Along 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 shore 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 passed and repassed, 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all sorts of tender trifles to each other, according to the immemorial mode of those from whom the honeymoon has notyet withdrawn her witching spells.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 rôle of domestic anticipation.
"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 morningpapers 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-assertion 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 withhis 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 mass 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 shore, 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 shore, 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 layso 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 shore, 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 assumption 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 Frenchbonne, in a fluted cap, suddenly appeared upon the scene, and cut short the child's further overtures of friendship by drawing her awaywith 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 thebonne, just as a lady abruptly joined them. The lady shook her forefinger at the child, while she was being borne away with passionate clamor.
"Tu as été très méchante," 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 nefussestombée 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 button 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 herspeech, 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 nobody. '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 beso 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 longmousquetairegloves 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 passed 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 tookplace 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 theplacid face of her observer, though the flush from faint pink into pink only by a shade less dim might easily have passed 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 whatplacedyou, 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 whoyouwere. 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 knowhim?"
"Oh, yes," said Claire. "I knew him very well."
"Why, you don't tell me so!" blithely exclaimed Mrs. Diggs. "I dote on Beverley. I suppose he thinks me dreadful, but I dote on him, just the same. He is so broad, don't you know? He's seen so much, and read so much, and lived so much, generally. And with it all he's so conventional. That is the way I like conventionality—when you find it in some one who makes it a sort of fatigue-dress for liberal views, and not the uniform of narrow ones."
"I approve your description of Mr. Thurston," said Claire, slowly. "It tells me how well you know him."
Mrs. Diggs creased her forehead in puzzled style, and bent her face closer toward Claire's. "What on earth do you suppose it was that made him dart off so suddenly to Europe?" she asked.
Claire stooped, as though to discover some kind of objectionable speck in the cup of chocolate that she was stirring, and then removed what she had found, with much apparent care. "He did go quite unexpectedly, did he not?" she said, lowering her head still more as she put the speck on her saucer and examined it with an excellent counterfeit of the waywe regard such things when uncertain if their origin be animal or vegetable. She wondered to herself, at the same time, whether Mrs. Diggs would notice her increased color, or whether she herself had merely imagined that her color had undergone any sort of change. "At some other time," she went on, letting the words loiter in utterance, with a very neat simulation of preoccupied attention ... "at some other time, Mrs. Diggs, I should like to talk more with you about Mrs. Van Horn's brother. But just now I want to ask you about Mrs. Van Horn herself."
Here Claire briskly raised her head. The problem of the aggressive speck had seemingly been solved. "I have heard Mr. Thurston mention that he had a sister of that name," she continued, now speaking with speed, "but he told me almost nothing regarding her. She appears to be a very important person."
Mrs. Diggs glanced toward a distant table at which she had already seen her cousin seat herself. Then she turned to Claire again, as though confident of how safely remote was the lady whom she at once proceeded to discuss.
"Corneliaisa very important person, Mrs. Hollister. As I told you, she's my second cousin. I used to see a good deal of her before I was married. She's at least ten years older than I am. She brought me out into society. I was an orphan, don't you know, and there was nobody else to bring me out. Ihadto be brought out, for I was eighteen, and all the rest of the family were either in mourning, or were too old, or else had gone to Europe, or ... well, something of that sort. So Cornelia gave me a great ball. It was splendidly civil of her. ButI don't think she did it from the least benevolence. No, not at all. She had ended her term of widowhood, and wanted toappearagain, don't you know? The ball was magnificent, and it gathered all her oldclientèleabout her. I remember it so well; it is only eight years ago. I stood at her side, behind a towering burden of bouquets which it made my wrist ache to hold. Cornelia was in white satin, with knots of violets all over her dress. I shall never forget that dress. She wore amethysts round her throat, and in her hair, and on her arms. It was a kind of jubilant second-mourning, don't you know? She looked superb; she was eight years younger than she is now. People gathered about her and paid their court. She resumed old acquaintances; she received open or whispered compliments; she was the event of the evening.Iwas nearly ignored. And yet it wasmyball; it had been given for me, to celebrate mydébutin society. But as the evening progressed I began to discover that I had been made a mere pretext. Cornelia herself was the real reason of the ball. She had simply used me as an excuse for reëmerging. She reëmerged, by the way, with seventy thousand a year, and a reputation for having been one of the reigning belles of New York before she married Winthrop Van Horn. She was poor when she married Winthrop, and he lived only a few years afterward. He left her every penny of his money; there were no children. Cornelia was a devoted wife; at least, I never heard it contradicted, and I've somehow always accepted it. I think everybody has always accepted it, too. He died of consumption in Bermuda, and it is usually taken for granted, don't you know, that he died in Cornelia'sarms. For my part, I can't imagine anybody dying in Cornelia's arms.... But that's neither here nor there. She kept herself as quiet as a mouse for five years. But mice are nomadic, and they gnaw everything. And Cornelia, during those five years of bereaved woe, to my certain knowledge, took a peep at every capital in Europe. After the ball—the ball that she gaveme, please understand—she became a great leader. She's a great leader still. Didn't Beverley tell youthat, Mrs. Hollister?"
