Part 24

"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!"

He saw her eye, tearful though it was, quail before his own narrowed and penetrating look. He felt his suspicion strengthen within him.

"I do impose the condition," he said, perhaps more determinedly than he had yet spoken. "I do exact the promise. Now decide, Cornelia. There is no hard threat on my part, remember. You don't like the idea of an open rupture with me, you don't think it would be respectable; it would make a little mark on your ermine--a _défaut de la cuirasse_, so to speak. But your beloved world would possibly side with you and against me; you would not lose a supporter; you would still remain quite the grand personage you are. Only, I should never darken your doors again; that is all. Come, now, be good enough to decide."

She sank into her seat once more; her eyes had drooped themselves; the tears were standing on her pale cheeks. "I did not know you had it in you to be so cruel," she said, uttering the words with apparent difficulty.

"I am afraid I always knew that you had it in you," he returned. "Come, if you please.... Your answer."

"You--you mean my promise?"

"Yes. Your faithful and solemn promise. We need not go over its substance again. If you break it after giving it I shall not reproach you; I shall simply act. You understand how; I have told you."

She was silent for some time. She had got her handkerchief so twisted between her fingers that they threatened to tear its frail fabric.

Without raising her eyes, and in a voice that was very sombre but had lost all trace of tremor, she at length murmured:--

"Well, I promise faithfully. I will do nothing--say nothing. My conduct shall be absolutely neutral--null. Are you satisfied?"

"Entirely," he said.

He at once left her. He reached the opera just as it was ending. Claire, in the company of two ladies and two gentlemen, and attended by Goldwin, was leaving her box when he contrived to find her. Hollister had purchased one of the larger proscenium boxes some time ago; he had given a great price for it to an owner who could not resist the princely terms offered.

"You are very late," Claire said, giving him her hand, while Goldwin, standing behind her, dropped a great fur-lined cloak over her shoulders, and hid the regal costliness of her dress, with its laces, flowers, and jewels. "Have you been dining with your sister all this time, or were you here for the last act, but talking with older friends elsewhere?"

"No," replied Thurston, who had already exchanged a nod of greeting with Goldwin. He lowered his voice so that Claire alone could hear it. "I arrived but a few minutes ago. I have been talking seriously with my sister. You were quite right. She has withdrawn her disapprobation. You have conquered her, as you conquer everybody."

He saw the faint yet meaning flash that left her dark-blue eyes, and he read clearly, too, the significance of her bright smile, as she said:--

"Ah, you reassure me. For I had my doubts; I confess it, now."

"So had I," he returned. "But they are at rest forever, as I want yours to be." ...

At an early hour, the next morning, Mrs. Van Horn surprised her friend and kinswoman, Mrs. Ridgeway Lee, in the latter's pretty and quaint _boudoir_, that was Japanese enough, as regarded hangings and adornments, to have been the sacred retreat of some almond-eyed Yeddo belle.

Mrs. Lee had had her coffee, and was deep in one of Zola's novels when her friend was announced. Her coupé would appear at twelve, and take her to a certain small religious hospital of which she was one of the most assiduous patrons; but she always read Zola, or some author of a similar Gallic intensity, while she digested her coffee.

She had concealed the novel, however, by the time that Mrs. Van Horn had swept her draperies between the Oriental jars and screens.

"I have come to talk with you about that affair--that plan, Sylvia," said her visitor, dropping into a chair.

"You mean ... to-morrow, Cornelia?"

"Yes.... By the way, have you seen the morning papers?"

"I glanced over one of them--the 'Herald,' I think. It said, in the society column, that I wore magenta at the Charity Ball last night. As if I would disgrace myself with that hideous color! These monsters of the newspapers ought to be suppressed in some way."

"You didn't think so when they described your flame-colored plush gown so accurately last Tuesday. However, you deserve to be ridiculed for going to those vulgar public balls."

"But this was for charity, and"--

"Yes, I know. Don't let us talk of it. If you had read the paper more closely you would have seen the statement, given with a great air of truth, that Herbert Hollister's millions are flowing away from him at a terrible rate, and that to-night may see him almost ruined."

"How dreadful!" said Mrs. Lee, in her slow way, but noticeably changing color.

Mrs. Van Horn gave a high, hard laugh. "Of course you are sorry."

"Sorry!" softly echoed Mrs. Lee, uncoiling herself from one peculiar pose on the yellow-and-black lounge where she was seated, and gently writhing into another. "Of course I am sorry, Cornelia. Although you must grant that _she_ merits it. To desert her poor, ignorant, miserable mother! To run away and leave her own flesh and blood in starvation!" Here Mrs. Lee heaved an immense sigh. "Ah, Providence finds us all out, sooner or later! If that wicked woman's sin is punished by her husband's ruin, who shall say that she has not richly deserved it? But in spite of this, Cornelia dear, _our_ stroke of punishment will not be too severe. With regard to my own share in our coming work, I feel that I am to be merely the instrument--the humble instrument--of Heavenly justice itself!"

