An Ambitious Woman Part 23

"Nonsense. You snubbed her mildly. I don't doubt that she will come.

Women at her time of life have survived nearly every sentiment except that of appet.i.te. Ten to one that she will scent the odor of a good dinner, and come, as your dear former instructress, and all that, don't you know?"

"Very well," said Claire, with gravity; "I might ask her. But then there would be the fifth lady. I am afraid that she is not to be found."

Mrs. Diggs put one slim hand to one pale temple, and drooped her bright eyes. "I have it!" she presently exclaimed. "There is my other cousin, Jane Van Corlear. We won't ask Jane until we are sure of the others.

Then we shall be certain of getting her to fill the vacant place. You remember her at Coney Island, don't you? No? Well, in a certain sense n.o.body ever remembers poor Jane, and n.o.body ever forgets her. She has been a widow for years, like Cornelia. But she never a.s.serts herself.

She is tallowy, obese, complaisant. She rarely goes anywhere, and yet she leaves a sort of aristocratic trail wherever she has been. She will accept if I tell her to; she always gives in to me, though in her sluggish way I know she thinks me objectionable. Poor Jane is a perfect goose, and yet I dote on her. She is such a dear, consistent, inoffensive, companionable goose, don't you know? Claire, your dinner-party is entirely arranged."

"I am afraid not," said Claire, dubiously.

The next day she and Mrs. Diggs concocted the invitations together. On the day following, the two ladies whom they had asked each sent a courteous, conventional refusal.

Mrs. Van Horn gave no reason for her refusal. Mrs. Arcularius mentioned a previous engagement as the reason of her non-acceptance.

"You see," said Claire, to her fallacious counselor, "our ladies are not obtainable, after all."

She was secretly chagrined; but Mrs. Diggs showed herself openly so. "It is too bad!" declared the latter. "I've a lurking belief in the authenticity of Mrs. Arcularius's 'previous engagement.' As for Cornelia, I suspect pique at your not having been to visit her. But we shall see what we shall see, regarding Mrs. Van Horn. Of course our little dinner is ruined. You must preside as the only woman, Claire, and I don't doubt you will do it charmingly. But I shall drop in upon Cornelia to-morrow, and try to sound the unfathomable."

Mrs. Diggs did so, and on the afternoon of the same day she sought out Claire, filled with her recent exploring skirmish.

"She received me, my dear Claire, with a great deal of high-nosed graciousness. I hadn't been three minutes in her presence before I felt that her cold, serene eyes were reading me through and through. She mentioned you herself; she made it a point to do so. She spoke of you as that pretty young woman whom Beverley used to know. Then she recollected that you had asked her to dinner. 'But of course I could not accept,'

she said, with her best sort of ducal look. 'I do not really _know_ your friend. I have met her only once, and then for a few minutes.' She wanted to change the conversation, after that; she has vast tact in the way of changing conversations; great leaders like herself always have.

But I wouldn't put up with that at all. I am usually a good deal awed by Cornelia. But I made up my mind not to be awed to-day at any hazard. I reminded her that she had sought to know you and asked you to visit her.

I showed her that I wouldn't stand her delicate rapier-thrusts. I swung a bludgeon, and I flatter myself that I swung it rather well. I told her that she had given you a perfect right to invite her. I told her that you had treated her with unusual courtesy, and that instead of leaving a slip of meaningless pasteboard with her footman, you had resolved on the more honest and significant civility of asking her to dinner. Moreover, I added, the fact of her brother having been your most intimate friend had rendered, to my thinking, the civility a still more kindly and genuine one."

"You must have made her very angry," said Claire, with a peculiar fleeting smile.

"Angry? She was in a white heat. She could never be in a red one, don't you know, she is so const.i.tutionally placid and chill. She replied that you had actually attempted to offer her patronage, and that your effort had amused her not a little."

"Did she say that?" questioned Claire, with a certain quick eagerness.

"Then I was right at first. She had some unpleasant purpose in wanting me to visit her."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Diggs; "you never suggested such a thing before!"

Claire had grown very grave and calm again. "Did I not?" she said.

"Well, I had supposed it. It was a sort of fancy."

Mrs. Diggs took one of Claire's hands and held it, at the same time giving her an intent look.

"You're keeping something from me," she said. "Yes, Claire, I know you are.... Did Beverley Thurston ever ask you to marry him?"

Claire colored to the roots of her rich-tinted tresses. She tried to draw her hand away, but Mrs. Diggs still retained it.

"He did!" exclaimed her friend. "Your complexion tells me so! Everything is explained now. You refused Beverley. Yes, my dear, you refused him.

And she somehow got wind of it. Perhaps Beverley told, or perhaps his complexion, like yours, divulged secrets, don't you know?... And yet, on second thought, Beverley's complexion could do nothing so expressive; it is too battered and world-worn; its capability for blus.h.i.+ng is entirely null.... No, _he_ told her. And she has not forgiven you, and never will. Her monstrous pride would not permit her to do so. I understand everything, now. You remember what I told you about her clannish feeling--how she loves to quietly exalt her family name?... Ah, my dear Claire, you have committed, in her eyes, the great unpardonable sin. I was right; I felt it to be in the air that you and she would prove enemies. I begin to think myself a sort of haphazard sibyl; I divined what would happen, and it has happened. You have presumed to refuse her brother, and Cornelia knows it. Prepare to be crushed."

