An Ambitious Woman: A Novel

"I thought I should find you here," he said, as their hands dropped apart.

"Did you come on that account?" she asked.

"Not entirely, because I had great fears of not being able to do more than watch you from a distance."

"Ah," she said, with a pretty graciousness, and loud enough for all the others to hear, "you have an excellent claim upon me – that of old acquaintance."

Her surrounders felt that there was either dismissal or desertion waiting for them. She managed to make it promptly plain that her favoring heed had been wholly transferred to Thurston; she showed it to them with a cool boldness which they would have resented with resolves of future neglect if indulged in by many another woman present; for they were all men who put a solid worth upon their courtesies, and had a fastidious reluctance ever to be charged with sowing them broadcast.

But Claire had long ago learned that the security of her reign depended upon an occasional open proof of how she herself trusted its power. She had guessed the peril of continuing monotonously clement. To talk with Thurston now interested her more than any other conversational project. It was not long before she had slipped her hand into his arm, and was saying, as they moved through the crowd: —

"If you care to go into the conservatory, we shall find it much pleasanter there, I think."

The house was one of those new and majestic structures near the Park. It occupied a corner, sweeping far backward from Fifth Avenue into an adjacent street. It had an almost imperial amplitude, and was a building in which no lordly or pleasurable detail seemed to have been overlooked. The conservatory, whose spacious interior wooed through breadths of glass its kindest warmth from the churlish winter sunshine, was of refreshing temperature after the heated rooms beyond, while its masses of leafing or blooming plants loaded the air with delightful odors.

A few people were strolling about the cool courts, as Claire and Thurston now entered them. The entertainment of to-day was a kind of house-warming; the Vanvelsors, in current metropolitan phrase, were old people, but their present mansion was new in a decisive sense; they had migrated hither from a residence in Bond Street, where they had dwelt for forty years or more. The push of the younger generation, left with inherited millions, had thus architecturally asserted itself. Few of their guests knew the ways of their changed and palatial home. But Claire knew them; she had dined in this imposing abode not less than a fortnight ago. There were many bearers of precious Dutch names who had known the Vanvelsors for many decades; but Claire had been preferred to hosts of these nice-lineaged legitimists. She was the fashion; other people were paying homage to her; the younger Vanvelsors liked everything that was the fashion; they had paid homage, too.

"We can find a seat," Claire said to her companion; "the place is not full, as you see; we might sit yonder, in those two vacant chairs – that is, if you care to sit; I do; I am tired."

It was not until they were both seated, with glossy tropical leaves touching their heads, that Thurston answered: —

"You say you are tired. That might mean a little or a great deal. Which does it mean?"

Claire responded with a question, looking at him fixedly.

"Why did you write me that letter?" she said.

"Did it offend you?" he asked.

"No and yes. You might not have reproached me until you knew more of the real truth."

Thurston stroked his gray mustache. "I think I knew all the truth," he said. "I know it now, at least."

"Your sister has told you," Claire retorted, with speed.

"Yes and no," he responded, not mocking her own recent words, yet leaving a distinct impression that he had half repeated them. "You forget that I have seen you reigning on your new throne."

"Let us be candid," said Claire. "Your note was almost a sneer."

He slowly shook his head. "It was a regret."

"You think I might have done greater things."

"I think you might have done better things."

"You admit that I have achieved success?"

"A marvelous success. It shows your extraordinary gifts. The town, in a certain way, is ringing with your name. If an ordinary woman had gained your place she would have found in it a splendid gratification. She would have been amply, perfectly satisfied."

"You mean that I am not satisfied. Pray allow it. Your tones and your look both show it me."

Thurston smiled, transiently and sadly. "I mean that you are miserable," he said.

Claire bit her lip, and slightly drooped her head. "You have no cause to tell me that."

He leaned closer to her. "I do tell you. It is true. I saw it in your face when I first looked at you. There is a change. I can't define it, but it exists. You are more beautiful than when I saw you last. You have an air of ease, dignity, command. But you express a kind of superb weariness, and yet occasional flashes of excitement are in your talk and demeanor. You see, I have watched you from a distance; I have my opinions."

