"Oh keep "em, Clem!" the big girl urged, pa.s.sionately, and the rest joined her with their entreaties.
"I guess I betta not," said Clementina, and she completed the work of taking off the slippers in which the big girl could lend her no further aid, such was her affliction of spirit.
"All right, lady," said the shoeman. "Them"s youa slippas, and I"ll just keep "em for you till the latta paht of August."
He drove away, and in the woods which he had to pa.s.s through on the road to another hotel he overtook the figure of a man pacing rapidly. He easily recognized Gregory, but he bore him no malice. "Like a lift?" he asked, slowing up beside him.
"No, thank you," said Gregory. "I"m out for the walk." He looked round furtively, and then put his hand on the side of the wagon, mechanically, as if to detain it, while he walked on.
"Did you sell the slippers to the young lady?"
"Well, not as you may say sell, exactly," returned the shoeman, cautiously.
"Have you-got them yet?" asked the student.
"Guess so," said the man. "Like to see "em?"
He pulled up his horse.
Gregory faltered a moment. Then he said, "I"d like to buy them. Quick!"
He looked guiltily about, while the shoeman alertly obeyed, with some delay for a box to put them in. "How much are they?"
"Well, that"s a custom made slipper, and the price to the lady that oddid"em was seven dollas. But I"ll let you have "em for three--if you want "em for a present."--The shoeman was far too discreet to permit himself anything so overt as a smile; he merely let a light of intelligence come into his face.
Gregory paid the money. "Please consider this as confidential," he said, and he made swiftly away. Before the shoeman could lock the drawer that had held the slippers, and clamber to his perch under the buggy-hood, Gregory was running back to him again.
"Stop!" he called, and as he came up panting in an excitement which the shoeman might well have mistaken for indignation attending the discovery of some blemish in his purchase. "Do you regard this as in any manner a deception?" he palpitated.
"Why," the shoeman began cautiously, "it wa"n"t what you may call a promise, exactly. More of a joke than anything else, I looked on it. I just said I"d keep "em for her; but--"
"You don"t understand. If I seemed to disapprove--if I led any one to suppose, by my manner, or by--anything--that I thought it unwise or unbecoming to buy the shoes, and then bought them myself, do you think it is in the nature of an acted falsehood?"
"Lo"d no!" said the shoeman, and he caught up the slack of his reins to drive on, as if he thought this amusing maniac might also be dangerous.
Gregory stopped him with another question. "And shall--will you--think it necessary to speak of--of this transaction? I leave you free!"
"Well," said the shoeman. "I don"t know what you"re after, exactly, but if you think I"m so shot on for subjects that I"ve got to tell the folks at the next stop that I sold a fellar a pair of slippas for his gul--Go "long!" he called to his horse, and left Gregory standing in the middle of the road.
VIII.
The people who came to the Middlemount in July were ordinarily the nicest, but that year the August folks were nicer than usual and there were some students among them, and several graduates just going into business, who chose to take their outing there instead of going to the sea-side or the North Woods. This was a chance that might not happen in years again, and it made the house very gay for the young ladies; they ceased to pay court to the clerk, and asked him for letters only at mail-time. Five or six couples were often on the floor together, at the hops, and the young people sat so thick upon the stairs that one could scarcely get up or down.
So many young men made it gay not only for the young ladies, but also for a certain young married lady, when she managed to shirk her rather filial duties to her husband, who was much about the verandas, purblindly feeling his way with a stick, as he walked up and down, or sitting opaque behind the gla.s.ses that preserved what was left of his sight, while his wife read to him. She was soon acquainted with a good many more people than he knew, and was in constant request for such occasions as needed a chaperon not averse to mountain climbing, or drives to other hotels for dancing and supper and return by moonlight, or the more boisterous sorts of charades; no sheet and pillow case party was complete without her; for welsh-rarebits her presence was essential.
The event of the conflict between these social claims and her duties to her husband was her appeal to Mrs. Atwell on a point which the landlady referred to Clementina.
"She wants somebody to read to her husband, and I don"t believe but what you could do it, Clem. You"re a good reader, as good as I want to hear, and while you may say that you don"t put in a great deal of elocution, I guess you can read full well enough. All he wants is just something to keep him occupied, and all she wants is a chance to occupy herself with otha folks. Well, she is moa their own age. I d"know as the"s any hahm in her. And my foot"s so much betta, now, that I don"t need you the whole while, any moa."
"Did you speak to her about me?" asked the girl.
"Well, I told her I"d tell you. I couldn"t say how you"d like."
"Oh, I guess I should like," said Clementina, with her eyes shining.
"But--I should have to ask motha."