Claire lightly tossed her graceful head, and her lip curled a little as she did so.

"I am not at all prepared to be crushed," she said. "Mrs. Van Horn has spoiled our prospective dinner-party, as regards ladies, but she has not spoiled _me_."

"Delightful!" declared Mrs. Diggs, softly clapping her hands. "That's the spirit I like to see. The fight has begun; it's going to be serious.

But remember that I am always your devoted auxiliary!" ...

The dinner took place. There were no ladies present except Claire herself. It was an extremely elegant dinner. Claire rose when coffee was being served, and left the gentlemen together. She performed, so to speak, her unaided office of hostess with singular charm and dignity.

And during the progress of the dinner she made a friend.

This was Mr. Stuart Goldwin. Everybody in Wall Street knew Stuart Goldwin. He had drifted into that stormy region of risk about four years ago. He had so drifted from a remote New England town, and his speculative successes had been phenomenal. He was reputed to be worth, at present, a good many millions of dollars. He had acquired an enormous influence among his const.i.tuents; he was the reigning Wall Street King.

But he had none of the vulgarity which had marked a few of his immediate predecessors; he had always shown a full appreciation of his royalty and the duties resultant from it. He had been admitted, with singular promptness, into the social holy of holies; he was hand in glove with what are termed the best people; he belonged to three or four of the most select clubs; his circle of acquaintances had rapidly become huge.

Women liked him as much as men. He was personally the type of man whom women like. His frame was tall and imposing; he wore a large tawny mustache, which drooped with silky abundance below a delicately-cut nostril. His eyes were large, and of a soft, glistening hazel. His manners were full of a fascinating frankness. His age was about forty years, but he might have pa.s.sed for considerably younger. Books had not fed his rapid and distinctive intelligence, for he had no time to read them; and yet he had caught the reverberation, as it were, of the best and newest ideas announced by the best and newest writers.

Claire thought him delightful. He, in turn, thought her even more than this. She was a discovery to him. He had never married, and he was fond of saying, in his blithe, epigrammatic way, that half womankind was so enchanting to him as to have made, in his own case, anything except the most Oriental polygamy quite out of the question. He had wit in no small store, but when he liked a woman greatly it was his most deft of arts to keep this in very judicious reserve, and employ it only as a means of subtly wooing forth the mental sparkle of her to whom he paid court.

Claire found herself vain, in a covert way, of her own conversational gifts, before she had talked with Goldwin more than twenty minutes. She would have liked to talk with him exclusively during the dinner, but her two other guests were persons of importance who ought not to receive her impolitic neglect. She managed matters with tact and skill. Everybody thought her charming when she glided from the dining-room, in decorous retreat before that little anti-feminine bayonet, the after-dinner cigar. She had made a distinct success. She felt it as she sat in the drawing-room, waiting for the gentlemen to ascend and join her.

Goldwin had not deceived her. She read him with lucid insight. She saw him to be imposingly superficial; she perceived him to be a man whose polished filigrees would ring hollow at so much as one sincere tap of the finger-nail. He was agreeable to her, but not admirable; he captivated, but he did not dazzle her. She compared him with Beverley Thurston (never thinking to compare him with her husband), and noted all the more clearly his lack of genuine and manly magnitude. He came and joined her before any of the other gentlemen. His face was a little flushed from the wine he had taken, but with no unbecoming suggestion of excess.

"I couldn't stay away from you," he said, sinking into a happy, half-lounging posture on the sofa at her side. He was faultlessly dressed, in garments that seemed to accept every bend of his fine moulded figure without a wrinkle of their dark, flexible surface. "Your husband smokes the nicest sort of cigar, but he has another possession that seems to me vastly superior." Then he broke into a mellow laugh, and waved one hand hither and thither, with an air of mock explanation.

"I allude to this beautiful little drawing-room," he continued.

His mirthful sidelong look made Claire echo his laugh. "I will tell Herbert how much you like it," she said; "he will be so pleased to know."

"Pray do nothing of the sort!" he expostulated, with a good deal of comic seriousness. "I should never forgive you if you did. Husbands are such oddly jealous fellows. There is no telling what innocent little outburst of esteem may sometimes offend them."

Claire thought the time had come for a decisive parry, in the parlance of fencers. "Oh, Herbert is not at all jealous," she said, measuring the words just enough not to make them seem out of accord with her bright smile. "He has never had the least occasion to be, I a.s.sure you."

He fixed his eyes with soft intentness on her sweet, blooming face.

"Never?" he questioned, quite low of tone.

"Never," she answered, gently laconic.

"But he might take some stupid pretext ... who knows?"

"Oh, if he did I would soon show him the stupidity of it. We understand each other excellently."

They talked on for at least a half hour. The other gentlemen remained below. Goldwin made no more daring complimentary hazards. He listened quite as much as he talked. Their converse turned upon social matters--upon what sort of a season it would be--upon the coming opera--upon the nature of New York entertainments--upon the men and women who were to give them. Claire made it very plain to him that she wanted to enter the gay lists. She at length said:--

"Do you know Mrs. Van Horn?"

Goldwin laughed. "Why don't you ask me if I know the City Hall," he said, "or the Stock Exchange? Of course I know her."

"Do you like her?"

"n.o.body ever likes her. Who likes statues?"

"People sometimes wors.h.i.+p them."

"Oh, she is a good deal wors.h.i.+ped, if you mean that."