The gay season had soon set in with full force. It promised to be a
season of especial brilliancy. Claire rapidly found people gathering
about her. She began to have a little list of her own. The wives of the
two gentlemen who had dined with herself and husband in Goldwin's
company, each asked herself and husband to dine at their own house. The
dinners were both of sumptuous quality, and attended by numerous other
guests. Claire made a deep impression at both places. Her toilettes were
rich and of unique taste; she was by far the most beautiful woman at
either assemblage. The sudden financial glory of Hollister, whose actual
wealth was tripled if not quadrupled by rumor, cast about her
exceptional grace, beauty, and wit an added halo of distinction. She was
the kind of woman whom women like. In not a few of her own sex she
quickly roused an enthusiastic partisanship.
"You are bound to lead, or nothing," Mrs. Diggs soon said to her. "I see
this very clearly, Claire,--though, for that matter, I have seen it all
along."
"I mean to lead, or nothing," answered Claire, with her superb candor.
"Thus far I have not found it difficult."
Mrs. Diggs put up her thin forefinger.
"Tut, tut," she remonstrated. "Don't be too confident. Ambition _may_
overleap itself. Remember that you are still on the threshold."
"I've crossed it," said Claire, laughing. "I've got into the
drawing-room."
"No, you haven't, my dear. You have yet achieved nothing secure,
absolute, decisive. Now, I'm not a bit of a snob, myself, as you know.
But I understand how to reason like one; I can measure the mettle of the
foe you've got to fight with. Let us talk plainly together, as we always
do. None of the very heavy swells have as yet admitted you. There's no
use of denying this. You're being a great deal talked about. You've
broken bread already, and you've received invitations to break more
bread, with some very nice, exclusive women. But they are not of the
first rank; they're not of the great, proud, select clique. True,
Cornelia has called on you, and Sylvia Lee has called. You've returned
their visits, and have seen neither; neither was at home. But then
neither _is_ at home except on her visiting-day, and that is customarily
written with much legibility on both their cards. But on both the cards
which you received, _no day at all was written_. I've never mentioned
this before, have I? Well, it never occurred to me until last night. I
was nervous, and couldn't sleep; that dear Manhattan was out at the
club, smoking those horrid cigars, which flush his face so and hurt his
poor, dear brain, I'm sure. Perhaps it was that which kept me awake and
made my mind wander toward you, and reflect upon this peculiarly
interesting stage of your career. The little circumstance I have
mentioned may mean nothing, but I'm inclined to think otherwise;
everything, no matter how trivial, about Cornelia, is sure to mean
something. But, however this may be, affairs have now reached a peculiar
pass with you. You must make a _coup_, my dear--a grand _coup_."
"Which you have arranged entirely," said Claire, smiling, "I haven't a
doubt. And now you await my sanction of it?"
Mrs. Diggs creased her pale forehead, in a reflective frown. "No, not
precisely that, my dear; I haven't yet quite decided what it is to be.
But I have almost decided. Suppose that you do not make it at all--that
is, not in your own person. Suppose that I make it for you."
"You?" inquired Claire.
"Yes. Suppose that I send out cards for a huge reception, and place your
card within the same envelope. Then you would receive at my side, don't
you know, and everybody who came must henceforth be on your list as well
as on mine. I would launch you boldly forth, in other words. I would put
you under my wing. I would give you my _cachet_."
A marked intimacy now existed between Claire and Goldwin. He would often
drop in of an evening--sometimes of an afternoon. Hollister was not by
any means at home every evening, when he and Claire had no mutual
engagement. He was getting to have a good many solitary engagements.
"Stag" dinners claimed him; there would be nocturnal trysts with certain
fellow-financiers on the subject of the morrow's chances. Then, too, he
had been made a member of the Metropolitan Club, an institution oddly
hard, and in a way oddly easy, to enter; it was the one great reigning
club of the continent; none other precisely resembled it; the social
leaders who did not belong to it were few, and to cross its doorstep at
will was the unfulfilled dream of many a social struggler.
Claire cordially liked Goldwin. If he had been obscure she would still
have liked him, though his importance was so knit in with his
personality, he exhaled such an atmosphere of pecuniary and patrician
celebrity, that one could ill think of him as ever being or ever having
been obscure. She was boldly frank with him regarding her ambitious
aims. He would throw back his handsome head and laugh most heartily at
her ingenuous confidences. He would tell her that she was the most
exquisite joke in the world, and yet that he was somehow forced to
accept her as quite the opposite of one. "Ah, yes, intensely opposite,"
he would add, with a fluttered pull at his silken mustache that she felt
to be studied in its emotional suggestiveness, with a large sigh that
she suspected of being less studied, and with a look in his charming
hazel eyes that would nearly always make her avert her own. His homage
had become a very substantial fact, and she knew just how much of it the
popular standard of wifely discretion would permit her to receive--just
how much of it would be her advantage and not her detriment. He was too
keen not to have perceived that she had drawn this judicious line of
calculation. Now and then he made little semi-jocose attempts to
overleap it, but at the worst a word could curb him where a glance
failed. She found him, all in all, saltatory but never vicious; a stout
pull of the rein always brought him to terms.
