It was so seriously spoken that Mrs. Diggs broke into one of her most
mutinous laughs. "How delicious!" she exclaimed. "What a superb conjugal
truth you condense in one demure little epigram!... Well, if 'Herbert,'
as you say, 'never objects,' there is ... let me see ... there is
Cornelia Van Horn."
"Would she come if I asked her?" said Claire.
"You haven't asked her, so of course you don't know. Nobody can ever
predicate anything about Cornelia. But considering how grand was her
amiability at Coney Island, I should say that.... Well, yes, I should
say that Cornelia _would_ come." Here Mrs. Diggs raised one thin finger,
and shook it in smiling admonition. "That is," she added, "if you call
on her, as she requested."
Claire looked grave. "I will call on her," she at length said. "I have
not felt sure whether I would or no. I did not like her way of asking
me, or her manner beforehand.... But I will call on her, provided there
are two other ladies." Here she paused a moment, and then proceeded with
decision. "But of course there are no other two ladies. At least, not
yet."
Mrs. Diggs's eyes were sparkling most humorously. "I don't know why it
is," she exclaimed, "that you always entertain me so when you talk of
Cousin Cornelia. There's a latent pugnaciousness in the very way that
you mention her name. It seems to be fated that you and she shall become
dire foes. She's so big and mighty that I'm always reminded, when you
discuss her, of dauntless little David, with his sling and stone,
marching against the doughty old giant.... As for our _one_ other lady,
Claire, how about Mrs. Arcularius?"
"Mrs. Arcularius? Why, we have quarreled."
"Nonsense. You snubbed her mildly. I don't doubt that she will come.
Women at her time of life have survived nearly every sentiment except
that of appetite. Ten to one that she will scent the odor of a good
dinner, and come, as your dear former instructress, and all that, don't
you know?"
"Very well," said Claire, with gravity; "I might ask her. But then there
would be the fifth lady. I am afraid that she is not to be found."
Mrs. Diggs put one slim hand to one pale temple, and drooped her bright
eyes. "I have it!" she presently exclaimed. "There is my other cousin,
Jane Van Corlear. We won't ask Jane until we are sure of the others.
Then we shall be certain of getting her to fill the vacant place. You
remember her at Coney Island, don't you? No? Well, in a certain sense
nobody ever remembers poor Jane, and nobody ever forgets her. She has
been a widow for years, like Cornelia. But she never asserts herself.
She is tallowy, obese, complaisant. She rarely goes anywhere, and yet
she leaves a sort of aristocratic trail wherever she has been. She will
accept if I tell her to; she always gives in to me, though in her
sluggish way I know she thinks me objectionable. Poor Jane is a perfect
goose, and yet I dote on her. She is such a dear, consistent,
inoffensive, companionable goose, don't you know? Claire, your
dinner-party is entirely arranged."
"I am afraid not," said Claire, dubiously.
The next day she and Mrs. Diggs concocted the invitations together. On
the day following, the two ladies whom they had asked each sent a
courteous, conventional refusal.
Mrs. Van Horn gave no reason for her refusal. Mrs. Arcularius mentioned
a previous engagement as the reason of her non-acceptance.
"You see," said Claire, to her fallacious counselor, "our ladies are not
obtainable, after all."
She was secretly chagrined; but Mrs. Diggs showed herself openly so. "It
is too bad!" declared the latter. "I've a lurking belief in the
authenticity of Mrs. Arcularius's 'previous engagement.' As for
Cornelia, I suspect pique at your not having been to visit her. But we
shall see what we shall see, regarding Mrs. Van Horn. Of course our
little dinner is ruined. You must preside as the only woman, Claire, and
I don't doubt you will do it charmingly. But I shall drop in upon
Cornelia to-morrow, and try to sound the unfathomable."
Mrs. Diggs did so, and on the afternoon of the same day she sought out
Claire, filled with her recent exploring skirmish.
"She received me, my dear Claire, with a great deal of high-nosed
graciousness. I hadn't been three minutes in her presence before I felt
that her cold, serene eyes were reading me through and through. She
mentioned you herself; she made it a point to do so. She spoke of you as
that pretty young woman whom Beverley used to know. Then she recollected
that you had asked her to dinner. 'But of course I could not accept,'
she said, with her best sort of ducal look. 'I do not really _know_ your
friend. I have met her only once, and then for a few minutes.' She
wanted to change the conversation, after that; she has vast tact in the
way of changing conversations; great leaders like herself always have.