"No," stated Claire, keenly interested by this nimble monologue. "As I said, Mr. Thurston scarcely did more than mention his sister's name."
Mrs. Diggs applied herself actively to a fragment of cold chicken, which she had left neglected through all these elucidating items. Claire watched her, thinking how clever she was and yet how uncircumspect. With what slight incentive had been roused this actual whirlwind of family confidences!
"She perfectly adores Beverley," Mrs. Diggs presently continued. "I have an idea that she does so because he's a Thurston—or rather becauseshe'sone. She has contrived to make it appear very exceptional to be a Thurston. The Thurstons have never been anything whatever. Her mother married into the family, and cast a spell of aristocracy over them. But Cornelia never alludes to the Van Kortlandt connection. She knows that can take care of itself. I believe her grandfather, on the other side, was a saddler. But she has managed to have it seriously disputed whether he was a saddler or a landed Knickerbocker grandee. The panels of her carriage bear a Thurston crest. It is a very pretty one; I am quite sure she invented it. I once told Beverley so, andhe laughed.Hehas never used it, though he has never denounced it as spurious. The joke is that she ignores the Van Horn crest entirely, which is the only one she has any right to air. Cornelia is a great leader, as I said. She has Thursday evenings in the big old house on Washington Square which her late husband left her. Lots of people have struggled to go to Cornelia's Thursdays, and not gone, after all. It's absolutely funny to observe what a vogue she has got. She could make anybody whom she chose to take up a social somebody by merely lifting her finger. But she never lifts her finger. That is why she is so run after. You can't get her to use the power she possesses. It yearly grows more of a power, don't you know, on this very account. It's like a big deposit in a bank, that gets bigger through lying there untouched. She won't spend a penny; she lets it grow. The women of New York are becoming a good deal less flippant, some of them, than they used to be. Clubs and receptions have come into fashion, where intellectual matters are seriously, even capably discussed. Somebody will read a paper on something sensible and literary, and a little debate will follow. At one of these clubs—composed strictly of women—it is forbidden to mention the last ball, though this may have occurred on the preceding night and everybody may have seen everybody else there, talking the usual gay nonsense. The whole thing is a kind of 'movement,' don't you know? It's very picturesque and it's extremely in earnest. It makes one think a little of the old historical Frenchsalons. It has laid bare some charming and surprising discoveries. It has shown how many women have been reading andthinking in secret, during those long intervals of leisure that have occurred between their opportunities for being publicly silly, inane, flirtatious, and hence of correct form. On the other hand it has led certain women to cultivate their minds as they would a new style of dressing their hair. All that we used to satirize in former entertainments of this kind fails to exist in those I am describing. Pipe-stem curls and blue spectacles are replaced by the most Parisian felicities of costume. A delightful-looking creature in a Worth dress that fits her like a glove will give us her 'views' on the Irish land-question or the persecution of the Jews in Russia.... And now I come to the real object of my digression, as the long-winded orators say. Cornelia Van Horn frowns upon all this. She has gathered about her a little faction, too, which frowns obediently in her defense. You must not fancy for a moment that Cornelia could not shine in these assemblies if she chose to favor them. She has brains enough tooutshine nearly all their supporters. But she condemns the intellectual tendency in women when thus openly exhibited. If they want to read and think, they should do it in the quiet of their closets, and in the same way that they write their letters, or glance over their accounts, or distribute their household orders. There is no objection to philosophy, science, belles-lettres, so long as these are not made to interfere with the general dignified commonplace of the higher social life. To be individual, argumentative, reformatory, is to be professional. To be professional is not to be 'good form.' The moment that a drawing-room is made to resemble a lecture-room or a seminary it becomes odious from a patrician stand-point. Only queensand duchesses can afford to paint pictures or to write books, without loss of caste. A consistent aristocracy never discovers new ideas; it accepts old ones. Agitators are the enemies of repose, and repose is the soul of refinement."
Here Mrs. Diggs gave a gleeful trill of laughter that made Claire compare it to her mind as well as her person; it was so clear and sharp. "Oh, you can't imagine," she went on, "how radical Cornelia is in her positively feudal conservatisms. I'm so liberal, don't you know, that I can appreciate her narrowness. I relish it as one does a delicious joke. But it's a very curious sort of bigotry. There's nothing in the least spontaneous about it. I've a conviction that she sweeps her eye more widely over this fine Nineteenth Century than any of the ladies I've been telling you about. She has seen that she can only reign on one kind of a throne, and she sticks there. And I assure you, there isn't the least doubt that she reigns in good earnest.... I'm surprised that Beverley Thurston didn't tell you about her. Beverley has got her measure so exactly. He thinks me dreadful, as I said, but he's fond of me. I'm sure we always amuse each other."
