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Title: Despotism and Democracy: A Study in Washington Society and Politics

Author: Molly Elliot Seawell

Release date: March 27, 2022 [eBook #67721]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: McClure, Phillips and Company

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY: A STUDY IN WASHINGTON SOCIETY AND POLITICS ***





DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY




  DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY

  A STUDY IN WASHINGTON
  SOCIETY AND POLITICS

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  McCLURE, PHILLIPS
  AND COMPANY
  MCMIII




  COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY
  McCLURE, PHILLIPS AND CO.

  COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.

  Published, June, 1903, R




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

     I. MEN AND WOMEN                                                  3

    II. THE RISE OF A PREMIER AND SOMETHING ABOUT TWO HEARTS          30

   III. DOWN AMONG THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING                      48

    IV. GOVERNMENT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED                73

     V. A RAPTUROUS HOUR WHICH WAS RUDELY INTERRUPTED                 91

    VI. DEVILS AND ANGELS FIGHT FOR THE SOULS OF MEN                 112

   VII. HOW VARIOUS PERSONS SPENT A MAY SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON         130

  VIII. A NEW SENATOR--A RAILWAY JOURNEY--THE ROSE OF THE
          FIELD AND THE ROSES OF THE GARDEN                          148

    IX. CONCERNING THINGS NOT TO BE MENTIONED IN THE
          SOCIETY JOURNALS                                           172

     X. THERE ARE MEN WHO CAN RESIST EVERYTHING EXCEPT TEMPTATION    203

    XI. IN THE SWEET-DO-NOTHING OF THE SUMMER-TIME                   229

   XII. WHAT IS IT TO BE HONEST IN POLITICS AND TRUE IN LOVE?        256

  XIII. WAR AND PEACE                                                283




DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY




_Chapter One_

MEN AND WOMEN


Certain aspects of Washington, both outward and inward, are like Paris.
Especially is this true of the outward aspect on a wet night, when
the circles of yellow-flaring gas lamps are reflected in the shining
expanse of asphalt, when the keen-flashing electric lights blaze
upon the white façades of great buildings and the numerous groups
of statuary against a black background of shrubbery, and when some
convention or other brings crowds of people to swarm upon the usually
dull Washington streets. The Honourable Geoffrey Thorndyke, M.C., spoke
of this Parisian resemblance to his colleague, the Honourable Julian
Crane, M.C., as they sat together on a warm, rainy April night in the
bay-window of Thorndyke’s apartment. The rooms were lofty, wide, and
dark, according to the style of forty years ago, and overlooked one of
those circular parks in Washington which fashion seemed only to have
patronised briefly in order to desert permanently. But the rooms and
the situation suited Thorndyke perfectly, and he had spent there all of
the five terms of Congress which he had served. Thorndyke’s remaining
in that locality secretly surprised Crane, a man from the Middle West.
He himself had an apartment in a modish hotel, which cost him more
than he could afford and was not half so comfortable as Thorndyke’s.
But then Thorndyke was born to that which Crane was toilsomely
achieving--for this vigorous product of the Middle West was sent into
the world with enormous ambitions of all sorts, and not the least of
these was social ambition. And combined with this social ambition was
a primitive enjoyment of society such as the Indian gets out of his
pow-wows with unlimited tobacco and fire-water. Crane, although bred
on the prairie, cared nothing for fields and woods and the skies of
night and the skies of morning. Men, women, and their affairs alone
interested him. Thorndyke, on the contrary, although town-bred, cared
for the God-made things, and at that very moment was studying with
interest the great tulip-tree, dark and dank before his window. When
he made the remark about Washington having sometimes a look of Paris,
he added:

“And I expected to be in Paris at this very moment but for this”--here
he interjected an impolite adjective--“extra session. However,” he
continued, good-humouredly, “I hardly expect you to agree with me,
considering your late streak of luck--or, rather, your well-deserved
promotion, as I shall call it on the floor of the House.”

Crane acknowledged this with a smile and a request for another cigar,
if possible, not so bad as the last. He was tall and well made, and
had a head and face like the bust of the young Augustus in the Vatican
gallery. He was elaborately groomed, manicured and all, judging that
time spent on beauty like his was not thrown away. In contrast to this
classic beauty was Thorndyke--below, rather than above, the middle
height, with scanty hair and light-blue eyes, and who could not be
called handsome by the mother that bore him. But when women were about,
Geoffrey Thorndyke could always put the handsomest man in the room
behind the door.

And he had a peculiarly soft and musical voice which made everything
he said sound pleasant, even when he proceeded to make uncomfortable
remarks about the late turn in national affairs which had sent Crane’s
political fortunes upward with a bound.

“For my part,” he said, knocking the ash off his cigar, “I have lived
long enough and read enough to know that such a stupendous opportunity
as your party has now is generally fatal to that party before the next
Presidential election. See--in the middle of a Presidential term, you
carry the Congressional elections by a close shave. The new Congress
is not expected to meet for thirteen months afterward. The Brazilian
matter reaches an acute stage, and the President is forced to call an
extra session in April instead of the regular meeting in December. Of
course, the Brazilian matter will come out all right. Any party, at
any time, in any civilised country, is capable of managing a foreign
affair in which all the people think the same way. But when it comes
to domestic affairs--my dear fellow, when the President saw how
things were going and that he really could invite you to make fools
of yourselves for the next fourteen months before the Presidential
convention, it was beer and skittles to him.”

Crane turned in his chair and sighed. The intricacies of national
politics, the wheels within wheels, the way of putting out a pawn to
be taken, puzzled and confused him. It had seemed to him the most
unmixed political good to him when his party had secured control of the
House at an international crisis. It could vote supplies with splendid
profusion, it could shout for the flag, it could claim the credit
for everything done, while the Senate and the Administration being
in opposition, very little real responsibility attached to anything
the House might leave undone. And when the man who was certain to be
the caucus nominee for Speaker had sent for Crane at one o’clock in
the morning and had offered him the chairmanship of the Committee on
Foreign Affairs to succeed Thorndyke, Crane had felt his cup of joy to
be overflowing. Everything was in his favour. Without the least doubt
about his powers, which were considerable, he had some diffidence on
the score of experience; but Thorndyke, who would be the ranking member
of the minority on the committee, would help him out, quietly and
generously. In the midst of his elation Crane remembered that Thorndyke
had not been wholly satisfied with the chairmanship of that great
committee--and Thorndyke had been suffered to exercise a degree of
power far greater than Crane felt would be permitted him for some time
to come. On most Congressional committees there are two or three men
who have come into the world booted and spurred, while the remainder
were born saddled and bridled. Thorndyke was one of those who got into
the saddle early, and yet, the saddle or the steed had not seemed to
suit his taste exactly. Crane spoke of this, and bluntly asked the
reason.

“Because,” replied Thorndyke, coolly, “there was no more promotion for
me--and I was made to accept it, whether I wanted it or not. You see,
although the Constitution guarantees every State a republican form of
government, all the States don’t have it. Mine hasn’t, nor has yours.
My boss, however, is a good deal more astute than your boss. Mine never
lets any man have what he wants. Unluckily, when I was a Congressional
tenderfoot I wanted the earth and the fulness thereof, and I worked
for it as well as I knew how. When the next nominating convention was
held I was left out in the cold world. I waited two years. Then, being
still green, with all the courage of inexperience, I went to my boss.
I said to him that I wished to get back in public life, and to stay
there--and he said----”

Thorndyke paused and blushed a little.

“Out with it,” said Crane, encouragingly.

“My boss has some extraordinary virtues--all real bosses have--among
them a very engaging frankness. He said, without beating about the
bush a moment, that it wasn’t his policy to promote men who might--who
might one day get a little too big for him. That was about what he
said. He told me if I would be satisfied with a seat in Congress and
the chairmanship of a good committee, I could have it as long as I kept
out of State politics, and didn’t make myself offensively prominent at
national conventions. Then he proceeded to advise me as Cardinal Wolsey
advised Thomas Cromwell. He charged me to fling away ambition, and
reminded me that by that sin the angels fell, and likewise a number of
very imprudent young politicians--I don’t use the word statesman any
more--all over the State. I squirmed, and the old fellow grinned and
told me if at any time I hankered after a foreign mission I could get
it. I thanked him and told him I had no fancy to be buried until I was
dead, and at last we compromised on his first proposition. I like the
life--God knows why. The salary is enough for me to live on and support
an invalid sister--all I have in the world. I have sense enough to see
that I am better off than if I gave a loose rein to my ambition and was
forever chasing rainbows. A man without fortune, who lives upon the
hopes of an office which will beggar him if he gets it----”

“That’s it!” cried Crane, suddenly interrupting, his eyes lighting up
with anxiety. “That’s it, Thorndyke. I know all about it. I’ll tell you
the whole story--the story I never even told my wife----”

There is something touching and appealing when a man lays bare his
wounds and bruises. Thorndyke, without saying a word, gave a look, a
slight movement of the head that brought out Crane’s story. He told it
readily enough--he had the mobile mouth and quick imagination of the
orator, and he was always eloquent when he was talking about himself.

“You see, when I got the nomination to Congress it was that or
bankruptcy. For two months before the convention was held I’d walk the
floor half the night, and the other half I’d pretend to be asleep, to
keep my wife from breaking her heart with anxiety. Annette is a good
woman--too good for me. I had neglected my law practice for politics
until I had no practice left, and then I was transported to Congress
and Heaven and five thousand dollars a year. I determined to do two
things--cut a wide swath in Washington and save one-third of my salary.”

“Great fool--you,” murmured Thorndyke, sympathetically.

“But--I didn’t know what a wide swath was. I didn’t know anything
about it. I came to Washington and brought my wife and three children.
We went to a boarding-house on Eleventh Street--you called to see us
there.”

“Yes. I remember thinking Mrs. Crane the prettiest, sweetest woman I
had seen that season.”

This was true, for Annette Crane had the beauty of form, of colour,
of sweetness and gentleness to an extraordinary degree. She was no
Perdita--no one would have taken her for a princess stolen in infancy.
But not Ruth in the harvest-field was more natural, more sweetly
graceful than this lady from Circleville, somewhere in the Middle West.

“Annette admired you tremendously,” continued Crane, in the easy tone
of a man who knows his wife is desperately in love with him, and
thinks her fully justified. “She said it was kind of you to call.
Like me, she thought we were going to do wonderful things--I believe
she used to pray that our hearts might not be hardened by our social
triumphs. Well, you know all about it. We were asked to the President’s
receptions, and my wife called on the Cabinet officers’ families,
and at the houses of the Senators and the Representatives from our
own State. We were asked to dinner at our junior Senator’s house. I
thought it would be grand. It was, in a way--the old man is pretty well
heeled--but it was exactly like one of those banquets a Chamber of
Commerce gives to a distinguished citizen. Annette was the prettiest
woman there, but she didn’t wear a low-necked gown like the other
women, and that embarrassed her. In the end she found out more things
than I did. She said to me before the season was over:

“‘Julian, it’s not being rich that makes people in Washington. If
it were, we shouldn’t mind not being in it. But there are plenty of
people, like the Senator, who have the money and the wish to make a
stir socially--but they can’t, while a plenty of poor ones do. Look at
Mr. Thorndyke’--she hit upon you the first man--‘he’s asked everywhere,
and he says he is as poor as a church-mouse. No, Julian, to be as you
would wish to be here, needs not only the money we haven’t got, but
something else we haven’t got and can’t acquire, so let’s give it up.
Another winter I’ll stay in Circleville--it will be better for the
children, better for me, better for you’--for I own up to having been
deuced surly all that winter. So we adopted that plan, and Annette
has never been to Washington since. But--I’ll confess this, too--I
had from the beginning a fancy to see the inside of those houses
where the people live who make up this world of Washington. It wasn’t
merely idle curiosity. I was convinced, and I am so still, that the
number and variety of people in Washington must make these Washington
parlours--drawing-rooms, you call them--the most interesting of their
kind in the world. Well--I’ve got into some of them. It’s a good deal
easier for a man without his wife than a man with her; and Thorndyke,
I own up, I am bewitched. Oh, it’s not so much to you; you’ve known it
too long, and seen too much of it all over the world to know how it
strikes a man born and brought up until he is thirty-five years old in
Circleville. I swear when I get a dinner invitation I am like the girls
out our way, who will drive twenty miles in a sleigh to go to a dance.
The mere look of the table--the glass, the silver, the flowers--goes to
my head. The terrapin intoxicates me. Those quick, soft-moving servants
fascinate me. And the conversation! They let me talk all I want.”

“You are a vastly entertaining fellow in your own mental bailiwick,”
interjected Thorndyke.

“And the women! So unaffected--so unconscious of their clothes! And
such listeners! I have never been to a stupid dinner in Washington.
And the club--I never knew a man of leisure in my life until I came
to Washington. I daresay you think me a fool.” Crane paused, with a
feeling rare to him that he could not express half what was in him, but
Thorndyke’s knowledge supplied the rest.

“No, I don’t. It is quite as you say, but you are taking it all too
seriously.”

“Circleville,” murmured Crane.

“Well, three-fourths of these people you so admire came from
Circlevilles. Forty years ago, how many of them, do you think, had a
servant to answer the door-bell? Just consider, my dear young friend,
that, except at the South, servants were unknown to a large proportion
of the American people until a short time ago. The parents of these
people you see here, with eighteen-horse-power automobiles, and with
crests upon their writing-paper, their carriages, their footmen’s
buttons, thought themselves in clover when they could afford a
maid-of-all-work. So far, they are merely at the imitative stage. Their
grandparents were pioneers and lived mostly in log cabins, and although
the three generations are divided by only fifty years, it is as if
æons of time existed between them! By Jove! It is one of the most
astounding things in American life!”

“That’s so,” replied Crane. “It is said that one-half the world
doesn’t know how the other half lives, but in these United States
about nine-tenths of the society people have no more notion how their
grandparents lived than they have of life on Mars or Saturn. I went to
a wedding the other day. It was magnificent beyond words. The two young
people had been brought up in----”

“Barbaric luxury,” Thorndyke interrupted. “It’s barbarous to bring
children up as those two were--I know whom you mean. The girl had her
own suite of rooms almost from her birth, her own maid, her own trap.
Even when there was an affectation of simplicity it cost enough to have
swamped her grandfather’s general store at Meekins’s Cross Roads, where
he laid the foundation of his fortune. When she came out in society it
simply meant more of everything. No daughter of the Cæsars was ever
more conscious of the gulf between her and the common people--I say
common people with the deepest respect for the term--than this girl
is conscious of the gulf between herself and the class to which her
grandparents belonged. The young man’s story was the same _da capo_,
except that he was given a boy’s luxuries instead of a girl’s. It
has been carefully concealed from them by their parents that their
grandparents swept, dusted, chopped wood, traded at country stores, and
did all those plain but useful and respectable things which made their
fortune. To hear them talk about ‘grandmamma’ and ‘grandpapa’ is the
very essence of simplicity.”

“And yet those people constitute the most exclusive set in Washington,”
said Crane, angrily, as if thereby some wrong was inflicted on him.

“Naturally,” replied Thorndyke. “Don’t you see that the first result
of their prosperity in their own community was to segregate them
from their less fortunate friends and neighbours? Don’t you see how
inevitably it came about that their children were separated from
their neighbours’ children? And in the end they were drawn from the
Circlevilles and the Meekins’s Cross Roads by sheer necessity? They
became fugitives, as it were, from their own class, and how natural it
was for them to be afraid of their own and every other class except
the recognised few, and to build up a wall around themselves and their
children.”

“I wonder if you would dare to use that word class on the floor of the
House?” asked Crane.

“I would dare to but I shouldn’t care to,” answered Thorndyke. “One
reason why I have so little to say on the floor of the House is because
it involves many explanations to men who know just as well what you
mean as you do, and agree with you thoroughly. But there’s Buncombe
County to be considered.”

“At all events,” said Crane, returning to himself as a subject of
consideration, “this social side of life appeals to me powerfully--too
powerfully, I am afraid. I feel an odd sort of kinship with those
old ladies of seventy that I see going the rounds in Paris gowns and
high-heeled shoes, with their scanty white hair crimped and curled
within an inch of their lives. It’s serious business with them; and,
by George, it’s serious with me, too. Of course I am a blamed fool for
acknowledging so much.”

“Not in the least. But you must know that it can only be a pastime with
you. There is Circleville, and Annette, and the babies----”

Thorndyke saw Crane’s face grow a little pale, and he fell silent
for a minute or two, and while Thorndyke was watching the current of
his thought, as revealed by a singularly expressive and untrained
countenance, Crane burst out:

“The best in the way of women I’ve seen yet is Constance Maitland--I
wonder why she never married. She’s nearer forty than thirty; that she
told me herself.”

It was now Thorndyke’s turn to grow pale. Constance Maitland was
responsible to a great degree for most that had happened to him for the
last eighteen years, and in all that time he had not seen her once; but
the mere mention of her name was enough to agitate him; and she was in
Washington and he had not known it----

It was a minute or two before he recovered himself and began to pull
at the cigar in his mouth. Then he saw by Crane’s face that Constance
Maitland was something to him, too. Had the poor devil fallen in love
with her as he had with Washington dinners? Thorndyke was disgusted
with his friend, and showed it by saying, coldly:

“I knew Miss Maitland well some years ago. She is very charming. But,
Crane, it’s bad manners to call ladies by their first names.” Thorndyke
used the old-fashioned word “ladies” where the moderns say “women.”

Crane coloured furiously. He did not mind in the least being coached in
legislative affairs, but he winced at being taught manners. However,
he had the highest admiration for Thorndyke’s manners, so he replied,
carelessly:

“I accept the amendment. As you say, Con--Miss Maitland is very
charming, and has been charming men for the past twenty years. Now, in
Circleville she would have been called an old maid ten years ago.”

Yes, of course, she had always had a train of men after her, and
the fact that she remained unmarried showed either that she had
no heart--or--sometimes a wild thought had crossed Thorndyke’s
mind--suppose Constance Maitland still remembered him? This thought,
coming into his head, set his heart to pounding like a steam-engine
while Crane talked on.

“That woman epitomises the charm of Washington life to me. First, she
is unlike any woman I ever saw before; that is in itself a charm.
Then, she has an environment; that, too, is new to me. I went to see
her four times last winter.” Then he mentioned where she lived. “Her
parlour--I mean drawing-room--was nothing compared with the others
I’d been in here, but it was distinctive. It wasn’t furnished from
bric-à-brac shops and art-sale catalogues. All the antiques came
from her own family--all the miniatures and portraits were her own
kinsfolk. And, after having lived in Europe for twenty years, as she
told me--because she doesn’t mind mentioning dates--and having seen
more of European society than one American woman in ten thousand, she
loves and admires her own country, and came back here to live the first
minute she was free. That struck me all of a heap, because, though
you wouldn’t judge so from my Fourth of July speeches at Circleville,
I should think that Europe would be something between Washington and
Paradise.”

“You haven’t been there yet,” was Thorndyke’s response to this. And
then Crane proceeded to tell a story which Thorndyke knew by heart.

“It seems, so I heard from other people, she was brought up by an old
crank of an aunt, who had married a Baron Somebody-or-other in Germany.
This old feminine party tried to make Constance marry some foreign
guy, and when she wouldn’t, the old lady, in a rage, made a will,
giving all she had to Constance on condition that she did not marry an
American. It was thought the old lady wasn’t exactly in earnest, but
unluckily she died the week after, and so the will stands--and that’s
why Con--Miss Maitland never married, I guess.”

Just then a band came blaring down the street, followed by the usual
crowd of negroes, dancing, shouting, and grimacing along the sidewalk,
and looking weird in the high lights and black shadows of the night.
Crane, to whom the negroes had never ceased to be a raree show, got up
and went to the window, whistling the air the band played; meanwhile
Thorndyke lay back in his chair trying to get used to the knowledge
that Constance Maitland had been in Washington months and he had not
known it. There was a prologue to the story just told by Crane--and
Crane had no suspicion of this prologue. A young American of good
birth but slender fortune--himself, in fact--was the primary cause
of the old Baroness von Hesselt’s remarkable will. It was he whom the
old lady held responsible for Constance Maitland’s flat refusal to
marry the son of an imperial privy councillor with seven points to his
coronet. Oh, those days at the Villa Flora on Lake Como--those days
that come only in youth, when the whole world seems young! When, from
the terrace, Constance and himself watched the sunset trembling in the
blue lake and making another heaven there! And those starlit nights
when Constance and himself were in a boat alone together, and she sang
to her guitar for him, and he repeated verses from Childe Harold to
her! They were both young and singularly innocent, and were deeply in
love--of that Thorndyke could never doubt; and because they were young
and innocent and in love with each other the old Baroness thought them
the wickedest and most designing creatures on earth. She had spent
all her life in Europe, had frankly married for a title, and wished
Constance to do the same. The old Baron, a helpless invalid, was not
reckoned in the equation.

The Baroness von Hesselt had acquired what many Americans who live
abroad acquire--a spite against her own country. This was accentuated
by the fact that she was a Southerner of the old régime, who hated
liberty, equality, and fraternity from the bottom of her heart, and
who instinctively realised her unfitness for America. She had also
forgotten a good deal about it, and thought a very effective way to
keep Constance from marrying Thorndyke or any other American was to cut
her off from a fortune in that event. The will was made, and the old
Baroness proclaimed it loudly for a week. At the end of that time the
gentleman on the pale horse unexpectedly summoned her. There was but
one thing for any man to do in Geoffrey Thorndyke’s circumstances, and
that was, to go far away from Constance Maitland. No definite words
or promises had passed between them, but unless eyes and tones of the
voice, and all sweet, unutterable things are liars, they were pledged
to one another.

Thorndyke, being in those days a very human youngster, hoped that
Constance would send him a line--a word--and doubted not for a moment
that his love would make up to her for a fortune. But no line or
word ever came. As years went on Thorndyke reached the sad knowledge
that modern life requires something more than bread and cheese and
kisses, and felt a sense of relief that it had not been in his power to
take Constance Maitland’s fortune from her with only love to give in
return. But this knowledge did not make him content. On the contrary,
year by year had her memory become more poignant to him. It was that
which had made him throw himself with all his being and equipment into
public life. It was that which made him tender to all innocent, sweet
women like Annette Crane--innocent, sweet women brought back to him
something of his lost love. He knew she had never married, but all else
concerning her was a blank to him. He was consumed with a desire to ask
Crane something about her--all about her--but he had noted instantly
that in Crane’s eye and voice was a manner which revealed a dangerous
interest in Constance Maitland; and Thorndyke was held back and urged
forward to speak of her.

The band passed on, the street once more grew quiet, and Crane returned
to his seat. Thorndyke smoked savagely to keep from mentioning
Constance Maitland’s name. Crane did likewise with the same motive,
but having less self-control than Thorndyke he could not but hark back
to the ticklish subject.

“So you say you knew Miss Maitland?”

“Yes. A long time ago.”

“She’s very old-fashioned; enough so to stay out of society when she
is wearing mourning. She’s been in mourning for her uncle by marriage
ever since she’s been in Washington--six months. The exclusives don’t
stay in mourning more than six months for husbands, wives, or children.
Parents and aunts and uncles don’t count.”

“The exclusives don’t have any aunts and uncles,” Thorndyke put in
shortly. “They have nieces and nephews who are presentable after they
have been washed and combed--but they can’t go back as far as uncles
and aunts.”

“So they can’t. Their uncles and aunts are just like _my_ uncles
and aunts. Well, I gather that the old Baron for whom Miss Maitland
has worn mourning wasn’t a bad old party--better, perhaps, than his
American wife.”

“He was,” said Thorndyke.

Crane looked at him suspiciously and then kept on.

“Miss Maitland is going out this spring. She says I’m quite right in
thinking there is a delightful society attainable here in Washington,
but she’s so pleased to be back in her own country that she praises
everything right and left. She doesn’t even mind the Dupont statue,
and won’t discuss the Pension building. To see her flow of spirits you
would think her the happiest woman in the world. Yet she told me once
that she wasn’t really happy.”

“All women tell you that before you get through with them,” growled
Thorndyke.

“Annette never has,” said Crane, rising and throwing away his cigar.
“Some time, if you wish to call on Miss Maitland, I’ll take you round.”

Thorndyke restrained the temptation to brain Crane with the carafe
on the table by him, partly out of regard for himself, partly out of
regard to Crane, and partly from the fact that Crane was a much bigger
man than he was. But his colleague was evidently quite unconscious of
Thorndyke’s bloody inclinations, and thought himself the best fellow in
the world to be willing to give Thorndyke a view into the paradise of
Constance Maitland’s company.

“And as for my streak of luck, as you call it, I intend to devote all
my powers to my work, so that no matter what other committee makes
a fool of itself, the Committee on Foreign Affairs won’t--at least
through its chairman,” Crane continued.

“It’s easy enough to steer that committee when everything is peaceful,”
answered Thorndyke, meaning to take the new chairman down a peg.
“And it’s a great deal easier when we get into a continental mess as
we are now. Wait until you get on the Ways and Means, or Committee
on Elections, or Banking and Currency, if you want to have a little
Gehenna of your own on earth. Good-night.”

Thorndyke sat up smoking until after two o’clock. His thoughts were not
concerned with Crane’s political future, nor with his own either, nor
with the continental mess. He was thinking about that dead-and-gone
time, and how far away it was; the moderns did not make love through
the medium of sentimental songs to the guitar and to stanzas from
Childe Harold. They preferred ragtime on the mandolin and the Rubáiyát
of Omar Khayyám; and they no longer seemed to fall in love in the
painful and whole-souled manner which had befallen him; and then he
wandered off into thinking how a man’s will could go so far and no
farther, and how he should feel when he saw Constance Maitland, as he
must eventually, and how she would look and speak. He concluded, before
he went to bed, that he had experienced that unlucky accident, the
breaking of heart, which would not mend, do what he could; for he was
one of those rare and unfortunate men who can love but once.




_Chapter Two_

THE RISE OF A PREMIER AND SOMETHING ABOUT TWO HEARTS


On the fifteenth of April Congress met for one of the most exciting
sessions in the history of the country. There was excitement both for
the members and for the public. Usually, when great economic questions
have to be disposed of, which rack the intelligence of the strongest
men in the House and Senate, which make and unmake Presidents and
policies, at which men work like slaves toiling at the oar, by night as
well as by day, and of which the harvest of death is grimly reckoned
beforehand, the people go on quietly, reading with calm indifference
the proceedings of Congress in the newspapers or skipping them because
of their dulness. When questions affecting the honour and prestige of
the country arise, the American people, justly described as “strong,
resolute, and ofttimes violent,” become deeply agitated, are swayed all
one way by the same mighty impulse, and force Congress to act as the
people wish. The Congress at these times is calm. There is nothing to
do but comply with the mandates of the people. One party is as willing
to vote supplies as another. All march together. The march would become
a wild storming party but for a few cool heads and obstructives, who
act as a brake, and keep the pace down to something reasonable and the
policies in the middle of the road. But the brake is powerless to stop
the march onward.

At this session, though, there were to be things to agitate both
the people and the Congress. The question of peace or war had to be
decided; and if it were peace, as the cooler heads foresaw, it would be
peace on such stupendous terms of power and prestige to this country
that it might be impossible to deal sanely with the great economic
problems which were like the rumblings of an earthquake, and were
liable to produce vast convulsions. For the present, however, economic
questions were in the background, the Committee on Foreign Affairs was
the most prominent one in the House.