But I wouldn't put up with that at all. I am usually a good deal awed by
Cornelia. But I made up my mind not to be awed to-day at any hazard. I
reminded her that she had sought to know you and asked you to visit her.
I showed her that I wouldn't stand her delicate rapier-thrusts. I swung
a bludgeon, and I flatter myself that I swung it rather well. I told her
that she had given you a perfect right to invite her. I told her that
you had treated her with unusual courtesy, and that instead of leaving a
slip of meaningless pasteboard with her footman, you had resolved on the
more honest and significant civility of asking her to dinner. Moreover,
I added, the fact of her brother having been your most intimate friend
had rendered, to my thinking, the civility a still more kindly and
genuine one."
"You must have made her very angry," said Claire, with a peculiar
fleeting smile.
"Angry? She was in a white heat. She could never be in a red one, don't
you know, she is so constitutionally placid and chill. She replied that
you had actually attempted to offer her patronage, and that your effort
had amused her not a little."
"Did she say that?" questioned Claire, with a certain quick eagerness.
"Then I was right at first. She had some unpleasant purpose in wanting
me to visit her."
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Diggs; "you never suggested such a thing
before!"
Claire had grown very grave and calm again. "Did I not?" she said.
"Well, I had supposed it. It was a sort of fancy."
Mrs. Diggs took one of Claire's hands and held it, at the same time
giving her an intent look.
"You're keeping something from me," she said. "Yes, Claire, I know you
are.... Did Beverley Thurston ever ask you to marry him?"
Claire colored to the roots of her rich-tinted tresses. She tried to
draw her hand away, but Mrs. Diggs still retained it.
"He did!" exclaimed her friend. "Your complexion tells me so! Everything
is explained now. You refused Beverley. Yes, my dear, you refused him.
And she somehow got wind of it. Perhaps Beverley told, or perhaps his
complexion, like yours, divulged secrets, don't you know?... And yet, on
second thought, Beverley's complexion could do nothing so expressive; it
is too battered and world-worn; its capability for blushing is entirely
null.... No, _he_ told her. And she has not forgiven you, and never
will. Her monstrous pride would not permit her to do so. I understand
everything, now. You remember what I told you about her clannish
feeling--how she loves to quietly exalt her family name?... Ah, my dear
Claire, you have committed, in her eyes, the great unpardonable sin. I
was right; I felt it to be in the air that you and she would prove
enemies. I begin to think myself a sort of haphazard sibyl; I divined
what would happen, and it has happened. You have presumed to refuse her
brother, and Cornelia knows it. Prepare to be crushed."
Claire lightly tossed her graceful head, and her lip curled a little as
she did so.
"I am not at all prepared to be crushed," she said. "Mrs. Van Horn has
spoiled our prospective dinner-party, as regards ladies, but she has not
spoiled _me_."
"Delightful!" declared Mrs. Diggs, softly clapping her hands. "That's
the spirit I like to see. The fight has begun; it's going to be serious.
But remember that I am always your devoted auxiliary!" ...
The dinner took place. There were no ladies present except Claire
herself. It was an extremely elegant dinner. Claire rose when coffee was
being served, and left the gentlemen together. She performed, so to
speak, her unaided office of hostess with singular charm and dignity.
And during the progress of the dinner she made a friend.
This was Mr. Stuart Goldwin. Everybody in Wall Street knew Stuart
Goldwin. He had drifted into that stormy region of risk about four years
ago. He had so drifted from a remote New England town, and his
speculative successes had been phenomenal. He was reputed to be worth,
at present, a good many millions of dollars. He had acquired an enormous
influence among his constituents; he was the reigning Wall Street King.
But he had none of the vulgarity which had marked a few of his immediate
predecessors; he had always shown a full appreciation of his royalty and
the duties resultant from it. He had been admitted, with singular
promptness, into the social holy of holies; he was hand in glove with
what are termed the best people; he belonged to three or four of the
most select clubs; his circle of acquaintances had rapidly become huge.
