An Ambitious Woman Part 14

"I liked them very much," returned Claire. She was watching him, in all his unpleasant details, though very covertly. She was asking herself, in the dispa.s.sionate reflectiveness born of her calculating yet feverish ambition, whether she could possibly consent to be his wife if he should ever ask her. The remembrance of his great prospective wealth dealt her more than one thrilling stroke, and yet feelings of self-distrustful dread visited her also. She feared lest she might commit some irreparable mistake. She was still very ignorant of the world in which she desired to achieve note and place. But she had, at the same time, a tolerably definite understanding of some things that she aimed to do.

Her talks with Thurston had let in a good deal of light upon her mind.

She had not lost a single point in all his explanatory discourse.

"I'm glad you _did_ like 'em," said Brady, examining his radiant rings for an instant. "They cost a heap of stamps," he added, suddenly lifting his head and giving her an intent look. "But I don't mind that. I ain't a close-fisted chap, especially when I'm fond of anybody. I guess you've seen that I think a deal about _you_. I can't talk flowery, like some chaps, but that don't matter." ... At this point he suddenly took Claire's hand; his face had acquired a still more sulky gloom; it was clouded by an actual scowl. "Look here, now, Miss Twining," he said, "I never expected to get married. I've had some pretty nice girls make regular dead sets at me--yes, I have--but none of 'em ever took my fancy. You did, though. I stuck it out for two or three weeks, and I daresay I kept giving myself clean away all the time. But I saw 't wasn't any use; I'm caught, sure; there ain't any mistake about it.

We'll be married whenever you say. I'll do the handsome thing--that is, Father will. Father's crazy to have me settle down. He's worth a lot o'

money--I s'pose you know that. He'll like you when he sees you--I ain't afraid he won't. We can have a slam-bang stylish wedding, or a plain, quiet one, just as you choose. And don't you be alarmed about too big a difference between you and I. Father may kick a little at first, but he'll come round when you've met once or twice. He'll see you're a good, sound girl, even if you ain't as high up, quite, as he'd want me to go for. There, now, I've broken the ice, and I s'pose it's all fixed, ain't it?"

Claire had been trying to withdraw her hand, for several moments, from the very firm grasp of this remarkable suitor. But as Brady ended, she literally s.n.a.t.c.hed the hand away, and rose, facing him, contemptuous, and yet calm because her contempt was so deep.

"It is impertinent for you to address me like this," she said, in haughty undertone. "You have no right to take for granted that I will marry you. In the first place, I do not like you; in the second place, I think myself by no means your inferior, but greatly above you as regards breeding, education, and intelligence; and in the third place, I would never consent to be the wife of one whom I do not consider a gentleman."

She at once left the room, after thus speaking, and saw, as she did so, that Brady's face was pale with rage and consternation. His insolent patronage had wounded her more than she knew. On reaching her own room, she had a fit of indignant weeping. But by the time that Sophia and Mrs.

Bergemann returned from their drive, she was sufficiently tranquil to betray no sign of past perturbation.

That evening Sophia went to one of her "sociables." A male friend called for her, and they were driven together to the entertainment in question, with superb yet innocent defiance of those stricter proprieties advocated in higher social realms. Mrs. Bergemann retired somewhat early, and Claire was left alone, as it happened, with Thurston, who chanced to drop in a little after nine o'clock. Just before Mrs.

Bergemann left the drawing-room, she contrived to whisper, in garrulous aside, with her plump face quite close to Claire's, and all her genial, harmless vulgarity at a sort of momentary boiling-point: "I shouldn't be surprised, dear, if he should pop to-night. And if he does, I ain't sure that you hadn't better have him than Brady, for he's ever so rich, though the other'll get that Sixth Avenu store and two or three millions o' money behind it. Still, please yourself, Claire, and don't forget to leave the hall gas burnin' for Sophia when you go upstairs."

Claire was in a very interrogative mood to-night. "I should like to have Mr. Brady explained a little more fully," she said, when Thurston and herself were again seated side by side.

Her companion gave a soft laugh. "I thought that we had exhausted that subject," he said. "It's not a very rich one, you know."

"I don't want you to tell me anything about his character as a man,"

Claire quickly replied. "But I want to find out his standing in society."

"He has no standing in society," said Thurston, with instant decisiveness.

"Do the people of whom you have spoken repeatedly--those whom you term the best cla.s.s, I mean--entirely refuse to know him?"

