"You think I might have done greater things."
"I think you might have done better things."
"You admit that I have achieved success?"
"A marvelous success. It shows your extraordinary gifts. The town, in a
certain way, is ringing with your name. If an ordinary woman had gained
your place she would have found in it a splendid gratification. She
would have been amply, perfectly satisfied."
"You mean that I am not satisfied. Pray allow it. Your tones and your
look both show it me."
Thurston smiled, transiently and sadly. "I mean that you are miserable,"
he said.
Claire bit her lip, and slightly drooped her head. "You have no cause to
tell me that."
He leaned closer to her. "I do tell you. It is true. I saw it in your
face when I first looked at you. There is a change. I can't define it,
but it exists. You are more beautiful than when I saw you last. You have
an air of ease, dignity, command. But you express a kind of superb
weariness, and yet occasional flashes of excitement are in your talk and
demeanor. You see, I have watched you from a distance; I have my
opinions."
"Yes, you have your opinions," said Claire, lifting her head and
directly regarding him. "That is very plain."
"It all makes an exquisite picture," Thurston continued. "I have seen
the world, as you know. I have seen many beautiful women. Your
personality, as I now encounter it, is an absolute astonishment to me. I
don't know where, in these few months, you acquired your repose, your
serenity, your magnificence, your air. Do you remember what I told you
of the restless American type that you represent? I knew you would
strive to rise; it was in you; you pushed to the front, as I was sure
you would do. But I had no prescience of this mighty accomplishment."
"You are sneering at me, as your note sneered," said Claire, looking at
him steadily. "Acknowledge it. I perceive it with great accuracy. I
somehow cannot answer you as I would answer another. You warned me
months ago. You knew what I desired, and told me of the danger that lay
in my path. I recollect all that you wanted me to try and be. Perhaps I
_would_ have tried, under differing conditions."
She paused, and Thurston instantly said, "As my wife you would have
tried--and succeeded."
"Perhaps," she answered, very low of tone, not meeting his look. "But
all that is past. Don't pull corpses out of graves."
"My love for you is living," he said to her. There was no touch of
passion in his voice; there was only a mournful respect. "I don't think
I am wrong to speak of it now. There's a sanctity and chastity about the
feeling I bear for you which the fact of your being a wife does not
affect. I want to know the man whom you have married; I am curious to
meet him and know him well. He has a large publicity, as you are aware.
They have heard of him in Europe."
"I understand the question you wish to put yet do not," Claire said, at
this point. "You lead up to it very adroitly; I might play the role of
ignorant innocence, if I chose. But I do not choose. You want to ask me
whether I loved the man I married."
Thurston again stroked his mustache, for a moment. "Yes," he presently
said, "I should like to know that."
A silence now ensued between them. Claire broke it. "He loved me," she
said.
"Which means that you did not care for him?"
"Oh, yes. I cared very much. It was no worldly sale of myself. He was
not even rich when I married him. He attracted me--in a manner charmed
me. I felt that I should never meet another man who would attract and
charm me more. Do you understand?"
"Thoroughly.... Since then you have met Stuart Goldwin. I know him well.
He is a man of exceptional fascination. They tell me that he is your
slave."
"Do they?" said Claire, coloring under this rapid attack of candor.
"Well, if he is my slave--which I, of course, deny--then I am not his.
They did not tell you that, I am sure. They did not even hint it."
"No. You have escaped the least breath of scandal."
"Be sure that I have. And I shall continue to escape it. I recollect
that you once declared I was cold, and that my coldness would prove a
safeguard. 'It is very protective to a woman,' you said."
"Quote me in full or not at all," he corrected, with a grim pleasantry.
"I said that it is very protective to a woman--while it lasts."
"True," returned Claire. "And it _has_ lasted. I prophesied that it
would last, and I was right.... By the way, from whom have you learned
all these important items? Perhaps from your sister. She is not my
friend."
Thurston started a little. "She is not your enemy?" he said, putting the
words as a distinct question.
"I hope not. But I am by no means sure. Thus far she has held herself
aloof from me. She has not openly opposed me, but she has behaved with
telling reserve. Everybody else has paid me tribute, so to speak. No, I
am wrong. There is one other woman--her cousin, Mrs. Lee."
"Of course you know why poor Sylvia would be your foe. She is madly in
love with Goldwin; she has been for years. You must have cost her dire
pangs."
