Claire sealed and directed this note. She did not send it, however.
After its completion she went downstairs into the dining-room.
Hollister was seated there, being served with breakfast. He had already
found it impossible to eat; he was sipping a second or third cup of
strong tea.
When his wife appeared, he slightly started. Claire went to the fire and
stood before it, letting its warmth and glow hold her in thrall for
quite a while. Her back was now turned to him; she was waiting for the
butler to depart. He presently did so, closing a door behind his exit
with just enough accentuation to make the sound convey decisive and
final import.
Claire then slowly turned, removing one foot from one of the polished
rods that bordered the flame-lit hearthstone. She looked straight at her
husband; she did not need to see how pale he was; her first look had
told her that. She had chosen to ignore all that he had said last night.
It did not cost her much effort to do this; she had too keen a sense of
her own wrong toward him not to condone the reckless way in which he had
coupled her name with Goldwin's. Besides, had not Goldwin's own words to
her, a little later, made that assault seem almost justified? She felt
nothing toward him save a great pity. Her pity sprang, too, from
remorse. She lacked all tenderness; this, joined with pity, would have
meant love. 'And I cannot love him!' she had already reflected. 'If I
only could, it would be so different. But I cannot.'
When she spoke, her words were very calm and firm. "I thought you might
have something more to tell me," she said. "I came down to see you
before you went away, for that reason. You said last night that
everything had gone. There will be a day or two left us, I suppose; I
mean a day or two of--possession."
He was stirring the tea with his spoon. His eyes were bent on the table
as he did so. He spoke without lifting them. "Oh, yes," he answered.
"Perhaps four or five days. They will seize the house, after that," he
went on, "and all the furniture and valuables. Of course they can't
touch what is really yours. I mean your diamonds, your dresses, _et
cetera_."
A pause followed. "To-day I have a luncheon-party," said Claire.
"Yes ... you told me. I remember."
"I hope nothing of ... of _that sort_ will happen to-day."
"No." He had taken his spoon from the cup, and was staring down at it,
as though he wanted to make sure of some flaw in its metal. His face was
not merely pale; it had the worn look of severe anxiety. "You can have
your luncheon-party with impunity. By the way, our own _chef_ gets it
up, doesn't he? You didn't have Delmonico or any one else in, did you?"
"No," she answered. "Pierre was to do it all. He had his full orders
several days ago."
A fleet, bitter smile crossed Hollister's lips. He put his spoon back
into the cup, but did not raise his eyes. "Oh, everything is safe enough
for to-day," he said.
Claire moved slowly toward him. "Herbert," she said, and put forward one
hand ... "I don't see why we should not be friends at a time like this.
You were angry last night, and said things that I am sure you didn't
mean--things that I've almost forgotten, and want entirely to forget.
Let us both forget them. Let us be friends again, and talk matters over
sensibly--as we ought to do."
She herself was not aware of the loveless chill that touched every word
she had just spoken. There was something absolutely matter-of-fact in
her tones; they rang with a kind of commercial loudness. It was almost
as though she were proposing a mercantile truce between man and man.
Hollister visibly winced, and slowly rose from the table. Every sentence
that she had uttered had bitten into his very soul. His pride was alive,
and keenly so. But he was not at all angry; he felt too miserably
saddened for that.
"Claire," he said, "we had best not talk of being _friends_. If I spoke
to you harshly last night, I'm sorry. I don't quite recollect just what
I did say. Of course we must have a serious talk about how we are to
live in future. But not now, if you please--not now. Your luncheon will
go off all properly enough. Things are not so bad as _that_. I shall be
away until evening. Perhaps when I come home again we can have our
talk."
Claire looked at him with hard, bright eyes. She assured herself that he
had causelessly repulsed her. Even allowing the wrong that she had done
him of marrying him without love, why should he now repel, by this
self-contained austerity, an advance which, in her egotistic misery, she
believed a sincere and spontaneous one? She was wholly unaware of her
own unfortunate demeanor; it seemed to her that she had done her best;
she had tried to conciliate, to appease, to mollify. Was not her note to
Goldwin now in the pocket of her gown? Was not that note a defense of
Herbert's own honor as of hers? She made the distinctly feminine error,
while she rapidly surveyed the present contingency, of taking for
granted that her husband possessed some obscure and mesmeric intuition
regarding this same unseen piece of writing.
