An Ambitious Woman: A Novel

"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 husbands drinking. I don't know what I should do if dear Manhattan drank. 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 comments had 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. Van Horn 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 massive condescension of 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 these very big 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 brooding fears. 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 French bonne, 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 not warm 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 you won't forget just where you're to find me, will you, my dear Mrs. Hollister?.. Sois bonne fille, Louise; nous allons à New York tout de 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 veut être absolument perdue… 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 to be it."

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 a sort 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 of the 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 real châtelaine, 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 are lancée, 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 Van Horn! That is what you mean. Isn't it, now? Isn't it?"

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."