After her converse with Mrs. Diggs, just recorded, she told him of the
latter's proposed _coup_. He looked at her sharply for a moment, and
then made a very wry grimace.
"Good Heavens!" he exclaimed. "That woman endorse you! It would be
complete ruin."
"Mrs. Diggs is my friend, and as such I must insist upon your always
speaking with respect of her in my presence," reprimanded Claire,
stoutly.
"Respect? Why, of course I respect her. Not physically; she's
constructed on too painful a plan of zigzags. But in all other ways I
consider her delightful. She's got a big, warm heart in that angular
body of hers. She's as liberal as the air. But she isn't good form--she
isn't a swell, and no earthly power could make her so. Of course she
doesn't think she has really lost caste. She may tell you that she does,
but privately she has an immense belief in her ability to play the fine
lady at a moment's notice. I don't know any woman more flatly
disapproved of by her own original set. Shall I tell you what this idea
of hers would result in if practically carried out? A distinct injury to
yourself. She has a crowd of queer friends whom she wouldn't slight for
the world; she's too consistently good-hearted. She'd invite them all,
and they would all come. Her notable relations--the Van Horns and Van
Corlears and Amsterdams and Hackensacks, and Heaven knows who
else--would yawn and perhaps shudder when they got the tickets for her
entertainment. They would mostly come, too, and all their grand friends
would no doubt follow them. But they would come with a feeling of deadly
rancor toward yourself; they would never forgive you for setting her up
to it, and nothing could induce them to believe that you had _not_ set
her up to it." Here Goldwin crossed his legs with an impatient violence,
and stared down at one of his shoes with enough intensity for it to
have been concerned in the last caprice of the stock-market. "Oh, no,"
he went on, "that would never do. Never in the world. It wouldn't be a
_coup_ at all; it would be a monstrous _fiasco_. Take my advice, now,
and politely but firmly nip any such proceeding in the bud."
Claire did. On his own side, Goldwin was secretly determined that she
whom he thought the most fascinating, novel, and beautiful woman he had
ever met, should achieve the full extent of her desires. These desires
affected him much as they affected Hollister; they were part of Claire's
charm for him; they were like the golden craft of scrollwork that framed
the picture; they set it off, and made it more precious; there was a
lovely imperiousness about them that would have bored him in another
woman, like a kind of ugly greed, but that in her were a delight.
He had made up his mind to serve her, brilliantly, conspicuously, and he
soon did so. He issued invitations for a dinner at Delmonico's, and gave
it on a scale of splendor that eclipsed all his previous hospitalities.
Rare music stole to the guests while they feasted; the board was
literally pavilioned in flowers; the wines and the viands were marvels
of rarity and cost; beside the plate of each lady lay a fan studded with
her monogram in precious stones; during dessert a little cake was served
to everybody present, which, when broken, contained a ring with the word
_bienvenu_ embossed in silver along its golden circlet. The host had
very carefully chosen his guests from among the autocrats and arbiters
of fashion. Claire and Hollister were the only persons who did not
represent aristocracy at its sovereign height. But on Claire fell the
chief honors. It was she whom Goldwin conducted into the dining room;
it was she to whom he directed the major share of his attentions,
contriving with slight apparent effort that she should know every one
else, and making it evident that the affair was held in large luxurious
compliment to herself alone, though not thrusting this fact into more
than partial prominence.
Goldwin, for certain marked reasons of his own, had been from the first
resolved upon the attendance of Mrs. Ridgeway Lee. He sent no invitation
to Mrs. Van Horn. He knew that Claire suspected the latter of adverse
feelings, and he knew no more than this. But Mrs. Van Horn was not a
necessity to the success of his festival; she could easily be replaced
by some other leader, and it would be much better not to invite her at
all than to invite her without avail. But Mrs. Lee must appear.
He had been prepared for refusal, and it promptly came. On the evening
of the day it reached him, he presented himself at Mrs. Lee's residence.
He found her alone. She had denied herself to four or five other
gentlemen during the previous hour. She had expected Goldwin, though she
tried to look decorously surprised when he entered her elegant little
drawing-room.
She had chosen to clothe herself in black satin, the shimmer of whose
tense-drawn fabric about bust and waist, and of its trailing draperies
about the lower portion of her lithe person, gave to her strange beauty
an almost startling oddity. An irreverent critic who had recently seen
her in this robe had declared that she made him think of a wet eel.
Allowing the comparison to have been apt, if ungallant, there is no
doubt that she could have suggested only an eel very much humanized,
with a face of quite as extraordinary feminine beauty as that possessed
by the deadly lady whom Keats so weirdly celebrated.
Her dark eyes seemed to-night lit with the smouldering fires of fever.