"Yes, you have your opinions," said Claire, lifting her head and directly regarding him. "That is very plain."

"It all makes an exquisite picture," Thurston continued. "I have seen the world, as you know. I have seen many beautiful women. Your personality, as I now encounter it, is an absolute astonishment to me. I don't know where, in these few months, you acquired your repose, your serenity, your magnificence, your air. Do you remember what I told you of the restless American type that you represent? I knew you would strive to rise; it was in you; you pushed to the front, as I was sure you would do. But I had no prescience of this mighty accomplishment."

"You are sneering at me, as your note sneered," said Claire, looking at him steadily. "Acknowledge it. I perceive it with great accuracy. I somehow cannot answer you as I would answer another. You warned me months ago. You knew what I desired, and told me of the danger that lay in my path. I recollect all that you wanted me to try and be. Perhaps I would have tried, under differing conditions."

She paused, and Thurston instantly said, "As my wife you would have tried – and succeeded."

"Perhaps," she answered, very low of tone, not meeting his look. "But all that is past. Don't pull corpses out of graves."

"My love for you is living," he said to her. There was no touch of passion in his voice; there was only a mournful respect. "I don't think I am wrong to speak of it now. There's a sanctity and chastity about the feeling I bear for you which the fact of your being a wife does not affect. I want to know the man whom you have married; I am curious to meet him and know him well. He has a large publicity, as you are aware. They have heard of him in Europe."

"I understand the question you wish to put yet do not," Claire said, at this point. "You lead up to it very adroitly; I might play the rôle of ignorant innocence, if I chose. But I do not choose. You want to ask me whether I loved the man I married."

Thurston again stroked his mustache, for a moment. "Yes," he presently said, "I should like to know that."

A silence now ensued between them. Claire broke it. "He loved me," she said.

"Which means that you did not care for him?"

"Oh, yes. I cared very much. It was no worldly sale of myself. He was not even rich when I married him. He attracted me – in a manner charmed me. I felt that I should never meet another man who would attract and charm me more. Do you understand?"

"Thoroughly… Since then you have met Stuart Goldwin. I know him well. He is a man of exceptional fascination. They tell me that he is your slave."

"Do they?" said Claire, coloring under this rapid attack of candor. "Well, if he is my slave – which I, of course, deny – then I am not his. They did not tell you that, I am sure. They did not even hint it."

"No. You have escaped the least breath of scandal."

"Be sure that I have. And I shall continue to escape it. I recollect that you once declared I was cold, and that my coldness would prove a safeguard. 'It is very protective to a woman,' you said."

"Quote me in full or not at all," he corrected, with a grim pleasantry. "I said that it is very protective to a woman – while it lasts."

"True," returned Claire. "And it has lasted. I prophesied that it would last, and I was right… By the way, from whom have you learned all these important items? Perhaps from your sister. She is not my friend."

Thurston started a little. "She is not your enemy?" he said, putting the words as a distinct question.

"I hope not. But I am by no means sure. Thus far she has held herself aloof from me. She has not openly opposed me, but she has behaved with telling reserve. Everybody else has paid me tribute, so to speak. No, I am wrong. There is one other woman – her cousin, Mrs. Lee."

"Of course you know why poor Sylvia would be your foe. She is madly in love with Goldwin; she has been for years. You must have cost her dire pangs."

Claire chose to ignore this last statement. "I think your sister dislikes me from pride," she said. "I mean pride of family." Here she paused for a moment, and seemed almost bashfully reluctant to proceed. But her hesitation had in it a gentle, unassuming modesty; it sprang wholly from unwillingness to touch on a subject which she knew that only the most delicate tact should deal with, if to deal with it at all were not folly and rashness. "Your sister found out," she softly continued, "that you had liked me enough to ask me to be your wife. Heaven knows, Beverley Thurston, that I did not tell her!"

Thurston looked very grave. "I told her," he said. "Or rather, she drew it from me. I was foolish to let her. Cornelia is so clever… Well," he suddenly went on, with an unusual show of animation, "do you mean that she accused you of having rejected me?"