"I don"t believe but what your motha"d be willin"," said Mrs. Atwell.
"You just go down and see her about it."
The next day Mrs. Milray was able to take leave of her husband, in setting off to matronize a coaching party, with an exuberance of good conscience that she shared with the spectators. She kissed him with lively affection, and charged him not to let the child read herself to death for him. She captioned Clementina that Mr. Milray never knew when he was tired, and she had better go by the clock in her reading, and not trust to any sign from him.
Clementina promised, and when the public had followed Mrs. Milray away, to watch her ascent to the topmost seat of the towering coach, by means of the ladder held in place by two porters, and by help of the down-stretched hands of all the young men on the coach, Clementina opened the book at the mark she found in it, and began to read to Mr.
Milray.
The book was a metaphysical essay, which he professed to find a lighter sort of reading than fiction; he said most novelists were too seriously employed in preventing the marriage of the lovers, up to a certain point, to be amusing; but you could always trust a metaphysician for entertainment if he was very much in earnest, and most metaphysicians were. He let Clementina read on a good while in her tender voice, which had still so many notes of childhood in it, before he manifested any consciousness of being read to. He kept the smile on his delicate face which had come there when his wife said at parting, "I don"t believe I should leave her with you if you could see how prettty she was," and he held his head almost motionlessly at the same poise he had given it in listening to her final charges. It was a fine head, still well covered with soft hair, which lay upon it in little sculpturesque ma.s.ses, like chiseled silver, and the acquiline profile had a purity of line in the arch of the high nose and the jut of the thin lips and delicate chin, which had not been lost in the change from youth to age. One could never have taken it for the profile of a New York lawyer who had early found New York politics more profitable than law, and after a long time pa.s.sed in city affairs, had emerged with a name shadowed by certain doubtful transactions. But this was Milray"s history, which in the rapid progress of American events, was so far forgotten that you had first to remind people of what he had helped do before you could enjoy their surprise in realizing that this gentle person, with the cast of intellectual refinement which distinguished his face, was the notorious Milray, who was once in all the papers. When he made his game and retired from politics, his family would have sacrificed itself a good deal to reclaim him socially, though they were of a severer social than spiritual conscience, in the decay of some ancestral ideals. But he had rendered their willingness hopeless by marrying, rather late in life, a young girl from the farther West who had come East with a general purpose to get on. She got on very well with Milray, and it was perhaps not altogether her own fault that she did not get on so well with his family, when she began to subst.i.tute a society aim for the artistic ambition that had brought her to New York. They might have forgiven him for marrying her, but they could not forgive her for marrying him. They were of New England origin and they were perhaps a little more critical with her than if they had been New Yorkers of Dutch strain. They said that she was a little Western hoyden, but that the stage would have been a good place for her if she could have got over her Pike county accent; in the hush of family councils they confided to one another the belief that there were phases of the variety business in which her accent would have been no barrier to her success, since it could not have been heard in the dance, and might have been disguised in the song.
"Will you kindly read that pa.s.sage over again?" Milray asked as Clementina paused at the end of a certain paragraph. She read it, while he listened attentively. "Could you tell me just what you understand by that?" he pursued, as if he really expected Clementina to instruct him.
She hesitated a moment before she answered, "I don"t believe I undastand anything at all."
"Do you know," said Milray, "that"s exactly my own case? And I"ve an idea that the author is in the same box," and Clementina perceived she might laugh, and laughed discreetly.
Milray seemed to feel the note of discreetness in her laugh, and he asked, smiling, "How old did you tell me you were?"
"I"m sixteen," said Clementina.
"It"s a great age," said Milray. "I remember being sixteen myself; I have never been so old since. But I was very old for my age, then. Do you think you are?"
"I don"t believe I am," said Clementina, laughing again, but still very discreetly.
"Then I should like to tell you that you have a very agreeable voice. Do you sing?"
"No"m--no, sir--no," said Clementina, "I can"t sing at all."
"Ah, that"s very interesting," said Milray, "but it"s not surprising.
I wish I could see your face distinctly; I"ve a great curiosity about matching voices and faces; I must get Mrs. Milray to tell me how you look. Where did you pick up your pretty knack at reading? In school, here?"
"I don"t know," answered Clementina. "Do I read-the way you want?"
"Oh, perfectly. You let the meaning come through--when there is any."
"Sometimes," said Clementina ingenuously, "I read too fast; the children ah" so impatient when I"m reading to them at home, and they hurry me.
But I can read a great deal slower if you want me to."
"No, I"m impatient, too," said Milray. "Are there many of them,--the children?"
"There ah" six in all."