CHAPTER IX
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.