An Ambitious Woman: A Novel

XI

She was wholly unprepared for the intelligence, a few days later, that Thurston had gone, in the most sudden manner, to Europe. The Bergemanns, mother and daughter, were both amazed by the departure of their legal adviser, without a premonitory word from him on the subject and apparently at such brief notice. Claire, in the midst of her own consternation, sharply dreaded lest some suspicion should dawn upon them that she was concerned in this precipitate change. But if Mrs. Bergemann let fall any hint that such was her belief, it was made in the hearing of Sophia alone; and the latter had scouted from the first, as we know, all idea that Thurston's regard for her friend could partake of lover-like tenderness. The letter which he had written to his client, announcing that he had sailed, gave no reason for this abrupt course. It was a letter somewhat copious in other respects, however, and made thoroughly plain the fact that the partner of him who wrote it would in every way defend and supervise the interests of Mrs. Bergemann. "I shall probably be abroad a number of months," ran Thurston's written words, "but during that time rest sure that all details of the slightest importance with respect to your affairs shall be safely communicated through Mr. Chadwick."

Mr. Chadwick soon afterward presented himself. He was a lank man, of bloodless complexion and irreproachable manners. "I think he's a reg'lar wet blanket," said Mrs. Bergemann, with critical cruelty, "after dear, high-toned Mr. Thurston. He was high-toned, Claire, wasn't he, now?" she persevered, with a sidelong, timorous look toward Sophia, who chanced, besides Claire, to be present at the time.

"Now, Ma!" broke in Sophia, accompanying this vocative with a tart gesture of remonstrance, "Claire doesn't know a bit better than you or I do whether he was high-toned or not. Do you, Claire?"

"I think almost everybody who ever met him," said Claire, answering the appeal, "must have seen it very clearly."

She spoke this with nice composure. But she was inwardly dismayed, wounded, almost tortured. For many succeeding days she contrived to absent herself from all Sophia's guests. Brady had totally disappeared from her experience; he no longer presented himself at the house. He was secretly fearful lest Claire might publish the fact of his proposal broadcast among the adherents with whom he stood supreme as their moneyed and autocratic leader. He suffered those torments of humiliation which only a small soul, with small views of things and an immoderate vanity, has learned the petty trick of suffering. It is by no means hyperbole to state that he inwardly cursed Claire for being the girl within whose power he had put it to say that she had actually repelled his superb matrimonial advances. Longer concern with so unwholesome a creature would be idle for the chronicler, especially since henceforth he drops out of our record somewhat as Slocumb did, and with a scarcely more chivalrous exit.

Claire now passed through a period of extreme repentance. Her old longings had vanished; she silently planned for herself, with ascetic enthusiasm, a future of humility and obscurity. She was a zealot in a totally new way; she had abandoned all thought of marrying, and had conceived the idea of mentally fitting herself to become a governess. With this end, she spent hours in the library. Incapable of doing anything by halves, she now bent the full force of her strong will and capable intellect toward obtaining a proper educational competence. She swam far out, so to speak, into the blue waters of knowledge, and breasted them with good, vigorous strokes. She was, for the time at least, passionately in earnest. Thurston's farewell words rang incessantly through her memory. She would crush down all that American "push," once and forever. She would steer from the perils against which he had warned her, by one broad, divergent swerve. Her remorse and her resignation held a poetic ardor of kinship. Her past longings had indeed been a folly, and as such she would unvaryingly treat them. She would be consistent henceforward, and seek only what lay within her lawful scope of action. She was like the convert to a new faith, and she had all a convert's intensity of fervor.

From her two friends, however, she chose to guard with caution the secret of this change. It was now the early portion of June, and the fierce heat of summer had literally leapt down on the city after several weeks of raw, inclement May weather. The judgment long ago passed upon our climate, that it has a summer, an autumn, a winter, but no spring, had never been more fully confirmed. The city was wrapt all day in a torrid drowse; the pavements lay either in bleak glare or breathless shadow. On the benches of the parks, where spots of dusk were wrought by overbrowing branches, groups of jaded citizens huddled together in moist discomfort. The cars tinkled sleepily; the omnibuses lagged in rumbling sloth; foul smells beset the nostrils, even from genteel gutters or the doorways of high-priced restaurants. People looked up at the wool-like pallor of the sky, and wished that it would darken into the cooling gloom of a thunderstorm.

But Claire scarcely minded the heat. She had known the fetid miseries of a Greenpoint summer. Those spacious chambers and halls of the Bergemanns' solid-built mansion were delicious indeed by contrast. Striped awnings had been affixed to each window, whose scalloped edges would flap in chance waftures of breeze, while the stout bunting above them changed the sunny rigors outside to a continual soothing gloom. It was true that she had no sympathy with hot weather; she liked an atmosphere in which quick movement was pleasantly possible. But she was nevertheless very much at her ease here and now. She read; she studied; the library, bathed in a tender dimness, pleased her with its vague rows of books, its rough rich carpeting, its dark massive wood-work. She had, for a time, that exquisite feeling of the scholar who clothes himself with silence, solitude, and repose, and who lets the outer world touch him through soft, impersonal yet cogent mediums. During this interval she was completely happy. It was the old self-surrender of the dévote. Literature was henceforth to be her cult, her idolatry. The mere process of reading had always been one of ease and speed with her. Past training helped her now in the way of method and system. She had learned how to learn. Her French readings were frequent. Sophia had a French maid with whom she often conversed. Her proficiency in the language soon became marked and thorough.

