An Ambitious Woman Part 16

"Tell me something about your expectations, won't you?" he asked, with the non-committal tenderness of a man whose acquaintanceship has been too brief for any serious depth to accompany his words. "You can't think how much I wish that I was one of them."

"One of my expectations? You?"

"Decidedly."

"But how could I answer you on that point?" she returned, letting him catch in the gloom a glimpse of her sly smile. "You're only a name to me. If you'll not think my candor rude, I haven't an idea who you are."

"I don't believe I should think you rude if you really were so," he said, smiling, and yet seeming to mean with much quiet force each word that he spoke. "So you want me to give an account of myself? Well, I'm a rather obscure fellow. That is, I don't believe I know more than ten people in New York at all well. I lead a quiet life; I'm what they call a Wall Street man, but I mingle with the big throng there only in a sort of business way. I was graduated at Dartmouth two years ago, and spent a year in Europe afterward. Then I came back, and began hard work. There were reasons why I should do so--I mean financial reasons. I'm not a New Yorker; I was born and reared in Providence. Do you know Providence?"

"No," said Claire. "I know only New York."

She was looking at him interestedly at short intervals; they had resumed their stroll again; her arm was still within his; he had continued to please her, though she felt no thrill of warm attraction toward him, however mild in degree. She had a sense of friendship, of easy familiarity. But apart from this, she was conscious, as a woman sometimes not merely will but must be, that she had won him to like her by a very easy and rapid victory. Already she was not sure but that she had won him to like her strongly as well. Her few recent words of reply had carried with them a subtle persuasion of which Hollister himself was oddly and most pleasurably conscious. He yielded to their effect, and became somewhat more free in his personal confidences.

"My father had been a Dartmouth man," he went on. "That was the reason of my going there. Father and Mother have both pa.s.sed away, now. It's a lovely old college, and it gained me some strong friendships. But I find that all my favorite cla.s.smates have drifted into other cities. They sometimes write to me, even yet, after my year in Europe. But, of course, the old good feeling will shortly cease ... how can it fail to cease?... I'm a good deal alone, just now. I know a number of men there in Wall Street, but I feel a little afraid of making friends with them.

I don't just know why, but I do. Perhaps it's because of getting into bad habits. Some of them, I've noticed have very bad habits. And I've made up my mind ... that is, I--I half promised my poor dear mother just before she.... Well, Miss Twining, the plain truth is that I keep regular hours and live straight, as they say. I like to take a sail down here while the weather is hot, but I nearly always take it quite by myself. To-night I happened to meet Trask on the boat. I'd nearly forgotten Trask. He was in my Freshman year with me, but he dropped off after that. It was he who introduced me to--to the Miss--excuse me, but I really forget your friend's name."

"Miss Bergemann," said Claire.

"Oh, yes--Miss Bergemann." He paused, at this point, gently forcing Claire to pause also. They were still beside the sea; the music still came to them in its modulated sweetness. Hollister bent his head quite low, looking straight down into her upturned face.

"I've told you ever so much about myself," he said. "I wish, now, that you'd give me a little knowledge also. Will you?"

"About _my_self?" asked Claire. "About just who I am?"

"Well, yes, if you don't mind."

She reflected for a short s.p.a.ce. Then she began to speak. She told him, as she went on, more than she had at first intended to tell. He listened intently while they slowly walked on, beside the dark, harmonious billows.

Before she had ended, he had realized that he was in love with her. He had never known anything of such love till now. His heart was fluttering in a new, wild way; he could scarcely find voice to answer her when she at length ceased to speak. But she had not told him all her past life.

She had reserved certain facts. And her own feelings were entirely tranquil. Not the least responsive tremor disturbed her.

XII.

Hollister nearly missed the last boat back to the city, that evening.

His night was partially sleepless, and morning brought with it a mental preoccupation that was surely perilous to what tasks lay before him.

Like most men who have escaped the stress of any important sentiment until the age of five-and-twenty, he was in excellent condition for just such a leveling seizure as that to which he had now made complete surrender. He was what we call a weak nature, judged by those small and ordinary affairs of life which so largely predominate in almost every human career. If some great event were ever fated to rouse within him an especial strength, this summons had not yet sounded, and he still remained, for those who had found cause to test the fibre of his general traits, a person in whom conciliating kindliness laid soft spell upon them all. His friends at college had been mostly of tough calibre, of unyielding will; he seemed unconsciously to have selected them in order that they might receive his concessions. But they were never encouraged in fostering the least contempt for him. The spark of his anger always leapt out with the true fire, prompt to resent any definite disrespect.

