In all her confusing anxieties for Mrs. Lander, Gregory remained at the bottom of her heart a dumb ache. When the pressure of her fears was taken from her she began to suffer for him consciously; then a letter came from him:
"I cannot make it right. It is where it was, and I feel that I must not see you again. I am trying to do right, but with the fear that I am wrong. Send some word to help me before I go away to-morrow.
F. G."
It was what she had expected, she knew now, but it was none the less to be borne because of her expectation. She wrote back:
"I believe you are doing the best you can, and I shall always believe that."
Her note brought back a long letter from him. He said that whatever he did, or wherever he went, he should try to be true to her ideal of him.
If they renounced their love now for the sake of what seemed higher than their love, they might suffer, but they could not choose but do as they were doing.
Clementina was trying to make what she could of this when Miss Milray"s name came up, and Miss Milray followed it.
"I wanted to ask after Mrs. Lander, and I want you to tell her I did.
Will you? Dr. Welwright says he"s going to take her to Venice. Well, I"m sorry--sorry for your going, Clementina, and I"m truly sorry for the cause of it. I shall miss you, my dear, I shall indeed. You know I always wanted to steal you, but you"ll do me the justice to say I never did, and I won"t try, now."
"Perhaps I wasn"t worth stealing," Clementina suggested, with a ruefulness in her smile that went to Miss Milray"s heart.
She put her arms round her and kissed her. "I wasn"t very kind to you, the other day, Clementina, was I?"
"I don"t know," Clementina faltered, with half-averted face.
"Yes, you do! I was trying to make-believe that I didn"t want to meddle with your affairs; but I was really vexed that you hadn"t told me your story before. It hasn"t taken me all this time to reflect that you couldn"t, but it has to make myself come and confess that I had been dry and cold with you." She hesitated. "It"s come out all right, hasn"t it, Clementina?" she asked, tenderly. "You see I want to meddle, now."
"We ah" trying to think so," sighed the girl.
"Tell me about it!" Miss Milray pulled her down on the sofa with her, and modified her embrace to a clasp of Clementina"s bands.
"Why, there isn"t much to tell," she began, but she told what there was, and Miss Milray kept her countenance concerning the scruple that had parted Clementina and her lover. "Perhaps he wouldn"t have thought of it," she said, in a final self-reproach, "if I hadn"t put it into his head."
"Well, then, I"m not sorry you put it into his head," cried Miss Milray.
"Clementina, may I say what I think of Mr. Gregory"s performance?"
"Why, certainly, Miss Milray!"
I think he"s not merely a gloomy little bigot, but a very hard-hearted little wretch, and I"m glad you"re rid of him. No, stop! Let me go on!
You said I might! she persisted, at a protest which imparted itself from Clementina"s restive hands. "It was selfish and cruel of him to let you believe that he had forgotten you. It doesn"t make it right now, when an accident has forced him to tell you that he cared for you all along."
"Why, do you look at it that way, Miss Milray? If he was doing it on my account?"
"He may think he was doing it on your account, but I think he was doing it on his own. In such a thing as that, a man is bound by his mistakes, if he has made any. He can"t go back of them by simply ignoring them.
It didn"t make it the same for you when he decided for your sake that he would act as if he had never spoken to you."
"I presume he thought that it would come right, sometime," Clementina urged. "I did."
"Yes, that was very well for you, but it wasn"t at all well for him. He behaved cruelly; there"s no other word for it."
"I don"t believe he meant to be cruel, Miss Milray," said Clementina.
"You"re not sorry you"ve broken with him?" demanded Miss Milray, severely, and she let go of Clementina"s hands.
"I shouldn"t want him to think I hadn"t been fai"a."
"I don"t understand what you mean by not being fair," said Miss Milray, after a study of the girl"s eyes.
"I mean," Clementina explained, "that if I let him think the religion was all the"e was, it wouldn"t have been fai"a."
"Why, weren"t you sincere about that?"
"Of cou"se I was!" returned the girl, almost indignantly. "But if the"e was anything else, I ought to have told him that, too; and I couldn"t."
"Then you can"t tell me, of course?" Miss Milray rose in a little pique.
"Perhaps some day I will," the girl entreated. "And perhaps that was all."
Miss Milray laughed. "Well, if that was enough to end it, I"m satisfied, and I"ll let you keep your mystery--if it is one--till we meet in Venice; I shall be there early in June. Good bye, dear, and say good bye to Mrs. Lander for me."
XXVIII.
Dr. Welwright got his patient a lodging on the Grand Ca.n.a.l in Venice, and decided to stay long enough to note the first effect of the air and the baths, and to look up a doctor to leave her with.
This took something more than a week, which could not all be spent in Mrs. Lander"s company, much as she wished it. There were hours which he gave to going about in a gondola with Clementina, whom he forbade to be always at the invalid"s side. He tried to rea.s.sure her as to Mrs.
Lander"s health, when he found her rather mute and absent, while they drifted in the silvery sun of the late April weather, just beginning to be warm, but not warm enough yet for the tent of the open gondola. He asked her about Mrs. Lander"s family, and Clementina could only tell him that she had always said she had none. She told him the story of her own relation to her, and he said, "Yes, I heard something of that from Miss Milray." After a moment of silence, during which he looked curiously into the girl"s eyes, "Do you think you can bear a little more care, Miss Claxon?"
"I think I can," said Clementina, not very courageously, but patiently.
"It"s only this, and I wouldn"t tell you if I hadn"t thought you equal to it. Mrs. Lander"s case puzzles me: But I shall leave Dr. Tradonico watching it, and if it takes the turn that there"s a chance it may take, he will tell you, and you"d better find out about her friends, and--let them know. That"s all."
"Yes," said Clementina, as if it were not quite enough. Perhaps she did not fully realize all that the doctor had intended; life alone is credible to the young; life and the expectation of it.
The night before he was to return to Florence there was a full moon; and when he had got Mrs. Lander to sleep he asked Clementina if she would not go out on the lagoon with him. He a.s.signed no peculiar virtue to the moonlight, and he had no new charge to give her concerning his patient when they were embarked. He seemed to wish her to talk about herself, and when she strayed from the topic, he prompted her return. Then he wished to know how she liked Florence, as compared with Venice, and all the other cities she had seen, and when she said she had not seen any but Boston and New York, and London for one night, he wished to know whether she liked Florence as well. She said she liked it best of all, and he told her he was very glad, for he liked it himself better than any place he had ever seen. He spoke of his family in America, which was formed of grownup brothers and sisters, so that he had none of the closest and tenderest ties obliging him to return; there was no reason why he should not spend all his days in Florence, except for some brief visits home. It would be another thing with such a place as Venice; he could never have the same settled feeling there: it was beautiful, but it was unreal; it would be like spending one"s life at the opera. Did not she think so?
She thought so, oh, yes; she never could have the home-feeling at Venice that she had at Florence.
"Exactly; that"s what I meant--a home-feeling; I"m glad you had it." He let the gondola dip and slide forward almost a minute before he added, with an effect of pulling a voice up out of his throat somewhere, "How would you like to live there--with me--as my wife?"
"Why, what do you mean, Dr. Welwright?" asked Clementina, with a vague laugh.
Dr. Welwright laughed, too; but not vaguely; there was a mounting cheerfulness in his laugh. "What I say. I hope it isn"t very surprising."
"No; but I never thought of such a thing."
"Perhaps you will think of it now."
"But you"re not in ea"nest!"