A certain admirer of Sophia's had of late deserted her, and sought the attention of Claire whenever occasion permitted. His name was Brady. His father was the owner of a large and popular emporium on Sixth Avenue. He was an only child, and supplied with a liberal allowance. The mercantile success of his father had been comparatively recent. He was now three-and-twenty; his early education had been one long, persistent neglect. After the money had begun to flow into the paternal coffers, Brady had gone abroad, and seen vice and little else in the various European capitals, and finally, coming home again, had slipped, by a most natural and facile process, into just that ill-bred, wealthy, low-toned set of which poor, rich Sophia Bergemann was one of the leading spirits.
Claire could hardly endure the attentions of Brady. She was civil to him because of her two hostesses, whose perception in all matters of social degree seemed hopelessly obtuse. But Brady had fallen in love with her, severely and effusively, and she soon had good cause to know it. He was very tall and slim of figure, with a face whose utter smoothness would have been the despair of a mercenary barber. His large ears, jutting from a bullet-shaped head, gave to this head, at a little distance away, the look of some odd, unclassic amphora. He spoke very indifferent English, and always kept the last caprice of slang in glib readiness, as a tradesman will keep his newest goods where he can soonest reach them. He was excessively purse-proud, and liked to tell you the price of the big sunken diamond worn on his little finger; of the suite of rooms at his expensive hotel; of the special deep-olive cigars, dotted with a lighter yellow speck, which lined his ivory cigar-case. He possessed, in truth, all the cardinal vulgarities. He was lavishly conceited; he paid no deference to age; he had not a vestige of gallantry in his deportment toward women; his self-possession was so frangible that a blow could shatter it, but his coarse wrath would at once rise from the ruin, like the foul aroma from a broken phial. At such times he would scowl and be insolent, quite regardless of sex, years, or general superiority on the part of the offender. Indeed, he admitted no superiority. The shadow of the Sixth Avenue emporium hedged him, in his own shallow esteem, with impregnable divinity.
"I think," said Thurston, speaking of him one day to Claire, "that he is truly an abominable creature. The ancients used to believe that monsters were created by the union of two commingling elements, such as earth and heaven. But to-day in America we have a horrid progeny growing up about us, resultant from two forces, each dangerous enough by itself, but both deadly when they meet. I mean Wealth and Ignorance. This Brady is their child. If he were merely a poor man, his illiteracy would be endurable. If he were merely illiterate, we could stand his opulence. But he is both very uneducated and very rich. The combination is a horror. He is our modern way of being devoured by dragons, minotaurs, and giants."
Claire laughed, and presently shook her head in gentle argumentative protest. "I think there is a flaw in your theory," she said, "and I'll tell you why. There are the Bergemanns. Sophia, I admit, is not precisely uncultivated—that is, she has had good chances of instruction and not profited by them. This may mean little, yet it is surely better than having had no chances at all. But Mrs. Bergemann—she is both rich and ignorant, poor dear woman. And yet she is very far from a monster. She is a sweet, comfortable, motherly person. She would not harm a fly." Claire put her head a little sideways, and looked with winsome challenge at her companion; she assumed pretty airs and graces with him, nowadays, which she had never dealt in before the occurrence of a certain momentous episode. "What have you to say," she went on, "in answer to my rather shrewd objection? Doesn't it send you quite into a corner."
"Well, I confess that it rather floors me to have Mrs. Bergemann cited against me," he said, smiling. "I am afraid that I must yield. I am afraid that my theory is torn in tatters. I must congratulate you on your destructive instincts."
He spoke these words with his usual robust sort of languor, in which there was never a single trace of affectation or frivolity. At the same time a secret feeling of wonder possessed him; he was thinking how swiftly active had been the change in Claire since their first acquaintance. She had told him every particular of her past life, so far as concerned its opportunities of instruction. He marveled now, as he had repeatedly done on recent occasions, at her remarkable power to grasp new phrases, new forms of thought, new methods of inquiry. She had never, from the first, shown a gleam of coarseness. But she had often been timid of speech and falteringly insecure of expression. Yet latterly all this was altered. Thurston had a sense of how phenomenal was the improvement. It was plain that the books in the library, and Claire's power of fleet reading, had wrought this benefit upon a mind which past study and training had already rendered flexibly receptive. And yet all of the explanation did not lie here; at least half of it lurked in the fact that she had quitted drudgery, need, and depression. Her mental shutters had been flung open, and the sunshine let to stream in through the casements. A few days later she had suspected the existence of Brady's passion. He made no attempt, on his own side, to conceal his preference for her society. Claire saw love in his prominent, slate-colored eyes; she saw it in the increased awkwardness of his motions when he either walked or sat near her; she saw it in his bluff yet repressed bravado of manner, as though he were at surly odds with himself for having been suddenly cut off in the flower of his vainglorious bachelorhood. She had grown sharper-sighted for the detection of these tender signs. And even in Brady their tenderness was unmistakable. His clownish crudity had softened, in all its raw lines. The effect might be compared to those graceful disguises in which we have seen moonlight clothe things that repel us under the glare of day.
One morning when Claire came down to breakfast she found a huge basket of Jacqueminot roses awaiting her, with Brady's card attached to it. She flushed, for a moment, almost as red as the florid, velvety petals themselves. Then she said, equally addressing Mrs. Bergemann and Sophia:
"How strange that he sent them to me! There may have been some mistake."
"Oh, not a bit of it!" Sophia exclaimed. "He's dead gone about you, Claire. I've seen it lately. So has Ma." Here the young lady turned toward her mother, and lifted an admonishing finger. "Now, Ma, don't you say a thing!"
But Mrs. Bergemann would say a number of things. Her amiability was so expansive, and made such a radius of glow and warmth all about her, that she rarely found it possible to dislike anybody. She had failed to realize that Brady was an offensive clod. In her matrimonial concern for Claire, the fact that he would one day, as the only child of his father, inherit a vast fortune, reared itself before her with irresistible temptation.