Claire chose to ignore this last statement. "I think your sister
dislikes me from pride," she said. "I mean pride of family." Here she
paused for a moment, and seemed almost bashfully reluctant to proceed.
But her hesitation had in it a gentle, unassuming modesty; it sprang
wholly from unwillingness to touch on a subject which she knew that only
the most delicate tact should deal with, if to deal with it at all were
not folly and rashness. "Your sister found out," she softly continued,
"that you had liked me enough to ask me to be your wife. Heaven knows,
Beverley Thurston, that _I_ did not tell her!"
Thurston looked very grave. "I told her," he said. "Or rather, she drew
it from me. I was foolish to let her. Cornelia is so clever.... Well,"
he suddenly went on, with an unusual show of animation, "do you mean
that she accused you of having rejected me?"
"She did not put it in the form of an accusation. She stated it. Wait; I
will tell you more; I will tell when, where, and how it all happened."
Claire did so. He listened with deep attention. She narrated the whole
episode of her well-remembered conversation with his sister in the
dining-room at the Coney Island hotel.
"Ah, what a woman that sister of mine is!" he exclaimed, in his subdued
way, as Claire finished. "I must talk with her. I dine there to-night. I
will find out if this knowledge has been at the root of her late
behavior."
Claire laid her gloved hand lightly on his sleeve. "I think it best to
say nothing. I feel that you are my friend--always my friend. As such
you will more discreetly let matters rest where they are."
"Let matters rest where they are?" he repeated.
"Yes." Her face broke into a smile as she spoke the next words. "Mrs.
Van Horn--the great Mrs. Van Horn--has withdrawn her disapprobation. The
day after to-morrow she and Mrs. Lee lunch with me. It is a ladies'
lunch. You have no idea how monstrously important an event her
attendance is to be. It is my crowning glory. After that I shall have no
more worlds to conquer. She is actually coming; I have it in her own
graceful handwriting. Frankly, I am quite serious. If you had followed
affairs, if you hadn't been off in Europe for months, you would
understand the momentous nature of your sister's acceptance."
Claire rose as she ended her last sentence. The conservatory was quite
empty of guests; the waning winter sunlight told of the hour for
departure. "It is time to go," she now continued. "Remember, whenever
you come to me you will be welcome. I shall be at the opera to-night.
Drop into my box if you get away from your sister's dinner before ten,
and feel like hearing some music."
Thurston replied that he would certainly do so. But, as it happened, he
partially failed to keep his promise. Mrs. Van Horn's dinner was
attended by several guests. He wanted to talk with his sister, and it
was somewhat late before he found the desired opportunity.
"Did you enjoy it, Beverley?" said his hostess, referring to the dinner.
They were in the front drawing-room together. Thurston had seated
himself near the fire-place, in a big chair of gilded basket-work with
soft plush cushions. He was playing with a small locket at his
waistcoat, and his look did not lift itself from the bauble as Mrs. Van
Horn spoke. She came near his chair and stood at his side for a moment.
She had been giving her servants a few orders relative to the morrow.
She looked very well that evening. The color of her gown was a sort of
tea-rose pink, and she wore a collar of large pearls about her throat,
and ornaments of pearls in her blonde hair. While her brother was
answering, she dropped in a chair quite near his own.
"I thought it about as successful as your dinners always are," he said.
"Everything went off to perfection, of course.... No, I forget; there
was one drawback. A serious one."
"What was it?"
"Sylvia Lee."
"You never could endure Sylvia," said Mrs. Van Horn, in her grand, cool,
suave way.
"I think her abominable," replied Thurston. "Her affectations irritate
and depress me. They appear to grow with age, too. She behaved more like
a contortionist than ever, to-night. But it is not only the wretched,
sensational bad taste of her poses and costumes. It is a conviction that
she is as treacherous as the serpent she resembles. And then her
religious attitudinizing ... has she got over that yet? I suppose not."
Mrs. Van Horn, who would sharply have resented these biting comments if
any lips but her brother's had delivered them, now answered with only a
faint touch of petulance. "You will never believe any good of Sylvia, so
it is useless to tell you how unjust I consider your opinions. But she
is more passionately absorbed in charities and religious devotion than
ever before. If you could see some of the people whom she goes among,
and whom she has constantly visiting her in her own house, you would be
forced to grant that the shallow hypocrisy with which you charge her is
a most sincere and active almsgiving."
