XI.

She was wholly unprepared for the intelligence, a few days later, that

Thurston had gone, in the most sudden manner, to Europe. The Bergemanns,

mother and daughter, were both amazed by the departure of their legal

adviser, without a premonitory word from him on the subject and

apparently at such brief notice. Claire, in the midst of her own

consternation, sharply dreaded lest some suspicion should dawn upon them

that she was concerned in this precipitate change. But if Mrs. Bergemann

let fall any hint that such was her belief, it was made in the hearing

of Sophia alone; and the latter had scouted from the first, as we know,

all idea that Thurston's regard for her friend could partake of

lover-like tenderness. The letter which he had written to his client,

announcing that he had sailed, gave no reason for this abrupt course. It

was a letter somewhat copious in other respects, however, and made

thoroughly plain the fact that the partner of him who wrote it would in

every way defend and supervise the interests of Mrs. Bergemann. "I shall

probably be abroad a number of months," ran Thurston's written words,

"but during that time rest sure that all details of the slightest

importance with respect to your affairs shall be safely communicated

through Mr. Chadwick."

Mr. Chadwick soon afterward presented himself. He was a lank man, of

bloodless complexion and irreproachable manners. "I think he's a reg'lar

wet blanket," said Mrs. Bergemann, with critical cruelty, "after dear,

high-toned Mr. Thurston. He _was_ high-toned, Claire, wasn't he, now?"

she persevered, with a sidelong, timorous look toward Sophia, who

chanced, besides Claire, to be present at the time.

"Now, Ma!" broke in Sophia, accompanying this vocative with a tart

gesture of remonstrance, "Claire doesn't know a bit better than you or I

do whether he was high-toned or not. _Do_ you, Claire?"

"I think almost everybody who ever met him," said Claire, answering the

appeal, "must have seen it very clearly."

She spoke this with nice composure. But she was inwardly dismayed,

wounded, almost tortured. For many succeeding days she contrived to

absent herself from all Sophia's guests. Brady had totally disappeared

from her experience; he no longer presented himself at the house. He was

secretly fearful lest Claire might publish the fact of his proposal

broadcast among the adherents with whom he stood supreme as their

moneyed and autocratic leader. He suffered those torments of humiliation

which only a small soul, with small views of things and an immoderate

vanity, has learned the petty trick of suffering. It is by no means

hyperbole to state that he inwardly cursed Claire for being the girl

within whose power he had put it to say that she had actually repelled

his superb matrimonial advances. Longer concern with so unwholesome a

creature would be idle for the chronicler, especially since henceforth

he drops out of our record somewhat as Slocumb did, and with a scarcely

more chivalrous exit.

Claire now passed through a period of extreme repentance. Her old

longings had vanished; she silently planned for herself, with ascetic

enthusiasm, a future of humility and obscurity. She was a zealot in a

totally new way; she had abandoned all thought of marrying, and had

conceived the idea of mentally fitting herself to become a governess.

With this end, she spent hours in the library. Incapable of doing

anything by halves, she now bent the full force of her strong will and

capable intellect toward obtaining a proper educational competence. She

swam far out, so to speak, into the blue waters of knowledge, and

breasted them with good, vigorous strokes. She was, for the time at

least, passionately in earnest. Thurston's farewell words rang

incessantly through her memory. She would crush down all that American

"push," once and forever. She would steer from the perils against which

he had warned her, by one broad, divergent swerve. Her remorse and her

resignation held a poetic ardor of kinship. Her past longings had indeed

been a folly, and as such she would unvaryingly treat them. She would be

consistent henceforward, and seek only what lay within her lawful scope

of action. She was like the convert to a new faith, and she had all a

convert's intensity of fervor.