"No doubt," replied Mrs. Van Horn, with frigid dryness. "But you must do it all alone to-morrow, Sylvia. I have come to tell you so. I can have no part whatever in the proceeding. However it is carried out--whether you bring Mrs. Hollister face to face with her plebeian parent or no, I shall be absent. It is true, I accepted for the lunch. But I shall be ill at the last moment. I withdraw from the whole ingenious plot. I shan't see the little _coup de théâtre_ at all. I wish that I could. You know I have never forgiven the refusal of Beverley any more than you have forgiven ... well, something else, my dear Sylvia. But I must remain aloof; it is settled; there is no help for it."

Mrs. Lee opened her big black eyes very wide indeed. "Have you lost your senses, Cornelia?" she queried, with her grotesque, unfailing drawl. "What! After my wonderful meeting with Mrs. Twining at the hospital! After your exultant conclusion that we had far better fix the stigma of ingratitude and desertion upon her shameless daughter with as much publicity as possible! After our talks, our arrangements, our anticipations! After all this, you are _not going to-morrow_! I don't understand. I am sure that I must be dreaming!"

"Let me explain, then," said Mrs. Van Horn, with a quiver in her usually serene tones that was a residue of last evening's dramatic defeat and surrender. "For once in my life, Sylvia, I--I have found my match, I have failed to hold my own, I have been ignominiously beaten. And the victor is my own brother, Beverley."

She went on speaking for some time longer, with no actual interruption on the part of her companion, though with very decided signs of consternation and disapproval.

"Oh, Cornelia, it is too bad!" exclaimed Mrs. Lee, when the recital was finished. "He couldn't have meant that he would cut his own sister! What _is_ to be done? Well, I suppose it must all be given up. And it would have been such a triumph! And she deserves it so--running away from her own mother whom she had always hated and disobeyed! We have that poor, horrid, common, but pitiable Mrs. Twining's own word for it, you know. And she would have been such a magnificent spectre at the banquet! She would have risen up like Banquo, ill-dressed, haggard, rheumatic, pathetic. Everybody would have denounced this unnatural daughter when they saw the meeting. I can't realize that you, _you_ could let it all be nipped in the bud!"

"It isn't all nipped in the bud, Sylvia," said Mrs. Van Horn, sharply.

"But it _is_! Why isn't it? You certainly don't expect me to carry it out alone?"

Mrs. Van Horn decisively nodded. "Yes, Sylvia," she answered, "that is just the point. I do expect you to carry it out alone. You are clever enough, quite clever enough, and" ... Here the speaker paused for a moment, and then crisply, emphatically added: "And after all is said, remember one thing. It is this: You have a much larger debt to pay her than I have."

A malign look stole into Mrs. Lee's black eyes. She was thinking of Stuart Goldwin. She was thinking of the man whom she had passionately loved--whom she passionately loved still.

"I believe you are right, Cornelia," she at length replied, in her usual protracted and lingering style. She had got herself, as she spoke, into one of her most involved and tortuous attitudes; she had never looked more serpentine than now.

XIX.

Claire felt, on this same day, like casting about in her mind for some pretext by which she might postpone her grand luncheon on the morrow. She had passed a sleepless night, having gone to bed without seeing Hollister. In the morning she had avoided meeting him. She had no comfort to administer, no reparation to offer. The mask had been stripped from her face; the comedy had been played to its end. She had a sense of worthlessness, depravity, sin. At the same time she recklessly told herself that no atonement was in her power. A woful weakness, which took the form of a woful strength, over-mastered her as the hours grew older. Her thirst for new excitements deepened with her misery and anxiety. But she sat in her dressing-room or paced the floor till past three in the afternoon. There were numberless people whom she might have visited; there were several receptions that afternoon at which her presence would have been held important by their respective givers. Even the known jeopardy of her husband's position would have heightened the value of her appearance, adding to her popularity the spice of curiosity as well.

More than once she said to herself: 'I will go to one of these places. I will show them how quietly I bear the strain. If by to-morrow no crash has come, they will admire my nerve and courage. For if I once went, they should never discover a trace of worriment or suspense. I think the fact of my being closely watched would even make me talk better and smile brighter. The wear and tear of the whole thing might make me forget a little, too. And I want so to forget, if I can!'

But she did not go. The morning papers lay on a near table. She had read every word that they had to tell her of the fierce financial turmoil. Some of the stern figures they quoted made her heart flutter with affright; some of their ominous and snarling editorials wrought an added discomfort.

If Hollister weathered the storm, she decided, all would remain as it had been before. Or, if not precisely that, the general outward effect would continue quite the same. She would shine among her courtiers; she would dazzle and rule. He would feel his wound, now that he knew the pitiless truth of her indifference, but he would make the engrossing ventures of his business-life drown its pain until this had perhaps ceased forever. They would drift further apart than they had ever done in recent months, but to the eye of the world there would be no severance. It was possible that he would vex her with no more reproaches. It was probable that as time passed he would forget that he had ever had any reproaches to offer.