"No," said Claire, shaking her head slowly, "he was very reticent on that subject. Perhaps he thought I might want to know her if he painted her portrait as you have done. That would have been awkward for him, provided his sister had declined my acquaintance. And I dare say she would have declined it, as I was not in her exclusive circle."
Mrs. Diggs put her head a little on one side. She was looking at Claire intently. A smile played like a faint flicker of light on her thin lips, whose two bluish lines always kept the same tinge.
"Why are you so candid with me?" she asked.
"Candid?" repeated Claire.
"Yes. Why do you show me that you would like to know Cornelia Van Horn?"
"Why?" still repeated Claire. "Did I show you that?"
"Not openly—not in so many words, don't you know? But I imagine it."
"You are very quick at imagining," said Claire, with a little playful toss of the head. "Well, if you choose, Ishouldlike to know her. I should like to know any one who ranks herself high, like that, and has a recognized claim. I have a fellow-feeling for ambitious people. I'm ambitious myself."
Mrs. Diggs seemed deeply amused. She lifted a forefinger, and shook it at Claire.
"I'm afraid you'reveryambitious," she said.
"Well, I am," admitted Claire, not knowing how much rosy and dimpled charm her face had got while she spoke the words. "I am quite willing to concede that I have aims, projects, intentions."
Mrs. Diggs threw back her head, and laughed noisily. But she lowered her voice to a key much graver than her laugh, as she said:—
"You're as clever as Cornelia, in your way. Yes, you are. I shouldn't be surprised if you were a good deal cleverer, too. I suspect there's a nice stock of discreet reserve under your candor."
Claire creased her brows in a slightly piqued manner. "That is not very pleasant to hear," she said.
Mrs. Diggs stretched out her hand across the table so pointedly and cordially that Claire felt forced to take it.
"I like you. You interest me. Forgive me if I've annoyed you."
"You haven't annoyed me," was Claire's reply.
"I want to see those aims, projects, intentions," Mrs. Diggs continued, still holding her hand, and warmly pressing it besides. "Yes, I want to see youexploiterthem—carry them out. You shall do it, if I can help you. And you willletme help you, I hope? You won't think me disagreeably patronizing, will you? I only speak in this way because I've taken a desperate fancy to you."
"Thanks," said Claire. Her eyes were sparkling; her heart was beating quickly.
WhenHollister returned that evening, almost the first words that Claire spoke to him were: "Congratulate me, Herbert. I have taken a fine forward step at last."
"What do you mean, my dear?"
"I have got to know somebody of importance. I have launched my ship."
"Oho," laughed Hollister, understanding. "I hope the ship will prove seaworthy, little captain. You must steer with a prudent eye, remember. All sorts of squalls will lie in wait for your canvas, no matter how well you trim it."
"That is just the kind of sailing I like," said Claire. "I've been becalmed long enough."
He laughed at this, in his hearty way, as though it were quite a marvel of wit. "Come and tell me," he proposed, "about the important somebody who has been sensible enough to discover you."
They were alone together, in their wide, cheerful apartment, overlooking the ocean. They were about to go down and dine, and Hollister had just finished a few preparatory details of toilet. Lights had been lit, for the rapid autumn dusk had already thickened into nightfall; but though they could not see the starlit level of waters just beyond their windows, they had a sense of its nearness in the moist, saltybreeze, whose tender rush made the drawn shades bulge, and set the loose lawn curtains fluttering buoyantly.
Hollister sank into a chair as he spoke the last sentence, and at the same time put an arm about his wife's waist, drawing her downward until she rested upon his knee. The roses at her bosom brushed his face, and he thrust his head forward with a sigh of comic infatuation, as though rapturously inhaling their perfume. But his free hand soon wandered up along the chestnut ripples of her hair, and he began to smooth them, with a touch creditably dainty for his heavy masculine fingers.
Claire permitted his caresses. She always permitted, and never returned them. He had slight sense that this was a coldly unreciprocal course; it appeared to fit in neatly enough with the general plan of creation that she should receive homage of any sort without further response than its mute recognition. That was the way he had constantly known her to act, or rather not to act; a change would have surprised, perhaps even shocked him; she would have ceased to be his peculiar, accustomed Claire; his revered statue would have lost her pedestal, and he had grown to like the pedestal for no wiser reason than that he had always seen it enthrone her.
"I will tell you all about my discoverer," Claire said, with matter-of-fact directness; and she at once began a swift and succinct little narration.
"Diggs," Hollister suddenly broke in, with one of his fresh laughs. "Oh, look here, now; you've made some big mistake. She can't be one of your adored swells, with such a name. It's—it's ... cacophonous, positively!"