The moment Goldwin looked well at her he made up his mind that he was to
have a hard time of it. She had undoubtedly guessed the purport of his
dinner, and she meant to tell him so. He strongly suspected that she
meant to tell him so, as well, with considerable verbal embellishment.
He pretended, in a playful way, to be dazzled by her fantastic apparel.
He put both hands up to his eyes and rubbed them in a comic imitation of
bewilderment.
"I'm not prepared to tell you whether I like it or not," he said, while
he sank into one of the big, yielding chairs. "But I consider it
splendidly effective. It makes you appear so beautifully slippery. You
look as if you could slide into an indiscretion, and then squirm right
out again without being observed by anybody."
Mrs. Lee bit her lip. She had often let him say more saucy things than
this to her, and not resented them. But to-night her mood held no such
tolerance.
"You once promised me," she said, "that you would never speak rudely
about my personal appearance." She seemed to shape with some difficulty
this and the sentences that followed it. "I did not make myself. Perhaps
if I had been granted that privilege I might have hit on a type more
suited to your taste."
Goldwin shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, come," he said, "you've let me
chaff you a hundred times before, and treated it as a joke."
He was still seated, while she stood. He forgot to think this a
discourtesy toward her; he would have remembered it as such with almost
any other woman; his outward manners were usually blameless; but perhaps
he was no more at fault than she herself for the present negligence.
As it was, it did not strike her. She was thinking of other weightier
things. A delicate table stood near her, and she half turned toward it,
breaking from a massive basket of crimson roses one whose rich petals
were heavy-folded and perfect, and fixing it in the bosom of her
night-dark dress. Goldwin was watching her covertly but keenly all the
while. She seemed to him like an incarnate tempest--he knew her so well.
His furtive but sharp gaze saw the tremor in her slim, pale fingers as
she dealt with the discompanioned rose.
Finding that she did not answer, he went on: "You're out of sorts
to-night. Has anything gone wrong during the day?"
She tossed her head for an instant, and her lip curled so high that it
showed the white edge of her teeth. But promptly she seemed to decide
upon a mild and not a harsh retort. "I have been at the hospital most of
the afternoon," she said. "I prayed for an hour beside a poor old woman
who was dying with cancer." She gave a quick, nervous shudder. "It was
horrible." She closed her eyes, then slowly unclosed them. "Horrible,"
she repeated, in her most measured way.
"It must have been simply ghastly," observed Goldwin, with dryness. "For
Heaven's sake, why don't you swear off these debauches of charity for at
least a month or two? They're completely breaking you up. It's they
that put you in these frightful humors."
She came several steps toward him, and sank into a chair quite close at
his side. She twisted herself so inordinately, in taking this new
posture, that her detractors would have decided the whole performance
one of her most aggravating affectations. "What frightful humors?" she
asked. This question had the same loitering, somnolent intonation that
always belonged to her speech, and contrasted so quaintly with her
nervous, volatile turns and poses.
Goldwin saw that the time had come. "Oh, you know what I mean," he said.
"You went and refused my dinner. Of course you didn't mean it."
"I did mean it," said Mrs. Lee, very low indeed.
"Nonsense. I'm like an enterprising salesman. I won't take 'no' for an
answer."
"I shall give you no other."
He leaned nearer to her. "What on earth is the matter?" he inquired. "I
am going to make it a very nice affair. I don't think I've ever done
anything quite as pretty as this will be. You used to tell me that no
one did these things just as well as I. You used to say that if I ever
left you out of one of my state feasts you'd cut my acquaintance."
She had drooped her small, dark head while he spoke, but now, as he
finished, she raised it. Her tones were still low, but unwonted speed
was in her words.
"I don't doubt you will make it a very nice affair. But you give it
because you want to give distinction to a woman who has bewitched you.
Don't deny that Mrs. Hollister will be there. I know it--I am certain of
it."
"I don't deny it," said Goldwin, crossing his legs quietly, "now that
you afford me a chance of stating it."
He saw her control an inward shiver from displaying more overt signs.
"Oh, well," she said, "do not let us discuss the question any more. I
sent you my regret to-day. I have another engagement, as I told you."
"Another engagement is easily broken."
"It is a dinner engagement."
"I don't believe you."
"You are grossly rude."
"I know I am. It's perfectly awful. It's the first time I ever insulted
a woman. I shall be in the depths of repentance all day to-morrow. I
don't know if I shall ever really pardon myself. But ... I don't believe
you, all the same."
He said this with a mournful deliberation that would at any other time
have roused her most enjoying laughter; for he had in him the rich fund
of true comedy, as many of his friends were wont loudly to attest, and
at will he could draw flattering plaudits of mirth from even the
gloomiest hearer.
But Mrs. Lee did not show the glimpse of a smile.
"There is no use," she said. "I have given you my answer. I shall not
go. I shall not permit you to make of my name and position a mere idle
convenience. I shall not lend you either one or the other, that it may
serve your purpose in presenting to society any adventuress who may have
pleased your fancy."