"Say notorious, too. She's a Pharisee to the tips of her fingers. I
should like to know of one good deed that she has ever performed in
secret. She parades her piety and her benevolence just as she does her
newest fantasies in dressmaking. She thinks them picturesque. She would
rather die than not be picturesque, and I believe that when she does die
she will make some _ante-mortem_ arrangements about an abnormal coffin.
It's a marvel to me that Stuart Goldwin should have put up with her
nonsense as long as he did.... By the way, how does she stand his
desertion?"
"Has he deserted her?"
"Oh, come, now, Cornelia, you know quite well that he has." Thurston was
looking directly at his sister for the first time since their interview
had begun.
Mrs. Van Horn gave a light, soft laugh.
"You mean for Mrs. Hollister, Beverley?"
"Of course I do."
"I see that you have picked up some precious bits of gossip since you
got back." He was watching her very closely, and perceived, knowing her
as scarcely any one else knew her, that a severe annoyance dwelt beneath
those last words. She slightly tossed her delicate head. "You are so
relentless with poor Sylvia that I naturally don't want to feed the fuel
of your disapprobation. Well, then, let me admit that Goldwin _is_
devoted to your former friend."
"Say my present friend, if you please, Cornelia."
He saw a little gleam, like that of lit steel, creep into her pale-blue
eyes. "Oh, then you still call her that?"
"Most certainly. Should I withdraw my friendship because she refused to
marry me when I was old enough to be her father? On the contrary, I am
liberal enough to applaud her good sense."
"Beverley," exclaimed his sister, in tones of harsh disgust, "how can
you show so little self-respect?"
He saw that she had grown pale with anger. He set his eyes upon her face
with a fresh intentness of gaze. He had a distinct object in view, and
he was determined, if possible, to reach it. He leaned much closer
toward her while he said, in slow, deliberative tones:--
"My self-respect, or lack of it, is quite my own affair. Pray understand
that. You never forgave Claire Twining for refusing me, Cornelia. You
need not attempt to deceive me there. I repeat, you never forgave her.
Your pride would not allow you."
Her voice shook as she answered him. She was bitterly distressed and
agitated. He had touched an old wound, but one which had not healed. She
loved him as she had never loved any other man. He was part of herself;
his blood was hers; he belonged to the egotism which was her ruling
quality. Her speech now betrayed neither wrath nor disgust; it was full
of mournful dismay. The times in her life had been rare when her glacial
composure had shown such excessive disturbance.
"I concede, Beverley, that it hurt me very deeply to realize your
humiliation. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that a girl of
her class should have been glad to marry a man of your place and name.
What was she? And what were and are _you_?"
"Pshaw! I was and am an elderly, faded old fellow."
Mrs. Van Horn rose from her chair. She was visibly trembling. "You could
have given that adventuress a position far more stable than she holds
now, as the wife of a lucky stock-gambler!"
Thurston remained seated. "You call her an adventuress," he said, "and
yet you visit her--you put her on a social equality with yourself."
During the vigilant scrutiny with which he accompanied these words, Mrs.
Van Horn's brother decided that in all his experience of her he had
never seen her show such perturbation as now.
"People acknowledge her," she said, a little hoarsely. "I have never
been to her entertainments. I have never accepted her, so to speak. If
you inquire, you will find this to be true. It is current talk, my
reserve, my disapproval."
He shot his answer with quiet speed, meaning that it should hit and
tell. "You are going to the lunch that she gives on Friday. I happen to
be certain of this--unless you have had the wanton rudeness to write her
that you would go, while meaning to remain away." He rose as he spoke
the last word. Brother and sister faced each other. There was a tranquil
challenge in Thurston's full and steady gaze.
She recoiled a little. "I--well, yes--I did intend to go," she replied,
below her breath, and actually stammering.
"What is your reason for going," he questioned, "if you despise and
dislike her so?"
She threw back her head; her self-possession had returned, and with it a
stately indignation.
"You are insolent," she said.
Thurston broke into a hard laugh.
"Yes," he exclaimed, "I am insolent to the great lady because I detect
her on the verge of some petty revenge! Oh, I know you too well, my dear
sister," he went on, with stern irony. "You can't rebuff me in that way.
There is something behind this fine condescension. Sylvia Lee and you
have been putting your heads together. Your revenge and her jealousy
will make a rather dangerous alliance. You are both going to the lunch.
You are both employing a new line of tactics. What does it mean? I
demand to know. I have a right to know."