"Wait, if you please," said Claire, with demure toleration, as though a bulwark of proof made this skeptic assault endurable. "Her husband's name, in the first place, is notsimplyDiggs; it'sManhattanDiggs." She made this announcement with an air of tranquil triumph; but Hollister at once gave another irreverent laugh.
"Oh, of course!" he cried. "I remember, now. I know him. That is, I nod to him on the street, now and then. Ishehere? Why, he's nearly always tipsy, you know."
"Tipsy!" repeated Claire, rising with an incredulous look. "Oh, Herbert, you must be mistaken. She worships him. She says that he treats her charmingly, and that they get on together with perfect accord."
"It would be rather strange to find two of that name even in such a great place as New York," said Hollister, with a slight shrug of the shoulders. "I don't believe I am mistaken a bit, Claire. He's a tall man, with fat yellow side-whiskers and a face as red as your roses. He's got a lot of money, I'm told. He goes down into the street, and dawdles an hour or so a day at his broker's. But I've never seen him thoroughly sober yet. Upon my word, I haven't."
Claire soon met the husband of Mrs. Diggs. It was after dinner, in one of the spacious, modern-appointed sitting-rooms, now so often half-vacant of occupants, or sometimes wholly vacant, through these lengthened September evenings.
"I want to present my husband," said Mrs. Diggs, preceding a tall man with fat yellow side-whiskers, whom Hollister had before this recognized across thedining-room as his own particular, chronically tipsy Mr. Diggs, beyond all possibility of mistake.
Claire had a little chat with Mr. Diggs, while Hollister, who had claimed acquaintance and shaken hands with him, seated himself at the side of his volatile spouse.
Claire soon became bored. Mr. Diggs was plainly tipsy; Herbert had been right. But he was most uninterestingly tipsy. He had sense enough remaining to conduct himself with a sort of haphazard propriety. He incessantly stroked either one or the other whisker, and kept up a perpetual covert struggle not to appear incoherent. He was at times considerably incoherent; a few of his sentences made the nominative seem as if it were swaggering toward its verb. But he was vastly polite. He told Claire that his wife had fallen in love with her. A little later, however, he spoke of his wife with a certain jolly disparagement.
"Kate is full of a lot of new things. I don't know what I'm going to do with her—really, I don't. She'll be a regular free-thinker before I know it. And I don't like free-thinkers; I think they're a sad lot. Now, don't you?"
Claire gave short, evasive answers to these and a number of similar appeals. Mr. Diggs distressed her; he was not at all the sort of person whom she desired to meet. She soon made herself so intentionallydistraitethat he rose and told her he was going to smoke a cigar, which he would bring into the sitting-room after he had obtained it, provided she did not object. She professed herself wholly sympathetic with this arrangement, and tried not to let her lip curl as she watched the unsteady pace of its proposer across the long sitting-room.
But he had scarcely retired before Mrs. Diggs broke off her converse with Hollister and exclaimed to Claire:—
"Where on earth has dear Manhattan gone? You don't mean that he has left you? How shameful of him!"
"I believe he has gone to get a cigar," Claire said.
"Oh, a cigar," retorted Mrs. Diggs. "Yes, poor Manhattan is an inveterate smoker." She now looked at Hollister and Claire equally, with quick, alternate movements of the head. "I feel sure that tobacco is beginning to injure him, though it is really a very small kind of vice, don't you know? It saves a man from other worse ones. Manhattan, dear boy, smokes a good deal, and I suppose I should be grateful it's only that. I hear such dreadful tales from my friends about their husbandsdrinking. I don't know what I should do if dear Manhattandrank. I'm so glad he doesn't. If he did, I—well, I actually believe I should get a divorce!"
Claire felt that her husband's eye, full of merry furtive twinkles, had fixed itself upon her all through this unexpected speech. But she kept her face from the least mirthful betrayal. Mr. Diggs did not come back with his cigar.
Claire now wondered, as she watched her new friend, and entered into conversation with her, whether this unconsciousness of her husband's continual excesses could be real and not feigned. It was hard to suppose that so much shrewd observation and so cunning a recognition of human foibles and follies could by any chance consort with the obtuse lack of perception which her late commentshad implied. And yet Claire somehow became conscious that Mrs. Diggs had really meant it all. The anomaly was hard to credit; it was one of those absurd contradictions with which human nature often loves to bewilder us; and yet its element of preposterous self-delusion held at least the merit of being genuine.
Claire had reached a distinct conclusion to this effect, when Mrs. Van Horn, entering the room, paused and looked all about her. There were several other groups scattered here and there, but the lady presently fixed her gaze upon that small one of which Mrs. Diggs was a unit. And very soon afterward she began to move in the direction of her cousin.
Mrs. Diggs was so seated that she could plainly note the approach. She half-turned toward Claire, and said in rapid undertone, seeming only to speak with the extreme edges of her lips:—
"Can I actually trust my senses? Is it fact or hallucination? Cornelia is coming this way. I told you she wanted to know you, but I didn't dream that she would condescend to seek anybody, like this, short of a queen, or, at the lowest, a duchess.... Yes, here she comes; there's no mistake."