Goldwin was very angry at this speech. She had no idea how angry it had
made him, as he quietly rose and faced her.
"What right have you to call her an adventuress?" he asked.
Her eyes flashed as she looked up at him. "Of course she is one. Her
husband, too, is an adventurer. They're both trying to push themselves
in among the best people. And you are helping them. You are helping him
because of her; and you are helping her ... well, you are helping her
because of herself."
Goldwin gave a smile at this. She perceived, then, how very angry he
was. She knew his smile so well that when it came, different from any
other she had ever seen on the same lips, it struck her by its cold
novelty.
"You called upon this adventuress," he said; "you were willing to do
that."
"Yes--to please you."
"Allow that as your reason. You called on her in private to please me.
You will not meet her in public to please me. Is not that just how the
case stands?"
She fixed her eyes on his face. Her feverish look had grown humid. He
could plainly note that her lips trembled. She was so alive, now, to a
sense of his being very indignant, that this realization frightened her,
and she let him see, with pitiable candor, just how much it frightened
her.
"You are in love with Mrs. Hollister," she murmured. "And--she is in
love with you."
She showed him the full scope of his power by those few words. He walked
toward the door, pausing on its threshold.
"I won't remain to hear you insult a woman whom I respect," he said;
"you called her an adventuress, which is untrue; you now say something
even worse."
"Will you deny it?" she asked, rising.
Her question had a plaintive, querulous ring, which the circumstances
made something more than pathetic.
"Will you reconsider your refusal?" he said, making the interrogation a
reply.
She sank back into her seat again.
"No, never!" she exclaimed.
"Good night," he returned. He went immediately out into the hall, put on
his coat and hat, and left the house.
"She will yield," he told himself. "I am sure of it. She showed me that
she would if I were only hard enough. I mean to be hard. I can make it
up in kindness by and by."
He waited three days. No word came to him from Mrs. Lee. But on the
fourth word came to him.
"I knew it," he thought, as he read her note.
Mrs. Lee went to the dinner in a truly marvelous gown. It was some
curious blending of crimson and black silks, that made her look sombrely
clad in one attitude and luridly clad in the next. Her only jewelry was
a thin snake of rubies about her slender throat, and the head of the
snake, set directly beneath her chin, was a big gold one, having two
large garnets for eyes. All the women pronounced her costume
ridiculously overdone. All the men professed to like it. She never
appeared in gayer spirits. Next to Claire she was the most notable
feminine guest.
But Claire ruled absolute. She had never been more beautiful, perhaps
because she had never felt more secretly and victoriously exultant. The
delicious music, the piercing yet tender odor of the lavish flowers, the
insidious potency of the wines, which she sipped sparingly and felt
dangerously tingle through her veins--all these influences wrought upon
her a species of stimulating enthrallment which made the whole splendid
banquet seem, on the following day, like some enchanted dream. On one
side sat Goldwin, the genius who had created this lovely witchery,
urbane, devoted, allegiant; on the other side sat a man of deserved
eminence, a wit, a scholar, a statesman. She talked with both
companions, and it could not be said that she then charmed both, for one
was already her loyal devotee. As for the other, though advanced in
years and freighted with pungent experiences, he soon tacitly admitted
that he had at last found, at the most discriminating period of his
career, a woman whose graces of intelligence and beauty met in faultless
unison. As all the ladies rose, leaving the gentlemen to their coffee
and cigars, he leaned toward Goldwin, even before Claire's draperies had
swept the threshold of the dining-room, and significantly murmured:--
"You were right. She is an event."
That dinner was the stepping-stone by which Claire mounted into
immediate triumph. All through the next year she was the reigning
favorite in just that realm where she had aimed to reign. Her father had
died a pauper and been buried as one. She, the mistress of many
thousands, having fixedly remembered what a feeble, disappointed,
obscure, broken-down man had said to her in early childhood, now stood
as the living, actual result of his past counsel. Years ago the seed had
been sown in that dingy little basement of One-Hundred-and-Twelfth
Street. To-day the flower bloomed, rare and beautiful. The little girl
had climbed the hill to its top, after all. She had not grown tired and
gone home before the top was reached. She had done her father's bidding.
She was sure he would be glad if he knew.
'And yet am I quite sure?' she would sometimes ask herself. 'Was this
what he really meant when he spoke those words?'
She knew perfectly the folly of the course that she now pursued. Her
occasional self-questionings were a hypocrisy that she realized while
she indulged it. But they were very occasional. She had slight time for
introspection, for analysis of her own acts.
Flattery and devotion literally poured in upon her, like the new wealth
that continued to pour in upon her husband. The house in Twenty-Eighth
Street was soon exchanged for a spacious mansion on Fifth Avenue. Claire
ceased to know even the number of her servants. She had a housekeeper,
who superintended their engagements and discharges. She dwelt in an
atmosphere of excessive luxury, and found herself loving it more and
more as she yielded to the spell of its subtle enervation.