Yet the anger sometimes cooled too quickly toward those whom he liked; there had been cases where he would waive his own claims to be indignant, with too humble a repentance of past heat. Necessarily such qualities made him popular, and this result was not lessened by the fact of his being almost rashly generous besides. His mental gifts had never been called powerful, but he had cut no sorry sort of figure as a student; and he possessed an airy humor that seldom deserted for a long time either his language or thought.

During the week that followed his introduction to Claire, he visited the hotel where she was a guest on every evening but two. One of those evenings chanced to be fiercely rainy; he could not have come to Coney Island without having his appearance there savor markedly of the ludicrous. The other evening was the last of the week. He had asked Claire to marry him the night before. She had not consented, neither had she refused: she had demurred. He was piqued by her hesitation, and affrighted by the thought of her possible coming refusal. He pa.s.sed a night and a day of simple torture. Then, his suspense becoming insupportable, he appeared once more within her presence. His aspect shocked her; a few hours had made him actually haggard. His hand trembled so when she placed her own within it that she feared the perturbation might be noticed by others besides herself, there on the crowded piazza where they met.

"I've come to get your answer," he began, doggedly, under his breath.

"You said last night that you were not sure if you--you cared enough for me. Have you found out, by this time, whether you do or no?"

"There are two empty seats, yonder, near the railing of the piazza.

Shall we sit there?" She said this almost in a whisper.

"If you choose. But I--I'd rather be down on the sands. I'd rather listen to it there, whatever it is."

But Claire feigned not to hear him. It was her caprice to remain among the throng. She moved toward the empty seats that she had indicated, he following. In all such minor matters she had already become the one who dictated and he the one who acquiesced.

The night, lying beyond them, was cool but beautifully calm. An immature moon hung in the heavens, and tinged the smooth sea with vapory silver, so that its outward s.p.a.ces took an unspeakable softness, as though Nature were putting the idea of infinity in her very tenderest terms.

There was no music to-night, for some reason. The buzz of voices all about them soon produced for each a sense of privacy in the midst of publicity.

"You asked me to be your wife last night," Claire began, looking at him steadily a little while after they were both seated, and not using any special moderation of tone because certain of her own vantage in the prompt detection of a would-be listener. "Before I give you any final answer to that request--which I, of course, feel to be a great honor--it is only just and fair that I should make you know one or two facts of my past life, hitherto left untold."

This was not the language of pa.s.sion. Perhaps he saw but too plainly its entire lack of fervor. Yet it seemed to point toward future consent, and he felt his bosom swell with hope.

"If it is anything you would rather leave untold," he said, with a magnanimity not wholly born of his deep love, "I have not the least desire to learn it."

Claire shook her head. "You must know it," she returned. "I prefer, I demand that you shall know it."

He felt too choked for any answer to leave him. If she imposed this condition, what was meant by its sweet imperiousness except the happy future truce for which he so strongly yearned? On some men might have flashed the dread suspicion that her words carried portent of an unpardonable fault, about to be confessed there and then. But Hollister's love clad its object in a sanctifying purity. Apart from this, moreover, his mind could give none of that grim welcome which certain dark fears easily gain elsewhere. The sun had long ago knit so many wholesome gleams into his being that he had no morbid hospitality for the entertainment of shadows.

"I want to tell you of how my father died," Claire went on, with her face so grave in every line that it won a new, unwonted beauty from the change. "And I want to tell you, also, of something that was done to me after his death, and of something that I myself did, not in personal revenge for my own sense of injury, but with the desire to a.s.sert my great respect for his loved memory, and to deal justice where I thought justice was deserved."

Then in somewhat faltering tones, because she had deliberately pressed backward among recollections so holy that she seemed to herself like one treading on a place filled with sacred tombs, she recounted the whole bitter story of her mother's avarice, of her father's ign.o.ble burial, and of her own resultant flight. The tears stood in her eyes before she had ended, though they did not fall. As her voice ceased she saw that Hollister had grown very pale, and that his brows met in a stern frown.

At the same moment his lip trembled; and as he leaned forward, took her hand into his own, pressed it once, briefly but forcibly, and then released it, she caught within his gaze a light of profound and unmistakable sympathy.

"I think your mother's course was infamous," he said. "Did you suppose that I could possibly blame you for leaving her?"

Claire had dropped her head, now, so that he could see only the white curve of her forehead beneath its floss of waved and gold-tinted hair.

And she spoke so low that he could just hear her, and no more.

