Ragged Lady. William Dean Howells
expansion that breakfast was his best meal, but he did what he could to make it his worst by beginning with oranges and oatmeal, going forward to beefsteak and fried potatoes, and closing with griddle cakes and syrup, washed down with a cup of cocoa, which his wife decided to be wholesomer than coffee. By the time he had finished such a repast, he crept out of the dining-room in a state of tension little short of anguish, which he confided to the sympathy of the bootblack in the washroom.
He always went from having his shoes polished to get a toothpick at the clerk's desk; and at the Middlemount House, the morning after he had been that drive with Mrs. Lander, he lingered a moment with his elbows beside the register. “How about a buckboa'd?” he asked.
“Something you can drive yourself”—the clerk professionally dropped his eye to the register—“Mr. Lander?”
“Well, no, I guess not, this time,” the little man returned, after a moment's reflection. “Know anything of a family named Claxon, down the road, here, a piece?” He twisted his head in the direction he meant.
“This is my first season at Middlemount; but I guess Mr. Atwell will know.” The clerk called to the landlord, who was smoking in his private room behind the office, and the landlord came out. The clerk repeated Mr. Lander's questions.
“Pootty good kind of folks, I guess,” said the landlord provisionally, through his cigar-smoke. “Man's a kind of univussal genius, but he's got a nice family of children; smaht as traps, all of 'em.”
“How about that oldest gul?” asked Mr. Lander.
“Well, the'a,” said the landlord, taking the cigar out of his mouth. “I think she's about the nicest little thing goin'. We've had her up he'e, to help out in a busy time, last summer, and she's got moo sense than guls twice as old. Takes hold like—lightnin'.”
“About how old did you say she was?”
“Well, you've got me the'a, Mr. Landa; I guess I'll ask Mis' Atwell.”
“The'e's no hurry,” said Lander. “That buckboa'd be round pretty soon?” he asked of the clerk.
“Be right along now, Mr. Lander,” said the clerk, soothingly. He stepped out to the platform that the teams drove up to from the stable, and came back to say that it was coming. “I believe you said you wanted something you could drive yourself?”
“No, I didn't, young man,” answered the elder sharply. But the next moment he added, “Come to think of it, I guess it's just as well. You needn't get me no driver. I guess I know the way well enough. You put me in a hitchin' strap.”
“All right, Mr. Lander,” said the clerk, meekly.
The landlord had caught the peremptory note in Lander's voice, and he came out of his room again to see that there was nothing going wrong.
“It's all right,” said Lander, and went out and got into his buckboard.
“Same horse you had yesterday,” said the young clerk. “You don't need to spare the whip.”
“I guess I can look out for myself,” said Lander, and he shook the reins and gave the horse a smart cut, as a hint of what he might expect.
The landlord joined the clerk in looking after the brisk start the horse made. “Not the way he set off with the old lady, yesterday,” suggested the clerk.
The landlord rolled his cigar round in his tubed lips. “I guess he's used to ridin' after a good hoss.” He added gravely to the clerk, “You don't want to make very free with that man, Mr. Pane. He won't stan' it, and he's a class of custom that you want to cata to when it comes in your way. I suspicioned what he was when they came here and took the highest cost rooms without tu'nin' a haia. They're a class of custom that you won't get outside the big hotels in the big reso'ts. Yes, sir,” said the landlord taking a fresh start, “they're them kind of folks that live the whole yea' round in hotels; no'th in summa, south in winta, and city hotels between times. They want the best their money can buy, and they got plenty of it. She”—he meant Mrs. Lander—“has been tellin' my wife how they do; she likes to talk a little betta than he doos; and I guess when it comes to society, they're away up, and they won't stun' any nonsense.”
III.
Lander came into his wife's room between ten and eleven o'clock, and found her still in bed, but with her half-finished breakfast on a tray before her. As soon as he opened the door she said, “I do wish you would take some of that heat-tonic of mine, Albe't, that the docta left for me in Boston. You'll find it in the upper right bureau box, the'a; and I know it'll be the very thing for you. It'll relieve you of that suffocatin' feeling that I always have, comin' up stars. Dea'! I don't see why they don't have an elevata; they make you pay enough; and I wish you'd get me a little more silva, so's't I can give to the chambamaid and the bell-boy; I do hate to be out of it. I guess you been up and out long ago. They did make that polonaise of mine too tight after all I said, and I've been thinkin' how I could get it alt'ed; but I presume there ain't a seamstress to be had around he'e for love or money. Well, now, that's right, Albe't; I'm glad to see you doin' it.”
Lander had opened the lid of the bureau box, and uncorked a bottle from it, and tilted this to his lips.
“Don't take too much,” she cautioned him, “or you'll lose the effects. When I take too much of a medicine, it's wo'se than nothing, as fah's I can make out. When I had that spell in Thomasville spring before last, I believe I should have been over it twice as quick if I had taken just half the medicine I did. You don't really feel anyways bad about the heat, do you, Albe't?”
“I'm all right,” said Lander. He put back the bottle in its place and sat down.
Mrs. Lander lifted herself on her elbow and looked over at him. “Show me on the bottle how much you took.”
He got the bottle out again and showed her with his thumb nail a point which he chose at random.
“Well, that was just about the dose for you,” she said; and she sank down in bed again with the air of having used a final precaution. “You don't want to slow your heat up too quick.”
Lander did not put the bottle back this time. He kept it in his hand, with his thumb on the cork, and rocked it back and forth on his knees as he spoke. “Why don't you get that woman to alter it for you?”
“What woman alta what?”
“Your polonaise. The one whe'e we stopped yestaday.”
“Oh! Well, I've been thinkin' about that child, Albe't; I did before I went to sleep; and I don't believe I want to risk anything with her. It would be a ca'e,” said Mrs. Lander with a sigh, “and I guess I don't want to take any moa ca'e than what I've got now. What makes you think she could alta my polonaise?”
“Said she done dress-makin',” said Lander, doggedly.
“You ha'n't been the'a?”
He nodded.
“You didn't say anything to her about her daughta?”
“Yes, I did,” said Lander.
“Well, you ce'tainly do equal anything,” said his wife. She lay still awhile, and then she roused herself with indignant energy. “Well, then, I can tell you what, Albe't Landa: you can go right straight and take back everything you said. I don't want the child, and I won't have her. I've got care enough to worry me now, I should think; and we should have her whole family on our hands, with that shiftless father of hers, and the whole pack of her brothas and sistas. What made you think I wanted you to do such a thing?”
“You wanted me to do it last night. Wouldn't ha'dly let me go to bed.”
“Yes! And how many times have I told you nova to go off and do a thing that I wanted you to, unless you asked me if I did? Must I die befo'e you can find out that there is such a thing