Women liked him as much as men. He was personally the type of man whom
women like. His frame was tall and imposing; he wore a large tawny
mustache, which drooped with silky abundance below a delicately-cut
nostril. His eyes were large, and of a soft, glistening hazel. His
manners were full of a fascinating frankness. His age was about forty
years, but he might have passed for considerably younger. Books had not
fed his rapid and distinctive intelligence, for he had no time to read
them; and yet he had caught the reverberation, as it were, of the best
and newest ideas announced by the best and newest writers.
Claire thought him delightful. He, in turn, thought her even more than
this. She was a discovery to him. He had never married, and he was fond
of saying, in his blithe, epigrammatic way, that half womankind was so
enchanting to him as to have made, in his own case, anything except the
most Oriental polygamy quite out of the question. He had wit in no small
store, but when he liked a woman greatly it was his most deft of arts to
keep this in very judicious reserve, and employ it only as a means of
subtly wooing forth the mental sparkle of her to whom he paid court.
Claire found herself vain, in a covert way, of her own conversational
gifts, before she had talked with Goldwin more than twenty minutes. She
would have liked to talk with him exclusively during the dinner, but her
two other guests were persons of importance who ought not to receive her
impolitic neglect. She managed matters with tact and skill. Everybody
thought her charming when she glided from the dining-room, in decorous
retreat before that little anti-feminine bayonet, the after-dinner
cigar. She had made a distinct success. She felt it as she sat in the
drawing-room, waiting for the gentlemen to ascend and join her.
Goldwin had not deceived her. She read him with lucid insight. She saw
him to be imposingly superficial; she perceived him to be a man whose
polished filigrees would ring hollow at so much as one sincere tap of
the finger-nail. He was agreeable to her, but not admirable; he
captivated, but he did not dazzle her. She compared him with Beverley
Thurston (never thinking to compare him with her husband), and noted all
the more clearly his lack of genuine and manly magnitude. He came and
joined her before any of the other gentlemen. His face was a little
flushed from the wine he had taken, but with no unbecoming suggestion of
excess.
"I couldn't stay away from you," he said, sinking into a happy,
half-lounging posture on the sofa at her side. He was faultlessly
dressed, in garments that seemed to accept every bend of his fine
moulded figure without a wrinkle of their dark, flexible surface. "Your
husband smokes the nicest sort of cigar, but he has another possession
that seems to me vastly superior." Then he broke into a mellow laugh,
and waved one hand hither and thither, with an air of mock explanation.
"I allude to this beautiful little drawing-room," he continued.
His mirthful sidelong look made Claire echo his laugh. "I will tell
Herbert how much you like it," she said; "he will be so pleased to
know."
"Pray do nothing of the sort!" he expostulated, with a good deal of
comic seriousness. "I should never forgive you if you did. Husbands are
such oddly jealous fellows. There is no telling what innocent little
outburst of esteem may sometimes offend them."
Claire thought the time had come for a decisive parry, in the parlance
of fencers. "Oh, Herbert is not at all jealous," she said, measuring the
words just enough not to make them seem out of accord with her bright
smile. "He has never had the least occasion to be, I assure you."
He fixed his eyes with soft intentness on her sweet, blooming face.
"Never?" he questioned, quite low of tone.
"Never," she answered, gently laconic.
"But he might take some stupid pretext ... who knows?"
"Oh, if he did I would soon show him the stupidity of it. We understand
each other excellently."
They talked on for at least a half hour. The other gentlemen remained
below. Goldwin made no more daring complimentary hazards. He listened
quite as much as he talked. Their converse turned upon social
matters--upon what sort of a season it would be--upon the coming
opera--upon the nature of New York entertainments--upon the men and
women who were to give them. Claire made it very plain to him that she
wanted to enter the gay lists. She at length said:--
"Do you know Mrs. Van Horn?"
Goldwin laughed. "Why don't you ask me if I know the City Hall," he
said, "or the Stock Exchange? Of course I know her."
"Do you like her?"
"Nobody ever likes her. Who likes statues?"
"People sometimes worship them."
"Oh, she is a good deal worshiped, if you mean that."
