“I guess,” she said diffidently, “you’ve got an old mother of your own that you help up and down—you do it so easy.”
“No, I wish I had,” answered Baskerville, with a kindness in his voice that both the old woman and the young felt. “My mother has been dead a long time; but I have a fine old aunt, Mrs. Luttrell, who makes me fetch and carry like an expressman’s horse, and then she says I am not half so attentive to her as I ought to be. Perhaps Miss Clavering has told you about her—I had the pleasure of dining with Miss Clavering at my aunt’s last night.”
“Yes, she did, and she told me you were all real nice,” answered Mrs. Clavering—and was appalled at her own daring.
Anne and Baskerville talked about the dinner, as they walked along the sunny, quiet street. Anne had enjoyed every moment spent in Mrs. Luttrell’s house, and said so. Mrs. Clavering walked with difficulty, and the young man’s arm at the street crossings was a real assistance to her; and without talking down to Mrs. Clavering or embarrassing her by direct remarks, he skilfully included her in the conversation.
Mrs. Clavering felt increasingly comfortable. Here was a man who did not scorn a woman because she was old and plain. For once the poor woman did not feel in the way with another person besides Anne. She ventured several remarks, such as: “People ought to be kind to poor dumb brutes, who can’t tell what ails them,” and “Washington is a great deal prettier for having so many trees, because trees make any place pretty,”—to all of which Baskerville listened with pleasant courtesy. He began to see in this ordinary, uneducated woman a certain hint of attractiveness in her gentleness of voice and softness of eyes that were reflected and intensified in the slim and graceful daughter by her side. Anne turned her soft, expressive eyes—her only real beauty—on Baskerville with a look of gratitude in them. Her life at home was one long fight for the happiness and dignity of her mother, for whom no one of her family had the least respect, except herself and her brother Reginald; and Reginald was but a poor creature in many ways. If Baskerville had sat up all night for a month, trying to devise a plan to ingratiate himself with Anne Clavering, he could not have done it better than by his courtesy to her mother. And he, appreciating the strong affection, the courage, the absence of false pride, the unselfishness, of Anne Clavering in this particular, admired her the more.
As they walked slowly along and talked, a kind of intimacy seemed to spring into being between them. Gratitude is a strong incentive to regard on both sides, and Baskerville’s attitude toward Mrs. Clavering touched Anne to the heart. Their objective point was Dupont Circle, which at that hour was tolerably free from the colored gentry and the baby carriages which make it populous eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. But Mrs. Clavering was destined to receive further distinguished attentions during that episode of the walk. When she was seated comfortably on a bench Baskerville proposed to Anne that he show her, on the other side of the Circle, a silver maple tree in great autumnal glory.
“Now do go, my dear,” said Mrs. Clavering. “I’d like to set here awhile. Do, Mr. Baskerville, take her off—she ain’t left me an hour this day, and she oughter have a little pleasure.”
“Come, obey your mother,” Baskerville said; and Anne, smiling, walked off with him.
Mrs. Clavering, good soul, was like other mothers, and as her darling child went off with Baskerville she thought: “How nice them two look together! And he is such a civil-spoken, sensible young man. Anne deserves a good husband, and if—“
This train of thought was interrupted by General Brandon. He, too, after his luncheon, was out for a Sunday airing, and passing the bench on which Mrs. Clavering sat, the good woman, with new-found courage, looked up at him and actually ventured upon a timid bow. She had recognized him from the first time she had seen him, when she moved into their new and splendid house; and she had a perfectly clear recollection of the old sutler days, when General Brandon was a handsome young captain, who always had a polite word for the sutler’s wife. But she had never before, in the two years they had lived opposite each other, had the courage to speak to him. Her success with Baskerville emboldened her, and as General Brandon made her an elaborate, old-fashioned bow Mrs. Clavering said:—