He was very impressive, yet his voice was hardly raised above that of
ordinary speech. She had always admired his gravity and calm; he had
been for years her ideal and model gentleman; she hated excitement of
any sort, and to see it in him gave her a positive feeling of awe.
"Beverley," she murmured, half brokenly, "remember that if I had any
thought of punishment toward the woman who trifled with you and humbled
you, it has been because I am your sister--because I was fond of
you--because" ...
He interrupted her with a quick, waving gesture of the hand. "You talk
insanely," he said. "She neither trifled with me nor humbled me. I was a
fool even to tell you how sensibly she acted. What you call your
fondness is nothing but your miserable pride. I see clearly that you
have some detestable plan. Do you refuse to tell me what it is?--me, who
have the right to learn it!"
Every trace of color had left her cheeks, and she was biting her lips.
There was very little of the great lady remaining in her mien or visage,
now.
"You have twice spoken of your right," she faltered. "On what is such a
right based? How can you possibly possess it? You are nothing to her.
You are neither her husband nor"--
"I am her lover," he broke in. "I am her lover, reverent, devout, loyal,
and shall be while we both live! She is the most charming woman I have
ever met. I met her too late, or she would be my wife now. It was not
her fault that she refused me. She is not a bit to blame. Good Heavens!
have I the monstrous arrogance to assume that she should have married an
old fossil like myself because I was of a little importance in the
world? No, Cornelia, that preposterous assumption belongs to you. It is
just like you. And you call it love--sisterly love. I call it the very
apex of intolerable pride. But admit for the moment that it is I and not
yourself whom you care for. Will you tell me, on that account, what it
is you mean or meant to do?"
Before he had finished, Mrs. Van Horn had sunk into a chair and covered
her face with both hands. Her sobs presently sounded, violent and rapid.
In these brief seconds she was shedding more tears than had left her
cold eyes for many years past.
"I mean to do nothing--nothing!" she answered, with a gasp almost like
that which leaves us when in straits for breath.
"Do you give me your sacred promise," he said, "that this is true?"
The words appeared to horrify her. She looked at him with streaming
eyes, while a positive shudder shook her frame.
"Oh, Beverley, what degradation this seems to me! Degradation of
_yourself_! You may call me as proud as you choose. It is no insult. It
is a compliment, even. I am proud of _being_ proud. I had never given up
hope that you would marry some woman of good birth, good antecedents,
your equal and mine--young enough, too, to bear you children. I am
childless, myself--how I would have loved your children! Their own
mother would not have loved them more. Every penny of my large fortune
should have gone to them. This has been my dream for years past, and now
you shatter it by telling me that an upstart, a parvenu, a nobody from
nowhere, holds you ensnared beyond escape!"
Thurston was not at all touched. This outburst, so uncharacteristic and
so unexpected, did not bear for him a grain of pathos. He saw behind it
nothing save an implacable selfishness that chose to misname itself
affection. The ambition of Claire saddened him to contemplate; it had so
rich a potentiality for its background. He was forever seeing the true
and wise woman that she might have been. Even the nettles in her soil
flourished with a certain beauty of their own, proving its fertile
resources if more wholesome growths had taken root there. But in
Cornelia Van Horn's nature all was barren and arid. The very genuineness
of her present grief was its condemnation. Her tears were as chilly to
him as the light of her bravest diamonds; they had something of the same
hard sparkle; she wept them only from her brain, as it were; her heart
did not know that she was shedding them.
"The bitter epithets which you apply to my _ensnarer_," he said, with a
momentary curve of the lips too austere to be termed a smile, "make me
the more suspicious that you harbor against her designs of practical
spite. I want your promise that you will refrain from the least active
injury--that you will never use the great social power you possess,
either by speech or deed, to her disadvantage. Do you give me this
promise, or do you refuse it? If the latter, everything is at an end
between us. The monetary trusts you have consigned to me shall be at
once transferred to whatever lawyer you may appoint as their recipient,
and from to-night henceforward we meet as total strangers."
"A quarrel between you and me, Beverley!" said his sister, trying to
choke back her sobs, and rising with a cobweb handkerchief pressed in
fluttered alternation to either humid eye. "A family quarrel! And I have
been so guarded--so careful that the world should hold us and our name
in perfect esteem!--Oh, it is horrible!"
"I did not infer that it would be pleasant," he answered. "You yourself
have power to avert or bring it about. All remains with yourself."