Her second winter was the confirmation of her sovereignty. As the phrase
goes, she was asked everywhere. Her bright or caustic sayings were ever
on the lips of loyal quoters. Her toilettes were described with
journalistic realism in more than a single newspaper. Cards for her
entertainments were eagerly sought, and often vainly. Foreigners of
distinction drifted into her drawing-rooms as if by a natural process of
attraction. She had scarcely a moment of time to herself; when she was
not entertaining she was being entertained. Her admirers, women and men,
vied in efforts to secure her presence. She had acquired, as if by some
magic instinct, the last needed personal touch; she had got the grand
air to perfection. Diplomatists who had met and known the most noted
beauties of European courts had nothing but praise to pay her serene
elegance of deportment, the undulating grace of her step, the nice
melody of her voice, the fine wizardry of her smile. She had never seen
Europe, yet she might have spent all the years of her youth on its soil
with no lovelier results than those which now marked her captivating
manner. She was American, past question, to transatlantic eyes; yet
these found in her only the original buoyancy and freshness of that
nationality, without a gleam of its so-termed coarseness.
Foes, of course, rose up against her. There can be no sun without
shadow. She had made herself so distinct a rarity that cheapening
comment could not fail to begin its assault. It did so, in hot earnest.
Two women had denied their sanction to her sudden popularity. These were
Mrs. Van Horn and Mrs. Ridgeway Lee. They were not open enemies;
neither, to all appearances, were they covert ones. They were on
speaking terms with her. They met her constantly, yet they offered her
no deference. Deference was what she now required, and with a
widely-admitted right.
The invidious statements that stole into circulation regarding her could
not be traced either to the vengeance of Beverley Thurston's sister or
the jealousy of Stuart Goldwin's abandoned worshiper. It is possible
that the most leal of Claire's defenders never thought of so tracing
them. But the statements were made, and took wing. She had been a vulgar
girl of the people. Her parentage was of the most plebeian sort. A lucky
marriage had given her the chance, now accepted and enlarged. Her
maiden name had been this, that, and the other. She was absolutely
nobody.
Claire heard none of these scorching comments. She reigned too haughtily
for that. Mrs. Diggs heard them, but Mrs. Diggs betrayed no sign of
their existence. Goldwin was now devotedly at Claire's side; they were
repeatedly seen in public together; the world in which she ruled
considered it a splendid subjugation; she had brought the great Wall
Street King obsequiously to her feet.
But no breath of slander tainted the relation between them. Claire had
been very clever; she had blunted the first arrow, so to speak. She had
done so by means of her complete innocence. Goldwin was in love with
her; no one doubted this. It was something notable to have said of one.
But she was so safely not in love with Goldwin that she could
continually, by strokes of frank tact, show the world her own calm
recipiency and his entire subservience. A swift yet sure chasm widened
between herself and Hollister. The latter had become a man of incessant
and imperative engagements. Claire never dreamed of feeling a jealous
pang, and yet she knew that her husband, no less than herself, had
become a star of fashion. Hollister was assiduously courted. He and
Claire would now meet once a day, and sometimes not so often. They had
separate apartments; it was so much more convenient for both. The same
dinner-engagement frequently claimed them; but on these occasions she
would appear in the lower hall to meet him, rustling beneath some new
miracle of dressmaking, and they would get into the carriage together
and be driven to the appointed place. At the dinner they would be
widely separated. He would sit beside some woman glad to have secured
him; she would be the companion of some man happy because of her
nearness. The dinner would break up; the hour would be somewhat late;
they would get into their carriage; Hollister would have an appointment,
at the club, or somewhere. He would let Claire into the great new house
with his latch-key. "Good night," he would say, and hurry off into the
carriage that had waited for him. Claire would ascend and be disrobed by
a sleepy maid. To-morrow there would perhaps be another dinner, of the
same sort. Or it might be an affair to which she went alone, and from
which Goldwin accompanied her home. Goldwin was always prepared to
accompany her. He obeyed her nod.
But Hollister was still her devout subject. It was merely that the
sundering stress of circumstances divided them. He did not forget
Claire; he postponed her. Everything was in a whirl with him, now; he
was shooting rapids, so to speak, and by and by he would be in still
water again. For the present, he had only time to tell himself that
Claire was getting on magnificently well. It was like driving four or
six restive horses abreast, with his wife seated at his side. He must
attend to the skittish brutes, as it were; her safety, no less than his
own, depended on his good driving. But she was there at his side; he
felt comfortably sure of this fact, though he could not turn and look at
her half often enough.
The January of this second winter had been prolific in heavy
snow-storms, and the sleighing had filled town with its jocund tinkles.
