The person whom the vice-consul helped out of the gondola was an elderly man like himself, and she took a last refuge in the chance that he might be Hinkle"s father, sent to bring her to him because he could not come to her; or to soften some terrible news to her. Then her fancy fluttered and fell, and she waited patiently for the fact to reveal itself.
There was something countrified in the figure of the man, and something clerical in his face, though there was nothing in his uncouth best clothes that confirmed this impression. In both face and figure there was a vague resemblance to some one she had seen before, when the vice-consul said:
"Miss Claxon, I want to introduce the Rev. Mr. James B. Orson, of Michigan." Mr. Orson took Clementina"s hand into a dry, rough grasp, while he peered into her face with small, shy eyes. The vice-consul added with a kind of official formality, "Mr. Orson is the half-nephew of Mr. Lander," and then Clementina now knew whom it was that he resembled. "He has come to Venice," continued the vice-consul, "at the request of Mrs. Lander; and he did not know of her death until I informed him of the fact. I should have said that Mr. Orson is the son of Mr. Lander"s half-sister. He can tell you the balance himself." The vice-consul p.r.o.nounced the concluding word with a certain distaste, and the effect of gladly retiring into the background.
"Won"t you sit down?" said Clementina, and she added with one of the remnants of her Middlemount breeding, "Won"t you let me take your hat?"
Mr. Orson in trying to comply with both her invitations, knocked his well worn silk hat from the hand that held it, and sent it rolling across the room, where Clementina pursued it and put it on the table.
"I may as well say at once," he began in a flat irresonant voice, "that I am the representative of Mrs. Lander"s heirs, and that I have a letter from her enclosing her last will and testament, which I have shown to the consul here--"
"Vice-consul," the dignitary interrupted with an effect of rejecting any part in the affair.
"Vice-consul, I should say,--and I wish to lay them both before you, in order that--"
"Oh, that is all right," said Clementina sweetly. "I"m glad there is a will. I was afraid there wasn"t any at all. Mr. Bennam and I looked for it everywhe"e." She smiled upon the Rev. Mr. Orson, who silently handed her a paper. It was the will which Milray had written for Mrs. Lander, and which, with whatever crazy motive, she had sent to her husband"s kindred. It provided that each of them should be given five thousand dollars out of the estate, and that then all should go to Clementina. It was the will Mrs. Lander told her she had made, but she had never seen the paper before, and the legal forms hid the meaning from her so that she was glad to have the vice-consul make it clear. Then she said tranquilly, "Yes, that is the way I supposed it was."
Mr. Orson by no means shared her calm. He did not lift his voice, but on the level it had taken it became agitated. "Mrs. Lander gave me the address of her lawyer in Boston when she sent me the will, and I made a point of calling on him when I went East, to sail. I don"t know why she wished me to come out to her, but being sick, I presume she naturally wished to see some of her own family."
He looked at Clementina as if he thought she might dispute this, but she consented at her sweetest, "Oh, yes, indeed," and he went on:
"I found her affairs in a very different condition from what she seemed to think. The estate was mostly in securities which had not been properly looked after, and they had depreciated until they were some of them not worth the paper they were printed on. The house in Boston is mortgaged up to its full value, I should say; and I should say that Mrs.
Lander did not know where she stood. She seemed to think that she was a very rich woman, but she lived high, and her lawyer said he never could make her understand how the money was going. Mr. Lander seemed to lose his grip, the year he died, and engaged in some very unfortunate speculations; I don"t know whether he told her. I might enter into details--"
"Oh, that is not necessary," said Clementina, politely, witless of the disastrous quality of the facts which Mr. Orson was imparting.
"But the sum and substance of it all is that there will not be more than enough to pay the bequests to her own family, if there is that."
Clementina looked with smiling innocence at the vice-consul.
"That is to say," he explained, "there won"t be anything at all for you, Miss Claxon."
"Well, that"s what I always told Mrs. Lander I ratha, when she brought it up. I told her she ought to give it to his family," said Clementina, with a satisfaction in the event which the vice-consul seemed unable to share, for he remained gloomily silent. "There is that last money I drew on the letter of credit, you can give that to Mr. Orson."
"I have told him about that money," said the vice-consul, dryly. "It will be handed over to him when the estate is settled, if there isn"t enough to pay the bequests without it."
"And the money which Mrs. Landa gave me before that," she pursued, eagerly. Mr. Orson had the effect of p.r.i.c.king up his ears, though it was in fact merely a gleam of light that came into his eyes.
"That"s yours," said the vice-consul, sourly, almost savagely. "She didn"t give it to you without she wanted you to have it, and she didn"t expect you to pay her bequests with it. In my opinion," he burst out, in a wrathful recollection of his own sufferings from Mrs. Lander, "she didn"t give you a millionth part of your due for all the trouble she made you; and I want Mr. Orson to understand that, right here."
Clementina turned her impartial gaze upon Mr. Orson as if to verify the impression of this extreme opinion upon him; he looked as if he neither accepted nor rejected it, and she concluded the sentence which the vice-consul had interrupted. "Because I ratha not keep it, if there isn"t enough without it."
The vice-consul gave way to violence. "It"s none of your business whether there"s enough or not. What you"ve got to do is to keep what belongs to you, and I"m going to see that you do. That"s what I"m here for." If this a.s.sumption of official authority did not awe Clementina, at least it put a check upon her headlong self-sacrifice. The vice-consul strengthened his hold upon her by asking, "What would you do. I should like to know, if you gave that up?"
"Oh, I should get along," she returned, Light-heartedly, but upon questioning herself whether she should turn to Miss Milray for help, or appeal to the vice-consul himself, she was daunted a little, and she added, "But just as you say, Mr. Bennam."
"I say, keep what fairly belongs to you. It"s only two or three hundred dollars at the outside," he explained to Mr. Orson"s hungry eyes; but perhaps the sum did not affect the country minister"s imagination as trifling; his yearly salary must sometimes have been little more.
The whole interview left the vice-consul out of humor with both parties to the affair; and as to Clementina, between the ideals of a perfect little saint, and a perfect little simpleton he remained for the present unable to cla.s.s her.
x.x.xV.
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 a.s.suring 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 a.s.sented 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 pa.s.sage of opinion upon the weather, he fell into an embarra.s.sed 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."