IX
Sophia consented to this plan, but only as a strategical manœuvre. She had determined that Claire should fill precisely the position just proffered her, and no other. By seeming to yield she at length won her cause. She was quite in earnest about her wish for mental improvement. Nor was Claire, in spite of latter years passed under the gloom of toil, half as much at sea among the many smart-bound volumes of the library as she herself had expected. She had been, in her day, a diligent student; she found that she remembered this or that famous writer, as she examined book after book. Now and then a celebrated name recurred to her with sharp appeal of recollection; again she had a vivid sense of forgetfulness, and of ignorance as well. But she was of the kind who read swiftly and retain with force. It was not long before she had discovered certain volumes which guided and at the same time instructed her in just that literary direction needful for the task required by her would-be pupil. A great deal of her old intellectual method and industry soon came back to her. She turned the pages of the many good books stored on the shelves near by with a hand more composed and deliberate; she began to see just what Sophia wanted her to do, and realize her full capability of doing it.
Meanwhile a week or more had passed. She was now clad in appropriate mourning. She was one of the family. Sophia, devoted and affectionate, was constantly at her side.
Now and then Claire said, with a nervous laugh, "I'm afraid I have never learned enough to be of the least use to you, Sophia, in the way you've proposed."
But Sophia would smile, and answer, "Oh, I'm not afraid, Claire dear. You'll get it all back again, pretty soon."
She rapidly got it all back again, and a great deal more besides. The morning readings began. Sophia soon expressed herself as in raptures; but it was the teacher that charmed her far more than the teaching.
Claire's life was now one of easy luxury. She walked or drove with Sophia every afternoon; she ate delicate food; she slept in a spacious bed-chamber that possessed every detail of comfort; all things moved along on oiled wheels; the machinery of her life had lost all its clogging rust. Greenpoint began to fade from her thoughts; it grew a dim, detested memory. Scarcely a day passed, however, without she definitely recalled some incident connected with her father. Now that this softness and daintiness surrounded her, the refinement which no adverse years could alienate from his personality became for her a more distinct conception. She realized how complete a gentleman he had been. At the same time, under these altered conditions, her own taste for the superfine niceties of cultivation increased with much speed. She was like a plant that has been borne back to its native soil and clime from some land where it has hitherto lived but as a dwarfed and partial growth; the foliage was expanding, the fibre was strengthening, the flowers were taking a warmer tint and a richer scent.
She soon perceived that the Bergemanns moved in a set of almost uniformly vulgar people. Many of them seemed very wealthy. Nearly all of them dressed handsomely and drove about in their private carriages. Not a few of them lived in fine adjacent houses on "the Avenue," as it is called. Sophia had a number of intimate friends, maidens of her own age, who constantly visited her. She had admirers, too, of the other sex, who would sometimes call for her of an evening, and take her to a party, unattended by any chaperone. She went, during the winter months, to numerous parties. She belonged to an organization which she always spoke of as "our sociable," and which met at the various homes of its female members. One evening a "sociable" was given at the Bergemann mansion. The music and dancing were kept up till two o'clock in the morning, and the house was effectively adorned with flowers. Claire, because of her mourning, abstained from this and all similar gayety. But as a matter of course she met many of Sophia's and Mrs. Bergemann's friends. Only one of all the throng had power pleasurably to interest her.
This exceptional person was Mr. Beverley Thurston, whom we have already heard Sophia mention as having selected the volumes of her mother's library. He was a man about forty years old, who had never married. His figure was tall and shapely; his face, usually grave, was capable of much geniality. He had traveled, read, thought, and observed. He stood somewhat high in the legal profession, and came, on the maternal side, of a somewhat noted family. He managed the large estate of Mrs. Bergemann and her daughter, and solely on this account was a frequent guest at their house. He had one widowed sister, of very exclusive views, who possessed large means, and who placed great value upon her position as a fashionable leader. For several years this lady (still called by courtesy Mrs. Winthrop Van Horn) had haughtily refused her brother's urgent request that she should leave a card upon Mrs. Bergemann, though several thousand a year resulted from his connection with the deceased brewer's property. But Mr. Thurston, while he succumbed to the arrogant obstinacy of his sister, had employed great tact in blinding his profitable patrons to the awkward truth of her disdain. He had been bored for three years past by his politic intimacy with Sophia and her mother, and he had always felt a lurking dread lest they should make a sudden appeal for his aid in the way of social advancement. But here he had committed a marked error. Mrs. Bergemann and Sophia understood nothing whatever about social advancement. They were both magnificently contented with their present places in society. The inner patrician mysteries were quite unknown to them. Their ignorance, in this respect, was a serene bliss. They believed themselves valuably important. They saw no new heights to gain.
