It is hard to readjust all one's prearranged plans in the twinkling of
an eye. Claire felt as if she had received a sudden dash of cold water
square in the face. She quite gulped from the shock of it. How in the
world was she to adapt herself to this brand-new set of conditions on
such short notice--on no notice at all? How was she to be anything but
awkwardly monosyllabic?
"Sit down, please."
Obediently she sat.
"Martha--Mrs. Slawson--tells me, your father was Judge Lang of
Michigan?"
"Yes--Grand Rapids."
"You are a college graduate?"
"Wellesley."
"You have taught before?"
"I tutored a girl throughout a whole summer. Prepared her for her
college entrance exams."
"She passed creditably?"
"She wasn't conditioned in anything."
"How are you on discipline?"
"I don't know."
"You have had no experience? Never tried your hand at training a boy,
for example?"
Claire's blue-gray eyes grew suddenly audacious, and the bridge of her
short nose wrinkled up delightfully in a roguish smile.
"I trained my father. He was a dear old boy--the dearest in the world.
He used to say he had never been brought up, until I came along. He used
to say I ruled him with a rod of iron. But he was very well-behaved
before I got through with him. He was quite a model boy, really."
Glancing quickly up into the steadfast eyes that had, at first, seemed
to her so stern as to be almost forbidding, she met an expression so
mild, so full of winning kindness, that she suddenly remembered and
understood what Martha had meant when she said once: "A body wouldn't
call the queen her cousin when he looks at you like that!"
"Your father was a credit to your bringing-up, certainly. I never had
the honor of meeting Judge Lang, but I knew him by reputation. I
remember to have heard some one say of him once--'He was a judge after
Socrates' own heart. He heard courteously, he answered wisely, he
considered soberly, he decided impartially. Added to this, he was one
whom kings could not corrupt.' That is an enviable record."
Claire's eyes filled with grateful moisture, but she did not allow them
to overflow. She nodded rapidly once or twice in a quaint,
characteristic little fashion, and then sat silent, examining the links
in her silver-meshed purse, with elaborate attention.
"Perhaps Mrs. Slawson has told you that my young nephew is something of
a pickle."
The question restored Claire at once. "I'm fond of pickles."
"Good! I believe there are said to be fifty-eight varieties. Are you
prepared to smack your lips over him, whichever he may be?"
"Well, if I can't smack my lips, there's always the alternative of
smacking _him_."
Mr. Ronald laughed. "Not allowed," he announced regretfully. "My sister
won't have it. Radcliffe is to be guided 'by love alone.'"
"Whose love, please? His or mine?"
Again Mr. Ronald laughed. "Now you've got me!" he admitted. "Perhaps a
little of both. Do you think you could supply your share? I have no
doubt of your being able to secure his."
"I like children. We've always managed to hit it off pretty well, the
kiddies and I, but, of course, I can't guarantee anything definite in
connection with your little boy, because, you see, I've never been a
governess before. I've only had to do with youngsters who've come
a-visiting, or else the small, lower East-siders at the Settlement. But
I'll promise to do my best."
"'Who does the best his circumstance allows, does well, acts nobly.
_Angles_ could no more,' as I wrote in my sister's autograph-album when
I was a boy," announced Mr. Ronald gravely.
Claire smiled over at him with appreciation. "I'd love to come and try,"
she said heartily.
She did not realize she had lost all sensation of alarm, had forgotten
her altered position, that she was no longer one whom these people would
regard as their social equal. She was talking as one talks to a friend.
"And if Radcliffe doesn't get on--if he doesn't improve, I should
say--if you don't _like_ me, you can always send me away, you know."
For a very long moment Mr. Ronald sat silent. So long a moment, indeed,
that Claire, waiting in growing suspense for his answer, suddenly
remembered all those things she had forgotten, and her earlier
embarrassment returned with a wave of bitter self-reproach. She accused
herself of having been too free. She had overstepped her privilege. It
was not apparent to her that he was trying to visualize the picture she
had drawn, the possibility of his _not liking her and sending her away,
you know,_ and that, to his utter consternation, he found it was
something he could not in the least conceive of himself as doing. That,
on the contrary, the vision of her going away for any reason, of her
passing out of his life, now she had once stepped into it, left him with
a chill sensation in the cardiac region that was as unexpected as it was
disturbing. When he spoke at last, it was with a quick, authoritative
brevity that seemed to Claire to bear out her apprehension, and prove he
thought she had forgotten her place, her new place as "hired help," and
must be checked lest she presume on good nature and take a tone to her
employers that was not to be tolerated.
"You will come without fail on Monday morning."
"Very well."
Her manner was so studiously cold and ceremonious, so sharply in
contrast with her former piquant friendliness, that Mr. Ronald looked up
in surprise.
"It is convenient for you to come on Monday, I hope?"
"Perfectly."
"I presume my sister, Mrs. Sherman, will take up with you the question
of--er--compensation."
"O--" quickly, with a little shudder, "that's all right!"
"If it isn't all right, it shall be made so," said Mr. Ronald cordially.
Claire winced. "It is quite, it is perfectly all right!" she repeated
hurriedly, anxious to escape the distasteful subject, still smarting
under the lash of her own self-condemnation--her own wounded pride.
How could she have forgotten, even for a moment, that she was no longer
in a position to deal with these people on equal terms? That now,
kindness on their part meant patronage, on hers presumption. Of course,
she deserved the snub she had received. But, all the same, it hurt! O,
but it hurt! She knew her George Eliot well. It was a pity she did not
recall and apply a certain passage in Maggie Tulliver's experience.