"Yes, I thought you might blame me.... I was not sure.... Or, if not this, I feared that the way in which poor Father was buried might ...

might make you feel as if I bore a stain--or at least that the disgrace of such a burial, and of having a mother who could commit so hard and bad an act, must reflect in shame upon myself."

If they had been alone together, Hollister would have answered this faint-voiced, hesitant speech by simply clasping Claire within his arms.

But the place forbade any such fondly demonstrative course. He was forced to keep his glad impetuosity within conventional bounds; yet the glow on his face and the tremulous ardor of his tones betrayed how cogent a surge of feeling was threatening to sweep him, poor fellow, past all barriers of propriety.

As it was, he spoke some words which he afterward failed to remember, except in the sense that they were filled with fond, precipitate denial of all that Claire had said. He felt so dazed by the bliss that had rushed upon him as to fail, also, of recalling just how he and Claire left the populous piazza, and just how they reached the lonelier dusk of the sh.o.r.e. But the waves brought him rare music as he paced the sands a little later. His was the divine intoxication that may drug the warder, memory, but that wakes to no remorseful morrow....

Claire wondered to herself when she was alone, that night, at the suddenness of the whole rapid event. She had given her pledge to become Herbert Hollister's wife in the autumn. While she viewed her promise in every sort of light, it seemed to her sensible, discreet, even creditable. He was a gentleman, and she liked him very much. She had no belief, no premonition that she would ever like any one else better. She was far from telling herself that she did not love him. We have heard her call herself cold, and it had grown a fixed creed with her that she was exempted by some difference of temperament from the usual throes and fervors. He suited her admirably, in person, in disposition, in manners.

She need never be ashamed of him; she might indeed be well proud of so gallant and handsome a husband. Her influence over him was great; she could doubtless sway, even mould him, just as she desired. And she would bear clearly in mind those warning words of Beverley Thurston's: she would use her power to good ends, though they might be ambitious ones.

From a worldly stand-point, he was comfortably well off; his income was several thousands a year; he had told her so. With his youth and energy he might gain much more. She would stimulate, abet, encourage him toward the accomplishment of this purpose. He should always be glad of having chosen her. She would hold it constantly to heart that he should find in her a guide, a help, a devoted friend. And he, on his side, should aid her to win the place that she coveted, loving her all the better because she had achieved it.

When these rather curious meditations had ceased, she fell into a placid sleep. She had been wholly unconscious of the selfish pivot on which they turned. It had quite escaped her realization that they were singularly unsuited to the night of her betrothal. She had no conception of how little she was giving and how much she was demanding. She fell asleep with a perfectly good conscience, and a secret amused expectancy on the subject of Sophia's and Mrs. Bergemann's surprise when to-morrow should bring them the momentous tidings of her engagement.

But they were not so much surprised as she had antic.i.p.ated. The attentions of Hollister had been brief, yet of telling earnestness.

Sophia hugged her friend, and cried a little. "You mean old thing," she exclaimed, "to go and get engaged! Now, of course, you'll be getting married and leaving us."

"I'm afraid that's the natural consequence," said Claire, with a smile.

Mrs. Bergemann pressed her to the portly bosom, and whispered confidentially, just after the kiss of congratulation: "He's a real ellergant gentleman. I think I know one when I see one, Claire. And don't you let Sophia set you against him. She better try and do half as well herself. _She'll_ marry some adventuring pauper, if she ain't careful, I just do believe."

Claire felt a great inward amus.e.m.e.nt at the thought of Hollister being depreciated in her eyes by any light value which Sophia might set upon him. As it proved, however, Sophia soon learned to forgive him for the engagement, and to treat him very graciously. Before the summer had grown much older Claire and her lover began to be pointed out by the few other permanent boarders of the hotel, with that interest which clings like a rosy nimbus about the doings of all betrothed young people. They certainly made a very handsome couple, as they strolled hither and thither. But Claire's interest, on her own side, had been roused by certain little coteries that would often group at one end of the monster piazza. The ladies of these small a.s.semblages were mostly very refined-looking persons, and many of the gentlemen reminded her of Hollister, though their coats, trousers, boots, and neck-ties not seldom bore an elaborated smartness unpossessed by his. They looked, in current idiom, as though they had come out of band-boxes, with their high, stiff collars, their silver-topped walking sticks, and their general air of polite indolence. The ladies, clad in lace-trimmed muslins and wearing long gloves that reached above their elbows, would hold chats with their gallants under the shade of big, cool-colored parasols. Claire was often pierced by a sense of their remarkable exclusiveness when she watched their dainty gatherings; and she watched them with a good deal of covert concern. Hollister could not even tell her any of the gentlemen's names.