An Ambitious Woman Part 18

A long chain of days followed, each in every way like the other. One steady yet lazy wind pulsed from the south; the skies were clad with an unaltering blue haze from dawn till dark, except that a rosy flush, like a kind of languid aurora, would steal into the full round of the horizon with each new sunset, and stay until evening had first empurpled it, then darkened it completely. Afterward the stars would come forth, golden, globular, and rayless, while the same unchanged southerly wind would get a damp sharpness that made at least a light wrap needful if one remained out of doors. The great piazza would be almost vacant an hour or so after nightfall, and the whole sh.o.r.e quite lonely. As regarded all after-dark visitors, the island had virtually closed its season. But Claire and Hollister haunted the piazza a good deal when the early autumnal darkness had emptied it of occupants. After they had dined he would light his cigar, and then select a certain hundred yards or so of the firm wooden flooring, over which they pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, arm-in-arm, more times than perhaps both their healthful young frames realized. The other guests of the hotel doubtless conjectured that they were saying all sorts of tender trifles to each other, according to the immemorial mode of those from whom the honeymoon has not yet withdrawn her witching spells. But in reality there was very little between them of what we term lover-like discourse. Claire discouraged it in her husband, who obeyed the tacit mandate.

She was prosaic and practical on these occasions. It amused and charmed Hollister to find her so. In any guise that it chose to wear, her personality was an enchantment. Claire planned just how they were to live on their return to town, and he thought her irresistible in this role of domestic antic.i.p.ation.

"We shall have to find apartments," she told him. "We cannot afford to rent a house of our own. But apartments are very nice and respectable.

They are quite different from a boarding-house, you know. I should be very sorry if we were compelled to board."

"So should I," declared Hollister. "Are you sure that we have not enough to let us rent a small house?"

Claire's eyes glistened, as though the chance of their income being made to stretch thus far suggested charming possibilities. But she soon gave a sad shake of the head. "No," she decided. "We should only find ourselves running into debt. We had better take no rash risks. Your business is full of them, as it is, Herbert. Besides, a year or two may make the change easy for us."

She amazed him by the speed with which she learned just how his affairs stood. Her quick mastery of facts that with most women baffle both memory and understanding, was no less rare than thorough. It had always been thus with her. Whatever she wanted to comprehend became her mental possession after slight and brief effort. It was not long before she read the price-list of stocks in the morning papers with nearly as lucid a perception of just what it meant as Hollister himself. She made her husband explain as well as he could--and this was by no means ill,--both the theory and practice of Wall Street speculation. She soon began to know all his important investments, and talk of them with facile glibness.

Her control over Hollister daily strengthened. She would have swayed a man of much firmer will, and it is certain that he grew steadily more deferent to her judgment, her counsel, or even her caprices. The desire that she so plainly laid bare to him he had already estimated as a most right and natural development. In his eyes it was touched with no shade of selfishness; its egotism was to be readily enough condoned; one liked self-a.s.sertion in those whom nature had wrought of finer stature, from better clay. The queen pined for throne and sceptre; they were a debt owed her by the world; she could not help being born royal.

It irritated him that those people in the hotel whom she had expressed a wish to know, should not have sought her acquaintance and society. She must have struck them as a creature of great beauty and grace. Why had they not been won into paying her tribute? This was Hollister's fond way of putting the matter to his own thoughts. A few of these same people still remained. They formed a little clique among themselves; they, too, were waiting for the drowsy and torpid weather to wake up and send them townward. They saw Claire daily, almost hourly, and yet they never showed a sign of caring to do more than see her. Hollister secretly resented their indifference. His pride perhaps conspired with his love in making him bring Claire a fresh supply of flowers every evening, that she might wear them brilliantly knotted in the bosom of her dress. She remonstrated with him on the extravagance of this little devoted act, but for once he overruled her protest by a reference to the cheapness of flowers at that especial season. She always wore the flowers. Jutting forth in a rich ma.s.s from the delicate symmetry of her breast, they became her to perfection, as their lovely contact becomes all save the most ill-favored of women. She allowed Hollister to continue his pleasant, flattering gift. The mirror in her dressing-room was of generous proportions.

