An Ambitious Woman: A Novel. Fawcett Edgar
would not have made the alert young lids loath to shade her eyes for hours to come.
It would all be the same as on other nights. It was always, every new night, the same as on that which went before. There was the dull burden of it. When would the burden be shifted? Would it ever be shifted? Would it not merely grow heavier, and slowly crush her down, till her back should get the crook of age, and so bear it with better ease?
She went nearer to the edge of the hillock, and set her eyes once more upon the city, as if for a farewell view. Its lights had become more numerous; the tips of its spires were lost in tender vapor. Above, the tiny scraps of luminous cloud had begun to fade; the river had roughened and grown dull, and there was a damp keenness in the freshening breeze. That exquisite melancholy which is sure to breathe from evening when it sheds a spell over the triple charm of blended sky, land, and water, was now in the full tide of its lovely power.
Claire lifted her hand to her lips, and waved a kiss toward the glooming city. It was a pretty gesture, and so furtive and stealthy that it might have fled the notice of any one who stood quite close at her side. And the low words that now succeeded it, too, were just low enough to escape such heed, though their sense might easily have met a possible listener with the effect of broken and half-audible speech.
"Good-night," she said to the city. "Good-night, and be merry for hours to come. You seem just like something alive and breathing, but I know that if you had one mind and one heart to think and to feel with, instead of the thousands and thousands that you have got, you would pity me because I'm so sorry that this big, cold river is always between us!"
Claire nearly broke into a laugh at her own soft and quaint little apostrophe. Like most lonely people who dislike their solitude, she often felt the temptation to soliloquize; especially since her imagination was vigorous, and sometimes loved, as well, to let mount from its wrist the agile falcon of fancy. But a practical bent, as we call it, and a rather sharp sense of the humor of things besides, usually mingled to repress this volatile impulse. As it was, she gave a strong, tired sigh instead of a laugh, and turned her face homeward, though not her steps quite yet, for she still remained standing on the mound beside the water.
"My holiday," she thought, "is over." She did not know that it was just beginning.
Her last action had brought her into abrupt contact with a girlish figure, whose countenance she might have recognized had not the dusk so deepened.
V
"I was mos' sure 'twas you, Miss Twining," said the new-comer, holding out a hand to Claire, "so I run a little further up the hill, jus' to make reel certain sure."
"Well, you were not wrong, Josie," said Claire, giving her own hand. It did not occur to her that she had been called "Miss Twining" and had answered by "Josie." In this case she took her rights of superiority without thinking; she did not stop to consider their soundness; it had always been to her an accepted fact that she was an alien and an exile, here in Greenpoint, and that the few residents whom she knew must of necessity admit her claim to having existed under better previous conditions. There was no taint of arrogance in this unargued assumption.
"You ain't often out's late's this, Miss Twining," said Josie, with a little burst of laughter. "Are you, now?"
"No, indeed," answered Claire. "I am not often out at all." She sighed again, quite unconsciously. "Well, Josie," she went on, "I must be getting back home. I've been away too long, as it is. You seem to be dressed in your very finest. Does it mean that you are going to enjoy yourself somewhere?"
Josie gave another laugh. "I expect so, Miss Twining," she said, with a touch of mysterious piquancy in her manner. She turned herself quickly about, looking over her shoulder all the while with the air of waiting for some one to appear. Claire watched her closely during the unconscious but significant by-play.
The name of this young girl was Josephine Morley. She was of Irish parents, but felt ashamed of the fact. Perhaps consciously, perhaps not, she had banished from her speech all hereditary traces. She spoke in a rattling way, and every now and then she would heap massive emphasis on one special word. Her talk made you think of a railway that is all broken up with dépôts, none of which the engine discountenances. Her widowed mother kept a grocery store, not amply patronized, and of moderate prices. By pre-arrangement with the Twinings on a basis of the most severe economy, Josie would bring them their needed supply of vegetables thrice a week. She was not so jaunty-looking on those occasions as she now appeared. Then she would be clad in any flotsam and jetsam of apparel that charity might have drifted toward her. But to-night she was smartly dressed. Now that Claire scanned her closer in the dimness, it was plain that she wore very unusual gear. Josie was not much over twenty. She was extremely thin, but still rather shapely, and endowed with a good deal of grace. Her face would have been pretty but for its high cheek-bones and the hectic blotch of color that was wont to flush them, in sharp contrast with her remaining pallor. She had had several sisters who had died of a speedy consumption. Her eyes were black, and would glitter as she moved them; she was always moving her eyes; like herself, they never seemed at rest. She constantly smiled, and the smile would have had a charm of its own if it had failed to reveal somewhat ruinous teeth. Claire had always liked her vivacity, though it had seemed to possess a spur that came from an unhealthy impulse, like the heat of internal fever. She wore a wide-brimmed hat of dark straw, with a great crimson feather, and a costume of some cheap maroon stuff, violently relieved by trimmings of broad white braid. The ensemble was very far from ugly. She had copied its effect from a popular weekly journal, whose harrowing fiction would sometimes be supplemented by prints of the latest fashions, "given away" to its devoted patrons.
Claire, having drawn nearer to Josie, took in all her details of costume with ready swiftness. This fleet sort of observation was always an easy matter for Claire. In most cases of a like sort, she would both see and judge before others had accomplished even the first process.
"You seem to be waiting for somebody, Josie," she now said.
"Yes, I am," returned Josie, with another laugh. She put one slim hand to her mouth as she laughed; she nearly always employed this gesture at such a time; it came, no doubt, from a consciousness of dental deficiencies. "I ain't goin' to be shy, Miss Twining," she pursued. "Why should I? I'm expectin' a gent'man friend o' mine. We was goin' over t' the city together. We was goin' to Niblo's. There's an el'gant play there, they say." … Here Josie paused, drew backward for an instant, and then impulsively seized one of Claire's hands in both of her own. "Oh, Miss Twining!" she suddenly exclaimed, "I know I hadn't ought to ask you if you'd come along, too, but I do wish you just would! You ain't the same kind as me a bit, and there's more'n me in Greenpoint – now, 'pon my word there is – that's said when they see you that you was a reel lady. But still, you might come with me and my friend, Mr. MacNab, and just get a spell of 'musement. I know you ain't had any 'musement in goodness sakes how long! It's a reel el'gant play! Do say you will! Now I ain't a bit soft on Mr. MacNab. P'aps he'd like me to be, but I ain't. So three won't spoil comp'ny. Now, do! Oh, Miss Twining, I'd be awful glad if you would!"
Josie's tones, like her words, were warmly persuasive. She still retained Claire's hand. Nor did Claire withdraw it. She was tempted. She turned her head toward the darkling city, in whose realm of deepened shadow many new lights had begun to burn.
"Ah, Josie," she said, "you are very kind to ask me. But I'm quite shabby beside you, you know."
"Pshaw!" flatly objected Josie; "you look fust rate. That ain't no sort of reason… Do! Now, do!"
Claire laughed nervously. She was thinking how pleasant it would be to hear an orchestra play, to see a curtain rise, to watch a drama roll its story out, behind vivid footlights, between painted scenes.
"I am sure Mr. MacNab wouldn't like," she said. And then she thought of how her father would soon come home and miss her, and have to be told, when they next met, that she had been to the theatre over in New York with the girl who brought them vegetables thrice a week. She seemed quite to have made up her mind, presently. She withdrew her hand from Josie's with a good deal of placid force.
"No, Josie, I can't," she said.
"Yes,