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.