By day she liked to stroll the sh.o.r.e, or to sit with a book on one of the many benches, and watch, when not reading, the pale blue sweep of ocean, smooth as oil, and flecked with a few white-winged ships. Some of the sails were so faint and far away to the eye that they made her think of blossoms blown by a random breeze clear out into the misty offing.

But now and then a boat would move past, hugging the sh.o.r.e, and wearing on its breadth of canvas huge black letters that advertised a soap, a washing powder or perhaps a quack medicine. The tender poetry in sky or sea gave these relentless merchantmen (if the term be not inapt) a most glaring oddity. But Claire did not wholly dislike, after all, the busy push of life and traffic which they so harshly indicated. If she had been less capable of understanding just how vulgar a note they struck, she might have disapproved of them more stoutly. As it was, she accepted their intrusion with full recognition of its ugliness, yet with a latent and peculiar sympathy. It reminded her of the vast mercantile city that lay so near--the city where her young husband was seeking to augment his gains, and by a process of slight essential difference.

But curiously in contrast with this feeling was Claire's mode of now and then speaking to the shabby people who frequented the sh.o.r.e, and repeatedly giving them alms when this or that woful story of want would meet her ears. Past experiences made her singularly keen in detecting all the sham tales of beggars. She had learned the real dialect of poverty, and her sense was quick to perceive any suspicious flaw in its melancholy syntax. More than once she would engage little dingy-clad children in converse, and nearly always a coin would be slipped into their hands at parting. But one day it happened that a child of smart gear, a little girl about five years old, came up to her side and began prattling on the subject of a sandy structure which the plump, tiny hands had just erected, a few yards away. The child had a fat, stupid face which was shaded by a big, costly-looking hat, along whose brim coiled a fashionable white plume. Every other detail of her dress implied wealthy parentage. Her little form exhaled a soft perfume, as of violets. She looked up into Claire's face with dull, unintelligent eyes, but with a droll a.s.sumption of intimacy, while chattering her fluent nonsense regarding the product of her recent sportive toil. Claire was not prepossessed, but at the same time she took the little creature's hand very socially, and listened to her brisk confidences with amiable heed.

But a French _bonne_, in a fluted cap, suddenly appeared upon the scene, and cut short the child's further overtures of friendship by drawing her away with swift force and a gust of voluble French reprimand. The child broke into peevish screams, and was at once lifted by the strong arms of the _bonne_, just as a lady abruptly joined them. The lady shook her forefinger at the child, while she was being borne away with pa.s.sionate clamor.

"Tu as ete tres mechante," exclaimed the new-comer, remaining stationary, but following with a turn of the head and unrelaxed finger this tragic departure. "Nous avions peur que tu ne fusses tombee dans la mer. Tais-toi, Louise, et sois bon enfant!"

Distance soon drowned the lamentations of little Louise, and the lady now addressed herself to Claire.

"I hope my bad little girl hasn't been troubling you," she said. "It is really the nurse's fault that she strayed away in this wild style. Aline is horridly careless. I've already discharged her, and that makes her more so. Last week at Newport the poor child nearly fell over the cliffs because of that woman's outrageous neglect."

"Your little girl was in no danger here, I think," said Claire, smiling.

"Oh, no; of course not," returned the lady. She gave Claire a direct, scanning look, and then dropped upon the bench beside her. "Coney Island is very different from Newport. We had a cottage there all summer. Do you know Newport?"

"No," said Claire. "It is a very delightful place, is it not?"

"Well, yes," returned the lady, with a covert dissent in her admission.

"It's nice, but it's awfully stiff."

"Do you mean ceremonious?" asked Claire.

"Yes. I got frightfully tired of it. I always do. My husband likes it, and so I go on his account. I'd much rather go to Narragansett or Mount Desert. They're more like real country, don't you know? You haven't got to b.u.t.ton your gloves all the time, and pose your parasol. You're not bothered with thinking whom you shall know and whom you shan't. You can let yourself loose. I love to let myself loose. But you can't do it in Newport. Everybody there is on a kind of high horse. Now I like to come down, once in a while, and ride a pony."