Mr. Thurston had long secretly smiled at their self-confidence. He was a clever observer; he had seen the world; the Bergemanns were sometimes a delicious joke to him, when he felt in an appreciative mood. At other times the bouncing, coltish manners of Sophia, and the educational deficiencies of her mother, grated harshly upon his nerves. But when Claire entered the household he at once experienced a new sensation. He watched her in quiet wonder. No points of her beauty escaped his trained eye. What he had learned of her past career made her seem to him remarkable, even phenomenal. By degrees an intimacy was established between them. At first it concerned literary subjects; Claire consulted him about the books appropriate for her readings with Sophia. But they soon talked of other things, and occasionally these chats took the form of very private tête-à-têtes. Claire was perfectly loyal to her new friends, but she could not crush a spirit of inquiry, of investigation and of valuation, so far as concerned the people with whom they associated.
The gentlemen distressed her more than the ladies. The latter were often so full of grace and prettiness that their loud talk, shrill laughter, and faulty grammar could not wholly rid them of charm. But the gentlemen had no grace, and slight good looks as an offset to their haphazard manners. Some of them appeared to be quite uneducated; others would blend ignorance with conceit; still others were ungallant and ungracious, and not seldom pompously boastful of their wealth.
Mr. Thurston was at first cautious in his answers to Claire's rather searching questions. But by degrees he threw aside restraint; he grew to understand just why he was thus interrogated.
He had a slow yet significant mode of talk that was nearly sure of entertaining any listener. Shallow people had called him a cynic, but not a few clever ones had strongly denied this charge. Claire began to look upon him as one who was forever opening doors for her, and showing her glimpses of discovery that either surprised or impressed the gazer.
On the evening of Sophia's "sociable" Claire remained in a large chamber that was approached from the second hall of the house, and appointed with that admirable taste which clearly indicated that the Bergemanns had once confided devoutly in their upholsterer, just as they now did in their milliner. She was quite alone; she held a book open in her lap, but was not reading it; her black dress became her charmingly; it seemed to win a richer shade from the chestnut-and-gold of her tresses, and to increase the delightful fragility of her oval, soft-tinted face. The music below stairs kept her thoughts away from her book; it pealed up to her with a dulcet, provocative melody; it made her feel that she would love to go down and join the merry-makers. But this was only a kind of abstract emotion; there was nobody in the bright-lit, flower-decked drawing-rooms whom she would have cared to meet, with the possible exception of Mr. Thurston, although what she then considered his advanced age made him seem more suitable as a companion of less jubilant hours.
But it chanced that a knock presently sounded at the half-closed door, and that Mr. Thurston soon afterward presented himself. He sat down beside her. His evening dress had a felicity of cut and fit that gave his naturally stately figure an added distinction, even to the inexperienced eye of Claire. She thought how the white tie at his throat became him – how different he was, in spite of the gray at his temples and the crow's-feet under his hazel eyes, from the younger men clad in similar vesture, whom she had seen pass through the upper hall a little earlier in the evening.
By this time Mr. Thurston's acquaintance with Claire had grown to be a facile and agreeable intimacy. He had learned from Sophia that she was here alone, and he had sought her with the freedom of one wont to make himself wholly at home in the mansions of his clients. At the same time, as it happened, he came with a vastly fatigued feeling toward the guests below.
"I didn't want to leave," he began, with his nice, social smile, "until I had seen you for a few moments."
"Ah," said Claire, pleased at his coming, and with a little sweet-toned laugh, "I'm afraid you came up here only because it was too early to go just yet."
Mr. Thurston put his head on one side, and his eyes twinkled quizzically. "Oh, come, now," he said; "are you going to talk badly about the party? You haven't seen it. I'm sure you'd like to be down there, dancing and romping among all those young people."
Claire shook her head; she looked rather serious as she did so. "No," she answered; "I shouldn't like it at all. I think you know why. There is nobody there – that is, among the guests – whom I like. Some of them I've never met. But I don't doubt that they are all much the same. Now, please don't look as if you didn't understand me. I am sure that you do, perfectly. Remember, we have talked on these subjects before."
Mr. Thurston stroked his thick gray mustache, whose ends slightly curved against cheeks which somehow looked as if they still wore the sun-tan of travel in remote sultry climates.
"Of course we have, Miss Claire," he gently exclaimed. "It's wonderful what an inquiring turn you possess. We've settled that there's no treachery to Sophia and her mamma in all these dreadful things that you and I say; haven't we?"