From her two friends, however, she chose to guard with caution the

secret of this change. It was now the early portion of June, and the

fierce heat of summer had literally leapt down on the city after several

weeks of raw, inclement May weather. The judgment long ago passed upon

our climate, that it has a summer, an autumn, a winter, but no spring,

had never been more fully confirmed. The city was wrapt all day in a

torrid drowse; the pavements lay either in bleak glare or breathless

shadow. On the benches of the parks, where spots of dusk were wrought by

overbrowing branches, groups of jaded citizens huddled together in moist

discomfort. The cars tinkled sleepily; the omnibuses lagged in rumbling

sloth; foul smells beset the nostrils, even from genteel gutters or the

doorways of high-priced restaurants. People looked up at the wool-like

pallor of the sky, and wished that it would darken into the cooling

gloom of a thunderstorm.

But Claire scarcely minded the heat. She had known the fetid miseries of

a Greenpoint summer. Those spacious chambers and halls of the

Bergemanns' solid-built mansion were delicious indeed by contrast.

Striped awnings had been affixed to each window, whose scalloped edges

would flap in chance waftures of breeze, while the stout bunting above

them changed the sunny rigors outside to a continual soothing gloom. It

was true that she had no sympathy with hot weather; she liked an

atmosphere in which quick movement was pleasantly possible. But she was

nevertheless very much at her ease here and now. She read; she studied;

the library, bathed in a tender dimness, pleased her with its vague rows

of books, its rough rich carpeting, its dark massive wood-work. She had,

for a time, that exquisite feeling of the scholar who clothes himself

with silence, solitude, and repose, and who lets the outer world touch

him through soft, impersonal yet cogent mediums. During this interval

she was completely happy. It was the old self-surrender of the

_devote_. Literature was henceforth to be her cult, her idolatry. The

mere process of reading had always been one of ease and speed with her.

Past training helped her now in the way of method and system. She had

learned how to learn. Her French readings were frequent. Sophia had a

French maid with whom she often conversed. Her proficiency in the

language soon became marked and thorough.

But suddenly her new contentment was shattered, and by a rude stroke.

Mrs. Bergemann began to talk of leaving town. Claire almost felt, at

first, as if the ground were giving way beneath her feet. She could only

accompany her friends to a watering-place in the position of a dependent

and pensioner. Her salary must stop, because her relations with Sophia

must of necessity lose all their instructive character. "You would never

continue our readings, Sophia," she said, "in a crowded hotel, where you

would have countless distractions."

"Oh, yes, I would, Claire," was the alert reply. "We'll keep it up just

the same. You'll pack a few books in one of the trunks, and I'll promise

to be a good girl; you needn't feel a bit afraid. Ma's decided on Coney

Island. Now, don't look so glum, as if you didn't have a friend in all

the world. You've been sort of queer, lately; you talk slower, somehow,

and you stick up there in the library nearly all the time. But you're

still my own nice Claire. I swear by you, dear girl, just as I always

did. If there's anything on your mind I won't ask you what it is."

"There is something on my mind, Sophia," Claire said. "But you must not

ask me what it is, just yet. I will tell you soon. Yes, I hope to tell

you quite soon."

She went with them to Coney Island. They engaged rooms at the Manhattan

Beach Hotel. The books had been packed and brought, but very few of them

were ever opened.

"It's not a bit of use, Claire!" Sophia affirmed, after the lapse of

about five days. "We can't manage it. There's always something

happening, as you see. Besides, nobody works here. Everybody idles. It's

in the air. Let's take a vacation."

"Why, yes, girls," said Mrs. Bergemann, at this point, with motherly

persuasion. "You better just lay up some health for next winter, and

quit the books till we get home. Or p'raps we may get tired of this

place 'fore the summer's through, an' go somewheres where it ain't so

lively--I mean some lazy place like Lake George or the White Mountains.

Then books and reading will fit in kinder natural. But I don't think

_I'll_ care to leave here for a good big while. I ain't ever seen

anything like it before. If we could only go driving here, now, and them

horses wasn't eating their heads off over in the city, why 'twould be a

reg'lar paradise. Sophia, I've just rec'lected that I came to this very

spot twenty years ago if it's a day, with poor Pa! We was quite a young

couple, then ... that girl wasn't more'n a baby, Claire. We took her

along. Pa carried you, Sophia. The Brewery wasn't started in them times,

an' ... well, I guess we got along with about five hundred dollars a

year, over at the small saloon at Hoboken."