It almost cured Crane of his infatuation for Washington society to
see how little it was impressed by the large events waiting to burst
from under the great white dome on the hill. Himself, in a fever heat
of suppressed excitement, he felt aggrieved that dinners still went
on unflaggingly, that the first long season of grand opera Washington
had ever known was about to begin, and claimed much attention. None of
these smart people seemed to care in the least that he was to present
the report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in an unprecedentedly
short time--a report which might mean war or peace. He expressed his
sense of personal injury to Thorndyke as the two sat hard at work in
their committee-room one night a week after the meeting of Congress.

They were quite alone, and it might be said that the report was theirs
alone. There were other strong men on the committee, but they had got
used to the autocratic rule of Thorndyke, and rather liked it. He
consulted them attentively, but he was always the man who acted. The
new chairman recognised this, and being ambitious to rule as Thorndyke
had ruled, he consulted his predecessor somewhat ostentatiously--at
which his colleagues smiled and let him alone. Crane had just
experienced an instance of Thorndyke’s goodwill, who was in the act
of saving his chairman from making a ridiculous blunder which would
have hindered his prospects very much as Oliver Goldsmith’s unlucky
red coat did for him with the Bishop. The Secretary of State, a very
long-headed person in a small way, had previously got the length of
the Honourable Julian Crane’s foot, as the vulgar express it. He had
asked Crane to play golf with him; he had invited the member from
Circleville to little dinners with him. The Secretary’s wife had
requested Crane as a great favour to assist her widowed daughter in
chaperoning a party of débutantes and college youths to the theatre,
and when a scurrilous journal had reflected grossly upon himself, a
married man, and the young widow, Crane was in secret hugely flattered.
To be linked, even remotely, in a scandal with the daughter of the
Secretary of State was a social rise--although he happened to know
that Cap’n Josh Slater, the father of the Secretary of State, had been
engaged in steam-boating on the Ohio River in the wild forties with
his own grandfather, Cap’n Ebenezer Crane. The Secretary’s father
had made money, and his daughters were replicas of Lady Clara Vere
de Vere. Of his sons, one, the present Secretary of State, had left
the banks of the Ohio never to return, and by a steady evolution had
passed from the Western Reserve College to Harvard, thence to Oxford
for a post-graduate course, to Berlin as attaché to the then Legation,
thence home to exercise a gift the politicians had found in him, viz.,
the power to form a silk-stocking contingent in the party to offset
the silk stockings in the opposition. Being a man of some brains and
much perseverance, he had reached the most highly ornamental position
in the Government of the United States--the Secretaryship of State. He
maintained it with dignity. He had, of course, long since, abjured the
Methodist faith, in which he was reared, and was as uncompromising a
Churchman as his brother, the Episcopal Bishop--for such had been the
career of the steam-boat captain’s other son. Both had been brought up
in an auriferous atmosphere totally denied the descendants of Cap’n
Ebenezer Crane, who had lost his all in the steam-boat business,
and spent his last years keeping the Circleville tavern. Crane knew
all about this, one of his grandfather’s standing quarrels with Fate
being that Josh Slater, a durned fool, and a rascal besides, in Cap’n
Ebenezer’s opinion, had made so much, where a better man--that is,
himself--couldn’t make a living. But Crane knew better than to refer to
any of these matters before the Secretary, who was indeed only dimly
acquainted with his father’s profession. The Secretary, a polished,
scholarly man, was a very good imitation of a statesman. He liked
to be called the Premier, prided himself on his resemblance to Lord
Salisbury, and dressed the part to perfection. During Thorndyke’s
chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, when the present
international complication had been brewing, the Secretary had
been a good deal annoyed by being sent for to the Capitol on what
he considered flimsy pretexts. He determined when Crane succeeded
Thorndyke to make a bold stroke, and have the chairman come to him
occasionally, on the sly, as it were. To this end he had written
Crane a little note beginning, “My Dear Crane.” In it the Secretary
spoke pathetically of his lumbago, also of his age--sixty-one--and
would Crane, on the score of old friendship and the Secretary’s many
infirmities, come to see him at a certain hour at the Department, and
perhaps the necessity might be avoided of the Secretary taking a trip
in the changeable weather to the Capitol, which otherwise would be
inevitable.

Crane showed this note with ill-concealed pride, and was about to fall
into the Secretary’s little trap through the telephone when Thorndyke
hastily interposed:

“My dear fellow,” said he, grinning, “you had better wait until the
Secretary’s lumbago gets better, rather than inaugurate the policy of
running up to the State Department to see him, when it is his business
to come here to see you. The old fellow tried that game on me, but, in
return, I used to get the committee to invite him down here about once
a week to give his views on something or other for which we didn’t give
a tinker’s damn, as the Duke of Wellington used to say. But it cured
him. He stopped inviting me cordially and informally to come to the
State Department to see him.”

Crane’s face flushed.

“The d----d old sneak!” he yelled--and then dashed off a curt note to
the Secretary. Thorndyke promptly confiscated this note, and dictated
another, which was, if anything, more affectionate in tone than
the Secretary’s. Crane would wish, above all things, to oblige the
Secretary, but was himself under the weather, and so forth, and so
forth.

“But I played golf with him at seven o’clock this morning!” cried
Crane, throwing down his pen.

“So much the better,” replied Thorndyke. “You are returning his own
lie to him with interest. Go on--‘Possibly by to-morrow you may be
well enough to comply with the wish of the committee, and come to
the Capitol. In any event, before a formal request is made for your
attendance, your convenience will be consulted with regard to the hours
and the weather.’ And when you get him up here put him in the sweat-box
and give him all that’s coming to him--that’s the way to get on with
him.”

“I see,” said Crane, light breaking upon him, “and when you had the old
fellow up here, and I thought you were so friendly and polite to him,
you were just ‘sweating’ him.”

“That’s what I was doing. However, I reckon the present Secretary to be
the ideal man for the place. He is highly ornamental, perfectly honest,
and satisfied with the shadow of power. Occasionally he reaches out for
something in the way of etiquette or attention, as in the present case,
but when he doesn’t get it he subsides quietly. The State Department
has been steadily losing power and prestige from the foundation of the
government until now, when it is recognised as a mere clerical bureau
and a useful social adjunct to the Administration. Do you think if
Daniel Webster were alive to-day he would take the portfolio of State?
He would see the Administration at the demnition bow-wows first. Mr.
Blaine took it twice under compulsion, and was the most wretched and
restless man on earth while he had it. Both times he was so much too
big for the place that he became exceedingly dangerous, and had to be
forced out each time to save the Administration from total wreck. The
lesson has not been lost on succeeding Presidents, and there will be
no more Blaines and Websters in the State Department. The trouble
is, however, that foreign Chancelleries persist in taking the State
Department seriously. They can’t take in that you, as chairman of the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, are of a good deal more consequence
at present than the Secretary of State. You can send for him, but
he can’t send for you. You can call for information from him and
practically force him to give it to you, but he can’t make you tell the
day of the week unless you want to.”

Crane, who had signed and sealed his note while Thorndyke was speaking,
glowed with pleasure at the last words. But he returned to his
grievance about none of the smart set taking any particular interest in
what was going to happen on the morrow.

“The diplomatic people are taking the deepest interest in it,” replied
Thorndyke, grimly, “and when this report is read to-morrow they will be
up against a fierce proposition.” Thorndyke was not above using slang
when in the company of men alone.

They fell to work again at some last details, and it was not far from
midnight when they left the great white building on the hill. In spite
of the engrossing matters which had employed them, both men had been
haunted by the recollection of their conversation the night before,
about Constance Maitland--but neither had spoken her name. Thorndyke
said, as they came out on the deserted moonlit plaza:

“It’s a pity Mrs. Crane can’t be here to listen to you speak to-morrow.”

“Yes,” replied Crane, promptly. “But I have written her about it, and
I shall send her a despatch as soon as I get through to-morrow. By the
way, I sent Miss Maitland a ticket to the reserved gallery. I shall
probably see her at the French Embassy, where I am going to take a look
at the ball.”

It was Crane’s first invitation to the French Embassy, and he was
slightly elated at it, and being unable to conceal anything, Thorndyke
saw his elation. His only reply to Crane’s important communication was,
“Good-night--here’s my car.” And he jumped aboard the trailer just
passing.

When he reached his own door he turned away from it. The night was
growing more enchantingly lovely every hour. A great white April
moon was riding high in the heavens, and the soft freshness of the
spring night was in the air. Thorndyke made the beauty of the night an
excuse to himself for remaining out of doors. In truth, he had felt a
yearning, ever since Crane had first told him that Constance Maitland
was in Washington, to see her habitation--it was next to seeing her.
He struggled against it for an hour or two, walking away from the
street wherein she dwelt. He soon found himself in the poorer part of
Washington, a long way from the gay quarters; a part of narrow brick
or frame houses, cheap churches, and many small shops. He was reminded
of that saying, as old as Plato, who did not himself say it first: “In
all cities there are two cities--the city of the poor and the city of
the rich.” The city of the poor in Washington, however, is the least
disheartening of its sort in the world--for even the poorest house has
air and space and sunlight about it and green trees to shelter it.

After having wandered about until he felt certain the West End was
asleep, Thorndyke yielded to the overmastering impulse and set out for
his goal at the other end of the town. He soon entered Massachusetts
Avenue--that long and beautiful avenue, shaded with double rows of
lindens, their pale green buds breaking out into their first delicate
leaf, the vista broken by open spaces with statues, and closing with
the rich foliage of Dupont Circle. All was quiet, silent, and more
and more brightly moonlit. No glaring gas lamps marred the light or
darkness of the perfect night--for in Washington when the moon shines
the gas lamps don’t shine.

Thorndyke’s soul, dragging his unwilling feet, brought him to one of
the pretty side streets opening upon the splendid avenue. It was here
that Constance Maitland’s house was.

Thorndyke believed--such is the folly of love--he would have known the
house even if Crane had not mentioned the number. But the number was
conclusive. It was an old-fashioned house, broad and low for a city
house. It had been the advance guard of fashion. There was a little
strip of garden and shrubbery at the side, where clipped cedars were
formally set, and three great lilac-bushes were hastening into a bloom
of purple splendour. The scent of the lilacs brought back the terrace
on Lake Como, where lilacs also grew, and where he and Constance had
spent those glowing and unforgotten hours--and by moonlight they had
often sung together the old duet from Don Pasquale, “Oh, April Night!”
Thorndyke, entranced and lost in visions, began to hum the old, old
air. What strange power of restoring the past have old songs and the
perfume of flowers long remembered! Thorndyke felt as in a dream; all
the intervening years melted away; it was once more Como, with its
moonlight, its flower-scents, its songs, its loves--and then he looked
up and saw Constance Maitland standing before him.

She had just returned from the ball--the carriage from which she
had alighted was rolling off. As she met Thorndyke face to face
on the sidewalk she started slightly, and her long white mantle
slipped from her delicate bare shoulders to the ground. Her eyes met
Thorndyke’s--everything was in that gaze except surprise. When two
persons think of each other daily for many years, the strangeness is
not in their meeting but in their separation. They had seen each other
last on a moonlit night, and the sweet scent of lilacs was in the
air--and now, after eighteen years, it was so alike!

The moonlight was merciful to them both. Neither saw all of Time’s
earmarks--Thorndyke saw none at all in Constance. Her girlish figure
was quite unchanged. Her pale yellow ball-gown, the pearls around her
throat, were youthfulness itself. She had never been remarkable for
beauty, but her face showed no lines, her silky black hair, simply
arranged, revealed none of the silver strands that were visible by
daylight. Thorndyke received a distinct shock at her youthfulness. It
was his lost Constance of the Villa Flora.

She held her hand out to him without a word, and he clasped it.
In that clasp Constance realised that she had all and more of her
old power over him. Thorndyke could not have said a word at first
to save his life, but Constance, with equal feeling, had a woman’s
glibness, and could have plunged into commonplaces on the spot. But she
refrained, knowing that her silence was eloquent. She withdrew her hand
lingeringly. Then Thorndyke saw the white cloak lying on the ground.
He picked it up and held it wide for Constance, and when he enfolded
her in the cloak she was enfolded for one thrilling, perilous instant
in his arms. Another moment and she would be at his mercy. Constance,
knowing this, and suddenly remembering the maid waiting for her, and
possibly belated neighbours looking out of their windows, withdrew a
little. This restored Thorndyke’s vagrant senses, and after a moment or
two he said:

“It does not seem--now--so long since we parted.”

“It is very long; it is nearly eighteen years,” Constance replied.
Her voice was the sweet voice of the far South, for her young eyes
had first opened upon the blue waters of another lake than Como--Lake
Pontchartrain. In her speech there were continual traces of her
Louisiana birth--Thorndyke had ever thought her voice and her little
mannerisms of language among her greatest charms--and he was confirmed
in his belief at the first word she uttered. He said to her:

“I did not know until yesterday that you were in Washington.”

“I did not like to send you a card,” Constance replied.

“You might have done so much.”

“I do not know which of us is in the wrong,” she said--said it so
deliberately that it might convey a thousand meanings. “But if you are
waiting for me to ask you--come. Of course, I cannot ask you in now; if
we were as young as we once were, it would be quite dreadful for us to
be standing and talking as we are--but both being old enough to take
care of ourselves, we have our liberty.”

Love and hate are closely allied, and often reason alike from the same
premises. As Thorndyke realised more and more that Constance Maitland
still had power to disturb him powerfully he resented her ease and
tranquillity--and aware of the lines in his face, conscious that he was
growing bald, he felt injured at her continuing youth. Evidently, the
recollections which had made him forswear love, forego wealth, and had
turned him into a Congressional drudge, had left no mark on her. He
took, at once, her hint to leave her, and said stiffly:

“If you will give me your key----”

Constance handed it to him; he went up the steps and opened the door.
The gaslight fell full upon her, and it was as if with every glance
they became more infatuated with each other and found it harder to part.

“To-morrow,” said Thorndyke.

“Yes; to-morrow,” Constance echoed, dreamily.

Thorndyke banged the door to and literally ran down the street.

When he came to himself, as it were, he was in his own room, smoking.
He kept on saying to himself, “To-morrow--to-morrow,” and then called
himself a fool--a purely academic proceeding, however, which never
really influences any issue between a man and his will. When at last he
went to bed the sky was opalescent with the coming dawn.




_Chapter Three_

DOWN AMONG THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING


After four hours of sleep Thorndyke waked with the uncomfortable
feeling which waits on excess in everything, especially excess in the
emotions after one is forty years of age. The tumults of youth are
killing after forty.

He got through with his breakfast and his mail under the disadvantages
of seeing visions of Constance Maitland floating all about him--visions
of Constance offering to give up her fortune and live with him on
what he could save of his Congressional salary after supplying the
wants of his crippled sister, Elizabeth. And in case he should lose
the nomination at the hands of his boss, as he had once done, there
would be nothing at all for Constance or Elizabeth, either, nor for
himself that he could then foresee. What a strange infatuation was
Congressional life! It was almost as strange as the infatuation for a
woman forever barred from him--and by the worst luck in the world, he,
Geoffrey Thorndyke, was the victim of both!

These unpleasant thoughts walked every step of the way with him to
the Capitol on that bright April morning. When he reached the great
white building, sitting majestically on the hill, he was one of a vast
multitude of people surging toward the south wing. It still lacked
half an hour of twelve, and the flag was not yet hoisted. Crowds were
disembarking from the street-cars, the plaza was black with carriages,
and over all was that tension of feeling which communicates itself to
thousands and tens of thousands of persons at once. Something was about
to happen that day in the House of Representatives. As Crane said, the
smart set cared nothing for it, but their majesties, the people, were
deeply interested in it, and had every reason to be, and assembled
in great crowds to see the first act. Thorndyke made his way to his
committee-room. No one was there except Crane. The gentleman from
Circleville was dressed for his first appearance as a star. Thorndyke,
being in rather a savage humour, thought he had never seen Crane so
over-dressed, so full of elation and vain simplicity, and, in short,
so nearly a fool. In this he did Crane great injustice, for Crane never
was, at any time, in the category of fools, although he often did
foolish things.

He spoke to Thorndyke affably, although with a slight air of
superiority, holding in his hand the report of which Thorndyke had
supplied the most effective part--the close reasoning, the conclusive
logic, the historical precedents, and the invincible moderation.
Thorndyke might indeed have said of that report, as Cæsar said of
the Gallic wars, “All of this I saw--most of this I was.” And in the
debate that would follow, Thorndyke would be obliged to take care of
Crane--for Crane, although a powerful and attractive speaker, was
easily disconcerted when on his feet, and had a tendency to panic under
the enfilading fire of debate. Thorndyke was not an orator in the
popular sense, but when it came to having all his wits about him, to
defending his position, to bold incursions into the enemy’s territory,
he was not surpassed by any man in the House. As his colleagues said
of him, he always went documented, and carried concealed parliamentary
weapons about his person.

By way of revenge, Thorndyke began to chaff his colleague on the
subject of his dress. Crane’s shirt-bosom snapped like giant crackers,
his cuffs rattled, his collar creaked. He was conscious of this,
and glowered darkly at Thorndyke’s jokes. Thorndyke’s clothes, in
contradistinction to Crane’s, were the clothes of a clothes-wearing
man. They were neither old nor new, neither out of the fashion nor
conspicuously in the fashion--they were, in short, the clothes of a man
whose father before him had worn clothes.

Both men were in their seats, which were near together, when the
Speaker’s gavel fell. The galleries were packed, the corridors jammed.
In the diplomatic gallery every seat was occupied. The bright costumes
of the Orientals and the flower-decked spring hats of the ladies made
it gay. The gallery reserved for the President’s family and the Cabinet
families was also full. So great was the pressure that the motion was
at once made to admit ladies to the floor of the House. They came
fluttering in like a flock of pigeons, and soon filled all the space
back of the desks. They were not, in general, of the smart set, who,
as Crane complained, were like Gallio, and cared for none of these
things--but were chiefly of official families.

As soon as the prayer and some routine business was over, the report
of the Committee on Foreign Affairs was called for. The calling of the
roll had been waived--it was easy enough to see that every member was
present who could get there, as well as many Senators. When the report
was handed to the reading-clerk there was a deep pause. Thorndyke
looked at Crane. He was very pale, but the veins in his neck were
pulsating strongly. He glanced up at the reserved gallery at the side,
and his face flushed deeply. Thorndyke followed his eye. It fell upon
Constance Maitland sitting in the front row. She was dressed in a rich
black toilette which contrasted strongly with the brilliant colours
around her. A delicate black tulle hat sat upon her graceful head, and
she fanned herself slowly with a large black fan.

Her distinction of appearance was extreme, and she showed her perfect
knowledge of it by the simple but effective trick of wearing black
when there was a riot of colour around her. By means of a good figure
and perfect dressing this seduced the world into thinking her far
handsomer than she really was. Thorndyke recognised that when he saw
how much more attention she attracted than much younger and more
beautiful women.

But then the silence was broken by the great, bell-like voice of the
reading-clerk reading the report. As the clerk proceeded, Thorndyke
perceived that the tone and manner of the report were making a strong
impression. The matter of it could not be wholly digested, but the
manner of presentation commanded attention. Nearly every one of the
three hundred and fifty members present saw Thorndyke’s fine Italian
hand in the business--but the crowd gazed in admiration at the tall
and handsome member from Circleville, who was reaping the glory of the
present occasion. The reading over, Crane arose, with a few notes in
his hand, prepared to defend the report. He was a born speaker, and
as soon as he began to talk he forgot his clothes and also made his
audience forget them, too. Thorndyke listened with enforced admiration.
Crane spoke lucidly, strongly, yet temperately--Thorndyke had taught
him the enormous power of moderation. Thorndyke, quite unobserved,
watched the faces of the European diplomats in the diplomatic gallery,
who were listening intently. One man, whom Thorndyke reckoned the
ablest diplomat among those representing Western Europe, stealthily
took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. An Ambassadress
dropped her card-case at his feet and he did not see it. Another, a
round, red-faced, sensible, guileless man, looked about him with a
frankly puzzled air, which said as plainly as words, “God bless my
soul--what are we to do about this?” The younger men unconsciously
assumed expressions of contempt, indifference, and displeasure. They
had every reason to be displeased at the turn international affairs
were taking--and there was no alternative but war.

Thorndyke, being experienced in legislation, could very readily
estimate the effect on his colleagues of what Crane was saying. It was
tremendous. The vast hall was stilled, and the stillness grew intense.
By some communicable psychic force all knew that here was a great issue
met and disposed of for a hundred years to come. To the Americans
present it was a source of pride and of relief. The mellow, unchanging
sunlight that glowed softly through the iridescent glass roof of the
hall fell upon their faces, serious indeed, but steady and cheerful.
The Congress was back of that report, and the people were behind the
Congress. There was no hysteria among the Congress or the people, but a
fixed and resolute determination which was, in effect, the registering
of a decree of fate.

Crane spoke for half an hour, his rich, full voice growing richer and
fuller, without becoming louder, as he proceeded. At the very end he
had allowed himself a little leeway, rightly judging that by that
time the audience would be wrought up to the pitch which would permit
what is called eloquence. When the last sentences, ringing with terse
Americanism, rolled out, the effect was magical. A great storm of
feeling had been evoked and had responded. The applause was long and
loud and deep and steady, like the breaking of ocean waves upon granite
rocks. Crane’s words had pierced the heart of every American present,
and a common impulse brought all of them to their feet. Even the
Speaker, not knowing what he was doing, rose from his chair, then sat
down again shamefacedly. None escaped the tumult outwardly except the
European occupants of the diplomatic gallery. They were ostentatiously
cool, and talked and laughed during the tempest of applause, while
secretly they were more agitated than any of the cheering multitude.
They had heard that which meant surrender to each and all of them.

The Speaker’s gavel descended presently, and quiet was partially
restored. Crane was surrounded by members of both parties
congratulating him, and he received their praise with a modesty more
sincere than was generally believed. But to him had it been brought
home that the crisis was bigger than the man, and the people were
bigger than the crisis. Thorndyke, sitting near him, had shared in
the tempest of feeling, but a sickening disappointment possessed him
when he saw Crane’s personal triumph. In all of Thorndyke’s years
of labour Fate had never given him any such a chance as this. But
it was his years of labour which made Crane’s success possible. He
could imagine the turgid, strained spread-eagleism, the powerful but
ill-reasoned speech, which Crane, but for him, would have made. His
eyes, in his cold fit of chagrin, wandered toward the place where
Constance Maitland sat. A slender black figure, gracefully holding up
the train of the black gown, was just disappearing through the door.
Thorndyke’s impulse to follow Constance was accentuated by a strong
desire, if there should be any debate, to leave Crane to his fate,
but he soon found out that the whole matter would go over until the
next day, and by that time his better self would assert itself, and
he would do his part--not for Crane’s sake, but for the sake of that
overmastering sense of public duty which he cherished religiously and
never alluded to. So, finding himself free and superfluous, he left
the chamber, partly to avoid the sight of Crane’s triumph and partly
drawn by Constance Maitland. Before leaving, however, he went up like a
gentleman and congratulated Crane, who, moved by an honest and generous
impulse, expressed the utmost gratitude to him.

Out in the spring sunshine that flooded the plaza and the parklike
gardens and blazed upon the golden dome of the fair white National
Library, visible beyond the fringe of great green trees, Thorndyke
looked about him for Constance Maitland. She was just stepping into a
smart little brougham with a good-looking pair of brown cobs, and drove
away toward the quiet, shady, beautiful but unfashionable part of the
town on the east.

The carriage went slowly, and Thorndyke, pursuing it, saw it stop a few
blocks from the Capitol, by one of those parks large enough for one to
wander in and feel alone as if in the woods. Constance descended from
the carriage holding her skirts daintily, and walked into the park.
Thorndyke boldly followed her--she had said to-morrow--and this was
to-morrow.

He came upon her in a few minutes in a little open space, shut in,
except for the pathway, by shrubbery on every side. The grass was full
of daisies which had just put on their little white shirts and yellow
caps, and a pair of robins hopped about with as much gayety and freedom
as if they were country robins instead of town robins.

Constance was sitting on a rusty iron bench, a little in the shade. She
had taken off her gloves, and her hands, small and innocent of rings,
lay in her lap. She seemed to be day-dreaming, as if she were eighteen
instead of thirty-eight years of age. Thorndyke was pleased to see
that by the searching light of day she did not look nearly so young
as in the mysterious night. But she was not the less charming on that
account--she had simply reached the fulness of her development in mind,
in feeling, and even in beauty, such as hers was.

As Thorndyke took off his hat and bowed to her he received a distinct
invitation, by means of her eyes and smile, to remain, so he seated
himself on the bench by her side. She began the conversation by saying:

“I have just come from the House. It was very exciting. I do not see
how any one can call life in America dull. It is Europe which is
dull--it is stagnation compared with this, our country.”

Thorndyke again noted, with delight, in her speech that slight trace
of her Creole blood which years had not changed. She said “do not” and
“can not” in place of “don’t” and “can’t;” she took extraordinary pains
to pronounce the _th_, and had a way of accenting last syllables in a
manner not recommended by the dictionaries. The result was piquant and
charming. Constance herself was quite unconscious of it, and Thorndyke
remembered that in the old days he could bring her to pique and pouts
at any time by asking her to pronounce certain words and phrases which
were a perpetual stumbling-block to her. He did not venture now to
laugh at her about this pretty idiosyncrasy, but gravely took up the
thread of conversation where she dropped it.

“What did you think of Crane’s speech?”

“It was quite extraordinary. But it was not like him. It seemed to me
us if he were making somebody else’s speech. Was it yours?”

If Constance had searched the realms of thought to find out the words
that would most soothe and satisfy Thorndyke at that moment she could
not have found any better than those she uttered. Smarting under the
sense of having sown for another to reap, Thorndyke needed consolation.
He had the defects of his qualities, and along with his passionate
devotion to parliamentary life was the natural desire for popular
applause. But he had never had it. He fondly believed that had this
superb opportunity been awarded him he should have proved equal to it.
Had it but occurred two months earlier! He and not Crane would have
been enveloped in trailing clouds of glory. But Constance--Constance,
with her woman’s wit, had seen that some one else besides Crane
deserved the credit for that effort. He made no reply to her questions
beyond a slight smile, but he let it be seen that she had hit the
bull’s eye.

“Mr. Crane tells me he knows you,” he said, presently.

“Yes,” answered Constance. “He has been a few times to see me. Last
night I met him at the ball at the French Embassy. I danced with him.”

“He owned up to me some time ago that he was taking dancing-lessons--at
forty-two, with a wife and children in Circleville. I fancy his
performance answers the description that Herodotus gives of the dancing
of Hippocleides--it is diverting to himself, but disgusting to others.”

“On the contrary, he dances very well--when he is not trying to do his
best. Perhaps you are surprised that I should still care to dance--but
remember, pray, my mother was Creole French.”

And to this Thorndyke made a speech which brought the blood into
Constance Maitland’s cheeks, knocking ten years off her age at once.

“I remember everything,” he said.