"She did not put it in the form of an accusation. She stated it. Wait; I will tell you more; I will tell when, where, and how it all happened."

Claire did so. He listened with deep attention. She narrated the whole episode of her well-remembered conversation with his sister in the dining-room at the Coney Island hotel.

"Ah, what a woman that sister of mine is!" he exclaimed, in his subdued way, as Claire finished. "I must talk with her. I dine there to-night. I will find out if this knowledge has been at the root of her late behavior."

Claire laid her gloved hand lightly on his sleeve. "I think it best to say nothing. I feel that you are my friend – always my friend. As such you will more discreetly let matters rest where they are."

"Let matters rest where they are?" he repeated.

"Yes." Her face broke into a smile as she spoke the next words. "Mrs. Van Horn – the great Mrs. Van Horn – has withdrawn her disapprobation. The day after to-morrow she and Mrs. Lee lunch with me. It is a ladies' lunch. You have no idea how monstrously important an event her attendance is to be. It is my crowning glory. After that I shall have no more worlds to conquer. She is actually coming; I have it in her own graceful handwriting. Frankly, I am quite serious. If you had followed affairs, if you hadn't been off in Europe for months, you would understand the momentous nature of your sister's acceptance."

Claire rose as she ended her last sentence. The conservatory was quite empty of guests; the waning winter sunlight told of the hour for departure. "It is time to go," she now continued. "Remember, whenever you come to me you will be welcome. I shall be at the opera to-night. Drop into my box if you get away from your sister's dinner before ten, and feel like hearing some music."

Thurston replied that he would certainly do so. But, as it happened, he partially failed to keep his promise. Mrs. Van Horn's dinner was attended by several guests. He wanted to talk with his sister, and it was somewhat late before he found the desired opportunity.

"Did you enjoy it, Beverley?" said his hostess, referring to the dinner. They were in the front drawing-room together. Thurston had seated himself near the fire-place, in a big chair of gilded basket-work with soft plush cushions. He was playing with a small locket at his waistcoat, and his look did not lift itself from the bauble as Mrs. Van Horn spoke. She came near his chair and stood at his side for a moment. She had been giving her servants a few orders relative to the morrow. She looked very well that evening. The color of her gown was a sort of tea-rose pink, and she wore a collar of large pearls about her throat, and ornaments of pearls in her blonde hair. While her brother was answering, she dropped in a chair quite near his own.

"I thought it about as successful as your dinners always are," he said. "Everything went off to perfection, of course… No, I forget; there was one drawback. A serious one."

"What was it?"

"Sylvia Lee."

"You never could endure Sylvia," said Mrs. Van Horn, in her grand, cool, suave way.

"I think her abominable," replied Thurston. "Her affectations irritate and depress me. They appear to grow with age, too. She behaved more like a contortionist than ever, to-night. But it is not only the wretched, sensational bad taste of her poses and costumes. It is a conviction that she is as treacherous as the serpent she resembles. And then her religious attitudinizing … has she got over that yet? I suppose not."

Mrs. Van Horn, who would sharply have resented these biting comments if any lips but her brother's had delivered them, now answered with only a faint touch of petulance. "You will never believe any good of Sylvia, so it is useless to tell you how unjust I consider your opinions. But she is more passionately absorbed in charities and religious devotion than ever before. If you could see some of the people whom she goes among, and whom she has constantly visiting her in her own house, you would be forced to grant that the shallow hypocrisy with which you charge her is a most sincere and active almsgiving."

"Say notorious, too. She's a Pharisee to the tips of her fingers. I should like to know of one good deed that she has ever performed in secret. She parades her piety and her benevolence just as she does her newest fantasies in dressmaking. She thinks them picturesque. She would rather die than not be picturesque, and I believe that when she does die she will make some ante-mortem arrangements about an abnormal coffin. It's a marvel to me that Stuart Goldwin should have put up with her nonsense as long as he did… By the way, how does she stand his desertion?"

"Has he deserted her?"

"Oh, come, now, Cornelia, you know quite well that he has." Thurston was looking directly at his sister for the first time since their interview had begun.