Mrs. Diggs quitted her chair, a little later. She took a few steps toward her cousin, meeting her. Hollister also rose; Claire, naturally, did not rise.
"I want to present Mrs. Hollister," said Mrs. Diggs, after a few seconds of low-toned converse with the new-comer. "My cousin, Mrs. Van Horn," she at once added, completing the introduction. It was then Claire's turn to rise also, which she did.
"I think you know my brother," said Mrs. VanHorn to Claire, when all were again seated. "I mean Mr. Beverley Thurston."
"Oh, yes," said Claire.
Her monosyllables were quite intentional. She had not liked the lady's manner. There had been a remote, superb chill about it. She was distinctly conscious of being descended to, as though from an invisible stair. The nearer view that she had gained of Beverley Thurston's sister made her sensible of a new and original personality. Mrs. Van Horn was so blonde, so superfine, so rarely and choicely feminine. Her warmth was so faint and her coolness so moderated. She was like a rose that had in some way blent itself with an icicle, the shape of the flower remaining, and its flush taking a hue that had the tint of life yet the pallor of frost.
Claire determined not to speak again unless Mrs. Van Horn addressed her. This event soon occurred. Hollister and Mrs. Diggs had fallen into conversation. Mrs. Van Horn surveyed them, with her nose a little in the air, and her eyelids a little drooped. She seemed on the point of interrupting their talk, and of ignoring Claire, who had leaned back with a nice semblance of entire unconcern. In a few moments, however, this mode of treatment underwent change.
"I have heard my brother speak of you," she said, fixing her light-blue eyes full on Claire's face. "It was before you were married, I think."
"Yes," replied Claire. "We were very good friends. I missed him after he had gone."
"He went suddenly," said Mrs. Van Horn.
"Very suddenly," responded Claire, with a smile as complaisant as it was inscrutable.
Mrs. Van Horn looked downward; she appeared to be examining one or two of her rings; they were not numerous, though each of them had an odd individuality of prettiness. "There seemed to be no good reason why he should go," she soon said, lifting her eyes again. "He has been there so often."
"I should think it would be hard to go too often," said Claire.
"You have been, then?"
"No. But I wish to go very much.... Not yet, however."
"Not yet?" repeated the lady. Claire could not accuse her of staring, in any downright way, but she had an impression that every least detail of her own dress or person was receiving the most critical regard. "I suppose your husband's affairs detain him here, for the present."
"Yes," returned Claire, but at the same time she shook her head negatively. "It isn't that, however. I mean it would not be only that. There is something for me to see, to know, to do, here. I haven't finished with my own country yet," she proceeded, giving a bright smile. "I am not yet ready for Europe."
Mrs. Van Horn laughed. But it was not a laugh with any amusement in it, neither was it one that contained any irony. "My brother thought you very clever," she said. "He told me so repeatedly."
"That was kind of him," Claire answered. She did not decide that Mrs. Van Horn was patronizing her; she decided, on the contrary, that the sister of Thurston was trying to make her disinclination to patronize most plainly apparent. "It is pleasant to hear that he thinks well of me," Claire went on."He is a man whose good opinion I shall always highly value."
Mrs. Van Horn leaned forward. She was smiling, now, but it struck Claire that her smile was at best a chilly artifice. "You did not show much regard for his good opinion in one instance," she said, lowering her voice so that Claire just caught it, and no more. "I mean when he asked you to marry him. You see, I know all about that. He told me. It sent him to Europe."
This was, of course, a bombshell to Claire. But even while the color was getting up into her cheeks with no weak flood, she realized that it had been meant for a bombshell, and made swift resolve that its explosion should not deal death to her self-command.
"I am sorry that he told you," she rather promptly managed to say. "I have kept it a secret from everybody. I thought he would do the same."
"Oh, he has no secrets from me," returned Mrs. Van Horn, with what seemed to Claire an extraordinary brightness of tone. The speaker immediately drew out a little jeweled watch and looked at the hour. "It is later than I thought," she now said. "I have two letters to write; I must be going upstairs. Pray come and see me, Mrs. Hollister, when you are back in town," she continued, while putting her watch away again, and calling Claire by her name for the first time since they had met. "Mrs. Diggs will tell you my address. Promise me that you will not forget to come. I leave rather early to-morrow, and may not have a chance of repeating my request." Here she rose and put out her hand. Claire took it, but said nothing. She had lost her self-command, after all; she was almost too embarrassed to utter a word. Mrs. Van Horn had nearly gained one of the doors of the great room before Claire realized what had taken place. A certain splendor of courtesy enveloped the whole departure. It was admirably conducted, notwithstanding its abruptness. It was one of the things that Mrs. Van Horn always did surprisingly well; she could enter or retire from a room with an effect quite her own in its supple graciousness and dignity. But Claire soon felt that both the graciousness and dignity had something mystic about them. It was somehow as if an oracle had pronounced something very oracular indeed. The civility of the invitation had been so totally unforeseen, and it had followed with so keen a suddenness the recent bewildering revelation, that Claire did not know how to explain the whole proceeding, to construe it, to read between its lines.