After a moment’s pause Constance, still with a heightened colour,
continued:

“I have seen Mr. Crane several times this winter--not only in my own
house, but in others. Whenever I am with him I am consumed with pity
for him.”

“He does not need your pity now,” said Thorndyke, grimly. “It is more
needed by his senior Senator, who is the fly-wheel of the political
machine in his State. The old gentleman, I know, is at this minute
walking the floor in his committee-room and gnashing his teeth over
Crane’s success. The senior Senator took Crane up, sent him to
Congress, and thought he had secured a really efficient understrapper.
I don’t think Crane will fill that place after to-day’s triumph,
and the senior Senator knows it, and has got to discover means, if
possible, to garrote Crane politically before the next Congressional
campaign.”

“I see,” replied Constance, who was only interested in the subject
because she saw Thorndyke was. “Mr. Crane, by virtue of making your
speech, has got beyond the control of his master. By the way--I am
so ignorant of Congressional matters--how can I get the Congressional
Record sent me every day?”

“You have already got it--by mentioning to me that you wished it. It is
one of my few privileges. I am glad to do at least that much for you.”

Thorndyke heard himself saying these things without his own volition in
the least. If Constance Maitland were willing at this moment to give up
a fortune for poverty with him, would he accept the sacrifice? Never.
How could a woman of her mature age, nurtured in luxury, descend to
poverty--for poverty is the lot of every member of Congress who wishes
to live in something more than mere decency on his salary. And yet
Thorndyke, at every opportunity, had assured Constance Maitland of his
unforgetting, of his tender, recollections--in short, of his love. Nor
had she showed any unwillingness to listen. It is not a woman’s first
love for which she wrecks her life; it is her last love--that final
struggle for supremacy. There can be no more after that. Sappho, on the
great white rock of Mitylene, knew this and perished.

Some thoughts like this came into Constance Maitland’s mind, and,
driving away her colour, restored to her the lately vanished years.
Silence fell between them for a while, until Constance roused herself,
and, affecting cheerfulness, said:

“I shall study the Congressional Record with interest. Everything in
one’s own country is of interest after a long and painful exile.”

“You should read Lord Bolingbroke’s defence of exile,” replied
Thomdyke, moving a little nearer to her, and resting his elbow on the
back of the bench so that he could look into her pensive, changing face.

“And yet, I daresay, Lord Bolingbroke pined in his exile. Nobody
believed him when he said he did not mind. Mine, however, was complete.
My uncle, von Hesselt, who was an honourable man in his way, thought he
was carrying out my aunt’s wishes by keeping me wholly away from all
Americans and wholly with foreigners.”

“But you could have left him after you were of age.”

“Ah, you do not know! He was the most terrible sufferer you can
imagine, for fifteen years. And what was worse, he was surrounded by
people, his own relatives, who, I truly believe, would have shortened
his life if they could. He knew this, and feared it even more than was
reasonable. Once, my longing for my country grew such that it overcame
me, and I told my uncle I must, I must come to America. He pleaded with
me--imagine an old man, whose life was one long stretch of pain and
fear, pleading with you until he fell prone in a paroxysm of despair!
I, too, was in despair, and I promised him I would remain with him
during his life.--I hardly knew what I was saying--I was not twenty-one
at the time--but I knew well enough after it was said. I kept my word,
and I nursed him through his last illness and closed his eyes in death.
Then, as soon as all was over, I sailed for America. I feel now as if I
never wished to see Europe again.”

“And did Baron von Hesselt realise the enormous sacrifice you made for
him?”

“Yes--that is, partly.”

“Your aunt certainly was most unjust to you,” said Thorndyke, coolly.
“I mean, that provision robbing you of all your fortune in case you
marry an American.”

“Yes, very unjust,” replied Constance, with equal coolness, although
the flush returned to her cheeks.

“And I--I was to blame for that,” cried Thorndyke, venturing farther
upon ticklish ground.

“Not altogether,” replied Constance, maintaining the steadiness of her
voice. “My aunt hated our country; she could not forget the Civil War;
and she meant--poor soul, I forgive her now--that I should never return
to America permanently. It was a strange thing to do, but I must admit
my aunt to have been in some respects both a strange and a foolish
woman. Let us not speak of her again. I am back, and if I feel as I do
now I shall never live in Europe again. It is time for me to prepare to
grow old.”

She said this with a wan little smile, and all at once thought with
terror of her age; there was but four or five years’ difference between
Thorndyke and herself, and that difference, at a certain point, becomes
transferred to the gentleman’s side of the ledger. Suddenly the spring
afternoon seemed to become melancholy and overcast. A sharp wind sprang
up from the near-by river; the world turned from gold to gray. At the
same moment Thorndyke and Constance rose and walked away from the spot
that had been only a little while ago so sweet and sunny.

“Why is it,” asked Constance, as they followed the pathway leading out
of the park, “a spring morning is the merriest thing in life, and a
spring evening the saddest?”

“Why should anything be sad to you, spring evenings or any other
times?” asked Thorndyke, quietly and with perfect sincerity.

“Why should any one be sad at all? Because we are human, I suppose,”
was Constance’s answer to this.

As they came out upon the streets, which were less deserted than usual,
Thorndyke looked toward the south wing of the Capitol. The flag was
fluttering down from its flag-staff.

“The House has adjourned,” he said, “and some history has been made
to-day--likewise a great reputation for our friend Crane.”

The brougham was driving up and down, and the coachman, perceiving the
graceful black figure on the sidewalk, drove toward them. Thorndyke
noted, with disgust, the elegance of the turnout--the two perfectly
matched cobs, the silver-mounted harness of Spanish leather, the
miniature brougham with “C. M.” in cipher on the panels--the whole
must have cost about half his yearly income. This, together with
Crane’s remarkable triumph, made him surly, and he said, stiffly, as he
assisted Constance into the brougham:

“You gave me permission to call to-day.”

“Yes, but I withdraw it. It is now nearly three o’clock. I have not had
my luncheon, I am tired, and I must rest this afternoon, and I go out
to dinner. To-morrow at five.”

Her tone and manner discounted her words. It was as if she were saying:
“I must save something for to-morrow--I will not be a spendthrift of
my joys.” Thorndyke, finding nothing to discompose him in her words,
replied, in a very good humour:

“It is always to-morrow--but to-morrow is better than not at all.
Good-bye.”

The brougham rolled off, and Thorndyke stepped aboard a street-car
bound for the West End.

At the Capitol plaza a great crowd got on, among them the two gentlemen
whom Thorndyke affectionately described as his boss and Crane’s boss.
The two men stood together on the platform outside. Both of them
revealed in their faces their mastery of men and affairs, for your
true boss is necessarily a very considerable man. Senator Standiford,
Thorndyke’s boss, had an iron jaw, which was emphasised by a low brow,
but his face was not without a touch of ideality. Senator Bicknell,
Crane’s boss, had likewise a determined face, but his forehead and
eyes betrayed the human weakness which made him like clever men as
his instruments. Both men were millionaires. Senator Standiford lived
in three rooms at a hotel, rode in street-cars, and gave liberally of
his money to campaign funds, charities, and his poor relations, but
was never known to part with an atom of his power if he could help it.
Senator Bicknell fared sumptuously every day, had a splendid house and
gorgeous carriages, only rode in the street-cars for a lark, and was
reported to be a skinflint in money matters, and somewhat foolishly
lavish in giving away his power. The two men exchanged some words
which Thorndyke, wedged inside as he was, could not but hear. Senator
Standiford was saying to his colleague:

“S. M. & L. stock must be going down when _you_ ride in a street-car.”

“I lost one of my coach-horses last night,” replied Senator Bicknell,
“and can’t use my carriage to-day.”

“Misfortunes never come singly,” said Senator Standiford,
enigmatically, then adding, “I suppose it’s in order to congratulate
you on the success of your protégé, Crane, to-day?”

Thorndyke could scarcely keep from laughing at the look of chagrin
which came over Senator Bicknell’s countenance at this.

“Y-yes,” he answered, dubiously.

“Don’t get in a panic,” kept on Senator Standiford, with rude good
humour; “I know how it is with those fellows. Crane thinks from this
day forth that you are a back number, an old fogy, and a dead cock in
the pit. He will go into what he considers a grooming process for the
next four years--oh, I know those fellows! He will kick up a lot of
dust in the gubernatorial convention, will make a great display of not
wanting the nomination, and will bide his time until your term expires.
Then he will find it is a grueling and not a grooming he has had, and
he will get a small bunch of votes, but I don’t think you need take the
fellow seriously just now.”

At this last sentence Senator Bicknell’s face shone like the sun. It
shone the more when Senator Standiford kept on:

“There’s no reason to fear a man who makes a good speech----”

“I am in no fear of any one,” gravely replied Senator Bicknell, who
thought it essential to his dignity to say so much.

“It’s the strong debater who is likely to become formidable. There’s
Thorndyke now--Crane has made the speech--largely Thorndyke’s--but he
is totally unequal to the running fire of debate. Thorndyke could do
him up inside of ten minutes. Luckily for him, the debate will not be
fierce, and Thorndyke will really conduct it.”

“Mr. Thorndyke is a very able man,” said Senator Bicknell, as if
thinking aloud.

“Yes, but totally without ambition,” replied Senator Standiford,
gravely, and Thorndyke, within the car, laughed silently.

It was, however, no laughing matter, but Thorndyke, having chosen his
rôle for better or for worse, could only cleave to it, forsaking all
others. However, he would see Constance Maitland the next day at five
o’clock. There was balm in Gilead, or hasheesh in the pipe, he knew not
exactly which.




_Chapter Four_

GOVERNMENT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED


Life is a battle and a march--especially public life. Thorndyke waked
the next morning prepared for both a battle and a march. A glance at
the morning newspapers showed that the country was entirely with the
Congress, and the people, having given their orders, would see to it
that these orders were promptly obeyed. The Continental press of Europe
with few exceptions barked furiously. The French newspapers alone
retained dignity and good sense, pointing out the inevitable trend of
events, and advised that, instead of abusing the United States, they
should be copied in that system which had made them great, not by war,
but by peace. The English newspapers were fair, but in some of them
bitterness was expressed at England being shouldered out of her place
as the greatest of the world-powers by the young giant of the West.
There was in all of them, however, a note of triumph, that this first
place had been lost only to an offshoot of the sturdy parent stock.
This sentiment is often ridiculed as a peculiarly absurd form of
national self-love, but there is, in reality, nothing ridiculous about
it. As long as self-love is a part of nations and individuals, so long
will each nation and each individual strive to share in the general
stock of glory, achievement, and success.

In the American newspapers the man most prominent was Crane. He was
compared to Henry Clay, to Stephen A. Douglas, to any and every
American public man who had early in life made a meteoric rise in
Congress. He was represented as the embodiment of youth with the wisdom
of age. One newspaper reckoned him to be a political Chatterton, and
called him “the Wondrous Boy.” His beauty was lauded, his voice, his
delivery, the fit of his trousers; and one enthusiastic journal in
Indianapolis promptly nominated him for the Presidency. Thorndyke
searched the newspapers carefully, and did not find his own name once
mentioned. He reflected upon Horace Greely’s remark that fame is a
vapour.

Disappointing as it was to him to feel that another had reaped his
harvest, it did not give him acute pain; for he had waked that morning
with the agreeable consciousness which comes occasionally to every
human being, that the world is more interesting to-day than it was
yesterday; that consciousness which illuminates the cold, gray stage of
life, and indicates that the lights are about to be turned up and the
play to begin. The kind tones of Constance Maitland’s voice were still
in Thorndyke’s ears, and the unmistakable look of interest in her soft
eyes had visited him in dreams. He was no nearer marrying her than he
had been at any time during the past eighteen years; the same obstacle
was there--a very large, real, terrifying, and obvious obstacle--but
there was also a sweet and comforting suspicion in his mind that
Constance, as well as himself, had cherished the idyl of their youth.
And then, by daylight, she did not look so preposterously girlish as
she had looked by moonlight and in ball-dress. This gave Thorndyke
considerable pleasure as he brushed the remnants of his hair into
positions where they would do the most good. Her apparent advantage of
him in the matter of youth and good looks had been disturbing to him
at first. She still had much of youth and great good looks, but yet, a
man with scanty hair and a grayish moustache would not look like an old
fool beside her, as he had feared.

Thorndyke, according to his custom, walked to the Capitol. The morning,
like most spring mornings in Washington, was as beautiful as the
first morning in the garden of Eden. He chose unfrequented streets,
and, passing under the long green arcades, had only the trees for his
companionship on his walk.

Instead of reaching the building by way of the plaza, Thorndyke
chose rather to ascend the long flights of steps leading upward from
terrace to terrace on the west front. It is a way little used, but
singularly beautiful, with its marble balustrades, its lush greenness
of shrubbery, and the noble view both of the building and the fair
white city embosomed in trees, spread out like a dream-city before
the eye. Half-way up Thorndyke saw Senator Standiford sitting on one
of the iron benches placed on the falls of the terrace. Thorndyke was
surprised to see him there, and it occurred to him at once that it was
a premeditated meeting on the Senator’s part.

He was a tall, ugly old man with chin-whiskers, but his appearance was
redeemed by the power which spoke from his strongly marked face, and
by his punctilious, old-fashioned dress and extreme neatness. He wore
a silk hat made from a block he had used for thirty years. His coat,
gray and wide-skirted, seemed of the same vintage, and his spotless
collar of antique pattern, and his large black silk necktie might have
been worn by Daniel Webster himself. A big pair of gold spectacles and
a gold-headed cane completed a costume which was admirably harmonious,
and produced the effect of an old lady in 1903 with the side curls and
cap of 1853.

The Senator had a newspaper spread out before him, but as Thorndyke
approached folded it up, pushed his gold spectacles up on his forehead,
and called out:

“Hello! Have you read about the ‘Wondrous Boy’ this morning?”

“I have,” replied Thorndyke, smiling pleasantly as he lifted his hat,
and in response to a silent invitation he seated himself on the bench
by Standiford’s side.

“Great speech, that,” continued the Senator. “At first I was disposed
to give you the credit for all of it--but there’s something in that
fellow Crane. You couldn’t have coached him so well if he hadn’t been
capable of learning.”

“You do me too much honour,” replied Thorndyke, laughing, but with
something like bitterness.

Senator Standiford continued with a dry contortion of the lips which
was meant for a smile:

“But you’ll see, my son, that your friend Crane won’t grow quite
so fast as he thinks he will. In our times public men require the
seasoning of experience before they amount to anything. There’ll be no
more Henry Clays elected to the House of Representatives before they
are thirty. The world was young, then, but we have matured rapidly.
It is true that we have relaxed the rule of the Senate a little, and
allow the new senators to speak in the Senate Chamber at a much earlier
period in their senatorial service than formerly. But speech-making is
a dangerous pastime. Much of the small success I have achieved”--here
Senator Standiford’s face assumed a peculiar expression of solemnity
which made him look like a deacon handing around the church plate--“I
lay to the fact that I never could make a speech in my life, and I
found it out at an early stage in my career. I’m a Presbyterian, as
you know, but in my town I’m classed as a heretic and an iconoclast,
because when they want to call a new preacher and to have him preach
a specimen sermon I always tell the elders, ‘Why do you want to judge
the fellow by the way he talks? It’s the poorest test in the world to
apply to a man. Find out what he can _do_.’ But they won’t listen to
me, of course, and the Fourth Presbyterian Church is perennially filled
by a human wind-bag, who snorts and puffs and blows dust about until
the congregation get tired of him and try another wind-bag. In Congress
wind-bags don’t last.”

“All the same, I wish from the bottom of my heart that I had had
Crane’s chance yesterday and had used it as well,” replied Thorndyke.

“If you had you would have given our junior Senator a bad quarter of an
hour,” replied Senator Standiford, gravely.

Now, in common with all true Senatorial bosses, Standiford had seen
to it that his junior Senator was a man of straw, put in the place in
order that the boss might have two votes in the Senate. Never had the
junior Senator yet voted or acted in opposition to his master; but had
Thorndyke been the junior it would have been another story, and both
men knew it. This caused Thorndyke to remark, coolly:

“He would have no reason to disturb himself--the ass! You have
been kind enough to give me to understand that I am ineligible for
promotion, not being made of putty, as our junior Senator is.”

“Now, now!” remonstrated Senator Standiford, again assuming his air of
a seventeenth-century Puritan. “To hear you anybody would think that
our State organisation didn’t want every first-class man it can get!
We have the highest regard for your services, and we do what we can to
keep you in your present place because we see your usefulness there.”

Senator Standiford punctiliously used the euphemism “we” just as he
gravely consulted all the pothouse politicians and heelers in “the
organisation,” but it did not materially affect the fact that he was
the whole proposition in his own State.

Thorndyke looked full into the deep, calm eyes of the rugged old man
before him, and could not forbear laughing; but there was not the
glimmer of a twinkle in them. Presently the old man said, coolly:

“Suppose I should tell you that I may retire at the end of my term, two
years from now?”

“I should wish to believe anything you say, my dear Senator, but I am
afraid I couldn’t believe that.”

“What a fellow you are! But let me tell you--mind, this is a confidence
between gentlemen--my retirement is not impossible. You know my
daughter, my little Letty----”

As Senator Standiford spoke the name his face softened, and a passion
of parental love shone in his deep-set eyes.

“She is a very remarkable girl, Mr. Thorndyke, very remarkable; and she
loves her old father better than he deserves. I have as good sons as
any man ever had--but that daughter left me by my dead wife is worth to
me everything else on God’s earth. The doctors have been frightening
her about me lately. They tell her I work too hard for my time of
life--that I ought to take a rest, and if I will do it I can add ten
years to my life. Now, you know, the State organisation will never let
me take a rest”--Senator Standiford said this quite seriously--“and
Letty as good as told me six months ago that if I should be re-elected
to the Senate”--the Senator uttered this “if” in a tone of the most
modest deprecation--“_if_ I should be re-elected for another term--as
she wishes me to be--then she wants me to resign. I don’t mind
admitting that if any other human being had said this to me except my
daughter Letty, I should have reckoned myself drunk or crazy to have
listened to it. But my daughter, as I mentioned to you, is a remarkable
girl. Besides, the child is not strong herself, and if she gets to
worrying about me--well, you can see, Mr. Thorndyke, how it is with me.
The world credits me with loving place and power above everything on
earth, but there is something dearer to me than the office of President
of the United States: it is my daughter. And the sweetness and the
tenderness of that child for her old father----”

Here Senator Standiford took out a large red silk handkerchief and blew
a blast like the blast of Roncesvalles.

Being an accomplished judge of men, Senator Standiford, while speaking,
had watched Thorndyke closely. Had he shown any undue elation over
the political prospects indicated by Senator Standiford’s possible
retirement, Thorndyke’s fortunes would have been ruined. But by the
lucky accident of having a good heart he said the most judicious thing
possible.

“I don’t see any indications of overwork in you, Senator. At the same
time I know you do the work of ten men, and I also know the exercise of
power is so dear to you that, from the pound-master in your own town
up to the candidate for President, you give everything your personal
supervision. But as for Miss Standiford’s not being strong--why, I took
her in to dinner less than a month ago, and remarked on her freshness
and beauty. She looked the picture of health and ate more dinner than I
did.”

“Did she?” asked the Senator, anxiously. “What did she eat?”

Thorndyke did not feel in the least like laughing at Senator
Standiford’s inquiry, and answered, promptly:

“Oh, everything. I remember chaffing her about her good appetite.”

“Thank God! The doctors say if she can only eat and live out in the
fresh air and play golf and ride horseback she will be all right.
But, Thorndyke, I swear to you, I am as soft as milk about that girl.
If she goes out to golf I am unhappy for fear she will take cold. If
she rides I am in terror for fear some accident will happen to her.
Ah, Thorndyke, a man is no fit guardian for a girl like that--the
sweetest--the most affectionate----”

Here Senator Standiford again blew his nose violently.

“She has always been very sweet to me,” answered Thorndyke, “although I
believe she thinks me old enough to be her grandfather.”

“She is a very remarkable girl, sir; that I say without the least
partiality,” replied Senator Standiford, earnestly. “She’s a little
wild, having no mother, poor child--but her heart, sir, is in the right
place. And the way she loves her old father is the most splendid,
touching, exquisite thing ever imagined!”

Thorndyke listened attentively, deeply interested in the human side of
a man who had seemed to him to have a very small amount of the purely
human in him. The little story of Letty Standiford’s health and heart
and nature did not strike him as puerile--there was nothing puerile
about Silas Standiford, and his love for this child of his old age
was, in truth, a Titanic passion, strong enough, as he said, to make
him forego the chief object of his existence: power over other men.
Thorndyke really liked and pitied Letty Standiford, living her young
life without guidance, in a manner possible only in America and not
desirable anywhere for a young girl. He had not suspected the delicacy
of her constitution, and after Senator Standiford ceased speaking said:

“I wish, Senator, you could persuade Miss Standiford to be a little
more prudent about her health. The night I dined out with her, when it
came time to go home she was about to pick up her skirts and run two
blocks to your hotel, in her satin slippers, with sleet coming down,
and the streets like glass--this, for a lark. I took her by the arm and
shoved her in a cab, got in myself, and took her home. I thought she
would box my ears before I got there, but I carried my point.”

“She told me about it--she tells me everything; and I thank you for
taking care of the child. You may imagine what I suffer on her account.”

Senator Standiford rose then, and, resting both hands on his
old-fashioned gold-headed stick, he looked full into Thorndyke’s face,
and said, slowly:

“I hope we understand each other, Mr. Thorndyke. We think you a very
strong man, and strong men are liable to become dangerous. The State
organisation wishes you to remain where you are. But in the event
that I should be re-elected and should be forced to resign, I have no
hesitation in saying that unless something unforeseen happens you would
certainly have my personal good wishes toward getting you the party
nomination for Senator.”

“I understand you perfectly, Senator,” replied Thorndyke, with equal
coolness, “and though I admit I think it a shameful state of affairs
that any organisation or any man should have the power to dispose of
any man’s political future, yet it is a fixed fact in our State and
can’t be helped for the present. So far as your personal kindness to
me goes I have the deepest sense of it, and the chances are, on the
strength of what you have just said, that I may one day be senator.”

“And when you are you won’t be as much down on the State organisation
as you are now,” remarked Senator Standiford, beginning to climb the
marble steps. “You will probably be called a boss yourself.”

“No, I shall not,” answered Thorndyke. “I shouldn’t have the heart to
put men through the mill as I have seen you and Senator Bicknell and a
few others do.”

Senator Standiford professed to regard this as a pleasantry, and so
they entered the Capitol together.

The day was the regular one for the meeting of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, and there was a full attendance, every member
being prompt except the chairman. Ten minutes after the hour struck,
Crane entered. It was almost impossible for a man to have had the
personal triumph he had enjoyed the day before, without showing some
consciousness of it. Thorndyke had expected to see Crane crowing
like chanticleer. Instead, he was remarkably quiet and subdued. He
was greeted with the chaff which senators and representatives indulge
in after the manner of collegians. Several members addressed him as
the “Wondrous Boy,” and others, displaying copies of the Indianapolis
editorial, presented their claims to him for cabinet places and
embassies. One member--the Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins, a colleague
of Crane’s, who posed as a greenhorn and was really a wit--solemnly
engaged Thorndyke to write him a speech to deliver at the first
seasonable opportunity, but warned him not to make it too much like
the speech of the “Wondrous Boy.” Thorndyke laughed. He had taken no
part in the joking and chaffing. Crane’s face flushed. He did not like
to be reminded of Thorndyke’s share in his success, but he was too
considerable a man to deny it.

The meeting was brief and devoted to routine matters. The debate would
begin directly after the morning hour, and it was supposed it would go
along smoothly. There was, it is true, an able and malevolent person
from Massachusetts who would be likely to stick a knife between the
joints of Crane’s armour, and two or three Southern members who would
be certain to discover an infringement of the Constitution of the
United States in something or other--but these were only the expected
rough spots in an otherwise smooth road.

At two o’clock the debate began. Again were the galleries packed,
though not to the same degree as on the day before. When Crane rose to
defend the report he was loudly applauded. He was interrupted once or
twice by the able and malevolent representative from Massachusetts, who
never disappointed expectations in that particular. And there were some
sly allusions to the Indianapolis newspaper and the “Wondrous Boy.”
This bothered Crane obviously, who had a reasonable and wholesome fear
of ridicule. He had his share of a certain crude humour--God never
makes an American without putting humour of some sort into him--but
Crane’s was not the rapid-fire, give-and-take humour which counts in
debate. He was always afraid of committing some breach of taste and
decorum when he wished to raise a laugh. He remembered certain men
whose remarks had caused a tempest of mirth in the House, but those
same remarks seen in cold type next day had seriously damaged their
authors. It was here that Thorndyke came to Crane’s rescue. While he
sat glowering and fuming and hesitating, Thorndyke stood in the breach
with a good story, full of wit and pith. The House immediately went
into convulsions of laughter. The able and malevolent member from
Massachusetts in vain tried to bring the gentlemen back to a state of
seriousness and disgust with affairs generally. But the turn injected
by Thorndyke into the discussion put everybody into a good humour, the
debate went swimmingly, as it was foreseen, and when the adjournment
came it was plain that the report would be adopted substantially as it
came from the committee.

Thorndyke watched the big clock over the main doorway, and precisely
at four left the chamber, and likewise left Crane to his fate, which,
however, proved to be easy enough. Thorndyke had other business on hand
then.




_Chapter Five_

A RAPTUROUS HOUR WHICH WAS RUDELY INTERRUPTED


When Thorndyke got out of doors the bright morning had changed into a
cold, determined downpour of rain. The gray mists hung over the city
at the foot of the hill, and the summit of the monument was obscured
by sullen driving clouds. Thorndyke’s spirits rose as he surveyed the
gloomy prospect. It was not much of an afternoon for visiting--he
should find Constance alone.

He went to his rooms, dressed, and before five was at Constance
Maitland’s door. The afternoon had grown worse. A sad northeast wind
had been added to the rain; the lilac-bushes in the little lawn at the
side of the house drooped forlornly, and the dejected syringas looked
like young ladies caught out in the rain in their ball-gowns.

The rain, the cold, and the wind outside was the best possible foil
for the fire-lighted and flower-scented drawing-room, into which the
young negro butler ushered Thorndyke. The walls were of the delicate
pale green of the sea, the rug on the polished floor was of the green
of the moss. A wood fire danced and sang in a white-tiled fireplace,
and laughed at its reflection in the quaint mirrors about the room, and
glowed upon family portraits and miniatures on the walls. There were
many old-fashioned chairs and tables, and a deep, deep sofa drawn up to
the fire. By its side was a tea-table gleaming with antique silver.

Like most men, Thorndyke was highly susceptible to the environment of
women without being in the least able to analyse the feeling. It takes
a woman to dissect an emotion thoroughly. He became at once conscious
that this quaint, pretty, sparkling drawing-room was a home, and that
what was in it had no connection whatever with shops for antiques and
art-sale catalogues. He had often noticed with dislike the spurious
antiquity of many modern drawing-rooms, which are really museums, and
represent the desire of the new for the old. But Constance Maitland had
inherited the furnishings which made her drawing-room beautiful and
distinctive, and in process of use, especially by one family, chairs
and tables and tea-kettles acquire a semi-humanity which creates that
subtle and enduring thing called atmosphere. The portraits on the walls
gave an inhabited look to the room--it was never without company.