One afternoon Claire, leaning back in a commodious sleigh, and muffled
to the throat in furry robes, stopped at Mrs. Diggs's house, and the two
ladies were driven together into the Park. It was a perfect afternoon of
its kind. There was no wind; the cold was keen but still; not a hint of
thaw showed itself in the banks of powdery snow skirting either edge of
the streets, or in those pure, unroughened lapses which clad the
spacious Park, beneath the black asperity of winter trees, traced
against a sky of steely blueness.
Claire was in high spirits; her laugh had a ring as clear as the
weather. Mrs. Diggs shivered under the protective wraps of the sleigh.
"My circulation was never meant for this sort of thing," she said, at
length. "We've gone far enough, haven't we, Claire? It's nearly dark,
too."
This was a most glaring fallacy, coined by the desperation of poor Mrs.
Diggs's discomfort. But the chilly light was growing a blue gloom above
the massed housetops when the two ladies found themselves at Claire's
door.
It had been arranged that they should dine quietly together that
evening. Hollister would not be at home, and Claire, for a wonder,
would. Mrs. Diggs had been complaining, of late, that she never had a
moment of privacy with her friend. Claire had agreed, three days ago, to
disappoint for one night all who were seeking her society. "We shall
have a cosey dinner," she had said, "of just you and me. We will chat of
everything--past, present, and future."
Mrs. Diggs recalled that word 'cosey' as she entered Claire's proud
dining-room, with its lofty arched ceiling, where little stars of gold
gleamed from dark interspaces between massive rafters of walnut. She
crouched on a soft rug beside the deep, large fire-place, in which great
logs were blazing. And while she basked in the pleasant glow, her eye
wandered about the grave grandeurs of the noble room, scanning its dusky
traits of wainscot, tapestry, tropic plants, or costly pictures: for all
was in sombre shadow except the reddened hearth and the small central
table, on whose white cloth two great clusters of wax-lights had been
set, stealing their colors from a group of flowers, and its clean
sparkle from the glass and silver. The whole table was like a spot of
light amid the stately dimness.
"Really, very splendid indeed, Claire," said Mrs. Diggs, in a sort of
ruminative ellipsis, letting her eye presently rest on the tips of her
own upheld fingers, which the firelight had turned into that milky pink
that we often see float through opals. "But I really think I liked the
little basement house better, take it all in all."
"Did you?" murmured Claire, who was standing near her, enjoying the
warmth, but not bathing in it like her half-frozen friend. "I didn't."
A very impressive butler soon glided into the room, and told Madame in
French that she was served. Mrs. Diggs scrambled to her feet; the
majesty of the butler had something to do with her speed in performing
this act, though hunger was perhaps concerned in it.
"That dreadful sleigh-ride has left me my appetite," she said, while
seating herself opposite Claire, "so I see it hasn't quite killed me."
"I think you will survive it," said Claire, with one of her little
musical laughs.
There was not much talk between the two friends while dinner lasted, and
what there was took a desultory and aimless turn. The butler waited
faultlessly; there were eight courses; Claire had said that it would be
a very plain dinner, and Mrs. Diggs secretly smiled as she remembered
the words. The cooking was perfect; it had all of what the _gourmets_
would call Parisian sentiment, though no undue richness. Claire ate
sparingly, yet with apparent relish. She drank a little champagne, which
she had poured into a goblet and mixed with water. There were other
wines, but she touched none of them. Mrs. Diggs did, however, sipping
three or four, until she lost her chalky wanness of tint and almost got
a touch of actual color.
"I never take but one wine, as a rule," she said, "and that's claret.
But the sleigh-ride chilled me to the bone. I begin to feel quite warm
and comfortable, now. Do you always take champagne, Claire?"
"Always. But only a little. It's companionable to touch your lips to,
now and then, when you sit through those very long dinners. I suppose
the dullness of certain society originally drove me to it. But I am very
careful."
'What an air she said that with!' thought Mrs. Diggs. 'And one year ago,
at Coney Island, she was unknown, unnoticed.'
The whole repast was exquisite. While it lasted, Claire never once spoke
to the butler. He needed no orders; everything was done as well and as
silently as it could be done. In his way he was an irreproachable
artist, like the invisible _chef_ below stairs, who had evoked this
blameless dinner from the chaos of the uncooked.
Just at the end of dessert, Claire said to her guest: "Shall you take
coffee?"
"Oh, dear, no," replied Mrs. Diggs; "I don't even dare. I'm nervous
enough as it is."
But Claire had coffee, black as ink, and served to her in a tiny cup as
thin as a rose-leaf. Presently the two friends became aware that they
were alone. The butler had gone without seeming to go. Like a mysterious
_au revoir_ he had left behind him two crystal finger-bowls, with a slim
slice of lemon floating in each. Claire had finished her coffee. She
rose and leaned toward the flowers in the centre of the table. As her
fingers played among them they seemed to break, almost of their own
accord, into two separate bunches. She went round to Mrs. Diggs and gave
her one of these, retaining the other. Presently each had made for
herself an impromptu _corsage_. Mrs. Diggs had not spoken for several
minutes; she had indeed been abnormally quiet ever since the butler's
departure. The calm, graceful splendor of it all had awed her. It had
such a finish, such a choiceness, such gentle dignity of execution.
