"You were right. She is an event."
That dinner was the stepping-stone by which Claire mounted into immediate triumph. All through the next year she was the reigning favorite in just that realm where she had aimed to reign. Her father had died a pauper and been buried as one. She, the mistress of many thousands, having fixedly remembered what a feeble, disappointed, obscure, broken-down man had said to her in early childhood, now stood as the living, actual result of his past counsel. Years ago the seed had been sown in that dingy little basement of One-Hundred-and-Twelfth Street. To-day the flower bloomed, rare and beautiful. The little girl had climbed the hill to its top, after all. She had not grown tired and gone home before the top was reached. She had done her father's bidding. She was sure he would be glad if he knew.
'And yet am I quite sure?' she would sometimes ask herself. 'Was this what he really meant when he spoke those words?'
She knew perfectly the folly of the course that she now pursued. Her occasional self-questionings were a hypocrisy that she realized while she indulged it. But they were very occasional. She had slight time for introspection, for analysis of her own acts.
Flattery and devotion literally poured in upon her, like the new wealth that continued to pour in upon her husband. The house in Twenty-Eighth Street was soon exchanged for a spacious mansion on Fifth Avenue. Claire ceased to know even the number of her servants. She had a housekeeper, who superintended their engagements and discharges. She dwelt in an atmosphere of excessive luxury, and found herself loving it more and more as she yielded to the spell of its subtle enervation.
Her second winter was the confirmation of her sovereignty. As the phrase goes, she was asked everywhere. Her bright or caustic sayings were ever on the lips of loyal quoters. Her toilettes were described with journalistic realism in more than a single newspaper. Cards for her entertainments were eagerly sought, and often vainly. Foreigners of distinction drifted into her drawing-rooms as if by a natural process of attraction. She had scarcely a moment of time to herself; when she was not entertaining she was being entertained. Her admirers, women and men, vied in efforts to secure her presence. She had acquired, as if by some magic instinct, the last needed personal touch; she had got the grand air to perfection. Diplomatists who had met and known the most noted beauties of European courts had nothing but praise to pay her serene elegance of deportment, the undulating grace of her step, the nice melody of her voice, the fine wizardry of her smile. She had never seen Europe, yet she might have spent all the years of her youth on its soil with no lovelier results than those which now marked her captivating manner. She was American, past question, to transatlantic eyes; yet these found in her only the original buoyancy and freshness of that nationality, without a gleam of its so-termed coarseness.
Foes, of course, rose up against her. There can be no sun without shadow. She had made herself so distinct a rarity that cheapening comment could not fail to begin its assault. It did so, in hot earnest. Two women had denied their sanction to her sudden popularity. These were Mrs. Van Horn and Mrs. Ridgeway Lee. They were not open enemies; neither, to all appearances, were they covert ones. They were on speaking terms with her. They met her constantly, yet they offered her no deference. Deference was what she now required, and with a widely-admitted right.
The invidious statements that stole into circulation regarding her could not be traced either to the vengeance of Beverley Thurston's sister or the jealousy of Stuart Goldwin's abandoned worshiper. It is possible that the most leal of Claire's defenders never thought of so tracing them. But the statements were made, and took wing. She had been a vulgar girl of the people. Her parentage was of the most plebeian sort. A lucky marriage had given her the chance, now accepted and enlarged. Her maiden name had been this, that, and the other. She was absolutely nobody.
Claire heard none of these scorching comments. She reigned too haughtily for that. Mrs. Diggs heard them, but Mrs. Diggs betrayed no sign of their existence. Goldwin was now devotedly at Claire's side; they were repeatedly seen in public together; the world in which she ruled considered it a splendid subjugation; she had brought the great Wall Street King obsequiously to her feet.
But no breath of slander tainted the relation between them. Claire had been very clever; she had blunted the first arrow, so to speak. She had done so by means of her complete innocence. Goldwin was in love with her; no one doubted this. It was something notable to have said of one. But she was so safely not in love with Goldwin that she could continually, by strokes of frank tact, show the world her own calm recipiency and his entire subservience. A swift yet sure chasm widened between herself and Hollister. The latter had become a man of incessant and imperative engagements. Claire never dreamed of feeling a jealous pang, and yet she knew that her husband, no less than herself, had become a star of fashion. Hollister was assiduously courted. He and Claire would now meet once a day, and sometimes not so often. They had separate apartments; it was so much more convenient for both. The same dinner-engagement frequently claimed them; but on these occasions she would appear in the lower hall to meet him, rustling beneath some new miracle of dressmaking, and they would get into the carriage together and be driven to the appointed place. At the dinner they would be widely separated. He would sit beside some woman glad to have secured him; she would be the companion of some man happy because of her nearness. The dinner would break up; the hour would be somewhat late; they would get into their carriage; Hollister would have an appointment, at the club, or somewhere. He would let Claire into the great new house with his latch-key. "Good night," he would say, and hurry off into the carriage that had waited for him. Claire would ascend and be disrobed by a sleepy maid. To-morrow there would perhaps be another dinner, of the same sort. Or it might be an affair to which she went alone, and from which Goldwin accompanied her home. Goldwin was always prepared to accompany her. He obeyed her nod.