Hollister, who had received a brief, polite bow of adieu, and risen as he returned it, broke the ensuing silence.
"Didn't she go away quite in a hurry?" he asked. "I hope you haven't offended her," he added, jocosely, to his wife.
"Cornelia didn't look a bit offended," said Mrs. Diggs, regarding Claire, or rather her continued blush. "But that means nothing. You didn't quarrel, now, did you, Mrs. Hollister?"
"Oh, no," said Claire, still dazed and demoralized. "She asked me to visit her in town; she was very urgent that I should do so."
"You don't really tell me such a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Diggs. "You've no idea how prodigious an honor she was conferring. It's like decorating you with the order of St. Something—actually it is."
"I'm afraid I failed to value it in that way," replied Claire, who was recovering herself.
"Of course you did. You haven't yet taken in the full enormity of Cornelia's importance. You can't do it until you see her surrounded by her own proper atmosphere—with her foot on her native heath, so to speak. Then you'll understand the massivecondescensionof to-night."
"I think I would just as lief not understand it," laughed Hollister, with his characteristic play of gentle humor. "It doesn't repay you to climb theseverybig mountains. Everybody says that there's very little to see after you've got to the tops of them."
Mrs. Diggs echoed his laugh. She was looking at Claire, however, with her bright, black, restless eyes. "I think your wife may want to climb," she said. "I'll be her guide, if she'll let me. There's a very good view from the summit of cousin Cornelia. You can look down on a lot of smaller peaks."
Claire shook her head. She had got her natural color again, but not her natural manner; she spoke in a tone of preoccupied seriousness that did not harmonize with her light words.
"I shouldn't like to fall down one of her glaciers and be lost," she said.
"Oh, there's no fear of that," cried Mrs. Diggs. "You're too sure-footed."
Somewhat later that evening, when they were alone together, Hollister asked his wife:
"Did that Mrs. Van Horn say anything that hurt you, Claire?"
"Oh, no. What made you think so, Herbert?"
"I.... Well, perhaps I only fancied it.... You had known her brother, hadn't you?"
"Yes. He was a good deal at the Bergemanns' last Spring. He went to Europe afterward. I suppose that was why she wanted to know me better."
Claire said this with a fine composure. She was standing before her dressing-table, disengaging the roses from her breast. Hollister stole up behind her and clasped her in his arms, setting his face close beside hers, and looking with a full smile at their twin reflection, which the mirror now gave to both.
"So you've got among the great people at last, little struggler," he said; "you've begun to be a great person yourself." He kissed her on the temple, still keeping his arms about her. "I suppose you'll make quick work of it now. I'm glad, for your sake—you know I am! You're bound to succeed. I shall be awfully proud of you."
This seemed quite in the proper order of things to Claire. Her husband's approval was a matter-of-course; it was like the roses he gave her every day—like the kiss, the embrace, the loving devotion that had each grown accepted synonyms of Herbert himself. She forgot the words and the caress with careless promptitude. But she did not forget what Mrs. Van Horn had said to her, downstairs in the great sitting-room. Her sleep that night was perturbed by the memory of it. "Does that woman like me, or does she hate me?" repeatedly passed through her mind, in the intervals between sleeping and waking. "Does she feel that she owes me a grudge, and long to pay it? Is she angry that I refused her brother? How strange it would be if I should find myself face to face with some hard, bitter enmity just at the threshold of the new life I want to live."
But the bright morning dissipated these broodingfears. It was a very bright morning, and an unexpectedly cold one. The sea sparkled with the vivid brilliance of real autumn as Claire looked at it from her window on rising, and every trace of its former lazy mist had left the silvery crystal blue of the over-arching sky. A sharp barometric change had occurred during the night. Claire and Hollister effected their toilets with numb fingers and not a few audible shivers. The flimsy architecture of the huge hotel, reared to court coolness rather than to resist cold, had suddenly become an abode of aguish discomfort.
Its occupants fled, that day, in startled scores. Mrs. Diggs was among the earlier departures. She bade farewell to Claire, wrapped in a formidably wintry mantle. Her leave-taking was warm enough, though her teeth almost seemed to chatter while she gave it. Her husband was at her side, looking as though the altered weather had incited him to even a more bacchanal disregard of his complexion than usual. The chubby-cheeked little girl, her Frenchbonne, and the maid of Mrs. Diggs, were also near at hand. They were all five on the piazza, where Hollister and Claire had also gone, both careless, in their youthful health and vigor, of the rushing ocean wind that blew out into straight lines every shred of raiment that it could seize. Little Louise was whimpering and contumacious; she wanted to break away from Aline, and pulled against the latter's tense clasp of her hand as if the wind and she were in some hoydenish, fly-away plot together. An admonitory stroke of bells had just sounded from the near dépôt; the train would soon glide off from the big wooden platform beyond. Mrs. Diggs was in a flurry, like the weather; her great wrap could notwarm her; she looked more chalky of hue than ever, and the bluish line at her lips had grown purplish. But a defective circulation had not chilled her spirits; she was alive with her wonted vivacity.