"I--I must make you a promise," she retorted, in what would have been,
if louder, a peevish wail, "just as though I had really intended
some--some gross, revengeful act! You--you are ungentlemanly to impose
such a condition! You--you are out of your senses! That creature has
bewitched you!"
He saw her eye, tearful though it was, quail before his own narrowed and
penetrating look. He felt his suspicion strengthen within him.
"I do impose the condition," he said, perhaps more determinedly than he
had yet spoken. "I do exact the promise. Now decide, Cornelia. There is
no hard threat on my part, remember. You don't like the idea of an open
rupture with me, you don't think it would be respectable; it would make
a little mark on your ermine--a _defaut de la cuirasse_, so to speak.
But your beloved world would possibly side with you and against me; you
would not lose a supporter; you would still remain quite the grand
personage you are. Only, I should never darken your doors again; that is
all. Come, now, be good enough to decide."
She sank into her seat once more; her eyes had drooped themselves; the
tears were standing on her pale cheeks. "I did not know you had it in
you to be so cruel," she said, uttering the words with apparent
difficulty.
"I am afraid I always knew that you had it in you," he returned. "Come,
if you please.... Your answer."
"You--you mean my promise?"
"Yes. Your faithful and solemn promise. We need not go over its
substance again. If you break it after giving it I shall not reproach
you; I shall simply act. You understand how; I have told you."
She was silent for some time. She had got her handkerchief so twisted
between her fingers that they threatened to tear its frail fabric.
Without raising her eyes, and in a voice that was very sombre but had
lost all trace of tremor, she at length murmured:--
"Well, I promise faithfully. I will do nothing--say nothing. My conduct
shall be absolutely neutral--null. Are you satisfied?"
"Entirely," he said.
He at once left her. He reached the opera just as it was ending. Claire,
in the company of two ladies and two gentlemen, and attended by
Goldwin, was leaving her box when he contrived to find her. Hollister
had purchased one of the larger proscenium boxes some time ago; he had
given a great price for it to an owner who could not resist the princely
terms offered.
"You are very late," Claire said, giving him her hand, while Goldwin,
standing behind her, dropped a great fur-lined cloak over her shoulders,
and hid the regal costliness of her dress, with its laces, flowers, and
jewels. "Have you been dining with your sister all this time, or were
you here for the last act, but talking with older friends elsewhere?"
"No," replied Thurston, who had already exchanged a nod of greeting with
Goldwin. He lowered his voice so that Claire alone could hear it. "I
arrived but a few minutes ago. I have been talking seriously with my
sister. You were quite right. She has withdrawn her disapprobation. You
have conquered her, as you conquer everybody."
He saw the faint yet meaning flash that left her dark-blue eyes, and he
read clearly, too, the significance of her bright smile, as she said:--
"Ah, you reassure me. For I had my doubts; I confess it, now."
"So had I," he returned. "But they are at rest forever, as I want yours
to be." ...
At an early hour, the next morning, Mrs. Van Horn surprised her friend
and kinswoman, Mrs. Ridgeway Lee, in the latter's pretty and quaint
_boudoir_, that was Japanese enough, as regarded hangings and
adornments, to have been the sacred retreat of some almond-eyed Yeddo
belle.
Mrs. Lee had had her coffee, and was deep in one of Zola's novels when
her friend was announced. Her coupe would appear at twelve, and take her
to a certain small religious hospital of which she was one of the most
assiduous patrons; but she always read Zola, or some author of a similar
Gallic intensity, while she digested her coffee.
She had concealed the novel, however, by the time that Mrs. Van Horn had
swept her draperies between the Oriental jars and screens.
"I have come to talk with you about that affair--that plan, Sylvia,"
said her visitor, dropping into a chair.
"You mean ... to-morrow, Cornelia?"
"Yes.... By the way, have you seen the morning papers?"
"I glanced over one of them--the 'Herald,' I think. It said, in the
society column, that I wore magenta at the Charity Ball last night. As
if I would disgrace myself with that hideous color! These monsters of
the newspapers ought to be suppressed in some way."
"You didn't think so when they described your flame-colored plush gown
so accurately last Tuesday. However, you deserve to be ridiculed for
going to those vulgar public balls."
"But this was for charity, and"--
"Yes, I know. Don't let us talk of it. If you had read the paper more
closely you would have seen the statement, given with a great air of
truth, that Herbert Hollister's millions are flowing away from him at a
terrible rate, and that to-night may see him almost ruined."
"How dreadful!" said Mrs. Lee, in her slow way, but noticeably changing
color.