"Shall we sit near the fire?" asked Claire, as together they moved from
the table. "Or would you prefer one of the drawing-rooms?"
"The fire is so lovely," said Mrs. Diggs. "Let's sit here." She dropped
into a chair as she spoke. Claire also seated herself, not far from the
fire, though a little distance away from her friend.
Suddenly the flood-gates of Mrs. Diggs's enthusiasm burst open. She had
considerable silence to make up for. "Oh, Claire," she exclaimed, "it's
just _perfect!_ I don't see how you do it! I don't see where on earth
you got the experience from! If I had seven times your money _I_
couldn't begin to have my household machinery move in this delightful,
well-oiled way. My servants would steal; my _chef_ would get drunk; my
magnificence would all go awry; I'm sure it would!"
Claire laughed. "I'm very composed about it all," she said. "I keep
quite cool. I like it, too. There is a great deal in that. I don't mean
management so much as the superintendence of others' management. I'm a
sort of born overseer."
"You're a born leader." Mrs. Diggs was looking at her very attentively
now. "And how capably you _are_ leading! How you've carried your point,
Claire! I observe you, and absolutely marvel! I can't realize that you
are really and truly _my_ Coney Island Claire, don't you know? You've
shot up so. You're so mighty. It's like a dream."
"It's a very pleasant dream."
She said this archly and mirthfully. But Mrs. Diggs on a sudden became
solemn.
"Claire," she went on, "you remember what I told you in our little
confab, the other day, at the Lauderdales' reception? It's true, my
dear. You're like a person at a gambling-table, who begins to play for
pastime and ends by playing for greed. You know I dote on you, and you
know I never choose my words when I'm in downright earnest. Your love
for pomp and luxury, my dear, is becoming a vice. Yes, an actual vice.
You don't take your triumphs moderately, as you do your
champagne-and-water. You drink deep of them, and let them fly to your
head. Oh, I can see it well enough. And I tremble for you, I tremble,
Claire, because" ...
"Well? Because?" ...
She put these questions with a smile, as Mrs. Diggs paused. But it was a
smile of the lips only.
"Oh, because affairs might change in a day, almost an hour. You know
just what vast risks your husband constantly runs. You know what _might_
happen."
Claire rose at this. Her repose was gone; her piquant excitability had
seemed abruptly to return. She did not appear in the least angry. Mrs.
Diggs would have liked it better if she had shown a wrathful sign or
two.
"Don't let us talk of those grim matters, please," she said. She came
very close to her companion, and then, taking both the latter's hands,
sank down on her knees. Her face was lit with a charming yet restless
cheerfulness. "Dear friend, you spoke a minute ago of my triumphs. Do
you know, I've never secured just what I wanted until to-day? You
thought I had, but you were wrong. Shall I tell you why?" Mrs. Diggs was
inwardly thinking, as one ill-favored but generous woman will sometimes
think of another, how purely enchanting was her manner, and how richly
she deserved to win the social distinction she had attained.
"I suppose you mean, Claire, that Hollister to-day completed the last
thousand of his fourth or fifth million, eh?"
"Oh, not at all. I don't mean anything of the sort. I don't know
anything about Herbert's affairs, nowadays. He keeps them all to
himself."
"Well, then, what is it?"
"You'll laugh when you hear. You recollect the great ladies' luncheon
that I am to give next Friday?"
"Of course I do. I'm going to honor it."
"And so are two others. Mrs. Van Horn and Mrs. Ridgeway Lee. They have
never honored anything of mine until now. Poor Mrs. Arcularius yielded,
and bowed before me, long ago. My old school-enemy, Ada Gerrard, more
freckled, more arrogant, more stupid than ever, is one of my most
willing allies. I had conquered them all, but I could not conquer those
two women. They stood aloof, and their standing aloof was a perpetual
distress."
"Claire, Claire," exclaimed Mrs. Diggs, "you make me wonder at you! What
was the hostility of these two women, whether open or repressed? You had
all the others to pay you court. Why should you have cared? They saw
your success. They are powerful, but their power could not keep you from
asserting and maintaining yours. I repeat, why should you care?"
"I did care. But it is all over now." She rose to her feet, with a full
laugh, as she said these words. "They are coming to my luncheon. They
have both accepted. They have acknowledged me. I have forced them to do
so."
She uttered that last sentence with a mock fierceness that ended in
laughter. But she could not hide from her friend the intense seriousness
from which these expressions had sprung.
Before Mrs. Diggs could answer, a servant entered the room by one of the
draped doorways leading into the _salons_ beyond. He was not the butler,
who had so admirably served them at dinner, but a footman, charged with
other special offices. He handed Claire a card, which she read and
tossed aside. The next moment she dismissed him by a slight motion of
the hand.
"Let me see that card," said Mrs. Diggs. "Has anybody called whom I
know?"