"Certainly we have settled it," returned Claire, still looking serious. "But I'm not by any means sure that we do say dreadful things. I ask the truth, and you tell it me." Here Claire's expression suddenly changed. She looked at her companion archly, and each cheek dimpled. "At least I hope you do."
Mr. Thurston shifted in his seat, and crossed his legs. "I do. I speak by the card when you ask questions. I'm compelled to. There's an enormous earnestness about you. You make me think of a person with a purpose. I'm sure you have a purpose. I haven't yet fathomed it, but I'm sure it's there."
"I have a purpose," Claire said.
"Very well. What is it?"
"To know about the world I live in. I mean New York, of course. That is my world, now. I think it a very nice world. At least, I've never seen a better one."
"Yes; I understand. And you want to explore it. You want to examine it in detail. You want to know its bad, worse, worst, and its good, better, best."
"I want to know its good, better, best."
Mr. Thurston laughed again. "Do you know," he said, "that the more I see of you the more you amuse me? No; I won't say 'amuse'; I'll say 'interest.' You are such a tremendous type. You are so characteristic. I called you a person with a purpose, just now, and I pretended not to know what your purpose was. That was an intentional hypocrisy on my part. I comprehend your purpose thoroughly. You wish to find out what New York society means. You're making a mental social dictionary. And you desire that I shall supply you with definitions to the best extent of my ability. Isn't that true? Pray confess, now."
Claire looked at him steadily for several seconds. There was a mild yet bright spark in her dusky-blue eyes, and a faint smile on her lips.
"You say less than you mean," she answered. "I think that I guess what is behind your words. I think that you suspect me of wishing to make my dictionary from motives of future personal preference. That is, you believe that I am a girl with strong ambitions – that I want to rise, thrive, succeed… Well, you're not wrong. I do want to rise, thrive, succeed. It's in me, as the saying goes. I can't help the impulse."
Mr. Thurston lifted both hands and slightly waved them. "The impulse is enough – with you," he said.
Claire started. "What do you mean?" she asked.
Mr. Thurston looked at the floor, for a moment, then raised his eyes. They dwelt on Claire's very forcefully.
"I mean," he said, "that you are too beautiful and charming not to gain your object."
Claire laughed, lightly and yet a little consciously. "That is very kind of you. If a young man had only said it! How delighted I would have been!"
"Then you think me so very old?" Thurston replied, watching her face with intentness.
"Oh, no," Claire at once said, growing serious again. "Not that, of course. But still … well, it would be idle for me to declare that I think you young."
"Perhaps I am younger than you think," he said, with low, peculiar emphasis on each word. "Mind, I only say 'perhaps.' … But do not let us talk of that. As I told you, I am sure you will gain your object. You will succeed. That is, you will find a higher level than these poor Bergemanns. There is a restless fire in your soul that will goad you on. And in the end you must win."
"Tell me by what means, please."
"Marriage will be your first stepping-stone."
"To what?"
"Success."
"Success in what form?"
"Social success. I assume that your aim lies there. You want men and women of a certain grade to pay you courtesy and deference."
Claire seemed to muse, for a brief time. "Yes, I do," she then said. "You are quite right. But you speak of my gaining all this by marriage. How shall I meet the man who is to lend me such important help?"
There was a daring candor about this question – a simplicity of worldliness, in fact – which startled her hearer. But his usual gravity betrayed no signs of dismay.
"You will meet him," he said, tranquilly. "Oh, yes; you will meet him. It is your fate. He will drop to you from the skies. But after you have secured through matrimony this desired end, will you be contented with what you have secured? So much depends on that – the success of your success, as one might say."
Claire raised her brows in demure perplexity. "I don't understand," she murmured.
Thurston slowly shook his head. A smile was on his lips, but it held sadness, and a hint of pity as well. "If I read you rightly," he answered, "you will understand, some day."
Claire made an impatient gesture. "Please don't talk in riddles," she exclaimed. "Do you mean that the prize will turn out worthless after I have got it? I have not found this true in my reading. I have not found many kings or queens who wearied so much of their thrones that they were ready to resign them." An eagerness now possessed her manner; she leaned slightly forward; her nostril dilated a little; her color deepened. "Power and place are what I want, and never to have them will be never to have contentment. This sounds cold to you. I'm sure of it."
"Yes," he said, softly; "it sounds very cold. But I don't know that such a coldness as that will not prove for you a tough safeguard. It is very protective to a woman – if it lasts."
"Mine will last, such as it is."
"I neither affirm nor deny that it will. Time will show."
