Ragged Lady, the Complete
Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920
English
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Below is a summary of Ragged Lady, the Complete
RAGGED LADY.
By William Dean Howells
Part 1.
I.
It was their first summer at Middlemount and the Landers did not know the
roads. When they came to a place where they had a choice of two, she said
that now he must get out of the carry-all and ask at the house standing a
little back in the edge of the pine woods, which road they ought to take
for South Middlemount. She alleged many cases in which they had met
trouble through his perverse reluctance to find out where they were
before he pushed rashly forward in their drives. Whilst she urged the
facts she reached forward from the back seat where she sat, and held her
hand upon the reins to prevent his starting the horse, which was
impartially cropping first the sweet fern on one side and then the
blueberry bushes on the other side of the narrow wheel-track. She
declared at last that if he would not get out and ask she would do it
herself, and at this the dry little man jerked the reins in spite of her,
and the horse suddenly pulled the carry-all to the right, and seemed
about to overset it.
"Oh, what are you doing, Albe't?" Mrs. Lander lamented, falling helpless
against the back of her seat. "Haven't I always told you to speak to the
hoss fust?"
"He wouldn't have minded my speakin'," said her husband. "I'm goin' to
take you up to the dooa so that you can ask for youaself without gettin'
out."
This was so well, in view of Mrs. Lander's age and bulk, and the hardship
she must have undergone, if she had tried to carry out her threat, that
she was obliged to take it in some sort as a favor; and while the vehicle
rose and sank over the surface left rough, after building, in front of
the house, like a vessel on a chopping sea, she was silent for several
seconds.
The house was still in a raw state of unfinish, though it seemed to have
been lived in for a year at least. The earth had been banked up at the
foundations for warmth in winter, and the sheathing of the walls had been
splotched with irregular spaces of weather boarding; there was a good
roof over all, but the window-casings had been merely set in their places
and the trim left for a future impulse of the builder. A block of wood
suggested the intention of steps at the front door, which stood
hospitably open, but remained unresponsive for some time after the
Landers made their appeal to the house at large by anxious noises in
their throats, and by talking loud with each other, and then talking low.
They wondered whether there were anybody in the house; and decided that
there must be, for there was smoke coming out of the stove pipe piercing
the roof of the wing at the rear.
Mr. Lander brought himself under censure by venturing, without his wife's
authority, to lean forward and tap on the door-frame with the butt of his
whip. At the sound, a shrill voice called instantly from the region of
the stove pipe, "Clem! Clementina? Go to the front dooa! The'e's somebody
knockin'." The sound of feet, soft and quick, made itself heard within,
and in a few moments a slim maid, too large for a little girl, too
childlike for a young girl, stood in the open doorway, looking down on
the elderly people in the buggy, with a face as glad as a flower's. She
had blue eyes, and a smiling mouth, a straight nose, and a pretty chin
whose firm jut accented a certain wistfulness of her lips. She had hair
of a dull, dark yellow, which sent out from its thick mass light prongs,
or tendrils, curving inward again till they delicately touched it. Her
tanned face was not very different in color from her hair, and neither
were her bare feet, which showed well above her ankles in the calico
skirt she wore. At sight of the elders in the buggy she involuntarily
stooped a little to lengthen her skirt in effect, and at the same time
she pulled it together sidewise, to close a tear in it, but she lost in
her anxiety no ray of the joy which the mere presence of the strangers
seemed to give her, and she kept smiling sunnily upon them while she
waited for them to speak.
"Oh!" Mrs. Lander began with involuntary apology in her tone, "we just
wished to know which of these roads went to South Middlemount. We've come
from the hotel, and we wa'n't quite ce'tain."
The girl laughed as she said, "Both roads go to South Middlemount'm; they
join together again just a little piece farther on."
The girl and the woman in their parlance replaced the letter 'r' by vowel
sounds almost too obscure to be represented, except where it came last in
a word before a word beginning with a vowel; there it was annexed to the
vowel by a strong liaison, according to the custom universal in rural New
England.
"Oh, do they?" said Mrs. Lander.
"Yes'm," answered the girl. "It's a kind of tu'nout in the wintatime; or
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