"Oh, very well," she replied, with an actually wounded manner; "you may
do just as you please. I might have resented the unjust and horrible
thing you said to me last evening, but I did not. I did not, because, as
I told you, I thought it best for us to be friends once again."
"Friends." He repeated the word with a harsh fragment of laughter. His
changed face took another speedy change; it grew sombre and forbidding.
"You and I, Claire, can never be friends. While we live together
hereafter I'm afraid it must only be as strangers."
"Strangers!" she repeated, haughtily and offendedly.
"Yes! You know why." He walked toward the tapestried door of the
dining-room, and flung one of its curtains aside, holding it thus while
he stood on the threshold and looked back at her. "You yourself make the
reason. I'll do all I can. I don't know of any unjust or horrible thing
that I said last evening. I only know that you are and have been my wife
in name alone."
He had forgotten his speech regarding Goldwin. He had never had any
suspicion, however remote, that she had transgressed her wifely vows. He
simply felt that she had never loved him, and that she had married him
for place and promotion in a worldly sense; that, and no more.
The draperies of the door at once shrouded his departing figure. Claire
stood quite still, watching the agitated folds settle themselves into
rest. 'He meant that Goldwin is my lover,' she told herself. 'What else
could he possibly have meant?'
She had some half-formed intent of hurrying after him and venting her
indignation in no weak terms. Best if she had done so; for he might then
have explained away, with surprise and perhaps contrition, the fatal
blunder that she had made. But pride soon came, with its vetoing
interference. She did not stir until she heard the outer door close
after him. Then, knowing that he was gone, she let pride lay its gall on
her hurt, and dull her mind to the sense of what wrong she had inflicted
on him by the permitted mockery of their marriage.
'He had no reason to judge so vilely of me,' sped her thoughts. 'His
approval of that intimacy was clearly implied, however tacit. What must
our lives together now become? He has brought a shameful charge against
me; if I loved him I could doubtless pardon him; love will pardon so
much. But as it is, there must always remain a breach between us. A
continuance of our present brilliant affluence might bridge it over. The
distractions and pleasures of wealth, fashion, supremacy, would make it
less and less apparent to both; but poverty, and perhaps even hardship
as well,--how should these fail to mercilessly widen it?'
Everything looked black, threatening, and miserable to Claire as she
began to attire herself for the great lunch. Her maid had just finished
dressing her hair, when a note was handed her.
It was from Mrs. Van Horn. Very brief and entirely courteous, it
expressed regret that a sudden sick headache would prevent her from
numbering herself among Claire's favored guests that morning. 'The first
token of my altered fortunes,' she thought, with a pang that was like a
stab. 'This woman was the last to come under my ensign; she is the first
to desert it.'
She recalled Thurston's words to her at the opera on the previous night.
Surely there was some grave discrepancy between these and the acts of
his sister. As for the headache, that was of course transparent sham. If
this lofty lady had wanted to deceive, she might have done so more
plausibly. But perhaps she did not care whether or no her excuse looked
genuine. Rats leave a falling house. That was all the letter meant.
Claire could have thrown it down upon the floor and stamped on it. In
reality, she tossed it with seeming unconcern into the fire, and gave a
quiet order to Marie which she wished taken directly to the butler,
regarding the reduced number of her coming guests.
When Marie reentered the apartment, she bore a card. It was the card of
Thurston. On it were written in pencil these words: "I beg that you will
see me for a few moments, if you can possibly manage."
She at once went down and received him. He looked fixedly into her face
for a slight while, after they had seated themselves. He knew all that
had happened, and he understood just how savage and calamitous must seem
to her the blows from which she was now suffering. He read excitement
and even despair in every line of her features, though he clearly
perceived that both were held under a determined repression.
'She means not to let herself go one inch,' he decided. 'If she did, she
would break down altogether. She has wound herself up to a certain
pitch. She will keep just this way for hours yet. She will keep so--if
nothing strange and unforeseen should happen.'