The lady gave a shrill, short laugh as she ended these words. Claire had already noted all her personal details. She was tall of figure and extremely slender. She had a sharp-cut face which would have gained by not being of so chill a pallor. Her black eyes were full of restless brilliancy; her lips were thin, and marked at their rims by a narrow bluish line. She carried herself with an air of importance, but her manner was very far from the least supercilious display. She promptly impressed you as a woman whose general definition was a democratic one, though aristocracy might also be among her minor meanings. She had no claims to beauty; she was too meagre in point of flesh, too severe in general contour, too acute in her angles. She lacked all the charm of feminine curves; she was a living conspiracy of straight lines. You could not closely observe her without remarking the saliency of her joints; she seemed put together on a plan of cruel keenness. At the same time, her motions were not awkward; she managed her rectilinear body with a surprising ease and pliancy. Her health appeared excellent, notwithstanding her slim frame and chalky color. The warmth, speed, and geniality of her speech, evidently springing from high animal spirits, no doubt enforced this inference.

Claire felt not a little puzzled by her, and had an immediate wish to find out just who she was. On the afternoon of yesterday she had once or twice joined the patrician group and had chatted with this or that member of it, apparently on the most familiar terms. Claire already knew, having thus observed her, that she was a recent arrival. But past experiences made it seem quite probable that she was merely a tolerated n.o.body. 'Would she join me like this and address me so affably,' Claire asked herself, 'if she were some one of real note?'

At the same time, any trace of such self-depreciation was far enough from showing itself in Claire's spoken answer.

"Everything is tiresome, I suppose," she said, "if there is too great a supply of it. For my own part, I think that I like the conventionalities, as they are called. I haven't seen enough of them in my life to be wearied by them. I have known what poverty is in other years, and now, when I contrast it with the little ceremonies and forms that accompany prosperity, I find myself rather glad that these exist."

Her companion looked surprised for a moment. She put her thin face rather close to Claire's. The candor of the latter was a novelty. Claire had used it with a somewhat subtle intent. Her fleet tact had told her that it was best frankly to count herself outside of the social pale behind which she more than suspected that this garrulous matron belonged.

"Oh, so you've been poor?" came the somewhat rattling response. "But of course you're not so now, or you wouldn't speak of it. Poverty must be so perfectly awful. I mean when one is born different from the people who ... well, don't you know, the people who are in tenement-houses, and all that." The speaker here paused, while arranging the long _mousquetaire_ gloves that reached in tawny wrinkles far up either sharp arm. "Well," she suddenly recommenced, "I dare say I ought to care more for style and form and fashion. I was brought up right in the midst of it. All my relations are perfectly devoted to it. They look on me as a kind of black sheep, don't you know? They say I'm always going into the highways and hedges to pick up my friends. But I don't mind them; I laugh at them. They're here now in full force. There are two of the Hackensacks, and two of the Van Corlears, and two of the Van Kortlandts--all cousins of mine, more or less removed. I was a Van Kortlandt before I married. I'm Mrs. Manhattan Diggs, now, and I have been for five years. The best of the joke is that my husband, whom I perfectly dote on, by the way, and who's the dearest in all Christendom, disapproves of me as much as my relations do. The other day he called me a Red Republican, because I said society in New York was all trash. So it is trash. It's money, money, and nothing else. When he makes me dreadfully mad I throw his name at him. _Diggs_, you know. Isn't it frightful? His mother was a Manhattan--one of the real old stock, and she married a man by that name--an Englishman with a fortune. If he hadn't been rich I'd have pitied my poor husband. He'd never have made a dollar. I tell him that all he can do is to sit in the club-window, and drive, and bet, and play cards. But he's just as lovely to me as he can be, so I don't mind. I worship him, and he worships me, so we get on splendidly together, of course.... And now I've told you my name, you must tell me yours. I hope it's prettier than mine. It ought to be, you're so immensely pretty yourself."

"My name is Mrs. Hollister," said Claire. "Mrs. Herbert Hollister. I have been married only a few weeks."

"A bride! Really? How delightful! Do you actually mean it? I dote on brides. I'm sure we shall be friends."