"Now, Ma, you needn't go into such very close particulars, please!"

chided Sophia, whose large, warm heart was not democratic enough always

to stand the intense humility of certain maternal reminiscences.

"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Bergemann, with a good-humored laugh; "we don't mind

Claire. She's one of us. Besides, we're up here in the bedroom, not down

on that crowded piazzer. Well, girls, as I was saying, Pa and me came

here that day, an' I declare to goodness, the place was only a bare

strip o' sand with a few little shanties here and there, that they

called hotels. And just look at it now! Three monstrous palaces, and all

New York streaming down every decent afternoon. It's like enchantment. I

can't believe I'm where I was twenty years ago. I'm afraid I must be

dreaming. But if I am, I don't want to wake up; I want to keep right on

till the first o' September."

"Only a few years ago the island was very much the same as you describe

it twenty years ago," said Claire, who had dipped into a small

descriptive handbook telling about the marvelous growth of this unique

and phenomenal watering-place.

"I s'pose I ought to find it a little bit too _gay_," pursued Mrs.

Bergemann, presently, in reflective afterthought. "Poor Pa's been gone

such a short time." Here the lady heaved an imposing sigh which her

massive bust made no less visible than audible. "But I can grieve just

as well by mixing in with folks as if I was hung round with crape an'

stuck off alone somewheres. Everybody's got their own ways o' grieving,

an' I ain't goin' to forget poor Pa merely 'cause I look about a little

and make my second-mourning kinder stylish. Not a bit of it!"

Mrs. Bergemann certainly showed the courage of her opinions, as regarded

the sort of grief due her departed spouse. Her laugh was loud in hall,

in dining-room, or on piazza. Her costumes tinkled with black bugles,

or rustled and crackled in sombre yet ornamented grandeur. It is

probable that grief may have dealt her real pangs, and yet that the

irrepressible glow and warmth of her spirits kept always at bay the

gloom and chill of grief. Her nature was not a shallow one; she could

feel with depth and force, but she could not mope or even muse; solitude

was hateful to her; she was gregarious; she wanted to hear the voices

and look into the faces of her kind. In spite of her German origin she

was excessively representative, from a purely American stand-point. Her

very vulgarities--and they were certainly profuse--possessed a wide,

healthful sincerity. Her enormous benevolence stood for her in the place

of refinement; it was indeed a certain code of manners by itself; she

was always so good to you that you might pardonably forget to remark the

unconventionalism of her goodness. She was precisely the sort of person

whom Coney Island must have pleased.

But it pleased Claire in a totally different way. The immense concourse

of people who flocked thither, by such easy modes of travel, from New

York and Brooklyn and elsewhere, were an incessant source of interest.

Their numbers, their activities, their enjoyments, kept her blood in a

soft tingle. This brilliant and picturesque city by the sea appeared to

her in the light of a delicious reparation. It was a long, splendid

festivity, compensating her for those years of dire dullness passed but

a few miles away. All her recent resolutions to spend a life of lowly

quietude, had melted into thin air. The ambition to climb, to shine, and

to rule was once more a dominant force within her being. It seemed to

her as if she had flung away some sort of irksome disguise, and now

beheld it lie like an ugly heap near at hand, while wondering, in the

exhilaration of regained freedom, how she had ever chosen to shroud

herself with its clogging folds.

She bathed every day in the ocean, and acquired a richer fund of health

on this account. Either with Sophia or alone, though more often the

latter, she explored the whole wondrous little life-crowded island, in

which every grade of human society, from lowest to highest, held for her

its distinct representation. The two huge Iron Piers, jutting out into

the surf and assailed by continual salty breezes, charmed her with their

streams of coming and departing people, with their noonday lunchers,

with their _table d'hote_ diners, seated over cigarettes or coffee in

the sweet marine dusk. She loved West Brighton, with its beer-bibbers,

its gaudy booths, its preposterous exhibited fat woman, its amazing

Irish giant, its games of strength or skill, and its whirling

_carrousels_, where delighted children span round on wooden horses,

cows, lions, or dragons, to the clamors of a shameless brass band. But

Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, and the Oriental each afforded a