Claire was looking straight into the tumbled, lurid logs of the hearth.
"Yes, you know him, of course," she said. "It was only Stuart Goldwin. I
am not at home to-night. Not to any one except you, I mean. I gave
orders."
A silence ensued. Mrs. Diggs presently made one of her plunges. "Claire,
they say that Goldwin is madly in love with you."
She gave a sharp turn of the neck, fixing her eyes on her friend's face.
"That is _all_ they say, I hope. They can't say--well, you understand
what they can _not_ say."
"That you care for him? Well, no.... You have been very discreet. You
have arranged wonderfully. Very few women could have done it with the
same nicety."
Claire threw back her head, with a haughty, fleeting smile. "Any woman
could have done it who felt safe--perfectly safe, as I feel."
"You mean that this grand Goldwin, who sways the stock-market, can't
quicken your pulse by one degree."
She looked steadily at Mrs. Diggs. "I did not say that I meant that. But
I do, if you choose to ask me point blank. We're very good friends. He
amuses me. I fancy that I amuse him. If I do more he doesn't tell me so.
He understands what would happen if he did."
She was staring at the fire again. Its lustres played upon the silken
folds of her dress, and made the gold glimmers start and fade in her
chestnut hair.
Mrs. Diggs was not reclining in her chair; she was leaning sideways,
with both black eyes riveted on Claire's half-averted face.
"Claire," she said, "I'm so awfully glad to hear you say that. It makes
me like you better, if such a thing were possible. Upon my word, to be
frank, in the most friendly way, I _did_ think there was a little
danger, don't you know, of.... Well, you've settled all doubts, of
course. But then, my dear, you never were enormously fond of Hollister.
You let him adore _you_, don't you know? Oh, I've seen it all. There's
no use in getting angry."
"I'm not angry," said Claire. She was again looking full at her friend.
She had put one dainty-booted foot on the low gilt trellis which rose
between the rug and the hearthstone. "We seem to drift upon very
unpleasant subjects this evening," she continued. "I am afraid our
little intimate reunion is not going to be a success."
"You _are_ angry!" exclaimed Mrs. Diggs, reproachfully. "You've changed,
Claire. You're not the same to me as you were before you became a great
lady. Now, don't deny it. You feel your oats, as my dear Manhattan would
say. You keep me at a distance. You"--
Here Mrs. Diggs paused, for the same footman who had before appeared now
made a second entrance. This time he handed Claire a note. "There is no
answer, Madame," he said in French, and at once softly vanished.
"Pardon me," said Claire, as she tore open the envelope. Mrs. Diggs
watched her while she read the contents of the note. Her perusal took
some time. She read the three written pages once, twice, thrice. Her
face had grown very grave in the meanwhile.
Suddenly she crumpled the note in one hand, and flung it into the fire.
Her eyes flashed and her lip quivered as she did so.
"For Heaven's sake, Claire," appealed her friend, "what _is_ the matter?
I suppose Cornelia or Sylvia Lee sends a regret for luncheon. You are so
foolish to mind what they do! You recollect what I used to tell you
about Cornelia. But why should you mind her airs and caprices now? You
are utterly above her--or rather, you have shown her that two can reign
in the same kingdom. You could cut her dead with perfect impunity.
That's a good deal to say, don't you know, but you positively could!"
"No, no," said Claire, with a clouded face and a little wave of the
hand, "it has nothing to do with either of those women. It is" ... here
she paused, and her breath came quick. "It is from Beverley Thurston."
"Beverley!" exclaimed Mrs. Diggs. "Why, he's in Europe."
"He got back yesterday. He has learned about me. I suppose his sister
has told him. And he writes to me in a tone of impertinence. Yes, it's
nothing else. He writes to me as if I were some sinful creature. He
presumes to be sorry for me. He says that he will pay me a visit if I
can spare him an hour from the giddy life I am leading.... I don't
remember the exact words he uses; it is not so much what he writes as
what he seems to write. The whole note breathes of patronage and
commiseration. To _me!_--think of it! What right has he? What right did
I ever give him?"
Mrs. Diggs started up from her chair. "Why, my dear Claire," she said,
"you are greatly excited!"
"I am miserable!" cried Claire. She almost staggered toward
Mrs. Diggs, and flung both arms about her friend's neck. "I am
miserable--miserable!" she went on, with a sudden paroxysm of tears. She
leaned her proud young head on Mrs. Diggs's bony shoulder, beginning to
sob quite wildly. "Do I deserve reproaches? Have I been so wrong? What
evil have I done? Let my conscience trouble me if it will, but _he_ is
not my conscience. How dare _he_ reproach me?"
A violent seizure of sobs made Claire incapable of further speech. Mrs.
Diggs let the clinging arms clasp her. She did not know what to answer;
she scarcely knew what to think. She only felt, at that unexpected
moment, that she loved Claire very much, and would always stay her
stanch friend, no matter what bitter ill might overtake her.