They rapidly became so. Claire was by no means averse to the arrangement. Mrs. Diggs was violent, explosive, precipitate, but she was not vulgar. Besides, her roots, so to speak, were in the soil that Claire liked. They lunched together that day at one of the little tables in the vast, airy dining-room. While they were seated at the meal, several of the elegant ladies pa.s.sed on their way toward other tables.

Mrs. Diggs nodded to each of them familiarly, and her nods were distinctly returned. Claire took special note of this latter point.

"Your relations will think you have deserted them," she said.

Mrs. Diggs laughed. "They think I'm always deserting them," she exclaimed. "I don't believe my absence is a great affliction; they manage to endure it.... Oh, by the way, here comes Cousin Cornelia Van Horn. She must have arrived to-day. Excuse me for a moment. I'll have to go and speak to her."

Mrs. Diggs hastily rose and went toward a lady who was herself in act of crossing the room, but who paused on seeing her approach. The meeting took place not far from where Claire was seated. She saw Mrs. Diggs give her kinswoman a kiss on each cheek like the quick peck of a bird.

They were cheeks that time had faded a little, but the face to which they belonged had a haughty loveliness all its own. At least five-and-thirty years had rounded her figure into soft exuberance, mellowing but scarcely marring its past harmonies. She was very blonde; her eyebrows, each a perfect arch, and the plenteous hair worn in a dry, crisp matwork low over her white forehead, were just saved from too pale a flaxen by the least yellow tinge. Her features were cut like those of a cameo, but they were too small and too near together for positive beauty, while her eyelids had too deep a droop, and her nose, by nature lifted too high at the extreme tip, lost nothing of the pride, even the arrogance it bespoke, from the exquisite poise of her head above a long throat and sloping shoulders. Claire decided that she had never seen a woman so stately and yet so lightsome, or one who could so clearly suggest the serenity and repose of great self-esteem without thrusting its offensive scorn into harsh evidence.

Mrs. Diggs remained with her new companion several minutes. Her severe back, in all its rather trying outlines, was presented to Claire during this interval, though once she slightly turned, making a little gesture with her bony hand that seemed to indicate either the table she had just quitted or the figure still seated there. And soon afterward Claire saw that the person whom she had heard named by Mrs. Diggs was looking steadily at her with a pair of cold, light-blue eyes. While she returned this look it struck her that a change of color touched the placid face of her observer, though the flush from faint pink into pink only by a shade less dim might easily have pa.s.sed for a trick of deceptive fancy.

Mrs. Diggs presently came trotting back to the table, with her odd combination of graceful movement and bodily sharpness.

"My dear Mrs. Hollister," she began, while seating herself, "do you know that Cousin Cornelia knows all about you? I happened to mention your name before you were married--Miss Twining, wasn't it?"

"Yes," replied Claire.

"Well, the name seemed to strike her, and she at once asked if you had not stayed quite a long time with Mrs.... Mrs.... Oh, you mentioned her when you spoke of being here several weeks before your marriage."

"Mrs. Bergemann," said Claire, and immediately added, in tones full of quiet interest: "Well, Mrs. Diggs?"

"Why, that was what _placed_ you, don't you know, with Cousin Cornelia.

Yes, Mrs. Bergemann; that was the name."

"Did your cousin know Mrs. Bergemann?" inquired Claire.

"She didn't say so. But she appeared to know just who _you_ were. I think she's going to make me present you. There seems to be some queer mystery. She acted rather strangely. Are you sure you've never met before?"

"Yes, I am perfectly sure," answered Claire. "Did you not say that the lady's name was Van Horn?"

"Cousin Cornelia's? Why, yes; of course it is. She's my second cousin.

She's related on the Van Kortlandt side. She was a Miss Thurston."

"Thurston," repeated Claire, not interrogatively, but as though she had caught the sound with recognition the instant it left the speaker's lips. She broke into a smile, now. "That explains everything. She is a sister of Mr. Beverley Thurston, is she not?"

"Cousin Beverley? Of course she is. Do you know _him_?"

"Oh, yes," said Claire. "I knew him very well."