But suddenly her new contentment was shattered, and by a rude stroke. Mrs. Bergemann began to talk of leaving town. Claire almost felt, at first, as if the ground were giving way beneath her feet. She could only accompany her friends to a watering-place in the position of a dependent and pensioner. Her salary must stop, because her relations with Sophia must of necessity lose all their instructive character. "You would never continue our readings, Sophia," she said, "in a crowded hotel, where you would have countless distractions."

"Oh, yes, I would, Claire," was the alert reply. "We'll keep it up just the same. You'll pack a few books in one of the trunks, and I'll promise to be a good girl; you needn't feel a bit afraid. Ma's decided on Coney Island. Now, don't look so glum, as if you didn't have a friend in all the world. You've been sort of queer, lately; you talk slower, somehow, and you stick up there in the library nearly all the time. But you're still my own nice Claire. I swear by you, dear girl, just as I always did. If there's anything on your mind I won't ask you what it is."

"There is something on my mind, Sophia," Claire said. "But you must not ask me what it is, just yet. I will tell you soon. Yes, I hope to tell you quite soon."

She went with them to Coney Island. They engaged rooms at the Manhattan Beach Hotel. The books had been packed and brought, but very few of them were ever opened.

"It's not a bit of use, Claire!" Sophia affirmed, after the lapse of about five days. "We can't manage it. There's always something happening, as you see. Besides, nobody works here. Everybody idles. It's in the air. Let's take a vacation."

"Why, yes, girls," said Mrs. Bergemann, at this point, with motherly persuasion. "You better just lay up some health for next winter, and quit the books till we get home. Or p'raps we may get tired of this place 'fore the summer's through, an' go somewheres where it ain't so lively – I mean some lazy place like Lake George or the White Mountains. Then books and reading will fit in kinder natural. But I don't think I'll care to leave here for a good big while. I ain't ever seen anything like it before. If we could only go driving here, now, and them horses wasn't eating their heads off over in the city, why 'twould be a reg'lar paradise. Sophia, I've just rec'lected that I came to this very spot twenty years ago if it's a day, with poor Pa! We was quite a young couple, then … that girl wasn't more'n a baby, Claire. We took her along. Pa carried you, Sophia. The Brewery wasn't started in them times, an' … well, I guess we got along with about five hundred dollars a year, over at the small saloon at Hoboken."

"Now, Ma, you needn't go into such very close particulars, please!" chided Sophia, whose large, warm heart was not democratic enough always to stand the intense humility of certain maternal reminiscences.

"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Bergemann, with a good-humored laugh; "we don't mind Claire. She's one of us. Besides, we're up here in the bedroom, not down on that crowded piazzer. Well, girls, as I was saying, Pa and me came here that day, an' I declare to goodness, the place was only a bare strip o' sand with a few little shanties here and there, that they called hotels. And just look at it now! Three monstrous palaces, and all New York streaming down every decent afternoon. It's like enchantment. I can't believe I'm where I was twenty years ago. I'm afraid I must be dreaming. But if I am, I don't want to wake up; I want to keep right on till the first o' September."

"Only a few years ago the island was very much the same as you describe it twenty years ago," said Claire, who had dipped into a small descriptive handbook telling about the marvelous growth of this unique and phenomenal watering-place.

"I s'pose I ought to find it a little bit too gay," pursued Mrs. Bergemann, presently, in reflective afterthought. "Poor Pa's been gone such a short time." Here the lady heaved an imposing sigh which her massive bust made no less visible than audible. "But I can grieve just as well by mixing in with folks as if I was hung round with crape an' stuck off alone somewheres. Everybody's got their own ways o' grieving, an' I ain't goin' to forget poor Pa merely 'cause I look about a little and make my second-mourning kinder stylish. Not a bit of it!"

Mrs. Bergemann certainly showed the courage of her opinions, as regarded the sort of grief due her departed spouse. Her laugh was loud in hall, in dining-room, or on piazza. Her costumes tinkled with black bugles, or rustled and crackled in sombre yet ornamented grandeur. It is probable that grief may have dealt her real pangs, and yet that the irrepressible glow and warmth of her spirits kept always at bay the gloom and chill of grief. Her nature was not a shallow one; she could feel with depth and force, but she could not mope or even muse; solitude was hateful to her; she was gregarious; she wanted to hear the voices and look into the faces of her kind. In spite of her German origin she was excessively representative, from a purely American stand-point. Her very vulgarities – and they were certainly profuse – possessed a wide, healthful sincerity. Her enormous benevolence stood for her in the place of refinement; it was indeed a certain code of manners by itself; she was always so good to you that you might pardonably forget to remark the unconventionalism of her goodness. She was precisely the sort of person whom Coney Island must have pleased.