While Thorndyke was considering the curious fact that all the mere
money in the world could not create a drawing-room like Constance
Maitland’s, she herself entered the room with her slow, graceful step.
She wore a gown of a delicate gray colour, which trailed upon the
floor, and at her breast was a knot of pale yellow cowslips. A bowl of
the same old-fashioned flowers was on the tea-table.

Thorndyke had never been able to contemplate without agitation a
meeting with Constance Maitland. But, as on the two previous occasions,
so soon as he came face to face with her, nothing seemed easier,
sweeter, more natural than that they should meet. He placed a chair
for her, and they exchanged smilingly the commonplaces of meeting and
greeting. At once Thorndyke felt that delicious sense of comfort,
security, and well-being which some women can impart so exquisitely
in their own homes. The quiet, fire-lighted room seemed a paradise of
peace and rest, which was accentuated by the northeast storm without.
The surety that he would have the room, the fire, the sweet company of
Constance Maitland to himself made Thorndyke feel almost as if he had
a place there. And Constance, by not taking too much notice of him,
increased the dear illusion. She got into a spirited discussion with
the negro butler, who rejoiced in the good old-time name of Scipio, to
which Constance had added Africanus. Scipio had his notions of how tea
should be made, which were at variance with his mistress’s. After the
manner of his race, he proceeded to argue the point. Constance entered
with spirit into the controversy, and only settled it by informing
Scipio that where tea was concerned he was, and always would be, an
idiot, at which Scipio grinned in a superior manner. Thorndyke thought
Scipio in the right, and said so, as he drank a very good cup of tea
brewed by Constance.

“But I can never let Scipio believe for a moment that I am in the wrong
about anything,” replied Constance, with pensive determination. “You
dear, good Northern people never can be made to understand that with a
negro everything depends on the personal equation. He is not, and never
can be made, a human machine. He is a personality, and his usefulness
depends entirely on the recognition of that personality.”

“The commonly accepted idea of a servant is a human machine,” said
Thorndyke, willing to champion Scipio’s cause for the purpose of
having Constance Maitland’s soft eyes glow and sweet voice quicken in
discussion. In the old days at Como they had many hot wrangles over the
North and the South.

“Ah, if you had been served by human machines for eighteen years, as
I was, you would understand how I longed to see an honest, laughing
black face once more. My negro servants do much toward making this
house a home for me. You would laugh at the way we get on together.
When I am in an ill humour they must bear the brunt of it. I am a
terrible scold when I am cross. But when the servants are lazy and
neglectful, then I bear with them like an angel, and so we hit it off
comfortably together. Even Scipio Africanus, who is altogether idle
and irresponsible, becomes a hero when I am ill and a gentleman when I
am angry.”

“Another cup of tea, please.”

“Already? You will become a tea-drinker like Doctor Johnson. However,
my tea is so good that you are excused.”

The conversation went on fitfully, but to Thorndyke delightfully.
Like all women who truly know the world, Constance had a charming and
real simplicity about her. She made no effort to entertain him. She
talked to him and he replied or was silent according to his mood. Every
moment increased Thorndyke’s sense of exquisite comfort and quiet
enjoyment. He had reached the inevitable stage of life when amusements
are no longer warranted to amuse; when only a few things remained,
such as certain books and certain conversations, which were a surety
of pleasure. Nor had it been much in his way to enjoy those simple
pleasures which are found only in quiet and seclusion. It was as much a
feeling of gratitude as of enjoyment which made him say to Constance:

“I did not think there remained for me such an hour of rest and
refreshment as you have given me.”

Constance turned toward him, her eyes pensive but not sad. There was
something soothing in her very presence. She had known and suffered
much, and had led a life far from quiet, and now, in her maturity,
she had reached, it seemed to her, a haven of peace and quiet. She
had acquired a knowledge worth almost as much as youth itself--the
knowledge that never again could she suffer as she had once suffered.
And the meeting with Thorndyke had confirmed her in a belief which
had been her chief solace under the sorrows of her life of exile and
disappointment. She knew he loved her well. For some years of her
youth she had been haunted by the thought, cruel to her pride, that
Thorndyke, after all, had been only playing at love. But as time went
on, and she knew herself and others better, she had become convinced
that Thorndyke had truly loved her, and his leaving her was only what
any other man of honour, burdened with poverty, would have done. And he
had remembered and suffered, too. As this thought came into her mind
Thorndyke made some little remark that referred vaguely to their past,
something about a song from one of the Italian operas, those simple
love-stories told in lyrics which she had often sung in the old days. A
blush swept over Constance’s cheek, and after a little pause of silence
and hesitation she went to the piano and sang the quaint old song.
She had a pleasing, although not a brilliant, voice, and her singing
was full of sweetness and feeling, the only kind of singing which the
normal man really understands.

When she returned to her chair Thorndyke leaned toward her with
eyes which told her he loved her, although he did not utter a word.
Constance, in turn, resting her rounded chin on her hand, leaned toward
him with a heavenly smile upon her face--the smile a woman only bestows
on the man she loves. Even if he could never speak his love she was
conscious of it, and that was enough for her woman’s heart. Under the
spell of her eyes and smile Thorndyke felt himself losing his head--how
could he refrain from touching the soft white hand which hung so
temptingly near him!

“Mr. Crane,” announced Scipio Africanus, and Julian Crane walked in.

Every man receives a shock when he finds he has interrupted a
tête-à-tête, and Crane’s shock was augmented by finding that Thorndyke
was the victim in the present case. Thorndyke had not said a word about
going to see Miss Maitland, and Crane had meant to do a magnanimous
thing by taking him there! And while outside the door he had heard
Constance singing to the piano. She had never mentioned to him that she
had such an accomplishment.

Thorndyke behaved as men usually do under the circumstances. He spoke
to Crane curtly, assumed an injured air, and took his leave promptly,
as much as to say:

“It is impossible for me to stand this man a moment.”

Constance, womanlike, showed perfect composure and politeness, bade
Thorndyke good-bye with a smile, and then, by an effort, brought
herself to the contemplation of Julian Crane. She saw then that he
was very pale, and the hand which he rested on the back of a chair
was trembling. The first idea which occurred to her was that Crane
had heard bad news; but she could not understand why he should come
to her under the circumstances. Perhaps it was only nervousness, the
relaxation after great tension. With this in mind, she said pleasantly,
as they seated themselves:

“So you waked this morning and found yourself famous.”

“My speech appears to have been well received by the country,” replied
Crane, in a strained voice, after a pause.

“It is a pity Mrs. Crane was not present to enjoy your triumph,” she
said.

“Mrs. Crane does not care for politics,” replied Crane, still in a
strange voice.

“I cannot say that I am especially interested in politics,” replied
Constance, “but I am interested in contemporary history of all sorts.”

“And interested in your friends, Miss Maitland, when they are in public
life.”

“Extremely. I was at the House yesterday to hear you speak, and read
your speech over again this morning in the Congressional Record.”

“Which, no doubt, you received through Thorndyke,” Crane answered,
pointedly, after a moment.

Constance felt an inclination, as she often did, to get up and
leave the room when Crane was talking with her. He had no reserves
or restraints, and said just what was in his mind--a dangerous and
alarming practice. She controlled herself, however, and looked closer
at Crane. He was evidently deeply agitated, and Constance forbore the
rebuke that she was ready to speak. Like a true woman, to feel sorry
for a man was to forgive him everything. Suddenly Crane burst out:

“Have you heard the news? Senator Brand--our junior Senator--was run
over by a train at Baltimore this morning, and died within an hour.”

There is a way of announcing a death which shows that the speaker is
contemplating the dead man’s shoes with particular interest. Without
fully taking in what it meant to Crane and what he wished to convey,
Constance at once saw that in Senator Brand’s death lay some possible
great good for Crane. She remained silent a minute or two, her mind
involuntarily reconstructing the horror and pity of the dead man’s
taking off.

Crane rose and walked up and down the room, his face working.

“I have committed a great, a stupendous folly,” he said. “At the very
outset of my real career I may have ruined it. I couldn’t describe to
you what I have suffered this day--yet no one has suspected it. I felt
the necessity for sympathy, the necessity to tell my story to some one,
and I came to you. I know I have no right to do it--but it seems to me,
Constance, that ever since the day I first saw you, you have had some
strange power of sustaining and comforting me.”

As Crane spoke her name, Constance involuntarily rose and assumed an
air of offended dignity. But Crane’s distress was so real, his offence
so unconscious, that her indignation could not hold against him.

Without noticing her offended silence he came and sat down heavily in
the chair that Thorndyke had just vacated.

“You know,” he said, “in cases like this of Senator Brand’s death,
the Governor appoints a senator until the Legislature meets and can
elect, which will not be until the first of next January. Just as I
had heard the news about poor Brand at my hotel I ran into Sanders,
our Governor. I didn’t know he was in Washington. Sanders is a
brute--always thinking of himself first. He button-holed me, took me
into his bedroom, locked the door, and closed the transom. There were
three other men present--all of whom I would not wish to offend. One of
them has indorsed two unpaid notes for me. Sanders told me he had been
looking for me, and with these other fellows--practical politicians
every one of them--had already formulated a plan of campaign. The
Governor would appoint me to fill the vacancy until the Legislature
met in January and elected a senator for the short term, provided I
would give him a clear track then. In further recompense, he agreed
to support me for the long term--the election is only two years off.
Sanders has had the senatorial bee in his bonnet for a long time, but
the State organisation is not over-kindly to him, and Senator Bicknell
is a little bit afraid of him, and naturally wouldn’t encourage his
aspirations. And do you know, after an hour’s talk I allowed Sanders
and those three fellows to wheedle me into that arrangement--and, of
course, I can’t, in two years, supplant Senator Bicknell. Sanders is
a long-headed rascal, and he knew very well that I was under money
obligations to those men, and among them, aided and abetted by my own
folly, I was buncoed--yes, regularly buncoed.”

The rage and shame that possessed him seemed to overpower Crane for a
moment, and he covered his face with his hands. Then he dashed them
down and continued:

“Of course I could have made a good showing in the race in January,
and after my success of yesterday I believe I could have won. Senator
Bicknell is not by any means the czar in the State which he would wish
people to believe. But because Sanders dangled before my eyes the
bauble of the appointment to the Senate--a present mess of pottage--and
because I owed money I could not pay, I gave up the finest prospect of
success any man of my age has had for forty years!”

Crane struck the arm of his chair with his clinched fist. His furious
and sombre eyes showed the agony of his disappointment.

“As soon as it was done I knew my folly, and since then I have been
almost like a madman. I went to my room to recover myself before going
to the Capitol, and managed not to betray myself while I was there.
But I couldn’t stand the strain until adjournment; I had to come to
you.”

Constance sat looking at him; pity, annoyance, and a kind of disgust
struggled within her. This, then, was politics. Accomplished woman
of the world that she was, this natural and untutored man thoroughly
disconcerted her. If only she had not felt such pity for him! And while
she was contemplating the spectacle of these elemental passions of
hatred, disappointment, revenge, and self-seeking, Crane’s eyes, fixed
on her, lost some of their fury, and became more melancholy than angry,
and he continued, as if thinking aloud:

“Suddenly I felt the desire to see you. You would know how insane was
my folly, but you would not despise me for it. That’s the greatest
power in the world a woman has over a man: when he can show her all
his heart, and she will pity him without scorn or contempt. Ah, if
Fate had given me a wife like you, I could have reached the heights of
greatness!”

At those words Constance Maitland moved a little closer to him so that
she could bring him under the full effect of her large, clear gaze.

“I think,” she said, in a cool, soft voice, with a rebuke in it,
but without contempt, “that you are forgetting yourself strangely. I
have often noticed in you a want of reticence. You should begin now
to cultivate reticence. What you have just said has in it something
insulting to me as well as to your wife--a person you seem to have
forgotten. As for the political arrangement which you regret so
much, I can only say that it seems to me to have been cold-blooded
and unfeeling on both sides to a remarkable degree. You have spoken
plainly; I speak plainly.”

Constance leaned back quietly in her chair to watch the effect of what
she had said. She felt then a hundred years older than Crane, who
was older than she, and who knew both law and politics well, but was
a child in the science of knowing the world and the people in it--a
science in which Constance Maitland excelled. But even her rebuke had
a fascination for him. No other woman had ever rebuked him--his wife
least of all.

“Do you complain of me,” he said, “for telling you my weaknesses, my
misfortunes? Don’t you see that what you have just told me is proof of
all I have said? You see my faults, you tell me of them, you inspire
me with a desire to correct them. No other woman ever did so much for
me. Is it forbidden to any one to utter a regret?”

“Very often it is forbidden,” replied Constance, promptly. “Unavailing
regrets are among the most undignified things on earth. Is it possible
that you have lived past your fortieth birthday without getting rid
of that school-boy idea that our environment makes us--that a man
is made by his wife, or by any other human agent except himself? So
long as self-love is the master passion, so long will we heed our own
persuasions more than any one else’s.”

“I hardly think you understand how things are with me,” replied Crane,
his eyes again growing sombre. “Yesterday was an epoch-making day with
me. To-day, the first of the new epoch, I make a hideous mistake. It
unmans me; it unnerves me. Not often do two such catastrophes befall
a man together. I follow an impulse and come to you and you are angry
with me. Bah! How narrow and conventional are women, after all!
Nevertheless,” he kept on, rising to his feet and suddenly throwing
aside his dejection, “no man ever yet rose to greatness without making
vast mistakes and retrieving them. This moment the way of retrieving
my mistake has come to me. I will go to Sanders--no, I will write and
keep a certified copy of the letter--saying that I shall withdraw from
my engagements with him. I will refuse to accept the appointment as
Senator and will contest the election with him before the Legislature.
But--but--if only the man who indorsed my notes hadn’t been in the
combine!”

As suddenly as he had rallied, Crane again sank into dejection.

“You don’t know what it is to want money desperately--desperately, I
say,” he added.

“N-no,” replied Constance, slowly. “I think I know the want of
everything else almost which is necessary to happiness--except only the
want of money.”

“Then you have escaped hell itself, Miss Maitland. This American
Government, which you think so impeccable, is the most niggardly on the
face of the globe. With untold wealth, it pays the men who conduct its
affairs a miserable pittance--a bare living. How can a man give his
whole mind to great governmental and economic problems when nine out
of ten public men owe more than they can pay? I owe more than I can
pay, and I owe, besides, a host of obligations of all sorts which the
borrower of money, especially if he is a public man, cannot escape.”

Constance, at this, felt more real pity and sympathy for Crane than
she had yet felt. Women being in the main intensely practical, and
in their own singular way more material than men, the want of money
always appeals to them. And Constance had an income much greater than
her wants--that is, unless she happened to want an American husband.
Every other luxury was within her reach. This idea occurred to her
grotesquely enough at the moment. She said, after a moment’s pause:

“It seems to me that to make your disentanglement complete, you
should, if possible, pay your debt to the man that you say helped to
wheedle you into the arrangement. You might easily borrow the money;
it is probably not a large sum. If--if--perhaps Mr. Thorndyke--might
arrange----”

Crane instantly divined the generous thought in Constance Maitland’s
heart.

“No,” he said. “I know what you would do--through Thorndyke. But it
is not to be thought of. With all my shortcomings, I can’t think of
borrowing money from a woman. But your suggestion is admirable--the
payment of the money is necessary. It is not much.”

Crane named something under a thousand dollars--and then fell silent.

“Mr. Crane,” said Constance, after a while, “what advice do you think
your wife would give you as to that money?”

Crane smiled a little.

“Annette is a regular Spartan when it comes to practical matters. She
would advise me to give up my rooms at the expensive hotel and go into
the country near-by for the balance of the session.”

“Could any advice be more judicious?” asked Constance. “And is it any
disadvantage to a public man, who is known to be a poor man, to live
plainly?”

“By Heaven!” exclaimed Crane. “You are right! It would show those
fellows in the Legislature next January that I have clean hands. What
an admirable suggestion! And I can save at least enough to pay half
what I owe on that note before the end of the session!”

“You forget,” said Constance, gently, “that the suggestion really is
your wife’s. Perhaps, if you had listened to her oftener, you would
have found life easier. You are, perhaps, like many another man--he
marries a pretty little thing, and she remains to him a pretty little
thing. Meanwhile, she may have developed a capacity for affairs far
superior to his.”

Crane did not like the hint that perhaps Annette’s head for affairs was
better than his, but he had heard several home-truths that afternoon.

He rose to go, and his changed aspect confirmed his words when he said
earnestly to Constance:

“I came in here with shame and despair in my heart. I go away
enlightened and encouraged and comforted beyond words. You will at
least let me say that it is to you I owe it.”

“Good-bye,” replied Constance, cheerfully.

The feeling that another woman’s husband or lover can be enlightened,
encouraged, and comforted by her is a very awkward circumstance to a
woman of sense.




_Chapter Six_

DEVILS AND ANGELS FIGHT FOR THE SOULS OF MEN


Crane went back to his rooms, wrote his letter to Governor Sanders, and
awaited developments.

Nothing happened for more than a week concerning the senatorship.
Meanwhile, he gave up his expensive rooms, and with the assistance of a
note-broker managed to borrow enough money from Peter to pay Paul and
to relieve himself from present obligations to one of the gentlemen who
had so urgently invited him to commit political hari-kari. He secured
quiet quarters in one of the suburbs of Washington and found that he
was quite as comfortable as he had been at his high-priced hotel, at
about one-fourth the cost.

The May days that followed were cool and bright and soft, as May
days in Washington often are. The called session of Congress and the
necessary presence of so many officials and diplomats made the gay
town gayer than usual. The whole country was in a mood of exhilaration
and self-gratulation, which was vividly reflected at Washington.

There could be no doubt that Crane’s success was real and substantial,
and that he was already a person to be reckoned with.

Crane hugged himself with satisfaction when he reflected on his escape
from being interned in the Senate, forced to remain quiescent during
the time that he should have been most active, and finally enter the
senatorial contest, two years ahead, with a reputation which would
probably have dwindled as rapidly as it had developed. Instead of that
he was in the centre of movement and interest, and even if he could
not make a serious effort before the Legislature in January, he was
in a good strategic position for the senatorial election two years in
advance--and a great deal may happen in two years.

The Secretary of State, however, was disappointed in Crane. He
proved to be quite as intractable as Thorndyke had been, and with
less excuse--for Thorndyke had never been asked to little dinners
at the Secretary’s house. The Secretary’s widowed daughter, Mrs.
Hill-Smith, the beautiful, well-gowned, soft-voiced granddaughter of
Cap’n Josh Slater, of Ohio River fame, murmured once or twice when
Crane was under discussion that he was “so very Western,” and assumed
a rather apologetic tone for having been seen at the play with him.
The Secretary himself, despairing of making the chairman of the House
Committee on Foreign Affairs a handy tool for the State Department,
returned to his legitimate business. This business consisted of
labouring and slaving, in conjunction with foreign chancelleries, to
make elaborate treaties, which the House and Senate treated as college
football teams treat the pigskin on hard-fought fields. The Secretary
felt peculiarly aggrieved over the Brazilian affair, in which the State
Department made a ridiculously small figure, in spite of innumerable
letters, memoranda, protocols, treaties, and what not. When the time
came for action the Congress had quietly taken the whole matter in
charge, and had not even censured the Secretary if it could not praise
him. Could he have been attacked and denounced, as Mr. Balfour and M.
Combes and Chancellor von Buelow, and the Prime Ministers of Europe
were, it would have been a consolation. But even this was cruelly
denied him. He had gone through all the strenuous forms of diplomacy
which meant something a hundred years ago, when there was neither cable
nor telegraph, and when diplomats were not merely clerks and auditors
of their respective foreign offices. The Secretary had practised all
the diplomatic expedients he knew. When he had not made up his mind
what to say to an ambassador, he had gone to bed with lumbago. When he
wished to impress one of the great Powers of Europe with the notion
that it had in him a Bismarck to deal with, he had lighted a cigar in
the presence of five full-fledged ambassadors. Remembering how eagerly
the world always waited for the speech of the Prime Minister of England
at the annual Lord Mayor’s banquet, the Secretary had spent a whole
month composing and revising his remarks at a great banquet in New York
on Decoration Day, and the reporters had got his speech all wrong, and
a disrespectful New York newspaper had made game of his trousers, had
compared them to Uncle Josh Whitcomb’s in “The Old Homestead,” and had
asked pertinently--or impertinently--where the Secretary had hired
them. In Congress he fared little better. The Senate had taken some
small notice of him. In the House he had been practically ignored,
except once when a member alluded to having “an interview with the
Secretary of State.” A member of his own party, the same Honourable
Mark Antony Hudgins, of Texas, who had guyed Crane, had sternly rebuked
his colleague for his phraseology, and declared that what he should
have said was “an audience with the Prime Minister”--and the House
laughed at the unseemly joke. The Secretary had in secret a low opinion
of the collective wisdom of Congress, and in this he was at one with
the whole diplomatic body in Washington.

Crane, like everybody else, had really forgotten the Secretary in the
press of affairs. He was amazed at not receiving an answer to his
letter to Governor Sanders, and so told Thorndyke one night a few days
after their meeting at Constance Maitland’s house. Crane had a great
esteem for Thorndyke’s sincerity, which was justified, and Thorndyke,
in his heart, was forced to admire Crane’s force and to expect great
things of him. He did not entertain any doubt of Crane’s loyalty, but
he watched curiously the development of the character of a man exposed
to Crane’s peculiar temptations. That Crane had both good and bad
qualities in great vigour he saw easily enough, but he could not tell
which were the fundamentals. Crane was desperately poor, was foolishly
proud, was rash and vainglorious, and was destined to shine brilliantly
in the world of politics. What was to become of such a man? What
usually became of such men? It was with these thoughts that Thorndyke,
at his lodgings, on a warm May night, listened to Crane’s account of
what had happened to him in the last few days.

He assured Crane that his conduct regarding Governor Sanders and the
senatorship seemed eminently sensible, after deducting the initial
folly of it. And his making his first serious attempt to save
money at the very time when it might be expected he would become
extravagant inclined Thorndyke to the belief that Crane was, after all,
fundamentally honest.

Crane at that very moment suffered from a feeling of conscious guilt.
He had begun to practise more than the one virtue of economy. He was
practising several others, but all with a view to his own advantage.
One of them was that his wife should come on and visit him during the
remainder of the session. She had not been in Washington for five
years--not since that first unlucky venture in the Eleventh Street
boarding-house.

He mentioned to Thorndyke his intention to send for his wife, and had
the grace to say that it was because he was lonely without her--and
in saying so he was conscious of uttering a colossal lie. But being
inexpert as a liar he did badly, and felt ashamed of doing badly even
in lying.

Thorndyke, on whom Annette Crane’s simple and natural charm had made a
strong impression, was pleased at the thought that Crane would pay her
the compliment of having her with him and pleased at the thought of
seeing her again.

“I shall be going West next week,” he said, “and if Mrs. Crane is ready
to come to Washington I shall be proud to escort her back.”

“Thank you,” answered Crane, “it would be a kindness to me as well as
to Mrs. Crane. She is not an experienced traveller.”

Both Thorndyke and Crane when they were together desired to keep
Constance Maitland out of their conversation, but by one of those
contradictory and involuntary impulses which cannot be accounted for,
her name always came up between them. This time it was by Crane’s
saying, after a while:

“Have you seen Miss Maitland lately?”

“I dined there night before last,” answered Thorndyke.

Crane knew that Constance Maitland’s favourite form of entertaining
was at little dinners, which were perfection in the way of guests and
service. He had never been asked to one of them, and thought gloomily
that after Constance’s very plain speaking to him at their last
interview his chance of being invited was thin to attenuation.

“Was that the night that fellow Hudgins from Texas dined there?”
asked Crane, who had not taken Constance’s sound advice to cultivate
reticence.

“Yes, and I never saw a better dinner-man than Hudgins, nor was ever at
a more agreeable dinner.”

“Bosh! Hudgins?”

“Yes, Hudgins. The fellow has a quiet manner, a soft voice, and the
most delightful and archaic reverence for ‘the ladies,’ as he calls
them. It is like what history tells us of General Sam Houston. Hudgins
was a screaming success at the dinner.”

Seeing that the account of Hudgins’s triumph gave Crane acute
discomfort, Thomdyke, lighting a fresh cigar, kept on remorselessly:

“Miss Maitland wanted to ask some really representative man to meet
Sir Mark le Poer, a very agreeable and considerable Englishman, one
of the permanent under-secretaries in the British Foreign Office--it
seems he is a great friend of hers. He had been gorgeously entertained
by all the retired trades-people who are in the smart set here, but
complained that he hadn’t met any Americans--they _would_ ask all the
diplomats to meet him, fellows that bored him to death in Europe and
still more so here. It seems that Miss Maitland had heard that the
long, thin, soft-voiced Texan was delightful at dinner--so she asked
me to bring him to call, and the dinner invitation followed. Besides
Sir Mark and Hudgins and myself, there was Cathcart--a navy man--good
old New England family, four generations in the navy, travelled man
of the world, and flower of civilisation. But Hudgins was easily the
star of the occasion. There were three other women present besides Miss
Maitland, all of them charming women, who know the world and command
it; and the way they, as well as the Englishman and the naval officer,
fell in love with Hudgins and his soft Texas accent, and his stupendous
Texas yarns, and his way of looking at things--well, it was a show.”

“Oh, come, Thorndyke--Hudgins!”

“Yes, Hudgins, I tell you. When the time came for the ladies to leave
the table none of them wanted to go, and they said so. Then Hudgins
rose and said in that inimitable manner of his, which catches the women
every time, ‘If Miss Maitland would kindly permit it, I’d rather a
million times go into the parlour with her and the other ladies than
stay out here with these fellows. I can get the society of men and a
cigar any day, but it isn’t often that I can bask in the presence of
ladies like these present.’ And the presumptuous dog actually walked
off and left us in the lurch--and you can depend upon it, the women
liked him better than any of us.”

“If women are won by compliments like that, any man can win their
favour,” said Crane, crossly.

“My dear fellow, women know vastly more than we do. It wasn’t Hudgins’s
compliments in words that won the women--it was his giving up his
cigar and the extra glass of champagne and the society of men that
fetched ’em--it was the sincerity of the thing. When we went into the
drawing-room Hudgins was sitting on the piano-stool telling them some
sentimental story about his mother down in Texas when he started out
in life, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a six-shooter
in his pocket. The women were nearly in tears. As for the rest of us,
including Sir Mark le Poer, we simply weren’t in it with Hudgins. We
stayed until nearly midnight; then the men adjourned to the club, where
Hudgins kept us until three o’clock in the morning telling us more
yarns about Texas. Sir Mark would hardly let him out of sight, and
Hudgins has engaged to spend August with him in Scotland at a splendid
place he has near Inverness. That’s the way a man with great natural
gifts of entertaining and being entertained can get on, if he has a
chance.”

Crane felt humiliated and disappointed. In all honesty, he could not
imagine why he, with his recognised talents, his extreme good looks,
his fondness for society, should have no such social triumphs as that
long, lean, lanky Texan. He had not grasped the truth that society is
a pure democracy, and until a man has abandoned all pretensions to
superiority he will not be acceptable in it.

Just then, along the dusky street a carriage came rolling. At
Thorndyke’s door it stopped, a footman descended from the box and
assisted Senator Bicknell to alight.