She broke into a laugh, full of sportive irony. "You mean that I may fall in love with somebody. But I have little fear of that." … Her face suddenly grew very sober, and her voice trembled some what as she next said: "I loved my poor dead father dearly. I shall never love any one else half so much again. No mere words could tell you of my firm certainty on this subject. But the certainty remains. I don't mean that I wish to live a loveless life. Far from that! I wish to have friends in abundance. And I shall not be disloyal to them in any case. But they must be friends of influence, standing, importance. They must not be like the Bergemanns, though I mean never to falter for an instant in my grateful fidelity toward Sophia and her mother."
"Your frankness," said Thurston, with one of his calm, wise smiles, "has a positive prodigality. What another woman would hide with the most jealous care, you openly speak. It is easy to see that your experience is yet limited."
"I should not talk to every one as I talk to you," Claire quickly answered.
He took one of her hands in his for a few moments. He held it, and she let him do so. He looked into her face with great fixity.
"My poor child," he said, "you have a hard road before you. But I know you mean to tread it with determined feet. In many women there would be something repellent about such resolves as those you have just confessed. In you they are charming. I suppose that is easily explained: you are charming yourself. I shall watch your career with the deepest concern. You will not mind if I watch it? Am I wrong, here?"
Claire, still letting him keep her hand, swiftly replied: "Oh, no; of course I shall not mind. You belong to that other world. You are one of the people whom I wish to have for my adherents – my clients, as it were. I hope we shall always be friends. I like you very greatly. You remember we have talked it all over before now. You have told me of the people whom I wish to meet. You have even told me some of their names. I have forgotten nothing of what you have said. I count you as my first conquest. If others follow – as I firmly believe that they will – we will have talks together, and laugh over the old times when I was obscure and a nobody. Yes, if I ever get to be that great lady you prophesy that I shall become, we will discuss, in little intimate chats, every detail of my progress toward grandeur and distinction. It will be very pleasant, will it not? But now I must say something that I have never said before. I must ask you to help me. Why should you not do so? You have means of doing so. And you like me; we are excellent friends. If you give me some real aid I will never forget it. I'm not ungrateful. I'm cold, if you choose, in a certain way, but I always recollect a service. Don't think I am begging any favor of you. I'm rather requiring one. Yes, requiring. You've told me that you think I have … well that I'm not ugly. You know just what I want to do. And you've said that I have … well that I'm very far from a fool… Now let us strike a compact. Shall we? Put me into some path where I may reach your fine, grand world, in which I should like to shine and be a power!"
The audacity of this whole speech was exquisite. In plain substance it belonged to what we call by harsh names. It was the sort of thing that in ordinary dealing we denounce and even contemn, as the effort of unsolicited pretension to thrust itself against barred gates with immodest vigor. But in Claire's case there was no question of ordinary dealing. Her impetuosity was so lovely, her youth, her beauty, and her freshness were so entirely delightful, that the unreserved freedom with which she spoke of aims in their essence purely selfish acquired a charming picturesqueness. Her ambition, thus openly expressed, lost every trace of gross worldly meaning. She became, to the eyes of him who watched her, a fascinating zealot. She seemed to demand what was merely her just due. It was indeed as though she had been robbed by some hostile fate of a royalty that she now declared her stolen right, and proudly reclaimed. All this time she had let Thurston retain her hand. Once or twice her slight fingers pressed against his palm, with unconscious warmth. Her face, meanwhile, lifted above the darkness of her mourning robes, was sweet and brilliant as some early dew-washed flower.
Thurston fixed his gaze upon her eyes, whose dark-blue depths were full of a rich, liquid light. His clasp tightened about her hand.
"I will give you my help," he said, with a new note in his voice that was a sort of husky throb; "I will give it to you gladly. But I am afraid you will not accept it when it is offered."
"Yes," returned Claire, still not guessing the truth, "I will accept it most willingly, since it comes from one whom I know to be my friend and well-wisher."
"That is not what I mean," Thurston objected. He rose as he spoke, still holding Claire's hand.
She looked at him wonderingly. She perceived his changed manner. "Explain," she said. "How do you mean that you will help me?"
"I will help you as my wife," Thurston replied. He looked as grave, as gray, as bronzed, as always; but his voice was in a hoarse flurry. "I will help you, as my wife, to be something more than a great lady. You shall be that, if you choose, but you shall be more. Your ambition is made of finer stuff than you know. I will help you to see just how fine it is."
The instant that he began to speak thus Claire had drawn away her hand. She did not rise. But she now looked up at him, and shook her head with negative vehemence.
"No, no!" she said. The words rang sharply.