Mrs. Van Horn gave a light, soft laugh.

"You mean for Mrs. Hollister, Beverley?"

"Of course I do."

"I see that you have picked up some precious bits of gossip since you got back." He was watching her very closely, and perceived, knowing her as scarcely any one else knew her, that a severe annoyance dwelt beneath those last words. She slightly tossed her delicate head. "You are so relentless with poor Sylvia that I naturally don't want to feed the fuel of your disapprobation. Well, then, let me admit that Goldwin is devoted to your former friend."

"Say my present friend, if you please, Cornelia."

He saw a little gleam, like that of lit steel, creep into her pale-blue eyes. "Oh, then you still call her that?"

"Most certainly. Should I withdraw my friendship because she refused to marry me when I was old enough to be her father? On the contrary, I am liberal enough to applaud her good sense."

"Beverley," exclaimed his sister, in tones of harsh disgust, "how can you show so little self-respect?"

He saw that she had grown pale with anger. He set his eyes upon her face with a fresh intentness of gaze. He had a distinct object in view, and he was determined, if possible, to reach it. He leaned much closer toward her while he said, in slow, deliberative tones: —

"My self-respect, or lack of it, is quite my own affair. Pray understand that. You never forgave Claire Twining for refusing me, Cornelia. You need not attempt to deceive me there. I repeat, you never forgave her. Your pride would not allow you."

Her voice shook as she answered him. She was bitterly distressed and agitated. He had touched an old wound, but one which had not healed. She loved him as she had never loved any other man. He was part of herself; his blood was hers; he belonged to the egotism which was her ruling quality. Her speech now betrayed neither wrath nor disgust; it was full of mournful dismay. The times in her life had been rare when her glacial composure had shown such excessive disturbance.

"I concede, Beverley, that it hurt me very deeply to realize your humiliation. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that a girl of her class should have been glad to marry a man of your place and name. What was she? And what were and are you?"

"Pshaw! I was and am an elderly, faded old fellow."

Mrs. Van Horn rose from her chair. She was visibly trembling. "You could have given that adventuress a position far more stable than she holds now, as the wife of a lucky stock-gambler!"

Thurston remained seated. "You call her an adventuress," he said, "and yet you visit her – you put her on a social equality with yourself."

During the vigilant scrutiny with which he accompanied these words, Mrs. Van Horn's brother decided that in all his experience of her he had never seen her show such perturbation as now.

"People acknowledge her," she said, a little hoarsely. "I have never been to her entertainments. I have never accepted her, so to speak. If you inquire, you will find this to be true. It is current talk, my reserve, my disapproval."

He shot his answer with quiet speed, meaning that it should hit and tell. "You are going to the lunch that she gives on Friday. I happen to be certain of this – unless you have had the wanton rudeness to write her that you would go, while meaning to remain away." He rose as he spoke the last word. Brother and sister faced each other. There was a tranquil challenge in Thurston's full and steady gaze.

She recoiled a little. "I – well, yes – I did intend to go," she replied, below her breath, and actually stammering.

"What is your reason for going," he questioned, "if you despise and dislike her so?"

She threw back her head; her self-possession had returned, and with it a stately indignation.

"You are insolent," she said.

Thurston broke into a hard laugh.

"Yes," he exclaimed, "I am insolent to the great lady because I detect her on the verge of some petty revenge! Oh, I know you too well, my dear sister," he went on, with stern irony. "You can't rebuff me in that way. There is something behind this fine condescension. Sylvia Lee and you have been putting your heads together. Your revenge and her jealousy will make a rather dangerous alliance. You are both going to the lunch. You are both employing a new line of tactics. What does it mean? I demand to know. I have a right to know."

He was very impressive, yet his voice was hardly raised above that of ordinary speech. She had always admired his gravity and calm; he had been for years her ideal and model gentleman; she hated excitement of any sort, and to see it in him gave her a positive feeling of awe.