But it pleased Claire in a totally different way. The immense concourse of people who flocked thither, by such easy modes of travel, from New York and Brooklyn and elsewhere, were an incessant source of interest. Their numbers, their activities, their enjoyments, kept her blood in a soft tingle. This brilliant and picturesque city by the sea appeared to her in the light of a delicious reparation. It was a long, splendid festivity, compensating her for those years of dire dullness passed but a few miles away. All her recent resolutions to spend a life of lowly quietude, had melted into thin air. The ambition to climb, to shine, and to rule was once more a dominant force within her being. It seemed to her as if she had flung away some sort of irksome disguise, and now beheld it lie like an ugly heap near at hand, while wondering, in the exhilaration of regained freedom, how she had ever chosen to shroud herself with its clogging folds.

She bathed every day in the ocean, and acquired a richer fund of health on this account. Either with Sophia or alone, though more often the latter, she explored the whole wondrous little life-crowded island, in which every grade of human society, from lowest to highest, held for her its distinct representation. The two huge Iron Piers, jutting out into the surf and assailed by continual salty breezes, charmed her with their streams of coming and departing people, with their noonday lunchers, with their table d'hôte diners, seated over cigarettes or coffee in the sweet marine dusk. She loved West Brighton, with its beer-bibbers, its gaudy booths, its preposterous exhibited fat woman, its amazing Irish giant, its games of strength or skill, and its whirling carrousels, where delighted children span round on wooden horses, cows, lions, or dragons, to the clamors of a shameless brass band. But Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, and the Oriental each afforded a steadier satisfaction. The delicate and lightsome architecture of these three hotels, with their myriads of windows, their châlet-like patterns of roof, gable, and chimney, and their noble outlooks upon the sea, grew dearer to her as the structures themselves became more familiar. She loved the fine sonorous music that pealed forth from the big deft-built pavilions, where troups of well-trained minstrels set many a brazen instrument to their capable lips, and would often find assembled thousands for their listeners, either in the long, salubrious afternoons, or in the breezy starlight and moonlight of those exquisite seaside evenings. Her observant eyes were never weary of watching, and they forever found something to watch. She soon acquired an extraordinary keenness in the matter of "placing" people at sight. Few points of manner, costume, or visage escaped her. She found herself classifying and arranging the vast crowds that she daily encountered. She became familiar with the faces of many who frequently disembarked from the loaded cars. Nor was her own face in turn unnoticed. Augmented health had freshened its tender tints, and lent to its lines a choicer symmetry. Many an eye dwelt upon her with admiration. Almost instinctively she had learned the art of disposing her black garments to dainty advantage, and of heightening their effect with little subdued touches of maidenly tastefulness.

Sophia's diversions increased with each fresh day. Many of the male devotees with whom she had romped during "sociables" of the previous winter, sought her in these new surroundings. Claire was compelled to acknowledge former introductions, and sometimes to assume a conversational attitude with the friends of her friend. But they all seemed to her alike; they all reminded her of Brady, though in a mercifully moderated way. She was invariably civil to them, though they wearied and tried her. They made her recall Thurston, whose remembered comments fleeted through her mind, while his grave, manly image appealed to it in retrospective vision. She was on the verge of a novel and important experience; but, of this unborn fact her longing for better companionship alone gave monition, and addressed her by the imaginative stimulus which we sometimes carelessly term presentiment.

One evening, as she joined Mrs. Bergemann and Sophia upon that portion of the hotel piazza which was usually set aside for its regular patrons, she found the two ladies in conversation with two gentlemen, of whom she knew only one, ranking him as not by any means the most ill-bred of Sophia's friends. He was a young man named Trask, of canary-colored eyebrows and a cloudy complexion, who had made himself a favorite with both sexes of his particular set through rousing no jealousies by superior personal and mental gifts, yet winning golden repute as one whose complaisant good-will would wince under nothing short of positive imposition. The second gentleman was presented to Claire as Mr. Hollister, and her look had scarcely lit on his face before she felt convinced that he was quite of another world from his companions. Even while he was seated she could see that he was tall and of shapely build. His head was small, and covered with glossy blond curls; his blond mustache fringed a lip of sensitive cut, though the smooth chin beneath it fell away a little, leaving his large, frank blue eyes, broad forehead, and well-formed nose to fail of implying the strength they would otherwise have easily told. He wore a suit of some thin, dark stuff that clung tightly about his athletic arms and chest, and contrasted with the light silken tie knotted at his wide, solid throat. Every detail of his dress was what Claire soon decided to be in the best fashion; she had already learned a good deal about the correct reigning mode in men's dress. The extraordinary nicety and comprehensiveness of her observation had made this one of the sure results of her present sojourn.