A deep and vital pity pierced him while he watched her. He loved her,
and his love made him unreasonably lenient. A sacred sadness invested
her, for his eyes, in this the hour of her misfortune and overthrow. He
forgot how blameworthy she had been, and could remember only that
destiny would soon hurl in the dust the crown that she had worn with so
much grace and grandeur.
"Did you come to speak of my--of our trouble?" she said, her lip
quivering for an instant and no more.
"No," he replied. "But since _you_ speak of it, is all chance of
recovery gone? May not matters right themselves somehow?"
She shook her head in quick negative. "I think not. He has lost
everything--or nearly that." She broke into a smile, which had for her
companion only the brightness one might see in tears. "I suppose it
seems to you like a punishment--a retribution." Her gaze dwelt on him
with a mournful kind of pleasantry. It was like the spirit of Comedy
slipping her gay mask a little down and showing beneath it a glimpse of
pallor and fatigue.
"But do not let us talk of that. You wanted to talk of something else.
What was it? your sister's refusal, at the eleventh hour, to come to my
lunch?"
"Has she refused?"
"She has a sick headache," returned Claire, with a bit of joyless
laughter--the saddest he had ever heard leave her lips. "I don't doubt
our disreputable downfall has given it to her. Don't make excuses for
her; she is quite right to have her headache. It's a fastidious
prerogative, you know. I shan't require a physician's certificate. I
only hope that all the others will be cruel in just as civil a manner."
The tragic bitterness of these words, though they were quietly enough
uttered, stung Thurston to the quick. When a man loves as he loved,
compassion waits the ready vassal of tenderness. He had a momentary
feeling of hostility against an elusive, disembodied foe--against
circumstance itself, so to speak, for having wrought discord in a life
that was meant to hold nothing but melody.
He swiftly decided not to tell the real truth regarding his sister. "I
would not concern myself with Cornelia's absence," he said. "Another
matter, of much more import, must be brought to your notice. It is then
settled that Cornelia remains away. I did not know that she would do so.
She made no mention of it during our interview last night."
"Her headache had not arrived. Neither had the morning papers, which
said such hard things of my husband."
"As you will. Let all that pass. I wish to speak of a lady who will
almost certainly be present at your entertainment to-day. I mean Sylvia
Lee. Don't ask me why I warn you against her, for I can't give you any
lucid reasons. She intends some mischief. I suspected it last night from
something my sister let fall, and I visited Mrs. Lee this morning with a
most detective purpose. I gained no clew, and yet my suspicions were by
no means lulled. I have never liked Sylvia; we are related, but she has
always struck me as an abhorrent kind of creature, bristling with
artifice, destitute of nearly all _morale_, capable of the worst
cunning, equipped with the most subtle resources of treachery. Be on
your guard against her to-day. This sounds mysterious--melodramatic, if
you will; but she has some snare laid for you, some petty but perhaps
ugly revenge. You know why I use that last word. She has wanted to marry
Goldwin for years. She isn't a bit above the grossest, most unscrupulous
hatred. She told me that she didn't believe in your husband's ruin, and
that a few more days would see him on his feet again. This makes me all
the more convinced that she will not put her little sharpened dagger
back into its sheath. She has hatched some sort of horrid plot. Thwart
it if you can. I wish I could be here to help you."
Claire had grown very pale, but her eyes sparkled vividly. "I am your
debtor for these tidings," she said. She drew a deep breath, and he
surmised that under the soft curve of her joined lips she had for a
brief moment set her teeth closely together. "I thought the lunch would
be a hard ordeal, even as matters stood," she went on, "and that I would
need my best nerve and courage to get through it all right, with proper
coolness and dignity. But now the task looks far less easy. Still, I
shan't flinch. I wish you _were_ to be here; but that is not possible."
Just then a clock on the opposite mantel gave one little silver note
that told it was half-past twelve. Claire rose as she heard the sound.