"Beverley," she murmured, half brokenly, "remember that if I had any thought of punishment toward the woman who trifled with you and humbled you, it has been because I am your sister – because I was fond of you – because" …

He interrupted her with a quick, waving gesture of the hand. "You talk insanely," he said. "She neither trifled with me nor humbled me. I was a fool even to tell you how sensibly she acted. What you call your fondness is nothing but your miserable pride. I see clearly that you have some detestable plan. Do you refuse to tell me what it is? – me, who have the right to learn it!"

Every trace of color had left her cheeks, and she was biting her lips. There was very little of the great lady remaining in her mien or visage, now.

"You have twice spoken of your right," she faltered. "On what is such a right based? How can you possibly possess it? You are nothing to her. You are neither her husband nor" —

"I am her lover," he broke in. "I am her lover, reverent, devout, loyal, and shall be while we both live! She is the most charming woman I have ever met. I met her too late, or she would be my wife now. It was not her fault that she refused me. She is not a bit to blame. Good Heavens! have I the monstrous arrogance to assume that she should have married an old fossil like myself because I was of a little importance in the world? No, Cornelia, that preposterous assumption belongs to you. It is just like you. And you call it love – sisterly love. I call it the very apex of intolerable pride. But admit for the moment that it is I and not yourself whom you care for. Will you tell me, on that account, what it is you mean or meant to do?"

Before he had finished, Mrs. Van Horn had sunk into a chair and covered her face with both hands. Her sobs presently sounded, violent and rapid. In these brief seconds she was shedding more tears than had left her cold eyes for many years past.

"I mean to do nothing – nothing!" she answered, with a gasp almost like that which leaves us when in straits for breath.

"Do you give me your sacred promise," he said, "that this is true?"

The words appeared to horrify her. She looked at him with streaming eyes, while a positive shudder shook her frame.

"Oh, Beverley, what degradation this seems to me! Degradation of yourself! You may call me as proud as you choose. It is no insult. It is a compliment, even. I am proud of being proud. I had never given up hope that you would marry some woman of good birth, good antecedents, your equal and mine – young enough, too, to bear you children. I am childless, myself – how I would have loved your children! Their own mother would not have loved them more. Every penny of my large fortune should have gone to them. This has been my dream for years past, and now you shatter it by telling me that an upstart, a parvenu, a nobody from nowhere, holds you ensnared beyond escape!"

Thurston was not at all touched. This outburst, so uncharacteristic and so unexpected, did not bear for him a grain of pathos. He saw behind it nothing save an implacable selfishness that chose to misname itself affection. The ambition of Claire saddened him to contemplate; it had so rich a potentiality for its background. He was forever seeing the true and wise woman that she might have been. Even the nettles in her soil flourished with a certain beauty of their own, proving its fertile resources if more wholesome growths had taken root there. But in Cornelia Van Horn's nature all was barren and arid. The very genuineness of her present grief was its condemnation. Her tears were as chilly to him as the light of her bravest diamonds; they had something of the same hard sparkle; she wept them only from her brain, as it were; her heart did not know that she was shedding them.

"The bitter epithets which you apply to my ensnarer," he said, with a momentary curve of the lips too austere to be termed a smile, "make me the more suspicious that you harbor against her designs of practical spite. I want your promise that you will refrain from the least active injury – that you will never use the great social power you possess, either by speech or deed, to her disadvantage. Do you give me this promise, or do you refuse it? If the latter, everything is at an end between us. The monetary trusts you have consigned to me shall be at once transferred to whatever lawyer you may appoint as their recipient, and from to-night henceforward we meet as total strangers."

"A quarrel between you and me, Beverley!" said his sister, trying to choke back her sobs, and rising with a cobweb handkerchief pressed in fluttered alternation to either humid eye. "A family quarrel! And I have been so guarded – so careful that the world should hold us and our name in perfect esteem! – Oh, it is horrible!"

"I did not infer that it would be pleasant," he answered. "You yourself have power to avert or bring it about. All remains with yourself."

"I – I must make you a promise," she retorted, in what would have been, if louder, a peevish wail, "just as though I had really intended some – some gross, revengeful act! You – you are ungentlemanly to impose such a condition! You – you are out of your senses! That creature has bewitched you!"