“The Senator has come hunting you up,” Thorndyke remarked to Crane.
“When a man is anxious enough to see you to come after you, it is
generally possible to make your own terms with him.”

Crane’s backbone was considerably stiffened by this remark of
Thorndyke’s, and then Senator Bicknell walked in the room and greeted
Thorndyke and Crane affably. He made an elaborate apology for seeking
Crane, but said frankly he wished to discuss some matters of State
politics with him.

Thorndyke at once rose to leave the room, but Crane, asking Senator
Bicknell if he had any objection to Thorndyke’s remaining and the
Senator feebly agreeing to it, Thorndyke sat down again to enjoy the
scrap. As it was not in his own party, he was a perfectly disinterested
listener.

“Mr. Crane,” began Senator Bicknell, in a dulcet voice, “I hardly
think you realise what it means to our State organisation to introduce
discord into it at this time.”

It was less than fourteen months before a national convention and the
rainbow of a Presidential nomination had arisen upon Senator Bicknell’s
political horizon. This had happened more than once, but the Senator
had never been able, heretofore, to catch the rainbow by the tail--yet,
hope springs eternal in the human breast.

To this Crane replied, firmly:

“I desire, Senator, to do everything I can to promote harmony in the
State organisation. It is Governor Sanders who is making trouble, and I
shall defend myself from him, and die in the last ditch, if necessary.”

Crane was by nature a gladiator, and the prospect of a fight by no
means discomposed him.

Senator Bicknell sighed. He had already on his hands nine bloody
fights in various parts of the State, and the prospect of a tenth
fight, of a triangular nature at that, with two such sluggers as Crane
and the Governor of the State, made the Senator’s head ache. He looked
sadly at Thorndyke and yearned after a knowledge of the secret by which
his friend, Senator Standiford, could get hold of a man like Thorndyke,
and keep him forever in a subordinate position, while he, Senator
Bicknell, was always engaged in a tussle with his lieutenants.

Crane improved the opportunity to explain fully his position; and there
could not be the slightest doubt that he had narrowly escaped from a
conspiracy meant to ruin him.

Senator Bicknell said little and was evidently impressed by Crane’s
statement. Thorndyke was mentally comparing his own boss with Crane’s
boss. All the pleas in the world would not have availed Crane had he
been dealing with Standiford. He would have been required to sacrifice
himself without a moment’s hesitation and accept the disastrous
honour of the senatorial appointment or be quietly put out of the
way. Politics with Senator Standiford was a warfare in which quarter
was neither asked nor given, and no time was permitted to succour the
wounded or bury the dead. Yet Thorndyke doubted if Senator Bicknell, or
any man then in public life, had ever known a tithe of the tremendous
parental passion which Senator Standiford had for his daughter. So
strange a thing is human nature.

A discussion followed Crane’s words which made a very important fact
clear: that Crane had suddenly become a factor in State politics.
Crane’s colour deepened as Senator Bicknell made a last effort with
him for peace with Sanders, and when it was met with a firm refusal
to accept the appointment, Senator Bicknell dropped some words which
indicated plainly that if forced to choose sides he might be with
Crane. For a man who a month before had been obscure this was a vast
though silent triumph.

After an hour’s talk Senator Bicknell got up and departed. It was well
on toward ten o’clock, and Crane, too, rose to go. Thorndyke went out
with him and they walked together as far as the foot of the hill at
Connecticut Avenue. Then Thorndyke turned back, to indulge in a folly
which had been his nightly, since that first afternoon with Constance
Maitland. It was, to pass within sight of her house, then to return
sick at heart to his own rooms and ask himself if he could be such a
fool as to wish her to give up that charming home for lodgings such as
he could afford.

Crane presently reached his quarters, a comfortable suburban house with
many verandas, and not unlike his own house at Circleville. On the
table in his room lay a parcel, evidently containing photographs. He
opened it and took out a photograph of his wife with her two children,
Roger and Elizabeth, by her side. The children were handsome--the boy
the sturdy, well-made replica of his father, the little girl her mother
in miniature; both of them children of whom any father might be proud.
As for Annette, the sweetness, the soft, appealing character of her
beauty, was singularly brought out in the photograph. Nor was there any
suspicion of weakness in the face, which most men would have fallen in
love with on the spot.

But Crane was dissatisfied. She was not a woman even to be talked
about. Crane would have liked a woman whose name would be in the
newspapers every day. True, Constance Maitland kept out of them all
she could, but she was too striking a personality not to attract the
attention of the society correspondents. If she had been the wife of a
public man, she would have been in print quite as often as he was.

Still Crane was glad he had sent for his wife. He had not realised
until this crisis in his fate had come upon him what a mistake he
had made in not having her with him sometimes. Not a man of his
acquaintance who owned a wife but had her occasionally in Washington.
He began to think with terror of what his enemies might have to say
concerning this, and then, going to his table, wrote Annette another
letter more urgent than his first, in his desire that she should come
to Washington. He mentioned the chance that Thorndyke, who had never
failed to show interest in her, had offered to escort her East. He felt
like a hero and a martyr while writing this. But after he had posted
his letter, and he had gone back to the balcony of his room and gazed
out into the solemn night, he had a return of that strange sense of
guilt. He felt like a hypocrite; and, as he was not a hypocrite by
nature, the feeling was uncomfortable. He put his request to Annette
on the same ground he had alleged to Thorndyke--his wish to see her.
And he ought to wish to see her--he _did_ wish to see her; but the
stillness of the night and the presence of the stars is disconcerting
sometimes to one’s conscience. The stars were very bright and it was
wonderfully clear, although the moon was just rising. Tall apartment
houses blazing with light made centres of radiance in the purple night.
The Washington monolith was like a pillar of cloud, and the dome of
the Capitol seemed suspended in mid-air. It was all very beautiful,
but Crane saw nothing of its beauty. He saw only before him a struggle
with stupendous forces--these he feared not--but also a struggle with
himself; and this he feared! He went to bed and slept uneasily.




_Chapter Seven_

HOW VARIOUS PERSONS SPENT A MAY SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON


Next morning Crane rose with the intention of going to church--a thing
he had not done for years. And in the practice of this virtue he
committed an act of the greatest hypocrisy. He knew the very hour when
Hardeman, the correspondent of his home paper, took his Sunday morning
stroll on Connecticut Avenue. Crane timed his own appearance so that he
met Hardeman directly in front of the Austrian Embassy.

In half a minute afterward Crane mentioned that he was on his way to
church.

As he spoke Hardeman took a newspaper out of his pocket, and opening
it, held it up before Crane. On the first page, with the most violent
display-head, was the official announcement of his appointment by
Governor Sanders to the unexpired time of the late Senator Brand’s
term.

Crane turned pale. He was ready for the fight, but the fight had come
unexpectedly soon. And that it was to be to the knife, and knife to the
hilt, was now perfectly plain.

“Come with me,” said he to Hardeman, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”

They turned back to Dupont Circle, seated themselves on a bench left
vacant by a coloured brother, and Crane told the whole story to
Hardeman to be printed next day.

As he talked, his course of action, simple, above-board, and effective,
at once took shape in his mind. He wrote out on a pocket-pad a letter
to the Governor, saying as the Governor had thought fit to make the
public aware of his action in the senatorship before communicating with
Crane himself, that he, Crane, should do likewise and make a public
declination of it. He then gave a brief statement of what had passed,
inserted a copy of his first letter to the Governor, and reiterated his
refusal to accept the senatorship. Hardeman, a keen-eyed man, was in
the seventh heaven of delight. The letter would, of course, be sent to
the Associated Press, but there was “a good story” for the home paper,
and a specific mention that Representative Crane was on his way to
church when the news was communicated to him.

Crane, still pale, rose and announced that he should keep on to
church--a fact also certain to be chronicled. Church was a very
good place to think out the problems which would come out of this
extraordinary and far-reaching fight.

He went on, sat through a long sermon of which he heard not a word,
listened to the musical gymnastics of a high-priced quartette, and
gradually became himself, or, rather, more than himself, for the
fight at hand brought out in him all the thews and sinews of courage,
foresight, and judgment. At the very last, when the name of God was
mentioned in the final prayer, Crane had one moment of sincere piety.
Otherwise his thoughts were very far from pious, being absolutely those
of self-seeking and revenge. Like other men, he promised himself that
when Mammon had granted him all he wanted, then he would turn to God.

When he found himself on the street again it was a little past twelve
o’clock. He turned into the side streets to escape the throng of
people going home from church. As he walked under the arcade of the
sweet-smelling tulip-trees with the May sunshine filtering through, he
felt the ever-present longing for sympathy. He would have liked to go
to Constance Maitland, but something in her tone and manner at their
last meeting made him afraid.

On that former occasion he had scarcely been master of himself, he did
not know when he was offending her; but now he was far more composed.
Yet he dared not go.

While these thoughts were passing through his mind he looked up and
saw Constance coming down the street under the dappled shadows of the
tulip-trees. She was dressed simply in black, but Crane had never
been more struck by the distinction of her appearance. With her was a
fine-looking man whom Crane surmised was Cathcart, the naval man. Crane
intended to pass the pair without stopping, but when he raised his hat
Constance halted him. There was that ever-present feeling of pity for
him, and she was conscious of having said some hard things to him in
that last interview.

“I have glanced at the newspaper this morning,” she said, “and I fancy
your friend, Governor Sanders, has treated you rather shabbily.”

“Very shabbily,” replied Crane, smiling; “he has driven me to the wall,
but he will find me fighting with my back to the wall.”

Then Constance introduced her companion, and it was Cathcart, after all.

“You can’t expect much sympathy from me, Mr. Crane,” said Cathcart,
smiling. “If it had not been for you and your colleagues I might
have been in command of a ship at this moment, making a run for the
Caribbean Sea. You did us naval men a bad turn by forcing those beggars
to back down without striking a blow.”

Cathcart, like all naval men, was eager to play the great game of
war with the new implements lately acquired, and did not welcome the
exercise of peaceful power which had forced an amicable arrangement of
a dangerous question.

Just then a handsome victoria drew up at the sidewalk. In it sat Mrs.
Hill-Smith, the widowed daughter of the Secretary of State, and a
beautifully dressed, high-bred-looking girl, Eleanor Baldwin. Baldwin,
_père_, whose cards read, “Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin,” was the
successful inventor of a machine for stitching shoes, which had brought
him a great fortune early in life, and had enabled him to establish
himself in Washington and adopt the rôle of a gentleman of leisure
and of inherited fortune. His daughter looked like the younger sister
of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, as Mrs. Hill-Smith, Cap’n Josh Slater’s
granddaughter, looked like Lady Clara Vere de Vere herself.

Mrs. Hill-Smith beckoned to Constance, who approached, leaving the
two men a little distance away talking together under the overhanging
branches of the tulip-trees.

“My dear girl,” said Mrs. Hill-Smith, who had adopted the “dear girl”
mode of addressing all women like herself over thirty-five, “you must
come to the meeting of the Guild for Superannuated Governesses, which
is to be organised at my house to-morrow. It is a branch of the one
presided over in London by the Princess Christian”--and Mrs. Hill-Smith
ran over glibly a number of names of ladies of the diplomatic corps in
Washington who were interested in it, winding up with, “And we _can’t_
get on without you.”

Constance Maitland’s full gaze had in it power over women as well as
over men, and Mrs. Hill-Smith was not quite certain whether there was a
laugh or not in Constance’s deep, dark eyes, as turning them on her she
replied:

“Very well--but my first proposition will be revolutionary, I warn you.
I shall suggest that we pay governesses enough to enable them to save
something, and thus we can get hold of the economic problem by the head
instead of by the tail.”

Was she really in earnest? Mrs. Hill-Smith did not know, but there
was certainly a flippancy in Constance’s tone which shocked both Mrs.
Hill-Smith and Miss Baldwin. The serious, hard-working women by whom
they were mothered and grandmothered had given them a deadly soberness
and energy in the pursuit of social schemes and pleasures, just as
their forbears had industriously and seriously washed and baked and
brewed.

Mrs. Hill-Smith was so annoyed by Constance’s manner of receiving her
communication that if Constance had not been very intimate at the
British Embassy Mrs. Hill-Smith would have made her displeasure felt.
But she was constitutionally timid, like all social new-comers--timid
in admitting people into her circle, and timid in turning them out--so
she merely smiled brightly and said as they drove off:

“You’ll come like a dear, and be as revolutionary as you please.
Good-bye.”

Constance, with her two men, lingered a minute, and then Crane left
her. He yearned for his stenographer, and set out to seek him. Cathcart
walked home with Constance and left her at the door. She was malicious
enough to describe to him some of Mrs. Hill-Smith’s charities, at which
Cathcart was in an ecstasy of amusement.

Meanwhile Mrs. Hill-Smith went home with Eleanor Baldwin to what they
called breakfast, but most Americans call luncheon. On the way the two
women had discussed Constance Maitland cautiously--each afraid to let
on to the other what she really thought--because, after all, Constance
was intimate at the British Embassy.

Arrived at the Baldwin house--an imposing white stone mansion, with
twenty-five bedrooms for a family of four, of whom one was a boy at
school, a family which never had a visitor overnight--Eleanor led the
way to the library, where her father sat.

It was a great, high-ceiled, cool room, dark, in spite of many windows
and a glass door opening on a balcony. At a library table near the
glass door sat Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, alias Jim Baldwin, and on
the balcony outside, under the awning, sat Mrs. James Baldwin, née
Hogan.

It was easy to see whence Eleanor Baldwin had got her beauty. Jim
Baldwin was handsome, Nora Hogan Baldwin was handsomer.

From the days when Jim Baldwin had carried home parcels of tea and
buckets of butter in his father-in-law’s corner grocery, he had
cherished an honourable ambition to have a great big library full
of books. In the course of time, through the operations of the
shoe-stitching machine, he had been able to gratify this ambition and
taste. He had all of those books which Charles Lamb declares “are no
books--that is, all the books which no gentleman’s library should be
without.” They were all bound sumptuously in calf, and éditions de luxe
were as common as flies in a baker’s shop. The four vast walls were
lined with these treasures, and from them Baldwin derived an excess
of pleasure. This was not by reading them--he had never read a book in
his life. Two Chicago newspapers, one from New York, and the Washington
morning and evening papers satisfied his cravings for knowledge.
But he got from the outside of his books all the pleasure that most
people get from the inside. He justly felt that to be seen surrounded
by the glorious company of the living who died a thousand years ago,
and the conspicuous dead who live to-day, was to give him dignity and
poise. Nobody but himself knew that he never read. His days were spent
in his library--he always spoke of himself as “among my books”--and
shrewd, sharp, and keen as he was and ever must remain, he had actually
succeeded in bamboozling himself into the notion that he was a person
of “literary tastes.”

Mrs. Baldwin was one of the handsomest women in Washington, and
considered quite the proudest. Her abundant grey hair, setting off
a face of Grecian beauty, gave her a look as of a queen in the days
of powder and patches. She had a rarity of speech, a way of looking
straight ahead of her, which was regal. But this exterior of pride was
really a result of the sincerest bashfulness and reserve. When Nora
Hogan, the grocer’s daughter, had married Jim Baldwin, the contractor’s
son, Fortune was already smiling on Jim. Then suddenly she opened
her apron and deluged him with gold. Mrs. Baldwin was frightened
and stunned. She was afraid to say much for fear she might make
mistakes--so she gradually came to saying nothing at all. She dreaded
to look from side to side for fear she might find some one laughing
at her. So she always looked straight ahead of her. By degrees she
acquired a degree of coldness, of stiffness, that was perfectly well
suited to the mother of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. She was, of course,
an unhappy woman, being a misjudged one. Her chief solace lay in the
practice of secret acts of charity among the poorest of the poor, not
letting her left hand know what her right hand did. The promoters of
fashionable charities complained that Mrs. Baldwin was so stately and
so unsympathetic that they could not get on with her in charitable
work. True it is, that at the meetings for fashionable charities Mrs.
Baldwin would be more silent, more queenly than ever, but her heart
would be crying aloud for the poor who are born to suffer and to
die, and to have helped them she would cheerfully have given the very
clothes off her back. But cowardice kept her silent, as it kept her
silent in the presence of her servants, whom she feared inexpressibly.

If Mrs. Baldwin was constitutionally timid, not so Eleanor. All
the courage of her father had gone into his willowy, beautiful,
well-groomed daughter. Her first recollections were of the inland
town where they lived secluded in their big house, because nobody was
good enough for them to associate with after their fortune was made.
Then she was taken to Europe and returned a finished product, with no
more notion of what the word “American” meant than if she had been a
daughter of the Hapsburgs. As a compromise between Europe and America,
Baldwin had pitched upon Washington as a place of residence. His social
status had been agreeably fixed by a lucky accident--he had been asked
to be pall-bearer for a foreign Minister who died in Washington.
Baldwin rightly considered the dead diplomat worth, to him, all the
live ones going; for, having assisted in carrying the dead man from
the Legation to the hearse, Baldwin was, in consequence, elected to
the swell club, asked to the smart cotillion, and made more headway in
a month in the smart set than he could have made otherwise in a year.
He repaid his debt to the dead diplomat by buying some very ordinary
pictures at the sale of the Minister’s effects, and paying the most
extravagant price ever heard of for them.

To Eleanor their social rise was nothing surprising. She expected it,
having been bred like a young princess, only with less of democracy
than real princesses are bred. When she entered the room with Mrs.
Hill-Smith, Baldwin rose and responded smilingly to Mrs. Hill-Smith’s
remark:

“Here you are, as usual, among your books.”

“Yes--as usual, among my books. I daresay your father, the Secretary,
spends a good deal of time among _his_ books.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Mrs. Hill-Smith, airily, “but he has been dreadfully
put out of late. Congress has been so troublesome. I don’t know exactly
_how_, but it has annoyed papa extremely.”

“Very reprehensible,” said Baldwin, earnestly, who had the opinion
of the average commercial man that Congress is a machine to create
prosperity, or its reverse, and if prosperity is not created,
Congressmen are blamed fools.

“I _hate_ Congressmen--except a few from New York,” said Eleanor,
drawing off her gloves daintily. “There was one talking to Miss
Maitland when we stopped her on the street just now. The creature was
introduced to me at one of those queer Southern houses where they
introduce people without asking permission first, and ever since then
the man has tried to talk to me whenever we meet. But I really couldn’t
stand him. This morning I cut him dead. His name is Crane, and he’s
from somewhere in the West.”

Now it happened that there was another Crane in the House from the
West, and Baldwin had a business motive for wishing to cultivate this
particular Crane--and business was business still with Jim Baldwin. So,
at Eleanor’s words, he turned on her. His air of scholar-and-gentleman,
man-of-the-world, and person-of-inherited-leisure suddenly dropped from
him; he was once more Jim Baldwin, the shoe-stitching-machine man.

“Then let me tell you,” he said, authoritatively, “you made a big
mistake. That man Crane is on the Committee on Manufactures, and we
have been arguing with him, and sending the most expensive men we have
to prove to him that we are entitled to the same rebate on the platinum
used in our machines as the Oshkosh Shoe-Stitching-Machine people
get--and I have reason to know that Crane is the man standing in the
way. I wish you had snuggled right up to him.”

Eleanor surveyed her father with cold displeasure. Mrs. Hill-Smith was
politely oblivious, especially of the word “snuggled.” Coming, as she
did, of a very old family which dated back to 1860, she felt a certain
degree of commiseration for brand-new people like the Baldwins, who had
not appeared above the social horizon until 1880--twenty years later.
But she really liked them, and with a diplomatic instinct inherited
from her father she relieved the situation by rising and saying:

“I see dear Mrs. Baldwin on the balcony and must go and speak to her.”

And as she flitted through the glass door a deep masculine voice just
behind Eleanor said:

“Good morning, Miss Baldwin.”

It was the Honourable Edward George Francis Castlestuart-Stuart, third
secretary of the British Embassy, whom Eleanor had asked to breakfast
that morning. She grew pale as she rose to greet him--suppose--suppose
he had heard that remark about the shoe-stitching machine? And what was
more likely? The shoe-stitching machine was the family skeleton, and
was usually kept under lock and key. By some occult and malign impulse
her father had hauled it out and rattled it in Mrs. Hill-Smith’s face,
and perhaps it might be known at the British Embassy!

Baldwin himself realised the impropriety of his conduct, and tried to
rectify it by saying, with great cordiality, to the Honourable Mr.
Castlestuart-Stuart:

“Good morning--good morning. Very pleased to see you. You find me, as
usual, among my books--my best and oldest friends.”

To this Castlestuart-Stuart replied simply, like the honest Briton that
he was:

“I hate books.”

Baldwin was nearly paralysed at this, and still more so when the
honest Briton quite eagerly went out on the balcony to speak to Mrs.
Baldwin. Only the day before, in one of his rambles about town, he
had come upon her getting out of a cab before a poor lodging-house in
Southeast Washington, her arms loaded with bundles. A swarm of poor
children had run forward to greet her--they evidently knew her well.
Her usually cold, statuesque face had been warmed with the sweet light
of charity, and a heavenly joy shone in her eyes in the process of
feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick.

As Castlestuart-Stuart went out on the balcony and took Mrs. Baldwin’s
hand cordially, she blushed, but not painfully. She, too, had seen
him yesterday, and he had managed to convey with that peculiar art
of a simple and candid nature that he admired her for what she was
doing. Again did she feel this sincere and admiring approval, and was
profoundly grateful for it. Castlestuart-Stuart knew the history of
the family--all the diplomats in Washington know the family history of
those who race and chase after them. He remembered hearing Constance
Maitland say “Mrs. Baldwin redeems the whole family.” Goodness such
as hers could redeem much worse people than the Baldwins, thought
Castlestuart-Stuart, and he proceeded to be bored by Mrs. Hill-Smith
and Eleanor with the best grace in the world. His chief had told him
to take what was set before him in a social way, asking no questions
for conscience’ sake. In the performance of his duty he had dined,
breakfasted, and lunched with pork, dry-goods, whiskey, shoes,
sewing-machines, and every other form of good, honest trade. But the
word trade was never so much as mentioned among them--certainly not at
the breakfast which was now served.




_Chapter Eight_

A NEW SENATOR--A RAILWAY JOURNEY--THE ROSE OF THE FIELD AND THE ROSES
OF THE GARDEN


Crane was in nowise disappointed at the sensation his published letter
made. The justice of his position was at once apparent. But it was
equally apparent that he was making a serious break in the political
dykes which held the party together in his State against the ocean of
the party opposed to it. Under Senator Bicknell’s rule, insubordination
had gradually crept in. The late landslide, which had elected a
Congress in opposition to the party in power, increased the importance
of States like Crane’s, where the balance of power shifted about every
ten years between the two parties. Senator Bicknell, in the seclusion
of his boudoir--for such was his luxurious den in reality--tore his
hair and used all of the expletives permissible in polite society.
In a week or two Governor Sanders, without any further newspaper
controversy, appointed to the vacant senatorship Mr. Michael Patrick
Mulligan, a gentleman of Hibernian descent, who had made a vast fortune
out of manufacturing pies by the wholesale, and who cherished an
honourable ambition to legislate for the hated Saxon. Senator Bicknell,
Crane, and everybody in the State knew of Mr. Michael Patrick Mulligan,
who was commonly called Mince Pie Mulligan. He was a ward politician
of the sort peculiarly unhampered by prejudices or principles, and who
bought and sold votes by wholesale, very much as he bought and sold
pies. He was totally without education, but by no means without brains,
and proposed to himself a seat in the Senate as an agreeable diversion,
without the least idea of doing anything beyond voting as directed by
“the boss”--for so he designated the Senator who was chairman of the
National Committee of Mr. Mulligan’s party. It was, on the whole, about
as harmless an appointment as could be made. Mulligan’s private life
was perfectly clean, and he was known to have an open hand for charity,
and never to have forgotten a friend. It gave both Senator Bicknell
and Crane a breathing-spell, and they were willing enough to put up
with Mince Pie Mulligan until the first of January.

Senator Bicknell, although easy enough in his mind about Mulligan, was
far from easy about Crane, who had gone up like a rocket, but showed
no disposition to come down like a stick. The Senator got into the way
of stealing over to the House, “just to see how things are going”--in
reality to see how Crane was going--and it scared him to observe how
Crane was making good his footing everywhere. His first triumph, even
after subtracting Thorndyke’s assistance, had been a real triumph.
Following hard on this came his controversy with the Governor, in which
he clearly had the best of it. The shrewd men in his party saw that in
the readjustment of allegiances Crane must be counted, and the chairman
of the National Committee said as much to Senator Bicknell when the two
discussed the war between the Governor and Representative Crane. When
the chairman said that, Senator Bicknell felt as Henry IV. of England
felt when he saw the Prince of Wales trying on the crown before the
looking-glass.

Meanwhile, Thorndyke was speeding West, as he had said, and after a
week’s absence he turned eastward again, escorting Annette Crane and
her two children to Washington, as he had suggested to Crane.

For the purpose of acquiring knowledge of others and of one’s self,
there is nothing like a long railway journey. Marriage itself is
scarcely more of an eye-opener. The old Greeks, who reasoned so closely
on the nature of man, would have been vastly informed could they
have taken a few long journeys. Locke could have known more of the
human understanding had he taken the Chicago Limited, with a party,
from Chicago to Washington. In that journey Annette Crane found out
all about Geoffrey Thorndyke, and Geoffrey Thorndyke found out all
about Annette Crane. Their mutual discoveries changed the natural
sympathy which had been established between them to a deep and lasting
friendship.

Those five years of seclusion at Circleville had been developing years
for Annette Crane. In appearance she had gained in dignity and had not
lost in youthfulness. She had fair hair and a wild-rose complexion,
and a pair of the sweetest, most limpid hazel eyes in the world.
Everything about her bore the impress of a gentle sincerity--her frank
gaze, her pretty smile, her soft voice, in which the Western burr was
almost obliterated. Those five years represented a cycle to her. In
that time all of her relations to life seemed to have changed--and
especially were her relations with her husband curiously altered.
In their early married life Crane’s intensity of love and excess of
devotion had frightened her a little. But in time other passions
had come to take the place of this one in his wife, and it had been
shouldered out of place. He was a fairly good husband, but after the
microbe has once lodged in a man’s brain that he is very superior
to his wife, he may still be called a good husband, but scarcely an
agreeable one.

At this stage of the proceedings--which was at the time she first came
to Washington--Annette discovered that she adored her husband. As he
had always accused her of coldness and reserve, she determined to show
him all the treasures of her love. It was the common mistake of youth
and ignorance; but Annette, whose secret pride was great, suffered a
horrible mortification in finding that the display of her affection did
not bring forth the response on which she had confidently relied. She
had made no moan, and had deceived the whole world, including Crane
himself, into believing that she was a satisfied wife; but her misery
had been extreme. Her pride, informed by common-sense, had helped her
over the crisis. She had herself proposed to spend the winters in
Circleville, instead of Washington, thus forestalling any possibility
of the proposal coming from Crane; and in Circleville she had set
herself the task of making the most and best of herself, not only for
her husband, but for her children. She had learned a good deal in that
brief and unpleasant experience in Washington. Among others was a
just appreciation of herself. She realised that she had certain great
advantages, and she no longer had the self-deprecatory tone of mind
which had made her feel that Crane had perhaps condescended in marrying
her. She was as passionately attached to him as ever, but her eyes were
opened and she saw.

