an
acquaintance on your account befo'e you got he'e, Clem.”
“Your folks!” she silently repeated to herself. “Yes, they ah' mine!”
and she stood trying to realize the strange fact, while George's sister
poured out a voluminous comment upon Claxon's spare statement, and
George's father admired her volubility with the shut smile of toothless
age. She spoke with the burr which the Scotch-Irish settlers have
imparted to the whole middle West, but it was music to Clementina, who
heard now and then a tone of her lover in his sister's voice. In the
midst of it all she caught sight of a mute unfriended figure just
without their circle, his traveling shawl hanging loose upon his
shoulders, and the valise which had formed his sole baggage in the
voyage to and from Europe pulling his long hand out of his coat sleeve.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “here is Mr. Osson that came ova with me, fatha;
he's a relation of Mr. Landa's,” and she presented him to them all.
He shifted his valise to the left hand, and shook hands with each,
asking, “What name?” and then fell motionless again.
“Well,” said her father, “I guess this is the end of this paht of the
ceremony, and I'm goin' to see your baggage through the custom-house,
Clementina; I've read about it, and I want to know how it's done. I want
to see what you ah' tryin' to smuggle in.”
“I guess you won't find much,” she said. “But you'll want the keys,
won't you?” She called to him, as he was stalking away.
“Well, I guess that would be a good idea. Want to help, Miss Hinkle?”
“I guess we might as well all help,” said Clementina, and Mr. Orson
included himself in the invitation. He seemed unable to separate himself
from them, though the passage of Clementina's baggage through the
customs, and its delivery to an expressman for the hotel where the
Hinkles said they were staying might well have severed the last tie
between them.
“Ah' you going straight home, Mr. Osson?” she asked, to rescue him from
the forgetfulness into which they were all letting him fall.
“I think I will remain over a day,” he answered. “I may go on to Boston
before starting West.”
“Well, that's right,” said Clementina's father with the wish to approve
everything native to him, and an instinctive sense of Clementina's wish
to befriend the minister. “Betta come to oua hotel. We're all goin' to
the same one.”
“I presume it is a good one?” Mr. Orson assented.
“Well,” said Claxon, “you must make Miss Hinkle, he'a, stand it if it
ain't. She's got me to go to it.”
Mr. Orson apparently could not enter into the joke; but he accompanied
the party, which again began to forget him, across the ferry and up
the elevated road to the street car that formed the last stage of their
progress to the hotel. At this point George's sister fell silent, and
Clementina's father burst out, “Look he'a! I guess we betta not keep
this up any longa; I don't believe much in supprises, and I guess she
betta know it now!”
He looked at George's sister as if for authority to speak further, and
Clementina looked at her, too, while George's father nervously moistened
his smiling lips with the tip of his tongue, and let his twinkling eyes
rest upon Clementina's face.
“Is he at the hotel?” she asked.
“Yes,” said his sister, monosyllabic for once.
“I knew it,” said Clementina, and she was only half aware of the
fullness with which his sister now explained how he wanted to come so
much that the doctor thought he had better, but that they had made him
promise he would not try to meet her at the steamer, lest it should be
too great a trial of his strength.
“Yes,” Clementina assented, when the story came to an end and was
beginning over again.
She had an inexplicable moment when she stood before her lover in the
room where they left her to meet him alone. She faltered and he waited
constrained by her constraint.
“Is it all a mistake, Clementina?” he asked, with a piteous smile.
“No, no!”
“Am I so much changed?”
“No; you are looking better than I expected.”
“And you are not sorry--for anything?”
“No, I am--Perhaps I have thought of you too much! It seems so strange.”
“I understand,” he answered. “We have been like spirits to each other,
and now we find that we are alive and on the earth like other people;
and we are not used to it.”
“It must be something like that.”
“But if it's something else--if you have the least regret,--if you would
rather”--He stopped, and they remained looking at each other a moment.
Then she turned her head, and glanced out of the window, as if something
there had caught her sight.
“It's a very pleasant view, isn't it?” she said; and she lifted her
hands to her head, and took off her hat, with an effect of having got
home after absence, to stay.