An Ambitious Woman Part 36

"Well? What grounds?"

"Of infidelity. You know the life he has lived. Or rather, you don't know. He has been so gay, so prominent, of late, that almost any well-feed lawyer could"--

Claire interrupted him, there. "Leave me at once," she said, pointing toward the door. "Leave me. I order you to do it!"

He obeyed her, but stopped when he had nearly reached the threshold.

"As my wife," he said, "you would reign more proudly than you have ever reigned yet. The moment you were free I would be so glad to make you mine--you, the loveliest woman I ever knew, and the most finely, strictly pure!"

"Leave me," she repeated; but he had quitted the room before her words were spoken.

She glanced in the direction whence his voice had come to her, and then, seeing that he was gone, she dropped back upon the sofa, and sat there, staring straight ahead at nothing, with tight-locked hands and colorless, alarmed face.

XX.

She heard Hollister reenter the house that night at a very late hour, and pa.s.s to his own apartments. It was only after dawn that she obtained a little restless and broken sleep. By nine o'clock she rang for her coffee, and then, after forcing herself to swallow it, began to dress, with her maid's a.s.sistance. Marie was a perfect servant. As she performed with capable exact.i.tude one after another careful duty, the ease and charm of being thus waited upon appealed to Claire with an ironical emphasis. The very softness and tasteful make of her garments took a new and dreary meaning. She had forgotten for weeks the dainty details of her late life, its elegance of tone, smoothness of movement, nicety of balance. These features had grown customary and inconspicuous, as cambric will in time grow familiar to the skin that has brushed against coa.r.s.er textures. But now the light, so to speak, had altered; it was cloudy and stormful; it brought out in vivid relief what before had been clad with the pleasant haze of habit. The very carpet beneath Claire's tread took a reminding softness; the numberless attractions and comforts of her chamber thrust forward special claims to her heed; even the elaborate or simple utensils of her dressing-table had each its distinct note of souvenir. She must so soon lose so much of it all!

As if by some automatic and involuntary process, memory slipped images and pictures before her mental vision; she had noted them in the still, dark hours of the previous night, and they remained unbanished now by the glow of the wintry morning. She saw herself a child, cowed and satirized by her coa.r.s.e and domineering mother; she witnessed the episode of her gentle father's firm and protective revolt; she lived again through the prosperous rise of the family fortunes; she watched herself brave and quell the insolence of Ada Gerrard, and slowly but surely gain rank and recognition among those adverse and disdainful schoolfellows; she endured anew the chagrin of subsequent decadence--the commonness and the disrelish of her public school career, the disappointment and monotony of her Jersey City experience, and then, lastly, the laborious and deathly tedium of Greenpoint.... Here the strange panorama would cease; the magic-lantern of reminiscence had no more lenses in its shadowy repository; the actual took the place of dream, and startled her by an aspect more unreal than though wrought merely of recollection.

Had these recent weeks all been true? Had she climbed so high in fact and not in fancy? Was the throne from which fate now gave harsh threat of pushing her a throne not built of air, but material, tangible, solid?

The strangeness of her own history affected her in a purely objective way. She seemed to stand apart from it and regard it as though it were some lapse of singular country for which she had gained the sight-seer's best vantage-point. Its acclivities were so sheer, its valleys were so abrupt, it took such headlong plunges and made such unexpected ascents.

The discreet and sedulous Marie divined little of what engrossed her mistress's mind, and withdrew in her wonted humility of courtesy when Claire, no longer needing her service, at last dismissed her.

But before doing so, Claire took pains to learn that Hollister had not yet descended for his breakfast, which of late he had usually eaten alone in the great dining-room. She soon pa.s.sed into her adjacent boudoir, where fresh treasures and mementos addressed her through a silent prophecy of coming loss.

Here was a writing-table, well supplied with various kinds of note-paper, all bearing her initials in differing intertwisted devices.

Not long ago she had questioned her husband on the subject of the Hollister crest; she would have been glad enough to receive from him some clew that might lead to its discovery; but he had expressed frank and entire ignorance regarding any such heraldic symbol.

Claire took a sheet of note paper, and in a hand that was just unsteady enough to show her how strong an inward excitement was making stealthy attack upon her nervous power, began a brief note to Stuart Goldwin.

When finished, the note (which bore no ceremonious prefix whatever, and was unmarked by any date) ran as follows:--

"The words which you chose to address to me last night have permanently ended our acquaintance. As a gentleman to a gentlewoman, you were impolite. As a man to a woman, you were far worse. I desire that you will not answer these few lines, and that when we meet again, if such a meeting should ever occur, you will expect from me no more sign of recognition than that which I would accord any one who had given me an unpardonable insult.

C. H."

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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.sured 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.'