Hollister and his two remaining guests now appeared. Claire re-welcomed
both the latter gentlemen with beaming suavity. They were both important
personages, as it has been recorded. They both had important wives, to
whom they repaired, a little later, and to whom they loudly sang praises
of Claire's loveliness. The remarks of each took substantially the same
form, and the following might be given as their connubial and somewhat
florid average:--
"That fellow Hollister's wife, you know. The man I dined with to-night.
Didn't know he had a wife? Well, you'd have known it if you'd been
there. She's a splendid young creature. Handsome as a picture, and good
style, too. By the way, Stuart Goldwin was there; you know how hard it
is to get _him_. I shouldn't wonder if these Hollisters were going to
make a dash for society, soon. Now, don't repeat it, my dear, but the
fact is, this Hollister can be of considerable service to me in a
business way. There's no use of going into particulars, for women never
understand business. But ... if anything _should_ occur--any card be
left, I mean, you may be sure what my wishes are.... Oh, of course; look
sour, and refuse point blank. Bless my soul, when did you ever do
anything to help along _my_ interests? You'll spend the money fast
enough, but you won't turn a hand to help me make it. All right; do as
you please. Hollister is to-day the most rising young man on the Street.
There's a regular boom on him. He's got Goldwin for a friend. You must
know what _that_ means."
Both ladies did know what it meant. Both ladies had looked sour, but
both in due time entertained their afterthoughts. They were ladies of
high fashion, each prominent within an exclusive clique. They were not
powerful enough to indorse any new struggler for position; their own
right of tenure was not unassailable. They dreaded this Mrs. Hollister,
as it were, but they secretly resolved that it would be folly to ignore
her. Meanwhile a certain interview, held by Stuart Goldwin with a
certain lady of his acquaintance, was of quite different character.
Goldwin did not reach the house of Mrs. Ridgeway Lee until some time
after ten o'clock. It was an exceedingly pretty house. Its drawing-room,
though as small as Claire's, must by comparison have put the latter
completely into the shade. It was an exquisite artistic commingling of
all that was rare and fine in upholstery and general embellishment. Mrs.
Ridgeway Lee, too, was in a manner rare and fine. She rose from a deep
cachemire lounge to receive Goldwin. She was dressed in crimson, with a
great cluster of white and crimson roses at her breast. She pretended to
be annoyed that he should have presumed to come so late. She had the
last French novel in her hand, pressed against her heart, as though she
loved its allurements and disliked being thus drawn from them. Goldwin
knew perfectly well that she had expected him, that she was very glad he
had come. He often wondered to himself why he did not ask her to be his
wife. She was passionately in love with him; she had been a widow almost
since girlhood. She had a great deal of money, for which he cared
nothing, and a great deal of beauty, for which he could not help but
care. She had almost seriously compromised herself by permitting him to
show her attentions whose intimacy, in the judgment of the world, should
long ago either have ceased entirely or else have assumed matrimonial
permanence.
Yet she was a woman who could, to a certain degree, compromise herself
with impunity. Her connections were all people of high place. She was
distantly related to Mrs. Diggs and nearly related to Mrs. Van Horn, who
felt toward her that fondness which may exist between a queen and a
lady-in-waiting. Apart from this, she was a social dignitary. Her
artificiality was more plainly manifest than that of Goldwin, and it had
become a commonplace among her friends to say that she was affected.
But she had made her affectation a kind of fashion; other women had so
liked the peculiar flutter of her lids, the drawl of her voice, the
erratic movements and extraordinary poses of her body, that they had
imitated these with disastrous fidelity. She said clever, daring,
insolent, or amiable things all in the same slow, measured way, and
generally managed to leave an impression that a fund of unuttered
experience or observation lay behind them. She was prodigiously pious
for one of her pleasure-loving nature. Her charity was liberal and
incessant. She trailed her Parisian robes through the wards of
hospitals, or lifted them in the ill-smelling haunts of dying paupers.