steadier satisfaction. The delicate and lightsome architecture of these

three hotels, with their myriads of windows, their _chalet_-like

patterns of roof, gable, and chimney, and their noble outlooks upon the

sea, grew dearer to her as the structures themselves became more

familiar. She loved the fine sonorous music that pealed forth from the

big deft-built pavilions, where troups of well-trained minstrels set

many a brazen instrument to their capable lips, and would often find

assembled thousands for their listeners, either in the long, salubrious

afternoons, or in the breezy starlight and moonlight of those exquisite

seaside evenings. Her observant eyes were never weary of watching, and

they forever found something to watch. She soon acquired an

extraordinary keenness in the matter of "placing" people at sight. Few

points of manner, costume, or visage escaped her. She found herself

classifying and arranging the vast crowds that she daily encountered.

She became familiar with the faces of many who frequently disembarked

from the loaded cars. Nor was her own face in turn unnoticed. Augmented

health had freshened its tender tints, and lent to its lines a choicer

symmetry. Many an eye dwelt upon her with admiration. Almost

instinctively she had learned the art of disposing her black garments to

dainty advantage, and of heightening their effect with little subdued

touches of maidenly tastefulness.

Sophia's diversions increased with each fresh day. Many of the male

devotees with whom she had romped during "sociables" of the previous

winter, sought her in these new surroundings. Claire was compelled to

acknowledge former introductions, and sometimes to assume a

conversational attitude with the friends of her friend. But they all

seemed to her alike; they all reminded her of Brady, though in a

mercifully moderated way. She was invariably civil to them, though they

wearied and tried her. They made her recall Thurston, whose remembered

comments fleeted through her mind, while his grave, manly image appealed

to it in retrospective vision. She was on the verge of a novel and

important experience; but, of this unborn fact her longing for better

companionship alone gave monition, and addressed her by the imaginative

stimulus which we sometimes carelessly term presentiment.

One evening, as she joined Mrs. Bergemann and Sophia upon that portion

of the hotel piazza which was usually set aside for its regular patrons,

she found the two ladies in conversation with two gentlemen, of whom she

knew only one, ranking him as not by any means the most ill-bred of

Sophia's friends. He was a young man named Trask, of canary-colored

eyebrows and a cloudy complexion, who had made himself a favorite with

both sexes of his particular set through rousing no jealousies by

superior personal and mental gifts, yet winning golden repute as one

whose complaisant good-will would wince under nothing short of positive

imposition. The second gentleman was presented to Claire as Mr.

Hollister, and her look had scarcely lit on his face before she felt

convinced that he was quite of another world from his companions. Even

while he was seated she could see that he was tall and of shapely build.

His head was small, and covered with glossy blond curls; his blond

mustache fringed a lip of sensitive cut, though the smooth chin beneath

it fell away a little, leaving his large, frank blue eyes, broad

forehead, and well-formed nose to fail of implying the strength they

would otherwise have easily told. He wore a suit of some thin, dark

stuff that clung tightly about his athletic arms and chest, and

contrasted with the light silken tie knotted at his wide, solid throat.

Every detail of his dress was what Claire soon decided to be in the best

fashion; she had already learned a good deal about the correct reigning

mode in men's dress. The extraordinary nicety and comprehensiveness of

her observation had made this one of the sure results of her present

sojourn.

She liked Mr. Hollister at sight, and she liked him more after she had

heard him speak. His voice was full and rich, like the voice of a man

used to the shout that often goes with the out-door game; he could not

be more than five-and-twenty, at the most, she decided; he seemed a

trifle bashful, too, but bashful with a virile grace that pleased her

better, in so robust and engaging a person, than the most trained

self-possession could have done.

Sophia had always felt a liking for the yellow-eyebrowed young

gentleman; they were the firmest of friends. The coming of Claire

appeared to relieve her from the responsibility of "entertaining" Mr.

