Clementina and the Vice-Consul afterwards agreed that Mrs. Lander must
have sent the will to Mr. Orson in one of those moments of suspicion when
she distrusted everyone about her, or in that trouble concerning her
husband's kindred which had grown upon her more and more, as a means of
assuring them that they were provided for.
"But even then," the vice-consul concluded, "I don't see why she wanted
this man to come out here. The only explanation is that she was a little
off her base towards the last. That's the charitable supposition."
"I don't think she was herself, some of the time," Clementina assented in
acceptance of the kindly construction.
The vice-consul modified his good will toward Mrs. Lander's memory so far
as to say, "Well, if she'd been somebody else most of the time, it would
have been an improvement."
The talk turned upon Mr. Orson, and what he would probably do. The
vice-consul had found him a cheap lodging, at his request, and he seemed
to have settled down at Venice either without the will or without the
power to go home, but the vice-consul did not know where he ate, or what
he did with himself except at the times when he came for letters. Once or
twice when he looked him up he found him writing, and then the minister
explained that he had promised to "correspond" for an organ of his sect
in the Northwest; but he owned that there was no money in it. He was
otherwise reticent and even furtive in his manner. He did not seem to go
much about the city, but kept to his own room; and if he was writing of
Venice it must have been chiefly from his acquaintance with the little
court into which his windows looked. He affected the vice-consul as
forlorn and helpless, and he pitied him and rather liked him as a
fellow-victim of Mrs. Lander.
One morning Mr. Orson came to see Clementina, and after a brief passage
of opinion upon the weather, he fell into an embarrassed silence from
which he pulled himself at last with a visible effort. "I hardly know how
to lay before you what I have to say, Miss Claxon," he began, "and I must
ask you to put the best construction upon it. I have never been reduced
to a similar distress before. You would naturally think that I would turn
to the vice-consul, on such an occasion; but I feel, through our relation
to the--to Mrs. Lander--ah--somewhat more at home with you."
He stopped, as if he wished to be asked his business, and she entreated
him, "Why, what is it, Mr. Osson? Is there something I can do? There
isn't anything I wouldn't!"
A gleam, watery and faint, which still could not be quite winked away,
came into his small eyes. "Why, the fact is, could you--ah--advance me
about five dollars?"
"Why, Mr. Orson!" she began, and he seemed to think she wished to
withdraw her offer of help, for he interposed.
"I will repay it as soon as I get an expected remittance from home. I
came out on the invitation of Mrs. Lander, and as her guest, and I
supposed--"
"Oh, don't say a wo'd!" cried Clementina, but now that he had begun he
was powerless to stop.
"I would not ask, but my landlady has pressed me for her rent--I suppose
she needs it--and I have been reduced to the last copper--"
The girl whose eyes the tears of self pity so rarely visited, broke into
a sob that seemed to surprise her visitor. But she checked herself as
with a quick inspiration: "Have you been to breakfast?"
"Well--ah--not this morning," Mr. Orson admitted, as if to imply that
having breakfasted some other morning might be supposed to serve the
purpose.
She left him and ran to the door. "Maddalena, Maddalena!" she called; and
Maddalena responded with a frightened voice from the direction of the
kitchen:
"Vengo subito!"
She hurried out with the coffee-pot in her hand, as if she had just taken
it up when Clementina called; and she halted for the whispered colloquy
between them which took place before she set it down on the table already
laid for breakfast; then she hurried out of the room again. She came back
with a cantaloupe and grapes, and cold ham, and put them before
Clementina and her guest, who both ignored the hunger with which he swept
everything before him. When his famine had left nothing, he said, in
decorous compliment:
"That is very good coffee, I should think the genuine berry, though I am
told that they adulterate coffee a great deal in Europe."
"Do they?" asked Clementina. "I didn't know it."
She left him still sitting before the table, and came back with some
bank-notes in her hand. "Are you sure you hadn't betta take moa?" she
asked.
"I think that five dollars will be all that I shall require," he
answered, with dignity. "I should be unwilling to accept more. I shall
undoubtedly receive some remittances soon."
"Oh, I know you will," Clementina returned, and she added, "I am waiting
for lettas myself; I don't think any one ought to give up."
The preacher ignored the appeal which was in her tone rather than her
words, and went on to explain at length the circumstances of his having
come to Europe so unprovided against chances. When he wished to excuse
his imprudence, she cried out, "Oh, don't say a wo'd! It's just like my
own fatha," and she told him some things of her home which apparently did
not interest him very much. He had a kind of dull, cold self-absorption
in which he was indeed so little like her father that only her kindness
for the lonely man could have justified her in thinking there was any
resemblance.