"I must leave you now," she pursued. "I have only an hour left for my
toilette, and I shall need it all." She threw back her head, and a
dreary smile gleamed and fled along her lips. "I mean to meet all these
grand ladies without one sign of defeat. I shan't wear my heart on my
sleeve. This lunch was to have been my crowning triumph. It proves a
funeral-feast, in its way, but they shan't find me playing
chief-mourner. I intend to die game, as the phrase is." She gave a
slight shudder, drooping her eyes. "It will be as though I stood in a
house whose walls might crumble all about me at any moment--as if I
could hear the crack of plaster and the creak of beams. But I shan't run
away; I shall stand my ground very firmly, depend on it, until the
bitter end. When the crash comes nobody will be buried in the ruins but
myself--that is certain, is it not?"
Here her joyless laugh again sounded, and Thurston, swayed by an
irresistible mood, caught one of her hands, pressing it hard within his
own.
"You shall not be buried in the ruins!" he exclaimed. "Take my word for
it, you shall not! It will all only be the beginning of a new and better
life. You shall have learned a hard yet salutary lesson--that, and
nothing more."
She shook her head, meeting his earnest eyes. "You are my good genius,"
she said. "It is too bad you have not had more power over me."
"Who is your evil genius?" he asked, with slower tones, while she drew
her hand from his.
"Myself," she answered. "I am quite willing to concede it." ... She
appeared to muse for a little while. "I shall have one true friend here
to-day," she soon continued. "I mean Mrs. Diggs. She is very loyal to
me; she would do almost anything I should ask. You don't like her, or so
she tells me, but I hope you will like her better than your other
cousin, Mrs. Lee."
"I respect her far more. I have never doubted her goodness. But she
gives me nerves, as the French say. She is at such a perpetual gallop;
if she would only break into a trot, sometimes, it would be like anybody
else's walk.... You think you can trust her as an ally to-day?"
"Implicitly. She has promised to come early, too--before the others, you
know." ... Claire locked the fingers of both hands together, and held
them so that the palms were bent downward. The weary smile again touched
her lips and vanished. "What a day it is to be! And what a day it
_might_ have been!" She held out her hand to him, after that. "Good-by.
With all my heart I thank you! You have done all that you could do."
He did not promptly reply. He was thinking whether he had really done
all that he could do.... And this thought followed him hauntingly as he
left Claire to meet whatever catastrophe fate had in store for her.
Mrs. Diggs kept her promise, and was shown into Claire's dressing room a
good quarter of an hour before the other guests were due. The lady
started on seeing her friend, whose toilette was now completed, and
whose robe, worn for the first time, was of a regal and unique beauty.
It was chiefly of white velvet, whose trailing heaviness blent with
purple lengths of the same lustreless and sculpturesque fabric. The
white prevailed, but the purple was richly manifest. In her hair she
wore aigrettes of sapphires and amethysts shaped to resemble pansies,
and while the sleeves were cut short enough to show either arm from
wrist almost to elbow, and permit of bracelets that were two circles of
jewels wrought in semblance of the same flower and with the same blue
and lilac gems, her bust and throat were clad in one cloud of rare,
filmy laces, from which her delicate head rose with a stately yet aerial
grace. Excitement had put rosy tints in either cheek; the jewels that
she wore had no sweeter splendor than her eyes, and yet both by color
and glow in a certain way aptly matched them. A gear of velvet is
dangerous to women in whom exuberance of figure has the least assertive
rule. Velvet is the sworn enemy of _embonpoint_. But Claire's figure was
of such supple and flexile slenderness that the weight and volume of
this apparel made her light step and airy contour win a new charm and a
new vivacity.
"It is all perfect--quite perfect," said Mrs. Diggs, after taking a
rapid survey of Claire's attire. "But, my dear, are you perfectly sure
that" ...
"Sure of what?" Claire asked, as her friend hesitated.
"Well ... that it is just in good taste, don't you know? I mean, under
the circumstances."
"What circumstances?" she exclaimed, putting the question as though she
did not wish it answered, and moving a few paces away with an air of
great pride. "I intend to fall gloriously. The end has come, the fight
is lost; but I shan't make a tame surrender--not I! They shall see me at
my best to-day, in looks, in speech, in manner. I'm glad you like my
dress; I want it to be something memorable."