She had taken to reading as a solace, and as a duty, and not because
she was strongly attracted to books. The result, however, was good,
and she found it enabled her to meet men like Thorndyke on a common
ground. In training her children, she had performed the inevitable
function of training herself. Under her system, her children had become
quieter and sweeter than American children usually are. The American
women in general can more than hold their own with the women of other
countries, except in two trifling particulars--the arts of housekeeping
and of bringing up children. In these two things they generally fail
egregiously, and the more money they have the more conspicuous is their
failure. To paraphrase the Scripture--“See you the house of the rich
American man? Behold therein a tribe of undisciplined and impudent
servants and children.” The newness of the rich in America may account
for the undisciplined servants, of whom their mistresses are in mortal
terror. But American women have been bringing up children ever since
the settlement at Jamestown and the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, and
every year they seem to know less about it.

However, Annette Crane’s children were more quiet, more simply dressed
than most American children. They had escaped, to a great degree, the
demoralising influences of children’s magazines, “The Children’s Page”
in newspapers, and children’s plays, and they had not been amused to
death. Annette, it is true, had not mastered the science of managing
servants, but in that she was at one with the women of other parts of
the country, except the South--for, as Senator Hoar once remarked on
the floor of the Senate, as a preliminary to a ferocious attack on the
South, it is the Southerners alone, in this country, who have the habit
of command. Annette Crane, however, although she could no more manage
her household staff of one maid-of-all-work than Mrs. James Brentwood
Baldwin or Mrs. Hill-Smith could manage her retinue of English flunkeys
and French maids, yet, by tact and judgment, succeeded in keeping
the maid-of-all-work within bounds--which is more than the Brentwood
Baldwins and the Hill-Smiths could do with their maids and flunkeys.

On the journey with Thorndyke, not one word had passed Annette’s
lips to indicate any rift between her husband and herself. She spoke
of him frankly and affectionately. But the two children showed
none of that happy eagerness to meet their father which the average
American child shows to meet a dutiful and obedient parent. This did
not escape Thorndyke, and amazed him. He had the usual bachelor’s
fear and dread of children, but two days and nights of travel with
little Roger and Elizabeth Crane had placed him upon terms of perfect
intimacy with them. Roger had climbed all over him, and Thorndyke,
instead of resenting it, had been secretly pleased at it. He had wrung
permission from Annette to take the boy into the smoking-car with him
occasionally, and Roger emerged with many mannish airs for his eight
years. Thorndyke’s berth was at the other end of the sleeper from
Annette’s and her children, and on the second night, when Thorndyke
turned in, he found the youngster had eluded his mother’s vigilant
eye, and had crawled into Thorndyke’s berth for a talk about Indians.
Thorndyke not only submitted to this, but permitted Roger to send word
to his mother by the porter that he would sleep in Mr. Thorndyke’s
berth, because Mr. Thorndyke had asked him--and the two of them managed
to defy Annette in the matter. Little Elizabeth took an extreme fancy
to Thorndyke, and inquired if she might ask Mr. Thorndyke to be her
uncle Thorndyke.

Annette, being acute, as most women are, in affairs of the heart,
knew, the very first time that Thorndyke casually mentioned Constance
Maitland, that he was in love with her. When he said that he had known
her long ago, at Lake Como, and proceeded to describe the beauty of
those Italian days and nights, Annette Crane was convinced that it
was in those sweet hours that Thorndyke had first loved Constance
Maitland. Women have no conscience in probing the love-affairs of men,
reckoning them the common property of the sex--and while Thorndyke was
blithely unconscious that he had revealed anything, Annette was in full
possession of all the essential facts. Also, Thorndyke let out that
Crane knew Constance Maitland. Crane had never mentioned Constance’s
name to his wife. That, was in itself enough to give Annette a painful
interest in this woman who, as Thorndyke said, could charm the birds
off the bushes.

When the train came bumping into Washington on a pleasant May
afternoon, Crane was waiting at the station. He seemed delighted
to meet his family again, and indeed, on seeing them, a kind of
tenderness came over him. He kissed his children affectionately, to
which they submitted. Just behind them was a shabby, one-armed man,
whom a girl of ten or twelve was hugging and kissing with little
gurgles of delight. Crane wished that his children had met him like
that.

He thanked Thorndyke warmly for taking care of Annette, who said a
few words of earnest thanks, and gave him a smile from her dewy lips
and eyes that meant much more. The children bade him good-bye with
outspoken regret, and would not be comforted until Thorndyke promised
to take them to the Zoo the next Sunday to see the baby elephant.

As the party came out of the station together, a handsome little
victoria whirled by. In it sat Constance Maitland, her delicate mauve
draperies enveloping her, a black lace parasol shading her head, and a
filmy white veil over her face. By her side sat a little, withered old
lady in rusty black--one of the flotsam and jetsam of weary old people
who drift to Washington to die. It was one of Constance Maitland’s pet
charities to take these weary old people to drive, and in so doing
to wear her loveliest gowns, her most exquisite hats--a delicate
compliment unfailingly appreciated.

She did not see Thorndyke and the Cranes as they walked out of the
station--but both men saw her. Annette Crane had abundant confirmation
of her hypothesis about Thorndyke. His clear-cut, but rather plain,
features became almost handsome as he watched the passing vision
of the woman he loved. Of far more interest to Annette was Crane’s
countenance. It was full of expression, and he was totally untrained
in controlling it. There was in his eyes a strange and complex look,
which Annette interpreted instantly to mean, “You are the type of woman
I most admire and to whom I most aspire.” It struck her to the heart,
but, unlike Crane, she had acquired an admirable composure which made
her mistress of herself. She was glad, however, that Constance had not
seen her first, after two days of hard travel.

When the Cranes had reached the suburban villa where Crane lived,
a number of letters and despatches were awaiting him. Two or three
men, Hardeman among them, came out that evening to see him. From them
Annette found out the great struggle in which her husband was engaged.
He had scarcely mentioned it to her.

Not a word of inquiry or reproach from her followed. When Crane,
however, alluded to the great fight some days afterward, he was a
little staggered to find that Annette knew as much about it as anybody.
A study of the newspaper files at the National Library had enlightened
her.

Thorndyke did not see Constance for some days after his return; that
is to say, he did not show himself to her. But he resumed his nightly
prowl in her neighbourhood--a practice ridiculous or pathetic according
to the view one takes of an honourable and sensitive man, whose honour
stands between him and the love of his life. He did not dream that
Constance knew of it, but the fact was she had known of it from the
very beginning. It was this knowledge which made her somewhat sad dark
eyes grow bright, which brought out a delicate flush upon her cheeks,
and gave her step the airy spring of her first girlhood. It is the
glorious privilege of love to restore their lost youth to those who
love. Constance knew, by an unerring instinct, that Thorndyke, like
herself, treasured everything of their past--that past, so ethereal,
so innocent, so dreamlike, but to them eternal as the heavens. On
the first evening after Thorndyke’s return, when Constance, from her
balcony, half-hidden in towering palms, caught sight of the flame of
Thorndyke’s cigar as he strolled by in the murky night, she slipped
within the darkened drawing-room. The next moment Thorndyke heard her
playing softly some chords of the old, old songs--nay, even singing a
stanza or two. It filled his heart with a vehement hope that set his
pulses off like wild horses, into an ecstasy which lasted until he
got home to his old-fashioned bachelor quarters. What! Ask Constance
Maitland to give up her beautiful home, her carriages, her French gowns
for _that_! Thorndyke called himself a blankety-blank fool, with an
emphasis that bordered on blasphemy. Next day he was so dull that the
Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins charged him with having been jilted by
a certain tailor-made and Paris-enamelled widow whom Thorndyke paid
considerable attention to and cordially hated. That very afternoon,
though, he had his recompense, for, strolling through the beautiful
but unfashionable Smithsonian grounds, he met Constance Maitland
driving; and in response to a timid request on his part, she took him
in the victoria, and they had a delicious hour to themselves under the
great, overhanging elms and lindens. Few situations are more agreeable
than driving in a victoria with a charming woman on a sunny spring
afternoon through a secluded park. Something like it may be experienced
by sitting in a darkened theatre-box a little behind, and within touch
of a dainty ear, inhaling the odour of the flowers she wears upon her
breast, and watching, with her, the development of the old love-story
on the stage. But all pleasures have their seasons--and in the spring,
the victoria is more enticing than the theatre-box. And Constance was
so very, very kind to him that afternoon!

She showed a truly feminine curiosity about Annette Crane, whom
Thorndyke praised unstintedly, and when he asked Constance to call
on Mrs. Crane, Constance replied that she already intended to do so.
She asked about Crane’s political prospects, which Thorndyke assured
her were of the brightest, adding he had grave apprehensions that
the majority in the lower House would not, after all, make fools of
themselves as he ardently desired they should--which sentiment was
promptly rebuked by Constance, who, womanlike, never could be made to
really understand the game of politics. Then he asked her what she
had been doing in that week. She had been out to a suburban club to
a dinner given by Cathcart, at which information Thorndyke scowled.
Sir Mark le Poer was coming back to town for a few days, expressly,
so Constance believed, to see the Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins, of
Texas. The meeting of the Guild for Superannuated Governesses had taken
place at the house of the Secretary of State, Mrs. Hill-Smith in the
chair, and had been extremely amusing. It had been determined to give
an amateur concert in a fashionable hotel ball-room. This, as always,
had caused many heart-burnings and bickerings. The concert was to be
followed by a tea in the same ball-room. All of the prominent ladies of
the diplomatic corps had been asked to act as patronesses, and all had
agreed, but were not sure they could be present. Some ladies of great
wealth, who were even newer than the Baldwins, came rather aggressively
to the front. Mrs. Hill-Smith, with other scions of old families of
her date--1860--thought that no one whose family was not moderately
old--that is to say about 1870--should be among the directors and
patronesses. They did not speak this aloud, but there was a general
knowledge prevailing of the period when the various ladies had emerged
from having “help” to the stage of having servants--when they had
changed the two-o’clock dinner to the eight-o’clock function. Each of
these ladies knew all about the others, but hugged the delusion that
the others did not know about them, or thought, as Eleanor Baldwin did,
that they had come of a long line of belted earls, the Hogans included.
Mrs. Baldwin, handsomer, haughtier-looking, and more silent than usual,
listened to what was said. Constance Maitland--she alone, who fathomed
the nature of this misunderstood woman--said, in describing it to
Thorndyke, that she believed Mrs. Baldwin realised the nonsense of the
proceedings better than any one present. Constance’s eyes danced when
she told about the way in which her only suggestion was received--that
it would be impossible to find any parallel between the conditions
of governesses in England and the United States. This, however, was
ruthlessly brushed aside by a lady who was determined that her daughter
should sing a duet at the concert with a member of the Austrian Embassy
staff. For the first time Mrs. Baldwin’s voice was heard and in it
quiet advocacy of something sensible. This was when it was determined
to charge a stupendous price for the tickets.

“In that case,” she said, “it seems to me that we ought to have some
real music. It doesn’t seem quite right to charge the price asked to
hear good music, and then give a mere amateur performance.”

“But it is for charity!” screamed several ladies in chorus.

Then Constance, still with dancing eyes, told that great stress had
been laid upon the alleged opinions of various ladies of the diplomatic
corps, who had carefully refrained from expressing any opinions at all
and were not present to take care of themselves; and Constance had
landed a second bombshell in the camp by pleading ignorance of many
admirable things, owing to her ill-fortune in being educated chiefly in
Europe. This remark necessitated an immediate departure, in which she
was followed by Mrs. Baldwin. The two going out together, Mrs. Baldwin
had said diffidently to Constance:

“Miss Maitland--I--I think you are right in all you have said to-day.
I hope you’ll come to see me soon. I don’t seem to be afraid of
you--you’re genuine. You’re never pretending to anything. Good-bye.”

Mrs. Baldwin had not the gift of tongues, but, as Constance said, a
compliment from Mrs. Baldwin was of value, no matter how awkwardly it
was expressed.

A few afternoons later, Constance drove out to the Cranes’ suburban
villa, but Mrs. Crane was not at home. Constance was disappointed--her
curiosity to see Crane’s wife was unabated. Ten days afterward, on
a warm afternoon, Constance sat in her cool drawing-room, fresh in
its summer dress of linen covers, bead portières, and shaded by
awnings, waiting for her carriage. Mrs. Crane was announced. The first
impression which Constance got of Annette Crane was that she was
exquisitely dressed. Her gown was a delicate, pale-blue muslin, her
hat, a white straw, trimmed with white ribbons. Both gown and hat
were of her own creation, and the whole outfit had cost less than ten
dollars--but not the greatest man-milliner in Paris ever turned out
anything more becoming to Annette’s simple and natural beauty than she
herself had evolved from the “Emporium” at Circleville. The daintiness
and freshness of it was charming; and when, in moving, she accidentally
displayed a snowy, lace-edged petticoat, this daintiness and freshness
was emphasised.

Never in her life had Annette looked forward to a visit with the same
dislike as this one. Crane had at last spoken of Constance Maitland,
saying he meant to ask her to call. He was very guarded in all he said,
but Annette, as would any intelligent wife, saw that he was on his
guard, and that, in itself, told much. She said nothing; she was far
above the spites of petty jealousy. She no longer depreciated herself
in general, but she had been a little frightened by Thorndyke’s praises
of Constance Maitland’s intelligence and charm. And Annette had, by
clairvoyance, come very near to Crane’s real feeling for Constance. It
was not love--she had begun miserably to doubt whether he were really
capable of love--but it was a degree of admiration which could not
be agreeable to any wife, because it was plain that Constance was the
standard by which Crane measured women. Constance could at any moment
influence Crane; so Annette justly surmised. No woman of sense objects
to her husband’s simple admiration of another woman, but when it comes
to another woman being a factor in his life and his thoughts, a wife
must and should resent it.

So it was that Annette disliked the visit she had to pay, and yet was
careful not to postpone it. But by some magic of thought and feeling,
the instant she came face to face with Constance Maitland, Annette
Crane knew she had a friend. In a moment she was at ease. Like a woman
of the world in the best sense, Constance at once found something in
common to talk about, and the two sat, in the friendliest conversation
possible, each singularly pleased with the other.

Seeing Constance dressed to go out, and the victoria standing at the
door, Annette, after paying a short visit, rose to go, and with more
reluctance than she had thought possible.

“If you are returning home, perhaps you will allow me to drive you
out,” said Constance, affably, and Annette accepted without any demurs.

Seated together in the carriage, the conversation between the two
turned on Thorndyke. Annette expressed frankly the deep regard she
had for him, and described her efforts to keep the children from
annoying him, while Thorndyke, from simple tolerance of them at first,
had become an accomplished child-spoiler and destroyer of parental
discipline. Constance spoke of Thorndyke as frankly and without the
least embarrassment, but Annette, who had surmised very readily where
Constance stood in the regard of two men, one of them her own husband,
had little difficulty in settling to her own satisfaction that Miss
Maitland had a particular regard for Mr. Thorndyke.

After driving for three-quarters of an hour along a suburban road, they
came to the cottage where the Cranes had established their quarters. It
was near six o’clock, and Crane had returned early from the Capitol.
He was sitting on the veranda reading to Roger and Elizabeth when
Constance Maitland’s carriage drove up.

Since the meeting with his children and noting their perfectly
respectful, but perfectly evident, indifference toward him, Crane had
received a blow where he least expected it. He was surprised at the
degree to which it affected him. Their laughing eyes, suddenly growing
demure on his approach, haunted him amid the hurly-burly of debate,
and in long conferences on his political future. Impelled by all the
natural impulses, Crane determined to try and win his children’s
hearts; and as a beginning, he had come home early from the House that
day, bringing with him a book to read to them. The reading had been a
success, and in the midst of it Crane looked up and saw the victoria
approaching with his wife and Constance Maitland in it. He rose at
once and walked down the shady path to where the carriage stood. The
children, hand in hand, followed after, blowing kisses to their mother.

Crane was so possessed with the idea that Annette, as a native of
Circleville, must be far inferior to Constance, that he had a shock of
surprise when he saw the two women actually compared, and realised that
Annette was by no means cast into the shade. Constance was conscious of
this, but good-naturedly wished Annette to have the benefit of it.

Crane talked pleasantly with Constance for a few minutes, Annette still
sitting in the carriage. He was certainly remarkably handsome, as the
declining sun shone on his clear-cut, olive face, with the little rings
of dark-brown hair showing on his forehead. Constance thought the
Cranes the handsomest couple she had seen for a long time. The children
were introduced, behaved well, as American, and especially Western,
children seldom do--and then Constance said to Annette:

“I shall soon be closing my house for the season, but before doing so,
I hope to have you and Mr. Crane to dinner with me some evening.”

“We will come with pleasure,” replied Annette; and a date was arranged
for the following week.

Constance returned to town, thinking to herself what a fool Crane must
be not to be satisfied with such a wife as Annette.




_Chapter Nine_

CONCERNING THINGS NOT TO BE MENTIONED IN THE SOCIETY JOURNALS


The days went rapidly by for Crane, to whom they were full of events.
The House committed fewer follies than might have been expected, and
the management of the international crisis had put the country into
a thoroughly good humour with both the House and the Administration.
Crane gained steadily in consequence among the politicians, and it was
with difficulty he kept his head; but he kept it.

He did not relax his efforts to win his children’s hearts, and in the
effort he began to feel a strange jealousy of Thorndyke, who had won
them without any effort at all. Thorndyke had not only taken Roger
and Elizabeth to the Zoo on the first Sunday, but on the next he had
appeared, looking extremely sheepish, and had requested the pleasure
of their company to the Zoo again. The children were in paroxysms of
delight, and Annette laughed outright at Thorndyke, particularly when
he admitted that he had declined an invitation to a breakfast at the
Brentwood Baldwins on the ground of a previous engagement in order
to carry out this little trip to the Zoo. The trio went off together
in great spirits, and Crane and Annette were left alone. Through all
the laughing and joking with the children, Crane had sat silent and
sombre--they had not yet laughed and joked with him. Suddenly, he
proposed a walk to Annette. It was so long since such a thing had
occurred that he was embarrassed in giving the invitation, and she in
accepting it; but they walked together along the country lanes in the
quiet Sunday noon, and a shadow of the old confidence was restored
between them. But Crane was still fully convinced that Annette was
not cut out for the wife of a public man, and could not shine in
cosmopolitan society. He was soon to have an opportunity to judge of
her in this last particular.

Constance Maitland had set her mind to work upon that difficult and
interesting problem--the composition of a small dinner. More than
that, she meant it to be one at which Annette would be at her best.

The materials to form a good dinner abound in Washington, and Constance
Maitland knew it. As the smart set in Washington is composed largely
of persons who have made large fortunes in trade, and who have come
to Washington to enjoy these fortunes, Constance knew that from this
particular element she could not well draw the material for a really
sparkling dinner. The people in Europe know something after all,
and their dictum that an elegant and brilliant society cannot be
constructed out of retired merchants has not yet been disproved. Let
us be candid to ourselves. But in Washington the materials for a real
society exist outside of this element, and Constance Maitland had been
lucky enough to find it. Sir Mark le Poer was in town again, which
Constance reckoned as a special Providence. Like all Englishmen of
good position, Sir Mark was bored within an inch of his life by the
Anglo-American girl, who is an easily detected imitation. Constance,
having been a friend of Sir Mark’s for many years, and knowing him like
a book, spared him this infliction. She selected in the construction
of the party Mrs. Willoughby, an accomplished Washington woman, whose
family had social antecedents dating back to the days of Abigail
Adams. Mrs. Willoughby had been a distinguished hostess for twenty
years, until the influx of pork, whiskey, dry-goods, and the like
commodities had overwhelmed everything to the manner born. She took it
all good-naturedly, and got a great deal of amusement out of the status
quo. Then there was Mary Beekman, of New York, young, charming, and
rich, whose parents had owned a box at the New York Academy of Music,
but who were conspicuously out of it with the Metropolitan Opera set.
As Mrs. Willoughby remarked, when Constance mentioned the party she had
made up:

“What a very interesting collection of has-beens you have got together,
my dear.”

For the men, besides Crane and Sir Mark le Poer, Constance had secured
Thorndyke, an admirable dinner-man, and a courtly old Admiral--for she
was quite unlike the widow of a prominent shoe-dealer, who emigrated
to Washington and became violently fashionable, and who declared that
on her visiting list she “drew the line at the army and navy.” On the
evening of the dinner there was to be a belated reception at the White
House, in honour of an international commission which had just opened
its sittings in Washington, and it was arranged that the dinner should
be somewhat early, that the whole party, being invited to the White
House, might adjourn there.

The rest of the guests were assembled in Constance’s drawing-room
before the Cranes arrived. Crane himself always looked superbly
handsome in evening-clothes, and Annette’s appearance was scarcely
inferior in another way. As on her first meeting with Constance,
Annette gave the impression of being exquisitely gowned. A simple white
crêpe, cut low, showed off her beautiful arms and shoulders, and a few
moss rosebuds in their green leaves gave the needed touch of colour
to her costume. Simplicity is always the last form of elegance to be
attained, and Annette Crane had attained it.

Constance Maitland, too, was at her best, in a shimmering black gown,
like a starry night, and with her grandmother’s pearl necklace around
her white throat. Mrs. Willoughby, with resplendent black eyes and
snow-white hair, looked like one of Sir Peter Lely’s court of beauties,
and Mary Beekman was pretty enough to shine anywhere.

When they were seated around the table the men secretly congratulated
themselves on the looks of the women with whom they were to dine;
and Thorndyke voiced this opinion by quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes’s
suggestion that peas and potatoes could be warmed into an early
fruition by surrounding them with a ring of handsome women--such as
were then present--which caused the ladies all to beam on him.

Annette, seated between the Admiral and Sir Mark le Poer, with
Thorndyke’s kind eyes across the table to encourage her, and with
Constance Maitland’s fine gift as a hostess to sustain her, felt
perfectly at ease. Such was not the case with Crane himself. It was
the first time he had ever dined at Constance Maitland’s house, and he
yearned to distinguish himself. He wished the conversation would turn
on public affairs; he felt he could easily lay them all under a spell
then, forgetting that people don’t go out to dinner to be spellbound,
but to enjoy an idle hour, and to exchange those pleasant freedoms and
trifles which make up the sum of recreation.

The Admiral, a white-moustached, charming old man, who had hobnobbed
with princes, and was none the worse for it, began to compliment
Annette on her gown, after having previously called her “my dear.”

“Really,” he said, “that gown is a most stunning creation.”

Thorndyke chimed in here:

“Yes,” he said. “It makes Mrs. Crane look like a white narcissus
blooming in a bed of mignonette.”

No woman is ever disconcerted by compliments, and Annette was charmed
at the praises lavished on her--and particularly in Crane’s presence.

“I should say,” remarked Sir Mark le Poer, “with my feeble powers of
comparison, that Mrs. Crane’s gown reminds me of some of your delicious
American dishes, not all sauces and flavourings like our European
things, but fresh and new and exquisite. I know I have a grovelling
nature, but, ’pon my soul, is there anything more charming than a dish
of delicate soft crabs on a bed of parsley----”

“Oh, oh!” cried Constance. “How your soul must grovel! However, it’s
the highest compliment Sir Mark can pay you, Mrs. Crane, because I know
he has an unholy passion for soft crabs.”

“I will pay you the highest compliment of all,” said Mrs. Willoughby,
“I will ask you, who is your dressmaker?”

“I made this gown myself,” answered Annette, with a pretty smile.

Crane thought he should have gone through the floor into the cellar. He
had never in his life felt such a rage of shame. There was Constance
Maitland in a gown that shouted out its French nationality in every
line and fold. Mrs. Willoughby and Miss Beekman wore the smartest of
smart creations--probably not one of them had ever done a stitch of
sewing in their lives, while here was Annette announcing that she made
her own gown! The next thing he expected her to proclaim was that she
had just completed six suits of pajamas for him, all made with her own
hands and feet, on her own sewing-machine at Circleville.

Three persons at the table--Thorndyke, Constance, and Annette
herself--saw how annoyed Crane was at what he regarded as a very
damaging admission. Annette, however, was quite composed. She saw that
instead of making a mistake she had really made a hit, for she was
more complimented than ever upon her cleverness in making so beautiful
a gown. In truth, the sweet and natural way in which she owned to her
handiwork completed the charm of her simple and unaffected personality.
Mrs. Willoughby, turning despairingly to the other women, said:

“We are simply outclassed. Every man here thinks that all of us, like
Mrs. Crane, could make our own gowns if only we were clever enough.”

“I have always thought,” said Thorndyke, smiling, “that Napoleon’s idea
of the education of women was probably right--a plenty of religion and
needle-work. However, as I may get myself in trouble, I will say no
more.”

“Very properly,” replied Constance, who meant to enlighten Crane on his
wife’s accomplishments. “I have a great deal of religion, when I am not
annoyed by anything, and I beg all of the gentlemen to observe that
even if I were clever enough to make a gown like Mrs. Crane’s, I could
not wear it. It is too well adapted to Mrs. Crane’s style for any one
else to venture on it.”

“I could have worn it thirty years ago,” said Mrs. Willoughby, with
dangerous candour. “But the fact is, Miss Maitland, all of these men
are so absurdly prejudiced in favour of the gown, that they overrate
it. After all, the rest of us are fairly well-dressed.”

Annette took all this in the spirit of playful compliment in which
it was meant, and was flattered by it. Not so Crane. He thought that
Annette had, at first, let an ugly cat out of the bag, and secondly,
that Mrs. Willoughby was insolent in saying the gown was overrated.
But before the dinner was over, his eyes were opened to the fact that
Annette had made a most agreeable impression, and every man present
admired her, and every woman present liked her.

As soon as the rather short dinner was through, the carriages were
called to take the party to the White House. When Crane and Annette
were alone in their cab, he said to her:

“It seems to me you made a bad break in saying you made your gown
yourself.”

“Far from it,” replied Annette, pleasantly. “It seems to have made them
all like me better. Mrs. Willoughby and Miss Beekman both said they
would be glad to call to see me, and so did the Admiral. I think I was
a success.”

Crane felt like rubbing his eyes and pulling his ears. Was this his
submissive Annette, who never questioned his word on any subject? He
half expected her to call attention to the fact that he had been rather
dull at the dinner, but although Annette knew it quite as well as he
did, she forbore to mention it.

When they reached the White House, there was the usual crowd of
carriages, their lamps twinkling like myriads of stars in the soft
spring night, the roar of horses’ hoofs upon the asphalt, the crowds of
gaily dressed women in evening-gowns disembarking at the north portico,
the blare of music from the red-coated band within the corridors.
Constance Maitland, on Sir Mark le Poer’s arm, and followed by her
dinner-guests, presently found herself shaking hands with the President
and bowing to the line of ladies of the Administration, which extended
across the oval reception-room. Next the President’s wife stood the
wife of the Secretary of State. She was a small, thin woman, with a
determined nose and the general aspect of a mediæval battle-axe. She
was simply though splendidly attired in black velvet, with lace and
diamonds, and was as faultlessly correct as the Secretary himself, in
language and deportment, except in one small particular--she could not
pronounce the word “Something.” She invariably called it “su’thin”--a
souvenir of her early bringing up on the banks of Lake Michigan. She
greeted Constance coolly, remembering the meeting at her house for the
Guild of Superannuated Governesses, but she was effusive toward Sir
Mark le Poer.