"Not at all. They have never been called upon to know or not to know him. The best cla.s.s is in a different world altogether. Perhaps Brady is aware of their existence; he may have read of their entertainments in the newspapers, or he may have seen them occasionally at watering-places. But that is all. His self-importance prevents him from realizing that they are above him. He is essentially and utterly common.

He is surrounded by a little horde of sycophants who worship him for his money, and who are, in nearly all respects, as common as himself."

"You mean the set of people with whom Sophia a.s.sociates?"

"Yes. I mean the rich, vulgar set of which you have so frequently seen specimens in this very room."

Claire seemed to muse for a short while. "But the others?" she soon asked. "Those people who hold themselves above the Bergemanns--are they all refined and cultured? That is, are there any Bradys among them? Are there any Mrs. Bergemanns or Sophias?"

"I should emphatically say not. One may meet people among them who are by no means models of propriety or of high-breeding, but only as exceptional cases. They are generally found to be ladies and gentlemen; I don't know two more comprehensive words than those for just what I desire to express. Of course I have no large moral meaning, now. I would merely imply that in outward actions, at least, they preserve the niceties. Their occasional deeds of darkness may be as solidly bad as anything of the kind elsewhere. I should be very loth to describe them as saintly. But they are usually polished. Quite often they are rank sn.o.bs. Still oftener they are stupid. Their virtues might best be explained negatively, perhaps. They don't shock you; they are not crude; they haven't forgotten that a verb agrees with its nominative in number and person; they don't overdress themselves; they very rarely shout instead of talking, and ... well, for a final negative, they never tell the truth when its utterance might wound or annoy."

Claire had seemed to be listening very earnestly. She did not respond with her usual promptness. Her tones were slow and thoughtful when she at length said: "And they are what you would call an aristocracy?"

"I don't know why they are not. They are incessantly being compared, to their own disadvantage, with the aristocracies of foreign lands. But I have traveled considerably, in my time, and on the whole I prefer them to all similar bodies. There is less sham about them, and quite as much reason for existence. They point a very sad moral, perhaps; they ill.u.s.trate what certain austere critics like to call the failure of republican ideas. But I've had so many good friends among them that I can't consider any inst.i.tution a failure which is responsible for their development."

"And it is very hard to become one of their number," Claire said, after another little pause. She did not put the words as a question.

"You seem to think it hard," Thurston answered. Rare as was any impulsive order of speech with him, this slight yet meaning sentence had nevertheless found utterance, almost against his will.

It was his first reference to the episode which both vividly remembered, though in far different ways, and which had cast round their subsequent intercourse, even when directed upon the most mundane topics, a delicate glamour of sentiment plainly perceptible to each. Claire dropped her eyes, for a moment, then suddenly lifted them, while the pink was yet deepening in her cheeks.

"Let us suppose that I am not speaking of myself," she said. "Indeed,"

she went on, with a soft, peculiar smile that had hardly lighted her lips before it fled, "you have told me that _my_ gate into the kingdom of the elect is through--well, through matrimony." She now looked at her companion with so subtle a blending of the arch and the grave that Thurston, in all the solidity of his veteran experience, was baffled how to explain it. "Suppose," she suddenly announced to him, "that I should marry Mr. Brady. He is your abhorrence, I know. But if he put his millions at my disposal, could I become the great lady you and I have talked about?"

Thurston was stroking his mustache, and he now seemed to speak under it, a trifle gruffly, as he answered her.

"Yes," he said, "I think you could--provided Brady quitted the world after marrying you."

Claire gave a little rippling laugh. "They would never allow him to be one of them?" she asked, in tones whose precise import her hearer still failed to define, and which impressed him as midway between raillery and seriousness.

"No, never. If he has proposed to you, my poor child, don't for an instant flatter yourself that you could use him as a ladder by which to climb up into your coveted distinction."

These words were spoken with a commiserating ridicule. Tried a man of the world as he was, Thurston had of late been so deeply wounded that he now felt his wound bleed afresh, at an instant's notice, and deal him a severe pang as well. But Claire, quite forgetting to make allowances, flushed hotly, and at once said:--

"I never told you that Mr. Brady had proposed to me. And I do not think it proper or civil for you to throw in my face what I have put to you in the shape of a confidence."

"Marry Brady. By all means marry him," said Thurston. He had not been so bitterly affronted in years.

Claire felt conscience-stricken by the recollection of her own thoughts just previous to Brady's offer. She had permitted herself to weigh the question of whether or not marriage with such a man might be possible.

Then had come the sharp sense that it would be degrading. For this reason she was now humiliated beyond measure, and hence keenly angry.