"You say that with a kind of bravado, Claire. There's a bitter ring to
your mirth. Oh, I'm so sorry for you! That lovely dress hides an aching
heart. You will suffer, poor child. This lunch will be a positive
torture to you."
A moment after these words were spoken, Claire was close at Mrs. Diggs's
side, holding one of her hands with firm pressure.
"You don't know how much of a torture it must be," she said, "and for
what reason." She immediately repeated all that Thurston had told her.
When she had finished, Mrs. Diggs was in a high state of perturbation.
"I haven't a doubt that Beverley is right!" she exclaimed. "If there
_was_ any plot, Cornelia Van Horn was in it, too, and her brother has
made her throw away her weapons. But Sylvia Lee intends to deal the blow
alone.... What can it be? I'm at my wit's end to guess. There's but one
thing to do--keep a continual watch upon her. Claire, can you be, by any
chance, in that woman's power?"
"Her power?" faltered Claire.... "I hope not," she added.... "I _know_
not," she then said, as the full sense of Mrs. Diggs's question struck
her, and using a tone that was one of surprised affront.
"Now, don't be offended, my dear. I merely meant that Sylvia isn't a bit
too good to magnify some slight imprudence, or twist and turn it until
she has got it dangerously like an actual crime.... But _nous verrons_.
After all, Beverley's fears may be groundless. With all my heart I hope
they are!"
Not long afterward Claire was receiving her guests. All the great ladies
came, except, of course, Mrs. Van Horn. The last arrival was that of
Mrs. Lee. She contrived to make her entrance a very conspicuous one. She
was dressed with even more fantastic oddity than usual, and she spoke in
so shrill and peculiar a voice that she had not been in the
drawing-room more than five minutes before marked and universal
attention was directed upon her.
"Sylvia is in a very singular state of excitement," Mrs. Diggs murmured
to Claire. "I know her well. That slow drawl of hers has entirely gone.
She acts to me as if she were on the verge of hysteria. I don't know
whether you felt her hand tremble as it shook yours, but I thought that
I plainly _saw_ it tremble. Just watch her, now, while she talks with
Mrs. Vanvelsor. She has a little crimson dot in each of her cheeks, and
she is usually quite pale, you know. There's something in the
wind--Beverley was right."
"Her place at the table is rather distant from mine," said Claire, with
a scornful, transitory curl of the lip. "So there is no danger of her
putting a pinch of arsenic into my wine-glass."
"You're not nervous, then? I am. I don't know just why, but I am."
"Nervous?" Claire softly echoed. "No, not at all, now. I've other more
important things to think of. What _could_ she do, after all? Let her
attempt any folly; it would only recoil on herself.... Ah, my friend, I
am afraid I'm past being injured. This is my _finale_. I want it to
prove a grand one."
"It will, Claire. They have all come, as you see. They have met you with
perfect cordiality, and you have received them with every bit of your
accustomed grace. I dare say that some of them are stunned with
amazement; they no doubt expected to find you shivering and colorless."
The repast was magnificent. There were more than thirty ladies present,
and these, all brilliantly attired and some of striking personal beauty,
made the prodigal array of flowers, the admirable service of many
delicious viands, and the soft music pealing from the near hall just
loudly enough not to drown conversation while it filled pauses, produce
an effect where the most unrestrained hospitality was mingled with a
faultless refinement.
Claire's spirits seemed to rise as the decorous yet lavish banquet
proceeded. Her laugh now and then rang out clear and sweet, while she
addressed this or that lady, at various distances from where she herself
sat. Mrs. Diggs, whose place was next her own, observed it all with
secret wonder. She alone knew the bleeding pride, the balked aspiration,
the thwarted yearning, which this pathetic and fictitious buoyancy hid.
It was a defiance, and yet how skilled and radiant a one! Could you
blame the woman who knew how to bloom and sparkle like this, for loving
the world where such dainty eminence was envied and prized? Was there
not a touch of genius in her pitiable yet dauntless masquerade? Who else
could have played the same part with the same deft security, and in the
very teeth of failure and dethronement?