"It did not occur to her that her irritation was due to the pleasanter
emotion which preceded it, just as when we are satisfied with a sense of
glowing warmth, an innocent drop of cold water may fall upon us with a
sudden smart."
Mr. Ronald, searching her face for some clue to the abrupt change in her
voice and manner, saw her cheeks grow white, her lips and chin quiver
painfully.
"You are not well?" he asked, after a second of troubled groping in the
dark.
"O, perfectly." She recollected Martha's injunction, "Never you let on
to 'em, any of your worries. The rich must not be annoyed," and pulled
herself together with a determined mental grip.
"It is good that, being so far away from home, you can be under the
care of your old nurse," observed Mr. Ronald thoughtfully.
"My old nurse," Claire mechanically repeated, preoccupied with her own
painful meditations.
"Martha. It is good, it certainly must be comforting to those who care
for you, to know you are being looked after by so old and trusted a
family servant."
Claire did not reply. She was hardly conscious he was speaking.
"When Martha first mentioned you to me--to Mrs. Sherman, rather--she
described you as her young lady. She has a very warm feeling for you. I
think she considers you in the light of personal property, like a child
of her own. That's excusable--it's commendable, even, in such a case as
this. I believe she said she nursed you till you were able to walk."
With a shock of sudden realization, Claire waked to the fact that
something was wrong somewhere--something that it was _up to_ her to make
right at once. And yet, it was all so cloudy, so confused in her mind
with her duty to Martha, her duty to herself, and to these people--her
fear of being again kindly but firmly put back in her _place_ if she
ventured the merest fraction of an inch beyond the boundary prescribed
by this grandee of the autocratic bearing and "keep-off-the-grass
expression," that she hesitated, and her opportunity was lost.
"I think I must go now," she announced abruptly, and rose, got past him
somehow, and made blindly for the door. Then there was the dim vista of
the long hall stretching before her, like a path of escape, and she fled
its length, and down that of the staircase. Then out at the street-door,
and into the chill of the cold December noonday.
When she had vanished, Francis Ronald stood a moment with eyes fixed in
the direction she had taken. Then, abruptly, he seized the telephone
that stood upon the table beside him, switched it to connect with the
basement region, and called for Mrs. Slawson.
"This is Mr. Ronald speaking. Is Martha there?"
"Yes, sir. Please hold the wire, and I'll call her."
"Be quick!"
"Yes, sir!"
A second, and Martha's voice repeated his name. "Mr. Ronald, this is
Martha!"
"Good! I want you to put on your things at once, and follow Miss Lang,"
he directed briefly. "I do not think she's sick, but as she was talking
to me, I noticed she grew suddenly quite pale, and seemed troubled and
anxious. Waste no time! Go at once!"
The only answer was a sharp click over the wire, as Mrs. Slawson snapped
the receiver into its crotch.
But though Claire was not five minutes in advance of her, Martha was
unable to make up the distance between them, and by the time she had
mounted the stairs leading to the Elevated, and stood panting for breath
on the platform, the train she had hoped to catch was to be seen
disappearing around the curve at Fifty-third Street.
All the way uptown she speculated as to the why and wherefore of Mr.
Ronald's immediate concern about Claire.
"It's kinder previous, his gettin' so stirred up over her at this stage
o' the game," she pondered. "It ain't natural, or it ain't lucky. I'd
much liefer have it go slower, an' be more thora. A thing like this
affair I'm tryin' to menoover, is like some o' the things you cook. You
want to leave 'em get good an' het-up before the stirrin' begins. If
they're stirred up too soon, they're ap' to cruddle on you, an' never
get that nice, smooth, thick, _gooey_ look you like to see in rich
custuds, same as love-affairs. I hope she didn't go an' have a scare on,
an' give 'em to think she ain't healthy. She's as sound as a nut, but if
Mis' Sherman once is fixed with the notion she's subjeck to
faint-spells, nothin' on earth will change her mind, an' then it'll be
nit, not, nohow for Martha's little scheme. I must caution Miss Claire
about showin' the white feather. No matter how weak-kneed she feels,
she's just _got_ to buck up an' ack like she's a soldier. That's how--"
Martha had reached her own street, and was turning the corner, when she
stopped with a sensation as of a quick, fierce clutching at her heart.
Evidently there had been some sort of accident, for a great crowd was
gathered on the sidewalk, and beside the gutter-curbstone, just ahead of
her, stood waiting an ambulance. Her healthy, normal mind did not easily
jump at tragic conclusions. She did not, as a general thing, fear the
worst, did not even accept it when it came, but now, somehow, a close
association of ideas suggested Claire in an instant, and before ever she
had stirred a step, she saw in her mind's eye the delicate little form
she loved, lying injured, maybe mangled, stretched out upon the asphalt,
in the midst of the curious throng.
She hurried, hurried faster than any of the others who were also
hurrying, and pushed her way on through the press to the very edge of
the crowd. A crying woman caught wildly at her arm, as she stood for a
second struggling to advance.
"It's a child!--A little girl--run over by an automobile! O God help
the poor mother!" the stranger sobbed hysterically.
Martha freed herself from the clinging fingers and pressed forward. "A
child--Miss Claire's such a little thing, no wonder they think she's a
child," she murmured. "True for you, my good woman, God help the poor
mother!"
"You know her?"
"I know Miss Claire."
For some reason the crowd made way, and let her through to the very
heart of it, and there--sure enough, there was Claire, but Claire crying
and kneeling over an outstretched little form, lying unconscious on the
pavement.
"Why, it's--my Francie!" said Martha quietly.