Hollister, whom she had never met till this evening. She soon drifted

away arm-in-arm with her preferred companion, among the dark throngs

beyond the huge bright-lit piazza. Mrs. Bergemann, perhaps from an

instinctive perception of how matters lay with Claire, presently rose

and sought the society of a matronly friend, seated not many yards

distant, whom she had known in anterior Hoboken days, and who had

reached nearly as fat a prosperity as her own, from possibly similar

causes.

Claire was glad to be alone with her new acquaintance. He had roused her

curiosity; she wanted to find out about him, to account for him. Thus

far they had said the most impersonal and ordinary things to each other.

She remembered afterward that they had used the old meteorological

method which has so often served as the plain, dull path into fervent

friendships or still warmer human relations; they had talked of the

weather.

"I'm really surprised to hear that it has been so very hot in the city,"

Claire said, breaking the pause that followed Mrs. Bergemann's

departure.

"Oh, it has been dreadful, I assure you," said Mr. Hollister. "Ninety in

the shade at four o'clock."

"Why, we have had a lovely breeze here, all day, straight from the

ocean," Claire resumed, with a pretty little proprietary wave of one

hand seaward, as though she were commending the atmospheric virtues of

her own special domain. "Once or twice I have felt actually chilly." He

looked incredulous at this, then broke into a soft, bass laugh; laughter

was frequent with him, and made his blue eyes sparkle whenever it came.

"I've forgotten how it feels to be chilly," he said. "I wonder if I

could stand any chance of reviving the sensation down on the shore

yonder."

He spoke the words in the manner of an invitation, and doubtless seeing

prompt acquiescence in Claire's face, at once leaned forward to ask

"Will you go?" Claire straightway rose, answering "With pleasure." She

took his offered arm, and thought while she did so how strong and firm

it was, as if bronze or stone were beneath its flimsy vestment, instead

of muscular mortality. The band in the illuminated pavilion near by had

lately paused, but it now struck up a waltz rich in long mellow-pealing

cadences. "Is this your first visit here?" said Claire, as they

descended the broad piazza steps, down toward the smooth, trim levels of

grass and the massive, rounded beds of geranium, whose scarlets and

greens now looked vague in the starlight. "Or have you been here many

times before," she went on, "during past seasons, and so lost all your

enthusiasm for this charming place?"

"I've been here about six times in all," he answered, "but my enthusiasm

is still in fine order. It's ready to break forth at any minute. If you

want, Miss Twining, we can have a combined eruption this evening."

Claire thought this clever; it had so fresh a sound after the blunt fun

she had long heard; it made her think a little of the way Beverley

Thurston phrased his ideas, though any resemblance between the two men

could only exist for her in the large generic sense that they were both

gentlemen. She laughed, with a note of real glee among the liquid

trebles of her mirth. It seemed to her that she had already got to know

Mr. Hollister quite well. And yet they were still such strangers! She

had still so much to learn regarding him!

"I'm glad you've nothing to say against this delightful island," she

declared, as if mildly jubilant over the discovery. "I heard a man on

the sands talking about it to a friend only a few mornings ago. He was a

shabby man who wanted shaving, and I'm not sure that he had on any

collar. I think he must have been a kind of philosopher. He said that

Coney Island was an immense fact. There is just my opinion--that it is

an immense fact." They were now but a slight distance from the foamy,

rolling plash of the dark sea-waves. The music came to them in bursts of

softer richness. With her arm still in that of her companion, Claire

half turned toward the hotel, starred with countless lights, and

looking, as it rose above the vague throngs beneath it, like some palace

of dreamy legend, lit for festival.

"I often think that this mere strip of sand must be so surprised," she

continued, "to find itself grown suddenly important and famous after it

has lain here lonely, almost unnoticed, for long centuries. I sometimes

fancy that I can hear the waves talk to it as they break on its shore,

and ask it what is meant by this wonderful change."

"That's a very pretty way of looking at the matter," replied Hollister,

while he gazed down into her face from his considerably taller height

with a keener expression of interest and charm than he himself guessed.

"Perhaps the waves congratulate Coney Island on its final success in

life, and gently quote to it the old proverb about everything coming to

those who know how to wait."