Constance, however, blandly unconscious, passed on, and when she
reached the point whence ingress is had to that select region known as
“behind the line,” she was invited, with Sir Mark, to join the elect.
Directly behind her was Thorndyke with Mary Beekman, followed by the
Admiral with Mrs. Willoughby, and they, too, were invited within the
holy precincts. The President himself had stopped Crane for a word with
him, and, on having Mrs. Crane presented, had promptly invited her
behind the line. This was partly due to the white crêpe gown.

In the general mix-up that followed in the hallowed spot, Constance
found herself one of a group near Mrs. Hill-Smith, on the arm of the
British Ambassador, and Eleanor Baldwin and the Honourable Edward
George Francis Castlestuart-Stuart. Close by were Mrs. James Brentwood
Baldwin and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, and Mr. James Brentwood
Baldwin was gravitating toward the Secretary of State, who loomed
large at hand. The Secretary was in a very bad humour for so amiable
a man, but diplomatically concealed it. After eighteen months spent
in labouring over a couple of treaties, they had been knocked out in
three weeks by the Senate. The chief of the gang who perpetrated this
nefarious act was a Southern Senator--the wildest, woolliest, and
weirdest of all the wild and woolly and weird Senators to be found in
the north wing of the Capitol. But he happened to be a lawyer, and he
had punched the treaties so full of holes that they were literally
laughed out of court. This injured the Secretary’s feelings very much,
but he remembered that Beaconsfield and Gortschakoff and Bismarck used
to be ruffled the same way, so he concluded to bear it like a statesman
and a Christian.

Drifting toward the Secretary and Mr. Baldwin was a very odd-looking
object, whom Thorndyke whispered to Constance was Senator Mince Pie
Mulligan. These three got into conversation, very languid on the part
of the Secretary and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, but very strenuous on
the part of Senator Mince Pie Mulligan. A part of Mr. James Brentwood
Baldwin’s coyness came from the fact that he and Senator Mulligan were
old acquaintances--a fact which Mr. Baldwin had no disposition to brag
about.

The new Senator had a head of blazing red hair which was as good as
a stove on a cold night. He might have stepped bodily from the pages
of _Life_ as regarded his contours, but his small, light-blue eye
glittered with humour and shrewdness, while his great, slit of a
mouth, which divided his face fairly in the middle, had lines of both
sense and kindliness. He was enjoying himself hugely, and was not
afraid to let anybody see it. Not so Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, or
the Secretary of State, but a Senator is a Senator to the Secretary
of State, and Secretary Slater had in mind other treaties to be laid
before the Senate, and so was fairly civil to Senator Mulligan. Mince
Pie, himself, was much struck by the appearance of Eleanor Baldwin,
who was easily the handsomest woman present, except her mother, but
although Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin owned up that Eleanor was his
daughter, he made no move to introduce Senator Mulligan to her.

Eleanor Baldwin was a patriot. It was her sense of patriotic duty alone
which took her to a White House reception. White House receptions,
in every particular, including the cabinet people and those behind
the line, were “mixed.” This word “mixed” meant, to Eleanor, a social
Gehenna, while the word “exclusive” spelled, for her, the very joy of
living. There were some “nice people”--by whom she meant the diplomatic
corps and those who were intimate with them, and some people from
the smart sets of near-by cities--but still it was “mixed.” There
was Letty Standiford, whose father, had Eleanor but known it, was
personally responsible for the present occupant of the White House
being there. Then she noticed, quite close to her, the daughter of a
Senator who lived in a very unfashionable part of the town--a girl
whom she would never have known, except that paying calls one day,
with Mrs. Hill-Smith, she happened to go to the Senator’s house. It
had contained for her the one unattainable thing in life--some fine
old furniture and portraits, and a beautiful old grandfather’s clock,
which had been inherited, and by which the Senator’s daughter had not
seemed to set any special store. Eleanor would have given all of their
costly bric-à-brac for one single piece of old silver or furniture
or lace that had belonged even so far back as to her grandparents;
but neither the Baldwins nor the Hogans had inherited any silver,
furniture, or lace, or anything except good, strong legs and arms, and
the capacity to use them. The sight of family treasures always produced
a vague discomfort in Eleanor Baldwin’s mind, and gave her a kind of
pique toward those who possessed them. At that very moment she felt a
secret dislike toward the Senator’s daughter, who had on a beautiful
antique lace bertha, which had been worn by many generations of ladies
before the Brentwood Baldwins had “arrived,” as the French say. There
had been a fire in the Baldwin family, and likewise one in the Hogan
family, and Eleanor had persuaded herself that the frame houses burnt
down in these two fires were stately mansions, and priceless family
treasures had perished in the flames--and she had hinted at this so
often that she had really come to believe it. She was surprised to see
that her father and also the Secretary of State were talking with that
curious-looking object, Senator Mulligan, whose name she had heard.
But seeing the British Ambassador approach with Mrs. Hill-Smith on
his arm, and Constance Maitland with Sir Mark le Poer, Eleanor turned
her whole attention to them. She, too, had brought dinner-guests with
her. She had been the hostess at one of those extraordinary dinners
introduced within the last few years by hostesses whose experience of
dinner-giving is rudimentary. At these dinners, which are considered by
their innocent perpetrators as being the acme of elegance, all the men
are foreigners. When Eleanor Baldwin had achieved one of these dinners,
she felt that she had accomplished a social triumph. Mrs. Hill-Smith
had chaperoned the dinner; and the diplomats invited had refrained from
laughing in the face of their hostess, although they had chuckled with
amusement when in the dressing-room.

Mrs. Baldwin, who stood in the background, wore more than her usual
expression of icy pride, which meant that she was more than usually
frightened. Eleanor’s lovely face relaxed into a smile as she turned
to the British Ambassador, who was a widower. He was a tall, handsome,
high-bred-looking, elderly man, with a clean-shaven face, and a
thin-lipped mouth, which had contorted itself into a grin on his first
arrival in Washington, and the grin had become fixed and perpetual. He
had no fortune beyond his salary and pension, he had rheumatism, liver
complaint, nervous dyspepsia, chronic bronchitis, and a family of six
unmarried daughters and four sons, ranging from thirty-six to sixteen
years of age--yet Eleanor Baldwin would have jumped down his throat,
and Mrs. Hill-Smith was going for him with the stealthy energy of a cat
after the cream-jug.

Eleanor, putting on a roguish expression of countenance, said to the
Ambassador:

“Ah, Mrs. Hill-Smith and I are becoming factors in diplomacy! At our
dinner to-night, every man present was a diplomat, and you may imagine
what state secrets were disclosed!”

“The results may be serious,” replied the Ambassador, laughing a
little. “We shall have to keep our eyes upon the American diplomats who
were present so as to find out how our secrets were betrayed.”

“There weren’t any Americans present,” answered Eleanor, gaily.

“Eh?” said the Ambassador, pretending to be deaf.

Eleanor repeated her words a little louder. There was Constance
Maitland near enough to hear, and like Mrs. Hill-Smith, Eleanor was a
little afraid of Constance Maitland, and also of Mr. Thorndyke, who had
an uncomfortable way of laughing at very serious matters; and just at
her elbow was that queer Castlestuart-Stuart, who blurted out things,
such as not liking books, which other people kept to themselves; and
it was this British bull which now proceeded to play havoc in the
china-shop.

“Yes,” he said, with an air of infantine innocence, and addressing
his chief boldly. “It’s positively true. Not a blessed American man
there. Never saw such a thing anywhere in my life before. Fancy giving
a dinner in London to foreign diplomats and not having an Englishman
there--haw! haw!”

Both Eleanor and Mrs. Hill-Smith turned pale. Constance Maitland
laughed outright; the Ambassador and Sir Mark le Poer looked gravely
into each other’s eyes, and telegraphed, without winking, their
amusement. Castlestuart-Stuart kept on.

“And Hachette, the new French third secretary, told us in the
dressing-room about a letter he had got from his mother in
Paris--terribly strict old lady. She said, ‘You have written me about
going to dinners where no American men are present. You are deceiving
your old mother. It is impossible that persons such as you describe
us giving those dinners should not know any respectable American men.
At all events, do not bring me back a daughter-in-law who has no
acquaintance among respectable men in her own country’--haw! haw! haw!”

A flood of colour poured into the faces of Eleanor Baldwin and Mrs.
Hill-Smith. The Ambassador’s chronic grin had become a little broader;
Sir Mark le Poer was tugging at his moustache. That impossible person,
Castlestuart-Stuart, was haw-hawing with the keenest enjoyment.
Constance Maitland felt that it was time to come to the rescue of her
country even at the sacrifice of her country-women--so, smiling openly,
she said to the too truthful Castlestuart-Stuart:

“I can’t blame you for laughing--it makes all the initiated laugh. But
you must see for yourself that it is only the newest of the new who do
such things. All people new to society do strange things.”

“Never saw it done anywhere before, ’pon my soul,” replied this
incorrigible Briton. “We have our new people at home--tea, whiskey,
drapery, and furniture shops--and rawer than you can think--but they
wouldn’t dare--haw, haw! to give a dinner without an Englishman at it!”

Constance bit her lip--Castlestuart-Stuart was telling the truth, and
there was no gainsaying it; nor could she offer any fuller explanation
than she had already given. Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin were
glaring at her, but Constance remained calm and unmoved. Then from
a most unexpected quarter came a terrible complication. Mince Pie
Mulligan, having been frozen out by the Secretary of State and by Mr.
James Brentwood Baldwin, had been jammed by the crowd almost in Eleanor
Baldwin’s arms, without the least resistance on his part, and had been
an open-mouthed and delighted listener to Castlestuart-Stuart’s candid
words. At the first break he proceeded to improve his opportunities
by hurling himself into the conversation, and looking straight into
Eleanor’s eyes the Senator bawled to Castlestuart-Stuart:

“To give such heathenish dinners as you say, people have got not only
to be new, but they have got to be blamed fools besides!”

There was a moment’s awful pause, and then an involuntary burst of
laughter from all except Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin. The
functions of society with them meant deadly serious things, such as
baking and washing days had been to their grandmothers, and they
thought one about as little a subject of a joke as the other. Eleanor
Baldwin drew herself up, and looked coldly at the British Ambassador,
whose mouth had certainly grown wider. Mrs. Hill-Smith, who was really
timid, felt frightened to death. Like Eleanor Baldwin, she had thought
it the acme of elegance to have a dinner where every man present was
a foreigner and a diplomat, and secretly regretted that, from motives
of state, there always had to be Americans at a cabinet house. And
here were the diplomats themselves laughing at her! It was exquisitely
painful.

However, something more painful still was in store for Eleanor Baldwin.
Mrs. Baldwin approached the group, and at sight of her Mr. Mulligan
held out his hand, and a broad smile carried the corners of his mouth
back to his ears.

“Why, Nora Hogan,” he cried, “it’s good for sore eyes to see you. I
haven’t seen you before for twenty-five years. Jim Baldwin didn’t tell
me, just now when I was talking with him, that you were here, and
didn’t introduce me to his daughter, though I gave him some pretty
broad hints. Sure, you know Mike Mulligan, who was clerk in your
father’s store thirty years ago.”

“Certainly I do, Mike,” responded Mrs. Baldwin, calmly and sweetly and
offering her hand. It was the first time Constance Maitland had ever
seen Mrs. Baldwin unbend from her cold stateliness.

The kindness of her greeting seemed to inspire Senator Mulligan with
the greatest enthusiasm.

“A better man than your father, Dan Hogan, never lived,” proclaimed Mr.
Mulligan, addressing the circle, “and it’s the training I got with him
that’s made my fortune. ‘Dale square, Mike,’ Dan Hogan would say--he
had a beautiful brogue on him--‘and give the widders and the orphans
the turn of the scale when you’re sellin’ ’em sugar and starch and
such.’ And I’ve done it, Nora, in memory of good old Dan Hogan--and if
any man says it’s impossible to keep a corner grocery and be honest, I
say to ’em--‘It’s Danny Hogan, it is, that was the honest man and kept
the corner grocery.’”

Mrs. Baldwin’s face grew softer and softer as Mr. Mulligan proceeded.
She was so great a lover of charity and had such beautiful humility
of spirit that the idea of her father’s example having moulded a man
into a like charity gave her the deepest gratitude and pleasure; and if
pride had owned a lodgment in her heart she would have been proud at
that moment.

But not so Eleanor, or Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, who now appeared
hovering on the edge of the group. Eleanor, her face very pale, fixed
her eyes on Senator Mulligan with a haughty stare, which he perfectly
understood, and resented. A gleam shot into his eye which showed that
he meant to pay her back for her insolence. Mr. Baldwin, in the most
acute misery, practised the goose-step and tried to stem the tide of
Senator Mulligan’s eloquence.

“Er--ah--eh--Mr. Mulligan, your compliments to the late Mr.
Daniel Hogan are very much appreciated by me, as well as
Mrs. Baldwin--especially as I recall with pleasure--what
an--er--important--er--factor you were in the commerce of our native
place. For myself, business has no real charm for me,” continued Mr.
Baldwin, turning to the British Ambassador. “I have been reasonably
successful, but my taste always lay in the way of books. I live among
my books.”

Up to this time Mr. Mulligan had spoken with a very fair Irish accent,
but now he chose to lapse into the most violent brogue that ever
grew on the green sod of Ireland. This was accompanied with a wink
to Constance, which gave her extreme enjoyment, and a nudge in the
Ambassador’s ribs, which he did not in the least resent.

“Faith, and it’s the way yez always was, Jim Baldwin,” cried Mince
Pie Mulligan. “Whin you an’ me was luggin’ the buckets of butter an’
jugs of the most iligant molasses to th’ cushtomers, it was you, Jim
Baldwin, as was always a-savin’ your tin cints to buy a book. An’ when
you was a-coortin’ Dan Hogan’s pretty daughter, ye’d actually mourn
over the ice-cream ye filled her up wid bekase it wasn’t books wid a
gilt bindin’!”

At this point Mr. Mulligan squared himself off, and distributed a
general wink around the circle, including Eleanor, who glared at him
like a basilisk. Mrs. Hill-Smith felt acutely for her dear Eleanor,
but, being secretly consumed with curiosity about antecedents as new to
her as they were to Constance Maitland, could not forbear remaining.
The Slaters were well established socially and financially at the
time of Mrs. Hill-Smith’s birth, and she was as innocent of the phase
of American life which Senator Mulligan was describing as if she had
been born and reared in the royal apartments of Windsor Castle.
Rochefoucauld has said there is something not unpleasant to us in the
misfortunes of our best friends--and it was certainly true of Mrs.
Hill-Smith--for while she was eyeing Eleanor Baldwin with an expression
of the tenderest sympathy, she was inwardly rejoicing that there was
no blot of butter or molasses upon the escutcheon of the Slaters. But
a relentless fate seemed to direct Senator Mulligan’s tongue, and
turning to her the Senator said, cheerfully, and without the least
encouragement:

“And I’m tould ye are the granddaughter of Cap’n Josh Slater, that I
knew like me ould hat, when I was but la’ad, and he was Cap’n of the
River Queen, one o’ the floatin’ palaces of the day on the Ohio River.”

Mrs. Hill-Smith trembled a little, but answered, coldly:

“I think you must have been misinformed.”

“Well, hardly,” responded Senator Mulligan, blithely, “since it was
your own father as tould me, not half an hour ago. I knew th’ ould
man well--an’ he was an honest ould cuss, but for tobacco-chewin’ an’
bad whiskey ye’ll not find his match betune here and the lakes o’
Killarney. He knew how to turn th’ honest pinny though, did ould man
Slater. No givin’ of widders an’ orphans the turn of the scale, nor
the turn of a hair neither--he was out for the last rid cint. He was
a good-lookin’ ould chap, when he was washed up and had on a clean
shirt--and now, I’ll say, I think you’re like him--_raymarkably_ like
him--and it’s up to you to prove that he wasn’t your grandfather,
begorra!”

Had a bomb with a burning fuse dropped at Mrs. Hill-Smith’s feet,
she could not have been any more astounded. She looked from Mince
Pie Mulligan’s laughing face to Eleanor Baldwin’s, and then glanced
helplessly around the circle. It was impossible not to see that the
British Ambassador, Thorndyke, and the wretched Castlestuart-Stuart,
who was primarily responsible for the whole dreadful business, were all
enjoying themselves extremely. Constance Maitland alone seemed to feel
some sympathy for the unfortunates. It was, however, chiefly on account
of Mrs. Baldwin, who began to be painfully embarrassed, that Constance
said, smilingly, to Senator Mulligan:

“Your reminiscences are very interesting, and what you say of Mrs.
Baldwin’s father must give her cause for honest pride. You have
described a phase of American life of which nobody need be ashamed.”

“Except them as has been through it,” promptly responded Senator
Mulligan. “There’s some things human nature”--he called it
“natur”--“will always be ashamed of as long as it is human nature.
One of ’em is that more people blush for a rise in their family than
for a fall. And it ain’t so foolish as it seems; because, if you were
born on top of the pile, and all your people were, bedad, you don’t do
any of these outlandish things such as me young friend,” indicating
Castlestuart-Stuart, “has been tellin’ us about. By the way,” asked
Senator Mulligan, explosively, of the terrible Castlestuart-Stuart,
“who was it give the dinner anyhow?”

And what should that scion of aristocracy, the Honourable Edward George
Francis Castlestuart-Stuart, do but answer:

“Miss Baldwin’s was the last I went to--but there were plenty of
others!”

Ambassadors are not supposed to laugh--but at this, the British
Ambassador abandoned all hope of keeping serious. Constance
was laughing frankly, Thorndyke was in quiet convulsions,
Castlestuart-Stuart and Senator Mulligan were exchanging sympathetic
grins--and then Eleanor Baldwin said, with the air of an offended queen:

“Papa, give me your arm.”

This Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, with a heightened colour, did, but
not before Senator Mulligan genially remarked:

“Well, the best of frinds must part, so here’s good-bye and good-luck
to ye, Jim Baldwin, and I’ll say to you, Miss Baldwin, I hope ye’ll
live and die as honest as ould Danny Hogan, your grandfather, and a
better man never stepped in shoe-leather;” and then, turning to Mrs.
Hill-Smith, Senator Mulligan continued, “I commind to you the example
of your grandfather, Cap’n Josh Slater, that I had the honour of
knowin’ and who always got what he wanted, and was an agreeable man
enough barrin’ the bad tobacco and mean whiskey. But in the polite
society in which we find oursilves, in these dazzlin’ halls of light
an’ scenes of pothry an’ splendour, both Cap’n Josh Slater an’ good
ould Danny Hogan wud be about as much at home as a ham sandwich at a
Jew picnic!”

With these words, Senator Mince Pie Mulligan bowed himself off, leaving
a great trail of social devastation behind him.




_Chapter Ten_

THERE ARE MEN WHO CAN RESIST EVERYTHING EXCEPT TEMPTATION


Congress adjourned on the 15th of June, just two months after it
was convened in extra session. Thorndyke’s apprehensions had been
confirmed. Few legislative follies had been committed--the House had
gone with the people, leaving to the Senate and the Administration the
disagreeable task of stemming the popular tide as far as possible, when
it rushed on too fast. No reputations had been damaged in either House,
and several had been made--but none to equal Julian Crane’s. As for
Thorndyke, the newspapers seemed to have forgotten his existence.

By the time adjournment was reached, Washington was deserted. The
class which is designated as “everybody” was either going or gone. The
outgoing steamers carried half the town across the ocean. Thorndyke had
promised himself a treat--a trip to Europe that year--the first since
that long-remembered one which had settled his fate in some particulars
for him. It was the first time in years that he felt he could afford
it, for he was a free-handed man, generous to his invalid sister, not
averse to lending money when he had it, and fond of giving presents.
To do this on his Congressional salary did not leave much surplus.
This summer, however, he concluded he could take a three months’ trip.
Constance Maitland’s return had not changed his determination, because
he felt that he could not, in decency, follow her wherever her summer
wanderings might take her; and if he could not be with her, he would
rather, just then, be in Europe.

But one word from Constance, on the afternoon when he went to bid her
farewell, changed all this in the twinkling of an eye.

He found that she had just returned from a near-by place in Virginia,
where her family had been established many generations before the
Louisiana Purchase had sent them toward the Gulf of Mexico. Constance
was full of her Virginia trip, and told Thorndyke that she meant to
take, for the summer, the old family place, Malvern Court, at the
foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where many generations of dead and
gone Maitlands had lived and flourished, after their migration from
their first American home on the shores of the Chesapeake. She showed
him a photograph of the place. It was an old brick manor-house, very
tumble-down, but picturesque, with noble old trees around it, and even
in the picture it conveyed a delicious look of repose. It was the
sort of a place where nothing startling had ever happened except the
Civil War, and nothing ever could happen again. The present owner of
the place, an elderly maiden lady, “Cousin Phillis,” was the last of
her race. She had taken up the notion that, she would like to spend
the summer at “the Springs,” as she had done “in papa’s time, and
grandpapa’s time;” and Constance, meaning to confer a benefit on her,
had offered to rent Malvern for the summer at a price which would have
been dear for a Newport cottage. The old lady, after a long struggle,
had agreed. Constance did not tell all of this, but Thorndyke shrewdly
suspected that the arrangement was designed to help Cousin Phillis far
more than she imagined.

“And Cousin Phillis thinks she is doing me the greatest favour in the
world, and that she is giving me the place for nothing,” Constance
explained, smiling, to Thorndyke.

Then she went on to tell of her battles with Cousin Phillis regarding
what was necessary for the house. Cousin Phillis could not conceive
that anything should be wanting at Malvern Court, which stood exactly
as it was at the beginning of the war, minus forty odd years of wear
and tear; and Constance had only got the old lady’s consent to fit up
the house somewhat, according to modern ideas, by promising to remove
every one of the new-fangled fallals and gewgaws when she should give
up the place. By hard fighting she had got Cousin Phillis to agree
to have some painting and papering done, and hoped when once Cousin
Phillis was out of the way, that the house could be made as comfortable
as it was picturesque.

It was two hours by train from Washington and six miles from the
nearest railway-station.

“Will it not be very lonely for you up there?” asked Thorndyke, smiling
at Constance’s description of her efforts to benefit Cousin Phillis
against her will.

“Ah, you do not know Virginia cousins,” answered Constance. “Nobody
yet was ever known to want for company in Virginia. The two days I
was at Malvern it rained cousins. Each one had to be treated with
distinguished consideration, and after I had worn myself out with
civility to them--for they were coming all day and half the night to
call on me--Cousin Phillis gently intimated to me that if I wasn’t more
attentive to my relations I might find myself very unpopular with them;
and I find that in Virginia to be unpopular with one’s relations is to
be an outcast. They regard me with great suspicion; my Louisiana ways
and my Louisiana accent only half please them; and they seem to think
me a very forgetful person because I do not remember every birth and
death in the family which occurred during the seventy or eighty years
that the Maitlands have been established in Louisiana. I hope,” she
continued, smiling, “that you will have the opportunity to meet some of
my Virginia cousins. I shall have a great many house-parties during the
summer, and you are among those I shall invite. I hope you may accept.”

“I accept now,” replied Thorndyke, and in a breath his trip to Europe
melted away and was as if it had never been. Then Thorndyke very
artfully found out the hour of her departure, which was to be three
days later.

When Constance, on a warm June morning, arrived at the station, with
her five negro servants and her household and personal paraphernalia,
to start for her summer in Virginia, she found Thorndyke waiting for
her. In the station he had met Annette Crane, who had just seen a
constituent off on the train. At the same moment they caught sight of
Constance.

“Come,” said Thorndyke, “go with me and say good-bye to Miss Maitland.
She is a real friend of yours, and I know she will be glad to see you
before she goes.”

“I feel that she is a real friend,” answered Annette. “I never knew a
woman in whom I felt greater confidence.”

“Constance is a very loyal and a very large-minded woman,” replied
Thorndyke, absently. He had used her first name inadvertently, and only
became conscious of it when Annette began laughing softly. Then he
coloured violently, and explained that he had lost his mind, or lost
his manners, or something of the sort, to account for his calling Miss
Maitland by her first name.

They came upon Constance very smartly dressed, as always, and looking
young and animated. She was superintending the tickets and luggage of
herself and her five servants. There were innumerable boxes and trunks
to be seen to, besides a couple of traps and a pair of horses, and
Constance was doing it vigorously, with Scipio Africanus, her young
butler, and Charles Sumner Pickup, her coachman, acting as purely
ornamental adjuncts, giving her frequent and disinterested advice about
the horses, the trunks, and other impedimenta, but in reality being
waited on by their mistress. Whenever negroes go on a journey, they at
once become children, and are treated as such by those who understand
them. In a group stood the cook, an elderly, respectable negro woman,
dressed in black, with the stamp of “fo’ de war” written all over her
honest black face, and a housemaid and a lady’s maid, both chocolate
coloured.

Whenever Thorndyke had observed Constance’s servants before, they
had been dressed with entire correctness--but on this occasion they
had evidently been allowed complete latitude. The two maids wore the
shortest of short skirts, with violent-coloured shirtwaists. They had
on hats exactly alike--large picture-hats of white, with wreaths of
red roses. The same riot of colour had broken out on Scipio Africanus
and Charles Sumner Pickup. Scipio sported a scarf-pin composed of two
United States flags crossed, while Charles Sumner Pickup carried a
cane from the handle of which fluttered red, white, and blue ribbons.
The cook, who was plainly an ante-bellum product, had donned, for
the journey, an immense crape veil, which dangled to the ground, and
implied that she was in the first stages of widowhood. As a fact, she
had “planted her ole man,” in the Afro-American vernacular, about
thirty years before, but at intervals since, she had adorned herself
with the crape veil, as a dissipation in dress akin to the maids’
wreaths of red roses, and the butler and coachman’s assumption of the
national colours.

Thorndyke, on reaching Constance’s side, proffered his assistance, but
his offer was promptly repulsed.

“How on earth would you manage five negroes?” she asked. “You would
lose your patience in five minutes--you do not know what they know or
what they do not know. I think I have everything straight now--I will
keep the tickets myself”--and then, escorted by Thorndyke, she saw her
five charges and the horses, the traps, and the trunks in their proper
cars, and, sending Thorndyke after Annette Crane, herself took her
place in the drawing-room car for her two hours’ trip.

When Annette stepped in the car to spend ten minutes with her,
Constance was sincerely glad. She felt a strong and strange sympathy
with Annette Crane. Never were women more dissimilar in type, in
environment, in ideas, than those two women; but both were gentlewomen
of sense and right feeling, and on that common ground they met and
became friends.

Constance expressed a wish that Mrs. Crane might be in Washington the
next winter, and Annette quietly replied that she expected to be.

Thorndyke then began telling her of his amusement at watching
Constance, with five servants, working like a Trojan for them.

“Of course, you, with your cool Northern temperament, cannot understand
the negro,” replied Constance, good-humouredly. “You would expect a
negro to work when he could help it. What a delusion! Suppose I had
trusted Scipio or Charles to buy those tickets and get those horses
aboard, and meanwhile a street-band had come along?”