"I shall not marry him," she said, her lip faintly quivering. "Why do you speak to me like this?" Tears of shame now gathered to her eyes, and her voice notably faltered. She found no more words to utter. She felt that she was in a false, miserable position. She felt that she deserved Thurston's contempt, too, since she had given him, stupidly and rashly, a hint of what had pa.s.sed between herself and the man whom they both despised.

Thurston rose and placidly faced her. He was so angry that he had just enough control left to preserve tranquillity.

"I don't know that I have said anything very hard to you," he began.

"Yes, you have," retorted Claire, her voice in wretched case. She knotted both hands together while she spoke. She was still seated.

Thurston went on as if there had been no interruption. "But if I tell you the plain truth, I don't doubt you will think me hard. I will tell it because you need it. You are still a mere girl, and very foolish. I am profoundly sorry for you. You have no possible regard for that frightful young millionaire, and yet you have permitted yourself to think of marrying him. Such a marriage would be madness. You would not accept me because you thought me old, but it would be better if you married a decent man of ninety than a gross cad and ruffian of twenty-three. But whether you do sell yourself in this horrid way or no, it is a plain fact that you are in danger of committing some terrible folly. I see by your face that you do not mean to heed my words. But perhaps if you listen to them now, you will recall them and heed them hereafter."

"No," cried Claire, tingling with mortification, and seizing on satire as a last defensive resort against this deserved rebuke, whose very justice revealed her own culpability in a clearer light; "no, if you please, I won't listen! I shall ask, instead, that you will kindly grant me the liberty of purchasing my own sackcloth and of collecting my own ashes."

She half turned away from him, with glowing face, as she spoke; it was her intent to beat a prompt retreat; but Thurston's firm, even tones detained her.

"I warn you against yourself," he went on. His anger had cooled now, and melancholy had replaced it. "You have some fine traits, but there is an actual curse hanging over you, and as a curse it will surely fall, unless by the act of your own will you change it into a blessing. It is more than half the consequence of your land and your time, but it is due in part, also, to your special nature. In other countries the women whom fate has placed as it has placed you, are never stung by ambition like yours. They are born _bourgeoises_, and such they are contented to remain. If they possess any ambition, it is to adorn the sphere in which their destinies have set them, and this alone. They long for no new worlds to conquer; their small world is enough, but it is not too small to hold a large store of honest pride. All over Europe one finds it thus. But in America the affair is quite different. Here, both women and men have what is called 'push.' Not seldom it is a really n.o.ble discontent; I am not finding fault with it in all cases. But in yours, Claire Twining, I maintain that it will turn out a dowry of bitter risk if not woful disaster. I exhort you to be careful, to be very careful, lest it prove the latter. Don't let your American 'push' impel you into swamps and quicksands. Don't let it thrust you away from what is true and sterling in yourself. Be loyal to it as a good impulse, and it will not betray and confound you like a bad one. You can do something so much better than to wreck your life; you can make it a force, a guidance, a standard, a leadership. You can keep conscience and self-respect clean, and yet shine with a far surer and more lasting brilliancy on this account.... Think of my counsel; I shall not besiege you with any more; no doubt I have given you too much, and with too slight a warrant, already.... Good-by. If I should never see you again, I shall always hope for you until I hear ill news of you. And if bright news reaches me, I shall be vain enough to tell myself that we have not met, talked, argued--even quarreled, perhaps--without the gain on your own side of happy and valued results." ...

Thurston pa.s.sed from the room, swiftly, and yet not seeming to use the least haste, before Claire, strongly impressed and with her wrath at a vanishing point, could collect herself for the effort of any coherent sort of reply.

She had caught one very clear glimpse of his face just as he disappeared. His hazel eyes, troubled, yet quiet, had momentarily dwelt with great fixity on her own. As she afterward recalled this parting vision of a face grown so familiar through recent weeks, it appeared to her solely in imaginative terms. It ceased to be a face; it became a reproach, a remonstrance, an advice, an entreaty.

Immediately after his exit she sank into a chair, feeling his late words ring through mind and heart. She had never liked him so much as at that moment.

She had a sense that he meant to avoid seeing her again. But she did not realize through how much vivid novelty of experience she must pa.s.s before they once more met. If any such prescience had reached her, she would have gone out into the hall and plucked him by the sleeve, begging him to return, filled with conciliatory designs, eager that he should abandon all thought of permanent farewell.

But as it was, she let the hall-door close behind him, and sat staring at the floor and saying within her own thoughts: "He is right. I am in danger. I can save myself if I choose. And I _will_ save myself in time!"

She clenched both hands as they drooped at either side, and her eyes flashed softly below their shading lids.