Claire's gayety and self-possession made more than one of her guests
lose faith in the tale of her husband's ruin. They were all women of the
world, and they all had the tact and breeding to perceive that their
hostess, now if ever, merited their best courtesy. They could all have
staid away at the last moment; Mrs. Van Horn held no exclusive claim to
the possession of her headache; its right of appropriation belonged
elsewhere. But they had not availed themselves of it; they had chosen to
sit at Claire's board, to break her delicate bread. Hence they owed her
their allegiance to-day, even if to-morrow they should find expediency
in its harshest opposite. But it now appeared to them as if she were
refuting the widespread rumor of her husband's misfortunes; her own
equipoise and scintillance bespoke this no less than the irreproachable
_chic_ of the entertainment to which she had bidden them.
Mrs. Lee was not very far away from Claire, and yet the latter never
addressed or seemed to notice her. But Mrs. Diggs noticed her; she
indeed maintained a vigilant, though repressed, watchfulness.
"You have quieted her," she found a chance to murmur in Claire's ear,
sure that the indefinite nature of the pronoun would not be
misunderstood. "She is still looking excited and queer, but she has
almost relapsed into silence. Perhaps she really wanted to poison you,
and feels hurt at the lost opportunity." Mrs. Diggs had had several sips
of good wine, and felt her anxiety lessened; her jocose ebullition was
the result of steadied nerves. "I never saw you so _spirituelle_,
Claire," she went on. "You have said at least eight delicious things. I
have them all mentally booked, my dear. When we are next alone together
I will remind you of them."
"Pray don't," Claire answered, putting the words into a still lower
aside than her friend's. "I shall have hard enough work to forget, then.
I shall want _only_ to forget, too."
She had just finished this faint-spoken sentence when one of the
servants handed her a note. As she glanced at its superscription the
thought passed through her mind that it might be some dire and alarming
message from her husband. But the next instant a flash of recollection
assailed her. She remembered the handwriting--or, at least, in this
festive and distracting environment, she more than half believed that
she did so.
Her hands, while she swiftly tore open the envelope, were dropped upon
her lap. She read several lines of a note, and then crushed it, quickly
and covertly. As her eyes met those of Mrs. Diggs she had a sense that
she was becoming ghastly pale.
"What is it?" whispered her friend.
"Oh, nothing," she afterward remembered saying. The servant was still
close at her elbow. She turned her head toward him.
"Let her wait," she said. "Tell her that I will see her quite soon."
The whole affair had been very rapid of occurrence. No one present had
given a sign of having observed it.
'If I had only not grown so pale,' she thought.
The paper was still clutched in her left hand, and she had thrust this
half-way beneath the table-cover. With her right hand she began to make
a play of eating something from the plate before her, as she addressed
the lady on her other side. What she said must have been something very
gracious and pleasant, for the lady smiled and answered affably, while
the servants glided, the music sounded, the delightful feast progressed.
Everything had grown dim and whirling to Claire. And yet she had already
realized perfectly that Mrs. Lee was striking her blow. It had come,
sudden, cruel, direct. Her blurred mind, her weakened and chilling body,
did not leave that one fact any the less clear. She understood just what
it was, why it was, and whence it was.
The note had been from her mother. It was half illiterate invective,
half threatening rebuke. Its writer waited outside and demanded to see
her. "If you don't come," the ill-shaped writing ran, "I will come to
you." Claire knew that this thing had been Mrs. Lee's work as well as if
a thousand witnesses had averred it. The missive contained no mention of
Mrs. Lee, but she nevertheless had her certainty.
'I must go,' she told herself. 'I must go and meet her. _Can_ I go? Can
I walk, feeling as I do? Should I not fall if I tried?'
She always afterward remembered the food that her fork now touched and
trifled with. It was a sweetbread croquette, with little black specks of
chopped truffle in its creamy yielding oval, and the air that they were
playing out in the hall was from a light, valueless opera, then much in
vogue. She always afterward remembered that, too. So do slight events
often press themselves in upon the dazed and dilated vision of a great
distress.
'Can I rise and walk?' she kept thinking. 'Should I not fall if I
tried?'