Claire started. "Do you believe that?" she said. "_Does_ everything come

to those who know how to wait?"

Hollister laughed again. "You talk as if _you_ had been waiting. But I'm

sure it can't have been for very long."

This last sentence was put at least half in the form of a question. But

she evaded it, saying with a light little toss of the head: "Hasn't

everybody always something to wait for, between youth and old age?"

"Tell me something about your expectations, won't you?" he asked, with

the non-committal tenderness of a man whose acquaintanceship has been

too brief for any serious depth to accompany his words. "You can't think

how much I wish that I was one of them."

"One of my expectations? You?"

"Decidedly."

"But how could I answer you on that point?" she returned, letting him

catch in the gloom a glimpse of her sly smile. "You're only a name to

me. If you'll not think my candor rude, I haven't an idea who you are."

"I don't believe I should think you rude if you really were so," he

said, smiling, and yet seeming to mean with much quiet force each word

that he spoke. "So you want me to give an account of myself? Well, I'm a

rather obscure fellow. That is, I don't believe I know more than ten

people in New York at all well. I lead a quiet life; I'm what they call

a Wall Street man, but I mingle with the big throng there only in a sort

of business way. I was graduated at Dartmouth two years ago, and spent a

year in Europe afterward. Then I came back, and began hard work. There

were reasons why I should do so--I mean financial reasons. I'm not a New

Yorker; I was born and reared in Providence. Do you know Providence?"

"No," said Claire. "I know only New York."

She was looking at him interestedly at short intervals; they had resumed

their stroll again; her arm was still within his; he had continued to

please her, though she felt no thrill of warm attraction toward him,

however mild in degree. She had a sense of friendship, of easy

familiarity. But apart from this, she was conscious, as a woman

sometimes not merely will but must be, that she had won him to like her

by a very easy and rapid victory. Already she was not sure but that she

had won him to like her strongly as well. Her few recent words of reply

had carried with them a subtle persuasion of which Hollister himself was

oddly and most pleasurably conscious. He yielded to their effect, and

became somewhat more free in his personal confidences.

"My father had been a Dartmouth man," he went on. "That was the reason

of my going there. Father and Mother have both passed away, now. It's a

lovely old college, and it gained me some strong friendships. But I find

that all my favorite classmates have drifted into other cities. They

sometimes write to me, even yet, after my year in Europe. But, of

course, the old good feeling will shortly cease ... how can it fail to

cease?... I'm a good deal alone, just now. I know a number of men there

in Wall Street, but I feel a little afraid of making friends with them.

I don't just know why, but I do. Perhaps it's because of getting into

bad habits. Some of them, I've noticed have very bad habits. And I've

made up my mind ... that is, I--I half promised my poor dear mother just

before she.... Well, Miss Twining, the plain truth is that I keep

regular hours and live straight, as they say. I like to take a sail down

here while the weather is hot, but I nearly always take it quite by

myself. To-night I happened to meet Trask on the boat. I'd nearly

forgotten Trask. He was in my Freshman year with me, but he dropped off

after that. It was he who introduced me to--to the Miss--excuse me, but

I really forget your friend's name."

"Miss Bergemann," said Claire.

"Oh, yes--Miss Bergemann." He paused, at this point, gently forcing

Claire to pause also. They were still beside the sea; the music still

came to them in its modulated sweetness. Hollister bent his head quite

low, looking straight down into her upturned face.

"I've told you ever so much about myself," he said. "I wish, now, that

you'd give me a little knowledge also. Will you?"

"About _my_self?" asked Claire. "About just who I am?"

"Well, yes, if you don't mind."

She reflected for a short space. Then she began to speak. She told him,

as she went on, more than she had at first intended to tell. He listened

intently while they slowly walked on, beside the dark, harmonious

billows.

Before she had ended, he had realized that he was in love with her. He

had never known anything of such love till now. His heart was fluttering

in a new, wild way; he could scarcely find voice to answer her when she

at length ceased to speak. But she had not told him all her past life.

She had reserved certain facts. And her own feelings were entirely

tranquil. Not the least responsive tremor disturbed her.