Her religion and her charity went hand in hand. For some people they
were both shams; for others they were ostentation, half founded upon
sincerity; for others they implied a feverish craving to drown the
remorse born of persistent indiscretions; and still for others they were
an intoxication, indulged in by one who did nothing half-way, and
resorted to as some women drug themselves with opium, chloral, or
alcohol. She denounced the new intellectual tendency among social equals
of her own sex, as something wholly terrible; she frowned upon it no
less darkly than her kinswoman, Mrs. Van Horn, but for a different
reason. Its occasional lapses into rationalistic and unorthodox thought
roused her dismay and ire.
"Science," she would say, in her grave, loitering manner, "is perfectly
splendid. I adore it. I read books about it all the time." (There were
those who roundly asserted that she did not know protoplasm from
evolution.) "But this confusing it with religion is simply blasphemous
and awful. I have the profoundest pity for all who do not believe
devoutly. I wish I could build asylums for them, and visit them, as I do
my sick and my poor!"
Goldwin always listened to these melancholy outbursts with a twinkling
eye. She had long since ceased to try and convert him to her High Church
ritualisms. He would never go to church with her and witness, in the
edifice which she attended, the Episcopal ceremonial imitate, as he
said, the Roman Catholic ceremonial just as far as it dared and no
further. But he would never have gone to any church with her, and she
knew it, and mourned him as ungodly. That was the way, some of her foes
asserted, in which she made love to him: she mourned him as ungodly.
But she showed no signs of making love to him to-night. She received
him, as was already stated, with a shocked air.
"It is dreadfully late," she said, giving him her hand. "You ought not
to do it. You know that you ought not to do it."
He kept her hand until she had again seated herself on the cachemire
lounge. Then he sat down beside her.
Her type of beauty had been called that of a serpent. It was true that
her present posture on the lounge oddly resembled a sort of coil. Her
face wore at nearly all times a warm paleness; its color, or rather its
lack of color, had little variation. Her hair was black as night; her
eyes luminous, large, and very dark; her head small, her figure lissome
and extremely slender, her shoulders narrow and falling. She could not
be ungraceful, and her grace was always what in another woman would have
been called unique awkwardness. She appeared, now, to be gazing at
Goldwin across one shoulder. Her crimson dress was in a tight whorl
about her feet. She had a twisted look, which in any one else would have
suggested an imperiled anatomy. But you somehow accepted her at first
sight as capable of a picturesque elasticity denied to commoner
_physiques_.
"I dropped in only for a minute," said Goldwin. "I wanted to tell you
about the dinner."
"Well? Was it nice?"
"Immensely. There was only one woman, but a marvelous woman. She is
Hollister's wife. I feel as if I'd been hearing a new opera by Gounod.
Don't ask me to describe her."
Mrs. Lee was watching the speaker's face with great intentness. It was a
face that she knew very well; she had given it several years of close
study.
"She is handsome, then?"
"She's exquisite. She is going to take things by storm this winter. She
wants to do it, too. And I mean to help her."
"Who was she?"
"I don't know. And I don't care. I'm her devoted friend. I hope you will
be. I want you to call on her."
"Are you crazy?" said Mrs. Lee. She said it so quietly and slowly, as
was her wont to say all things, that she might have been making the most
ordinary of queries.
"Yes," laughed Goldwin, "quite out of my head."
"Do you think I will go and see a woman I don't know, merely because you
ask me to do it?"
He let his eyes dwell steadily upon her pale, small, piquant face,
lifted above the long, rounded throat, on which sparkled a slim gorget
of rubies, to match her dress.
"You've done things that I wanted you to do before now," he said softly.
"You'll do this, I am sure."
She put one hand on his arm. The hand was so tiny and white that it
seemed to rest there as lightly as a drifted blossom. "Will you tell me
all about her?" she said, in her measured way.
"I told you that I couldn't describe her. She's like flowers that I've
seen; she's like music that I've heard; she is like perfumes that I have
smelt. There's poetry for you. You're fond of poetry, you say."
She still kept her hand on his arm. He had very rarely praised a woman
in her hearing. He had never before praised one in this fashion.
"Will you tell me one thing more?" she said. "Have you fallen in love
with her?"
Goldwin threw back his head and laughed. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed,
"she is a married woman, and her husband worships her."
"Will you answer my question?" persisted Mrs. Lee.
"Yes," said Goldwin, suddenly jumping up from the lounge. "She is
tremendously fond of her husband. There ... your question is answered."