She did not see him again for a week, and meantime she did not tell the
vice-consul of what had happened. But an anxiety for the minister began
to mingle with her anxieties for herself; she constantly wondered why she
did not hear from her lover, and she occasionally wondered whether Mr.
Orson were not falling into want again. She had decided to betray his
condition to the vice-consul, when he came, bringing the money she had
lent him. He had received a remittance from an unexpected source; and he
hoped she would excuse his delay in repaying her loan. She wished not to
take the money, at least till he was quite sure he should not want it,
but he insisted.
"I have enough to keep me, now, till I hear from other sources, with the
means for returning home. I see no object in continuing here, under the
circumstances."
In the relief which she felt for him Clementina's heart throbbed with a
pain which was all for herself. Why should she wait any longer either?
For that instant she abandoned the hope which had kept her up so long; a
wave of homesickness overwhelmed her.
"I should like to go back, too," she said. "I don't see why I'm staying."
"Mr. Osson, why can't you let me"--she was going to say--"go home with
you?" But she really said what was also in her heart, "Why can't you let
me give you the money to go home? It is all Mrs. Landa's money, anyway."
"There is certainly that view of the matter," he assented with a
promptness that might have suggested a lurking grudge for the
vice-consul's decision that she ought to keep the money Mrs. Lander had
given her.
But Clementina urged unsuspiciously: "Oh, yes, indeed! And I shall feel
better if you take it. I only wish I could go home, too!"
The minister was silent while he was revolving, with whatever scruple or
reluctance, a compromise suitable to the occasion. Then he said, "Why
should we not return together?"
"Would you take me?" she entreated.
"That should be as you wished. I am not much acquainted with the usages
in such matters, but I presume that it would be entirely practicable. We
could ask the vice-consul."
"Yes--"
"He must have had considerable experience in cases of the kind. Would
your friends meet you in New York, or--"
"I don't know," said Clementina with a pang for the thought of a meeting
she had sometimes fancied there, when her lover had come out for her, and
her father had been told to come and receive them. "No," she sighed,
"the'e wouldn't be time to let them know. But it wouldn't make any
difference. I could get home from New Yo'k alone," she added, listlessly.
Her spirits had fallen again. She saw that she could not leave Venice
till she had heard in some sort from the letter she had written. "Perhaps
it couldn't be done, after all. But I will see Mr. Bennam about it, Mr.
Osson; and I know he will want you to have that much of the money. He
will be coming he'e, soon."
He rose upon what he must have thought her hint, and said, "I should not
wish to have him swayed against his judgment."
The vice-consul came not long after the minister had left her, and she
began upon what she wished to do for him.
The vice-consul was against it. "I would rather lend him the money out of
my own pocket. How are you going to get along yourself, if you let him
have so much?"
She did not answer at once. Then she said, hopelessly, "I've a great mind
to go home with him. I don't believe there's any use waiting here any
longa." The vice-consul could not say anything to this. She added, "Yes,
I believe I will go home. We we'e talking about it, the other day, and he
is willing to let me go with him."
"I should think he would be," the vice-consul retorted in his indignation
for her. "Did you offer to pay for his passage?"
"Yes," she owned, "I did," and again the vice-consul could say nothing.
"If I went, it wouldn't make any difference whether it took it all or
not. I should have plenty to get home from New York with."
"Well," the vice-consul assented, dryly, "it's for you to say."
"I know you don't want me to do it!"
"Well, I shall miss you," he answered, evasively.
"And I shall miss you, too, Mr. Bennam. Don't you believe it? But if I
don't take this chance to get home, I don't know when I shall eva have
anotha. And there isn't any use waiting--no, there isn't!"
The vice-consul laughed at the sort of imperative despair in her tone.
"How are you going? Which way, I mean."
They counted up Clementina's debts and assets, and they found that if she
took the next steamer from Genoa, which was to sail in four days, she
would have enough to pay her own way and Mr. Orson's to New York, and
still have some thirty dollars over, for her expenses home to
Middlemount. They allowed for a second cabin-passage, which the
vice-consul said was perfectly good on the Genoa steamers. He rather
urged the gentility and comfort of the second cabin-passage, but his
reasons in favor of it were wasted upon Clementina's indifference; she
wished to get home, now, and she did not care how. She asked the
vice-consul to see the minister for her, and if he were ready and
willing, to telegraph for their tickets. He transacted the business so
promptly that he was able to tell her when he came in the evening that
everything was in train. He excused his coming; he said that now she was
going so soon, he wanted to see all he could of her. He offered no excuse
when he came the next morning; but he said he had got a letter for her
and thought she might want to have it at once.
He took it out of his hat and gave it to her. It was addressed in
Hinkle's writing; her answer had come at last; she stood trembling with
it in her hand.