She had caught Claire's hand, while turning at very brief intervals toward Aline and the child. Her sentences had become spasmodic, polyglot, and parenthetical; they were half addressed to Claire and half to the recalcitrant Louise.
"Now youwon'tforget just where you're to find me, will you, my dear Mrs. Hollister?...Sois bonne fille, Louise; nous allons à New Yorktoutde suite.... I want so much to see you as soon as you can manage to come. Did you ever know anything like this dreadful gale? I'm so cold that I believe it will take a good month to warm me....Tais-toi, chérie, tu vas à New York, où il ne fait pas froid du tout.... You're going this afternoon, you say? I don't see how you can wait. There's cousin Jane Van Corlear just going inside—I promised to go along with her. Say good-by, Manhattan; the cold weather has made you as red as a turkey-cock, hasn't it, dear boy?...Aline, prenez garde! Elle est bien méchante, elle veutêtreabsolumentperdue.... Well, good-by, both of you. I do hope you won't freeze before you get off!"
When the Diggs family had disappeared, Claire and her husband went and finished their packing. That afternoon they left the deserted hotel, reaching New York at about dusk. They had themselves driven to the Everett House; Hollister had occasionally lodged there in bachelor days, and proposed it as a temporary place of sojourn.
It proved less temporary than they had expected.Apartments were easy and yet hard to procure. A good many sumptuous suites, in haughty and handsome buildings, were offered them at depressing prices. They found other suites, in buildings far less grand, which pleased them less and suited their purse better, but still left a certain margin as regarded proposed rental expenditure. Five or six days were consumed in these monotonous modes of search. They could obtain lodgment that was too dear, and lodgment that was too cheap; but they could not hit the golden mean of adaptability which would combine delectable quarters with moderate rates.
"It is tiresome work," Claire at length said, "and it is keeping you from your business, Herbert, in a most shameful way. I really don't see what we are to do."
"The apartments in West Thirty-Sixth Street, that we saw yesterday," ventured Hollister, genially, "were rather nice, though small, of course."
"Quite too small," affirmed Claire. "Besides, the house itself had a dingy air. It looked so—so economical, Herbert. We don't want to look economical; we want only tobeit."
Hollister made a blithe grimace. "I am afraid that to be it and to look it are inseparable," he said. "The grain of the rind tells the quality of the fruit." He put his head a little sideways and glanced at his wife with a quizzical eye. "Now, in the way of downright bargains, Claire," he went on, "there is that nice basement house which is for rent entire in Twenty-Eighth Street. The one we drifted into by mistake during our wanderings of yesterday, you remember."
"I'd rather not think of it," said Claire, with asort of musing demureness. "I liked it very much. I don't believe there is a furnished house to rent in the whole city that could be had for the same terms. But you know very well that we could not afford to take it, with the need of at least three servants, apart from other expenses."
"True," said Hollister. "That is, unless I get along better—make a hit on the street, you know."
"Oh, well," said Claire, "there is no use in depending upon chance. Of course," she added, slowly, with a grave, affirmative motion of the head, "I should like very much to have the house. You know I should."
"Then, we'll rent it," Hollister struck in, swiftly and with fervor. "It won't be much of a risk, but we'll take what risk there is. The first quarter's rent would be absolutely sure, Claire. Are you agreed?"
He spoke entirely from his loving perception of how much she would like to reign as the ruler of her own establishment. It thrilled him to think of her in this proper, sovereign sort of character.
"It will not be right, Herbert," Claire said. "We made up our minds to spend just so much and no more." ...
But her tones lacked all imperative disapproval. Perhaps she was thinking how pleasant it would be for Mrs. Diggs to find her handsomely installed as the mistress of her own private dwelling.
On the following day Hollister rented the little basement house in Twenty-Eighth Street. Claire accompanied him while he did so. She was frightened when the terms asked were finally accepted. She was still more frightened when she thought ofthe steady, draining expenses which must follow. But, after all, her alarm only acted as a sort of undercurrent. Above it was the large, delightful satisfaction of foreseeing herself the reigning head of a distinct establishment. It was an extremely pretty house, no less outside than inside. The occupation by its new tenants had been arranged as immediate, and this notable event soon occurred. Claire went herself to hire the three servants. She found a great supply at a certain dépôt for this sort of demand. She engaged three whom she liked the most, or rather disliked the least. And very soon she and her husband quitted their hotel for good. They became the co-proprietors of the basement house in Twenty-Eighth Street.
