An Ambitious Woman: A Novel. Fawcett Edgar

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      These silent, pathetic queries were fated to receive a speedy answer. Before the school hours of that same day had ended, the ostracism which had so wrung poor Claire's spirit was in a measure ended likewise. Less than a week had elapsed before she was on friendly terms with a number of her classmates. A little adverse clique soon shaped itself against her. Ada Gerrard, fiercely unforgiving, headed this hostile faction; its remaining members were a few stanch personal adherents who had never been able to resist the dazzling fascination of Miss Gerrard's toilets and lunches. But this opposing element was not actively inimical. Claire's party had the strength of multitude and the courage of its opinions. Still, its members were by no means ardent devotees; they sometimes hurt her with the sly stab of patronage, and they often gave her furtively to understand that her claims upon their favor were of a sort which they practically recognized without theoretically approving.

      It would be hard to define just how they conveyed this impression. And yet Claire frequently felt its weight, like that of some vague tyranny which offers no tangible excuse for revolt. She could neither realize nor estimate the force with which she had been thrown into contact. Her years were yet too few, her experience was yet too limited; nor was the force manifest in active strength at Mrs. Arcularius's school, a narrow enough theatre for its exercise, and one where its full-grown momentum must of necessity dwindle into something like mere juvenile parody. Claire was yet to learn with how much rank haste its evil growth had sprung up in the big metropolis outside, thwarting and clogging any pure development of what has been called the republican idea, and making us sometimes bitterly wonder if the great dead philosophers were not tricked, after all, by wills-o'-the-wisp no less lovely than elusive.

      But there were a few girls who met Claire on a perfectly equal footing, and left from their intercourse, at all times, the least frosty sparkle of condescension. Some of these may or may not consciously have undertaken their rôles. But with one, past doubt, and for excellent reasons, the kindly impulse was in every way spontaneous. The name of this pupil was Sophia Bergemann. She professed a deep fondness for Claire, and it was evidently sincere. She belonged among Mrs. Arcularius's tolerated plutocrats. Her father was a German brewer who had made a very large fortune out of lager-beer, and who dwelt in Hoboken, where he had built an immense house on spacious grounds. It was said that the lawns were adorned with statues in bronze and marble, and that the main drawing-room of the mansion was frescoed with a design representing Germany offering a tankard of foaming beer to Columbia, in colossal sociability. But the latter statement may have been only the caustic invention of Sophia's foes. She was stoutly disapproved by the conservative element, and this fact had helped to make her so warm a supporter of Claire. Being at daggers drawn with Ada Gerrard, she naturally hailed Claire's public rebuke with rapture, and immediately became her stanch ally.

      "I was afraid you'd stay meek and mild right straight along, just as you began," she afterward confessed. "Somehow you looked as if you hadn't got any spunk. And I do like spunk. I believe in it." This article of faith Sophia had several times frankly verified. She had once pulled the ear of her fellow-pupil, and again narrowly escaped expulsion by slapping another's face. She had a buxom figure, a broad-blown countenance, nearly as round as a moon at the full, solid cheeks of constant vivid coloring, and hair so yellow that its keen tint blent with her brilliant complexion in producing the effect of an expensive wax doll enlarged and animated. She was drearily stupid at all her lessons, rivaling Ada Gerrard as the regnant ignoramus of the academy. Her gestures were painfully awkward; her walk was a cumbrous prance; she seemed incapable of seating herself without an elastic bounce. She grew very fond of Claire, as weeks went on, and gave her repeated invitations to pass a portion of the summer holidays at the grand Hoboken abode.

      But before the summer holidays arrived, Claire had left Mrs. Arcularius's school for good. Twining had awakened to one more dismayed perception of having been grossly duped; the reed on which he had leaned had snapped beneath him; prompt retrenchments became inevitable; his poor ventured thousands were dissolved, as a last ironical sort of ingredient, in the worthless elixir.

      For a long time his affairs stood miserably involved. His innocent share in a matter of imposture and chicanery was misconstrued and sharply censured by his employers. He was discharged from his clerkship, and put face to face with the worst threats of need. Mrs. Twining, forced to resign her briefly-worn robes of ease for the old garb of drudgery, spared no zeal in proving herself not to have been a false prophetess of disaster.

      "I ain't a bit surprised," she would declare, with one of her thin, acid laughs. "Mercy, no! Don't mind me. I was prepared for it, Francis. So here we are over in Jersey City, and a pretty shabby part of it, too! Oh, well, it's better'n keeping a peanut-stand, anyhow. You'll bring me there, some day; you're bound to. I ain't eaten a peanut in ever so long. I'm saving my taste for 'em."

      Twining secretly writhed under these thrusts. His meagre stock of money was slipping from him daily. But he was still cheerful. The tough texture of his optimism still refused to be rent. A few more years, and its severance must come, warp and woof, but as yet the sturdy fibres held good against every strain.

      He secured another position at last. The salary, smaller than before, was at least regular. But the quarters in Jersey City, though humble and restricted, made too strong an annual drain upon his impoverished purse. After two years of pitiful struggle, the family removed to Greenpoint. Claire was then sixteen. But before this new change occurred, Twining's evil genius had again tempted him, and with the usual malign result. He trusted a fellow-man once more, and once more he was confounded. This time it was of necessity a much smaller hazard. Only three hundred dollars went, though millions were of course to be ultimately realized. One day a sallow, elderly man, with eyes bleared from dissipation and clothes that hung glazed round a bony figure, fell in with poor Twining, and talked to him glibly about a miraculous patent. It concerned the giving of signals on railroads by an electrical process. It was to effect a sublime security against all future accidents of travel by land. A few primary steps were to be taken before this marvel should obtain the indorsements of eager capitalists. The sallow little man, in three interviews, during which he cleverly contrived not to smell too strongly of liquor, convinced Twining that he was a neglected genius. The money was given him, and a receipt for it was signed with a hand whose insecurity passed for grateful emotion. But this origin might have been ascribed with more truth to the rheumy moisture that filled the recipient's eyes when he placed a plump roll of bills within his threadbare waistcoat-pocket. Twining never saw him after that eventful conference. He died about three weeks later of delirium tremens in a city hospital. It was his seventh attack.

      This fresh blow leveled Twining. Neither his wife nor his child ever knew of it. But it struck into him a sort of terror at himself from which he never recovered. He had trusted humanity for the last time. He still remained amiable, genial, gentle. But despair had turned his heart to lead. Both Claire and Mrs. Twining saw the change, though ignorant of its cause. The Greenpoint epoch had now begun.

      In Jersey City Claire had been sent to a public school. Here she had met genuine daughters of the people. Some of them were almost in rags; others represented thrifty home-surroundings; all were very different from the sleek children of wealth and caste whom she had known at Mrs. Arcularius's. At first she suffered torments of disgust. But by degrees the slow, continual pressure of habit wore away the edge of her distaste, as a constant sea-wash will blunt the rim of a shell. She absorbed herself in study, made rapid progress, and learned much that a fashionable school would have left untaught.

      Her fastidiousness in a measure vanished. A good deal of the old acquired nicety stayed, but her age was impressionable, and ceaseless contact with rough manners and crude opinions wrought its certain effect. She was now rubbing against taffetas, and before it had been against silk. She was hearing the boorish laugh and the slovenly idiom to-day, when yesterday she had heard the mirth of culture and the phrase of decorum. Her young life had thus far been a strange discord of opposing influences. She felt this in periods of half-bewildered retrospect, and sometimes with moods of passionate melancholy as well. The intense contrast of the changes through which she had passed, disheartened while it stimulated her. СКАЧАТЬ