Certain new tasks occupied Claire. She quickly performed them. Her administrative faculty now showed itself in clear and striking relief. Her penurious past had taught her unforgotten lessons; she went into her new place with none of a neophyte's unskilled rawness; her fund of domestic, of managerial experience was like an unused yet efficient well; she had only to give a turn of the hand and up came the buckets, moistly and practically laden. True, she worked under the most altered conditions; she was no longer a drudge but a supervisor; and yet the very grimness of that early apprenticeship had held in it a radical value of instruction. She who had known of the prices paid for inferior household goods, could use her knowledge now to fine profit in the purchase of better ones. Having swept with her own toil floors that were clad coarsely, she could in readier way discern uncleanly neglect on the part of underlings who swept floors clad with velvet.
Her responsibility was borne with great lightness. "I think I am a sort of natural housekeeper," she soon told her husband. "It all comes very easy. I find that my daily leisure is increasing at a rapid rate." She directed with so much system, discipline, and keen-sightedness, that speed was a natural result. Her detection of negligence and fraud was prompt and thorough. She discouraged the least familiarity in her servants. On this point she was severely sensitive; she maintained her dignity in all intercourse with them, and sometimes it was a dignity so positive and accentuated that it blent with her personal beauty in giving the effect of a picturesque sternness. The secret of its exercise lay wholly in her former life. She had once been socially low enough for these very employees to have treated her as an equal. All that was dead and in its grave. She wanted to keep it there forever. Instinctively she stamped down the sods, and even held a vigilant foot upon them.
She was soon prepared to seek out Mrs. Diggs and pay her a long, intimate visit. She found her new friend in a small but charming home. The drawing-room into which she was shown displayed a great deal of good taste, and yet it had not a touch of needless grandeur. Its least detail, from the cushion of a sofa to the panel of a screen, suggested permanent and sensible usage. It was a room that shocked you with no inelegance, while it invited you by a sort of generally sympathetic upholstery and appointment.
Mrs. Diggs was delighted to hear of the new Twenty-Eighth Street residence. She took Claire's gloved hand in both of her slim, bony ones, and proffered the most effusive congratulations.
"It's so much nicer, don't you know, to be a realchâtelaine, like that—to have your own four domiciliary walls, and not live in a honeycomb fashion, like a bee in its cell, with Heaven knows how many other bees buzzing all about you. I'm inexpressibly glad you've done it. Now you arelancée, don't you know? You can entertain people. And I'm sure, my dear, that you do want to entertain people."
Claire gave a pretty little trill of a laugh. "I have no people to entertain, yet," she said.
Mrs. Diggs was still holding her hand. "Oh, you sly mouse!" she exclaimed. "You've got great ideas in your head for the coming winter. Don't tell me you haven't. Remember our talks at Coney Island. And you're going straight for the big game. You're not of the sort that will be content with a small, low place. Not you! You want a large and a high one. It's going to be a great fight. Now, don't say it isn't. I know all about you. I dote on you, and I know all about you. You intend to try and be a leader. You've got it in you to be one, too. I believe you'll succeed—I do, honestly! I'll put my money on you, as that dear Manhattan of mine would say of a horse.... You're not annoyed at me?"
"Not at all," smiled Claire. "But everything must have a beginning, you know. And I have no beginning, as yet. I have only met yourself and" ... She paused, then, looking a little serious.
Here Mrs. Diggs dropped Claire's hand, and burst into a loud, hilarious laugh. Her mirth quite convulsed her for several seconds.
"Cornelia Van Horn!" she presently shouted in a riotously gleeful way. "Myself and Cornelia VanHorn! That is what you mean. Isn't it, now?Isn'tit?"
She was looking at Claire with both hands in her lap and her angular body bent oddly forward. She gave the idea of a humorous human interrogation-mark.
"Well, yes," said Claire, soberly, and a little offendedly; "I do mean that. Pray what is there so funny about it?"
Mrs. Diggs again became convulsed with laughter: "Funny!" she at length managed to say. "Why, it's magnificent! It's delicious! You're going to tilt against Cornelia! Of course you are! You don't know a soul yet; you're quite obscure; but you have a sublime self-confidence. That is always the armor-bearer of genius; it carries the spear and shield of the conqueror. My dear, I always wanted to have somebody beard Cornelia in her den, don't you know, like the Douglas! I'm with you—don't forget that! I'll help you all I can. And when you've shaken the pillars of New York society to their foundations, please be grateful and recollect that I set you up to it."
She threw back her head and laughed again, in her boisterous, vehement, but never ill-bred way.
Claire sat and watched her. She was not even smiling now; she was biting her lip. She had concluded, some time ago, that she understood Mrs. Diggs perfectly. But she did not know, at present, in what spirit to take this noisy paroxysm. Was it sincere, amicable amusement, or was it pitiless and impudent mockery?