“I suppose Scipio or Charles would have got the tickets and attended to
the horses just the same,” answered Thorndyke.

“Do you? That shows your utter density regarding Scipio and Charles. I
daresay you thought it very amusing that I should work for my servants.”

“I did.”

“They work for me when I want them and make them--that is, they work in
a certain way--_their_ way. And I suppose you would have that United
States flag pin off Scipio’s bosom and that cane with the red, white,
and blue ribbons out of Charles’s hand if you were travelling to
Newport with them.”

“I am afraid I should.”

“And you could not stand the wreaths of red roses on the hats of my two
maids?”

“I am quite sure I couldn’t.”

“Then, Mr. Thorndyke, stop legislating for the negroes, because you
know nothing about them.”

“I admit,” said Thorndyke, “that the patience and indulgence of
Southerners toward negroes has always amazed and charmed me. But I
believe the negro would be better off if he were made to assume greater
responsibilities.”

“Go to. Can the Ethiopian change his skin?”

Just then, Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin and Eleanor sauntered into
the state-room of the car. They were to join a yachting party at Old
Point Comfort. They spoke distantly and coolly to both Constance and
Thorndyke--the memory of Senator Mince Pie Mulligan’s candid praise of
“ould Danny Hogan at th’ corner grocery” was still a green and smarting
wound in their breasts.

Mr. Baldwin’s English valet and Eleanor’s French maid were doing
everything possible for the comfort of their master and mistress and
with perfect intelligence. Thorndyke smilingly indicated it, but
Constance shook her head.

“I am always hearing complaints about French and English servants
in this country, but we who are accustomed to negro servants never
complain of them.”

“Because you never require anything of them; however,” added Thorndyke,
“I’ll admit there seems to be a comfortable sort of arrangement between
you. It would drive any but Southern people mad, but you don’t seem to
mind it.”

Then Constance, turning to Annette, said she would be so glad if she
and Mr. Crane would pay her a visit during the summer. Annette’s
eyes sparkled; it was a distinct triumph for her, because she knew,
and knew that Crane knew, that he never would have been asked but
for her. She thanked Constance warmly, but said she was afraid it
was impossible--she never went away from Circleville in summer; and
Constance, seeing longing in Thorndyke’s eye, repeated her invitation
to him, and made his middle-aged heart beat fast by doing it; and then
it was time to go, and the train pulled out, and Constance was gone.

Thorndyke put Annette on her suburban car, and walked back to his
lodgings, through the hot, bright streets--hot and bright in spite of
the lush greenness of the shade. But the day had turned lead coloured
to him; and although there were still plenty of persons in town, and
the capital was seething, for it was yet some days before adjournment,
Thorndyke felt as if the whole town were silent and deserted.

The presence of Constance Maitland made any place full for Geoffrey
Thorndyke, and her absence made a desert to him. He contrasted in his
own mind his feelings of to-day and of a year ago. Then, he had reached
a kind of dull acquiescence in fate, or thought he had. Despairing of
forgetting Constance, he had learned to endure quietly the poignant
pain of remembering her, and in default of all else in life to interest
him he had thrown his whole soul and being into politics. Now, the
sound of Constance Maitland’s voice, the touch of her hand, was always
with him, and had turned an otherwise dull and prosaic world into a
region of splendid tumult and delicious agitations, for he would not
have gone back to his past state for anything on earth. Constance had a
deep regard for him--of that there could be no doubt. She commanded his
society whenever she could; she exerted herself to please and flatter
him; and he accepted it as a man drinks water in the desert, not
analysing it, but exulting in it. Even those frequent seasons when he
called himself a blankety-blank fool were not devoid of enjoyment--at
least, it was not stagnation. He yearned after a million or so of
money, that he might lay at Constance’s feet, and ask her to throw
away the fortune that stood between them, but he was too sound and
sane a man to imagine that he would ever be a rich man. Politics had
by no means lost its interest for him, but rather had it gained--that
at least was something to give him value in Constance’s eyes. As for
that bare possibility of the senatorship two years hence, in the event
that Senator Standiford should retire, Thorndyke regarded it as an
iridescent dream. He did not believe that Senator Standiford would
retire. He heard no more of Letty Standiford’s delicate health, or the
Senator’s, either. Letty was rushing about Washington in an automobile,
helloing at young gentlemen on the street, and doing many loud,
unnecessary, and innocent things which require much nervous energy and
lung-power. The Senator himself gave no indications of ill-health and
fatigue. In Washington he led a life as regular and temperate as that
of a boarding-school miss, but when local elections were impending,
or a national convention was on hand, Thorndyke had known the old
gentleman to go for a fortnight at a time almost without eating or
sleeping, and then come out looking as fresh as a daisy. So Thorndyke
was a little sceptical about his boss’s possible retirement from the
field, and took it that the Senator had been trying some sort of an
intellectual bunco game upon him.

When the adjournment of Congress was reached, Thorndyke took the first
train to his northern home. It was a comfortable old place, on the
skirts of an old colonial town left high and dry among more progressive
places; but shady, serene, and comfortable in the extreme. Here, in the
house where he and his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather
were born, Thorndyke’s summers were spent with his sister Elizabeth, a
gentle, sweet-faced creature, who had not walked for many years, but
whose mind and hands were busy doing such good as lay in their reach.

Down in the town before a wooden one-story office with a porch, hung
a battered tin sign, which had been repaired and repainted twenty
times since first, in Geoffrey Thorndyke’s grandfather’s time, it had
borne the legend, “Geoffrey Thorndyke, Counsellor at Law.” Thorndyke
still kept the dingy little office which had been his grandfather’s
and his father’s before him. He had given up the best of his law
practice at the time that he had been thrown down and securely roped
for Congress by Senator Standiford and his trusty cowboys, the State
Committeemen, but had always clung to the old law-office as a refuge in
case Senator Standiford should relegate him to private life. Although
he had been compelled to abandon the active and continuous practice of
his profession--for according to the old axiom, “The law is a jealous
mistress”--Thorndyke remained a student of law. He was by nature and
training a very considerable lawyer, and his legal acquirements had
helped to win for him the high and steady position he held in the House
of Representatives. He was not a leader of men, but rather a thinker
and adviser, and was proud of the somewhat scornful appellation of “the
scholar in politics.”

In his quiet summer home, among his few shabby books--which, unlike
Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, he read diligently, and never thought to
mention that he lived among them--Thorndyke spent his placid summers.
He read much, and observed a great deal. He was close to the border of
Crane’s State, and their congressional districts were contiguous, and
naturally Thorndyke knew the political happenings across the border.

In all his experience of men, Thorndyke had never watched with the
same interest the development of a man in his public and private life
as he watched Julian Crane’s. He saw the good and the evil struggling
together in Crane, and had not yet found out which was fundamental.

Crane, with Annette and the two children, had returned to Circleville
immediately after the adjournment of Congress, and immediately, on
reaching home, he had been beset with a temptation, against which he
had made a short, hard fight, and then was conquered, and gave up all
the honesty of his soul as regards politics. One week after his return
to Circleville, he had received overtures for peace from Governor
Sanders, and a meeting between them had been arranged.

It took place in a neighbouring city, in the private parlour of a
hotel. The two men were entirely alone. Sanders, a bull-dog of a man,
came out frankly and told Crane that, by the cutthroat policy they
were pursuing, they were simply playing into Senator Bicknell’s hands,
and depriving the State of its just weight with the National Committee
in the year of a Presidential convention. His proposition was a large
one, but was put in a few words. The Governor began by freely admitting
that Crane had got the best of him in the matter of the senatorial
appointment--the politicians were agreed on that. But all men make
blunders, and Governor Sanders proposed to atone for the blunder he
had made about the senatorship by joining forces with Crane instead
of opposing him further. It was plain that there was a strong revolt
against Senator Bicknell, and a split was inevitable among the chiefs
as soon as the Legislature met, which would elect a senator. When this
break came, new alignments must be made, and Governor Sanders believed
and said that if he and Crane should join forces they could oust
Senator Bicknell and get control of the machine.

At the mention of Senator Bicknell’s name, Crane changed countenance,
and mumbled something about his political obligations to the Senator.
Sanders met this by saying that it was his opinion, if Senator
Bicknell were not ousted, there would be grave danger that the party
would lose the State at the next election; and, in any event, there
must be a new arrangement of forces, and he was simply proposing to
take advantage of the inevitable. He then went on to explain briefly
his plan. The protocols must provide that Governor Sanders should
throw all his strength toward getting Crane the party nomination for
the short senatorial term in January, and second Crane’s efforts to
succeed himself. In return, Crane was to devote all his energies toward
securing the Governor’s election two years hence to succeed Senator
Bicknell. Meanwhile, Senator Bicknell was nursing a very robust and
promising Vice-presidential boom, which must, of course, be strangled
in the cradle. Nothing must be heard of it at the next Presidential
convention a year hence; but four years hence, when both Crane and
Sanders would be in the Senate, it would be time enough to decide which
one would strive for it. The geographical position of the State and
the uncertainty of the elections for many years past would put them in
a very good strategic position either to capture the Vice-presidential
nomination or to dictate it to the convention; and that was a prize
which could be held in reserve.

The success of the whole, however, depended upon keeping Senator
Bicknell in the dark, for although he had not displayed the qualities
of a truly great boss, like Senator Standiford, yet he was a man of
considerable force, well liked, a gentleman, and a favourite in his
party. If he suspected the plotting of an insurrection against him,
he might in two years’ time overthrow it completely; but he was an
unsuspicious man--a bad thing in a boss--and could be easily deluded
into believing that no effort was necessary on his part to hold his
own. For that reason, the warfare between Sanders and Crane should
be ostensibly kept up. Especially must this be the case in selecting
delegates to the National Convention. Senator Bicknell’s aspirations
for the Vice-presidential nomination must be frosted on the apparent
ground of dissensions among the leaders in the State--but as soon as
the election was over they could come together and have four years’
amicable struggle to prove whether Sanders or Crane should be seriously
put forward for the Vice-presidential nomination five years hence.

Crane listened to this nefarious scheme with disgust--a disgust in
which a great longing was strangely and violently mingled. Every
word that Sanders said was true; Crane knew that perfectly well. The
machine was going to pieces--there could be no doubt of that--and
Crane, with accurate knowledge of conditions, saw that the Governor’s
plan, although far-reaching, was quite practicable. The whole thing,
however, hinged upon keeping Senator Bicknell in the dark. If it had
been a free, fair fight, the Governor and himself might be worsted.
Senator Bicknell might be considered the founder of Crane’s political
fortunes, and had certainly treated him with great kindness, and had
procured his advancement; but then, it was a question whether the great
law of necessity would not compel Crane to go with Sanders. Senator
Bicknell would not, if he could, ruin Crane, but Governor Sanders was
fully capable of it, and would, if he could. Indeed, Sanders conveyed
as much.

“Of course,” he said, carelessly, as he lighted a cigar, “you would
have to be very circumspect in every way from now on. Voters, you know,
are easily offended. As a matter of business, purely, I shall mention
to you that there has been some talk about your leaving your wife at
home during your time spent in Washington. I have heard that, except
for the short visit she paid you during the extra session, she has not
been there since the first session at which you took your seat. Of
course, everybody knows that it is all straight between you, but it
was a mistake on your part, just the same. It will give your enemies a
handle against you.”

Crane grew pale. How strange it was that in all those years he had
never been conscious of the supreme folly of his behaviour! It had not
once occurred to him until that evening in Washington, hardly more than
a month ago!

“Mrs. Crane remained by choice in Circleville on account of
the children,” replied Crane, “and because my salary as a
congressman doesn’t admit of my having my family there as I would
wish--particularly as I had some debts to pay, and my house in
Circleville has a mortgage on it.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly, Mr. Crane. All of us who know you do. I
was not speaking of the views of your friends, but of your enemies, on
the subject. However, if money is the consideration, I think I could
guarantee your senatorial term in good style; nothing extravagant,
you know, but enough to put your mind at ease. Your notes, with my
indorsement, would be accepted at any bank in the State, and the matter
could be kept quiet.”

It was the old story--making chains out of his necessities. And they
were very great. Crane spoke of paying his debts. He had scarcely made
any reduction in the principal, and had only succeeded in paying the
interest--which, with his living expenses, of which his own were twice
as much as Annette’s and the children’s, and his small life-insurance,
had galloped away with his five thousand a year. And if he should lose
the nomination--there was not much danger of that now, but everything
was possible with a machine and a man like Governor Sanders.

Crane’s better nature, however, rebelled against the deceit to be
practised on Senator Bicknell. That he declared he could never bring
himself to--and believed it at the moment.

“Then,” said Governor Sanders, rising, “we may conclude our conference.
The entire success of the campaign I have mapped out depends upon
Senator Bicknell not being taken into our confidence. We are not
proposing anything against the party; we are simply proposing to do for
ourselves what Senator Bicknell has done for himself; and if things go
on as they have been going under his direction, I think we stand an
excellent chance of losing the State at the Presidential election.”

Before Crane’s ardent mind loomed a vision. Six years in Washington
as a Senator--and he was not yet forty-three years old; living in
good style, and then, the chance, not a bad one by any means, of the
Vice-presidential nomination in a little over four years. It was a
glorious vista. Like the Arabian glass-seller, his imagination far
outstripped itself. He saw himself, at forty-eight, Vice-president,
at fifty-two, another term, at fifty-six, still in the Senate, with
a great reputation--even the Presidency did not seem beyond him.
He had the enormous advantage of youth over most of his rivals. A
Vice-president stands one chance in three and a half of succeeding to
the Presidency--altogether, it was a dazzling dream--so dazzling that
Crane began to feel the old regret and longing that Fate had not given
him a wife like Constance Maitland; he was afraid even, in thought, to
wish that it might be Constance Maitland. How that woman would shine
in an official position! And then, the other side--but there was no
other side. Without Sanders’s help, he would have a desperate fight
before the Legislature; and that outlook which had seemed so rosy when
he described it to Constance Maitland in her drawing-room a few months
before, grew dismal and gruesome when examined in parlour number 20 of
the Grand Hotel. If defeated for the senatorship, and under the ban of
Governor Sanders, his seat, a year hence, would be certainly doubtful,
and if the machine ran over him it meant annihilation. So, tempted of
the devil, Crane yielded, and promised everything the Governor required.

As the Governor had found him an uncertain quantity before, there were
due precautions taken to keep him in the traces this time, by veiled
threats of what would befall him if he kicked them over a second time.
Crane understood perfectly well. He also realised that there were two
men under his skin--one, honest and loving the truth, and the other,
craving money and power and consideration, tormented with vanity,
enslaved by self-love, a fierce and hideous object to contemplate.
But he need not contemplate it; and with this determination he took
a friendly cocktail with the Governor, and departed for Circleville.
That hint about his wife opened Crane’s eyes to the necessity of the
outward practice of virtue, and he then determined to compass, as far
as in him lay, the whole comprehensive sin of hypocrisy. He would be
very attentive to his wife and devoted to his children. He would go to
church regularly. He would adopt a Cincinnatus-like mode of life, that
out of his small means he might contribute to charity and have it known
by the special correspondents. In short, he proposed to become that
object of man’s hate and God’s wrath, a hypocrite.




_Chapter Eleven_

IN THE SWEET-DO-NOTHING OF THE SUMMER-TIME


Straightway, Crane began a hypocritical mode of life, and
deceived everybody in the world except the two most necessary to
deceive--himself and his wife.

He did not deceive himself. There was enough of honesty in him to
make him loathe himself, while doggedly carrying out the devil’s
programme, into which he had entered with Governor Sanders. As he went
to church on summer Sundays, with Annette by his side and the two
children trotting soberly in front of them, Crane felt as if a bolt
from heaven ought to descend upon him for his treachery to the man who
had befriended him. Sitting in the cool, dim church, his head devoutly
bowed as if in prayer, he doubted that there was a personal God; for
if so, how could He tolerate such blasphemy us a man praying, to be
seen of men; giving, to be published in the newspapers, and saying to
his brother, “How is it with thee, my brother?” and then stabbing him
in the back?

At one thing, the evil spirit within him shuddered and turned away.
This was when he had a very friendly letter from Senator Bicknell,
saying he should be in the neighbourhood of Circleville in the next
fortnight, and if convenient he would accept Crane’s often-urged
invitation to stop and spend a day at his house.

The idea of receiving under his roof the man he had betrayed was
too much for Crane. Enough moral sense remained in him to make him
shrink from that. He wrote Senator Bicknell a very friendly and even
affectionate letter explaining that important business would take
him away from home for that week, and expressing the deepest regret
that he could not have the long-promised visit. And forthwith, on the
promised day, Crane made an excuse of business, and went speeding
toward the nearest city. He said no word to Annette about his letter
from Senator Bicknell, but some suspicion of the actual state of things
had crept into her mind. She knew that Crane was under obligations to
Senator Bicknell, and a close reading of the newspapers had shown her
that Crane and Governor Sanders were supposed to be mortal enemies.
Yet, she knew that the Governor and Crane were in the most friendly
communication, while Crane had ceased to mention Senator Bicknell’s
name. And some anxiety was weighing upon him--that she saw plainly. She
saw that Crane was prosperous, that he was rising in importance every
day, and yet was miserable. He had grown thin and pale in those few
weeks since he had entered into his evil compact. It could not be want
of money, because Annette had never known him to be so well supplied.
She begun to suspect some moral lapse on his part, and the thought
nearly broke her heart--for Julian Crane was the love of her life; and
she loved him in his degradation as profoundly as in the time when she
had believed him to be the soul of honour.

A singular complication came of Senator Bicknell’s letter. He did
not get Crane’s in reply, and on the day he had proposed to be in
Circleville he found himself at the little station. There was no one to
meet him, but it was easy enough to find the way to Crane’s house--he
was the local great man of Circleville.

When he reached the house, with its many verandas, embowered in fine
and vigorous elm-trees, the front door was wide open, and looking
through the low, wide hall, he could see the garden beyond. There,
under a tall lilac hedge, sat Annette in a rustic chair, sewing. On
a rustic table before her the children had their books, and took
turns reading aloud to her. As always, she was simply but freshly and
becomingly dressed, and as the green light fell upon her fair hair
and her pensive, pretty face, she made a charming picture for any man
to contemplate. Senator Bicknell had an æsthetic soul as well as an
honest heart, and the pretty scene appealed to him. He walked through
the hall, into the trim garden, and, hat in hand, introduced himself to
Annette.

She rose at once, smiling and blushing, and made him hospitably
welcome. She knew nothing of his expected arrival, which convinced
Senator Bicknell that there had been some misunderstanding concerning
his letter. But the Senator was so pleased with his first impressions
that he accepted Annette’s invitation to remain and share their
one-o’clock dinner--an invitation given with palpitations, but so
promptly and gracefully accepted that Annette was delighted at her own
courage in proposing it. The Senator, seated on a rustic settee, and
admiring the aspect of things in the house and garden, as well as the
mistress and her children, thought himself in luck. He expressed great
regret at not seeing Crane, but frankly declared himself very well
satisfied with things as they were.

Emboldened by her success in entertaining the Senator, Annette
proposed that she should notify the leading citizens, and invite
them to call at five o’clock to pay their respects to him. Senator
Bicknell good-humouredly assented--it would be of advantage to Crane,
he thought, mistakenly enough--and it was worth while obliging a
subordinate if that subordinate had a wife as pleasing as Mrs. Crane.

By the time this was settled it was one o’clock, and the Senator found
himself seated at Annette’s dainty table, with the two children,
and being waited on by Annette’s one servant, a neat, hard-featured
creature, who knew how to cook.

The Senator was worth millions, had a French chef, and a chronic
dyspepsia, but he spoke truly when he told Annette he had not enjoyed
a dinner so much in years as the one she gave him. It was very
simple, but good, and well served. The children never opened their
mouths except when spoken to. Annette was surprised, as at Constance
Maitland’s dinner, to find herself altogether at ease, and was
conscious that she was making an agreeable impression every moment of
the time. To be appreciated gives the most timid confidence; and it was
perfectly evident that this trained man of the world appreciated this
woman, as sweet and natural as the wild roses that grew in the roadside
hedges. They found much to talk about, and Thorndyke was mentioned, at
which Annette overflowed in praises of him, to which Senator Bicknell
agreed.

He was much amused by Annette’s impromptu plan of having a reception
for him that afternoon, and accused her of aspiring to be a second
Madame Roland, but laughingly agreed with her when Annette assured him
that it would be worth several votes to Crane in the coming senatorial
contest.

After dinner he was shown to a cool and spotless chamber, where he
had a very refreshing nap and a bath. At five o’clock he was summoned
below. Annette awaited him in the modest drawing-room. She wore
a pretty muslin gown, and looked as fresh as a dewdrop. With the
assistance of the neighbours, the lower floor was dressed with flowers,
and simple refreshments were served upon tables in the large and
well-kept garden.

Annette, taking her stand at the door of the drawing-room with the
Senator, received with dignity and grace the people who came pouring
in--the Judge of the County Court, the professional men in the town,
the principal of the Circleville High School--all accompanied by their
ladies, wearing their best silk gowns and very tight kid gloves.
Senator Bicknell was affability itself. He was an amiable man, and
Annette Crane’s virtues and charms were such as appeal peculiarly
to men, so that most of them wished to oblige her. He was secretly
amused at the courage and capability she had shown in organising a
political reception for him on such short notice, and determined to
help her through with it. By way of showing his goodwill, he spoke with
enthusiasm of Crane to many persons, and said that he should be pleased
if Crane might be his colleague after the first of January.

At seven o’clock he was obliged to take his train. Before he stepped
into the carriage of the Judge, who had asked the honour of driving him
to the station, Senator Bicknell expressed to Annette the most sincere
gratitude and pleasure at his visit.

“Tell Mr. Crane,” he whispered to her, “that with a wife who has such
masterly capacity for political management as you, my dear Mrs. Crane,
he may expect any sort of promotion. If our State is honoured by being
awarded the Vice-presidential nomination, I am afraid no one else will
be heard of except Mr. Crane, if you take the affair in charge.”

“You are laughing at me,” cried Annette, laughing herself, but
colouring with pleasure at Senator Bicknell’s kind manner and
flattering words. “Imagine me as a political manager!”

“My dear lady, the only political managers in the world, among women,
are those like yourself, who don’t know that they are managing.
Good-bye, and a thousand thanks. I have not spent so pleasant a day for
a long time. Remember, when you come to Washington, you are to dine
with me many times, but I can’t make you enjoy your dinner as much as I
enjoyed mine. Regards to Crane”--then, stepping into the carriage, the
Senator said to the Judge in a voice meant to be heard by those around:

“Charming woman--sweet, well-behaved children--comfortable home--our
friend Crane is in luck.”

Crane did not return until the next evening, and was greeted by the
sensational news of Senator Bicknell’s visit. Annette was, of course,
full of her achievement in entertaining the Senator. Instead of
receiving her account with the pleasure which might naturally have been
expected, Crane listened with sombre eyes and a face which grew pale
and paler as Annette proceeded with the story of the success of her
impromptu reception. It was indeed a horribly awkward complication for
Crane, and vastly increased his difficulties. His chagrin could not
be concealed, and Annette was quickly convinced, to her distress and
amazement, that Senator Bicknell’s visit was anything but pleasant to
Crane.

When this was borne in upon her, she stopped speaking, and
involuntarily fixed her clear, accusing eyes on her husband. All at
once her suspicions of the changed relations between Crane and Senator
Bicknell, and Crane and Governor Sanders, became a certainty. In a
moment of inspiration--the inspiration of an intelligent honesty--the
probable state of affairs flashed upon her. She remained silent for a
time; they were seated alone at the tea-table, in the garden, and the
August sunset was at hand. Crane’s countenance grew anxious as Annette
watched him.

“Did the Senator say he had got my letter?” he asked.

“He expressly said he had not heard from you,” replied Annette. “Did
you go away from home to avoid the Senator?”

It was but a chance shot, but it hit the bull’s eye. Crane did not
answer the question, but got up and walked to the other end of the
garden. They were sitting and talking in the very spot where Annette
had so successfully entertained the Senator the afternoon before.

She could not, of course, know the details, but she knew then that
Crane was a traitor, and was pretending a goodwill which he was far
from feeling. Annette suffered as only a high-minded woman can suffer
when the lower man in one she loves reveals itself. But she said
nothing. She knew that Crane must work out his own salvation, and that
she could be of no help to him there.

And Crane, having a guilty conscience, knew that Annette suspected the
game he was playing; and this made him more unhappy but not less guilty
than before.

Annette had told Crane of Constance Maitland’s invitation to them,
which piqued as much as it gratified him. He knew quite well that but
for Annette he would have had no invitation. Later on came a note from
Constance repeating the invitation very cordially, but Annette felt
obliged to decline it with all the thanks in the world.

So the summer passed for those two.

For Thorndyke the summer was, first, one long anticipation of that
visit he was to pay Constance, and then, one long retrospection of
it. He had enjoyed every moment of it, although the beginning was
inauspicious. When he changed trains at Washington to go into Virginia,
whom should he find in the Pullman with him but Mince Pie Mulligan, who
greeted him effusively. Thorndyke carefully concealed his destination
from Mr. Mulligan, but the junior Senator was by no means so secretive.

“I’ll tell you where I’m going,” he said, in the friendly juxtaposition
of the smoker. “I’m going to a place up in Virginia to see that
stunning woman I met in Washington, Miss Maitland. Never saw her but
once, but, by Jove, that was enough to make me want to see her again.
I’ve found out where she is spending the summer, and I’m going there
just to do a little prospecting.”

Mr. Mulligan had abandoned the violent brogue which he had used on a
former occasion, and spoke pretty fair English, but his mouth was as
wide and his hair was as red as ever.

Thorndyke, consumed with inward rage, inquired blandly of Mr. Mulligan:

“May I ask if you were invited by Miss Maitland to visit her?”

“Lord, no,” responded Mr. Mulligan, cheerfully. “But I’m just
prospecting. I don’t know whether I shall like her or not after I know
her better; but I expect to like her. The way she sat down on those two
young women snobs added a year to my life, and I’m thinking I gave ’em
a good whack or two.”

“I suppose,” said Thorndyke, longing to throw Mulligan out of the
car-window and under the locomotive wheels, “you have engaged
accommodations in Miss Maitland’s neighbourhood?”

“Never a bit of it. I just found out that Miss Maitland’s station was
Roseboro’ station on this road, and I presume there must be some sort
of a hotel within reach, or I can stop at the next town.”

“There are no towns in that part of the county, and Miss Maitland has
informed me that there isn’t a hotel or boarding-house within ten
miles,” replied Thorndyke, stalking angrily back into the Pullman.

The train stopped at Roseboro’ on being flagged, and Thorndyke had one
of the most delicious moments of his life when he stepped into a smart
trap driven by Constance herself, and left Senator Mulligan, the man of
millions and of pies, stranded at the station, which consisted of the
passenger shed and the station-master’s house, which had four rooms,
in which the station-master with his wife and eleven children lived in
much dirt and comfort.

Constance, sitting in the trap, looking remarkably handsome in her
summer costume and large black hat, felt a thrill of sympathy for the
unfortunate Mulligan, standing in the little shed of a station with his
luggage piled around him. Not so Thorndyke, who derived acute pleasure
from Mulligan’s miserable situation.

“I hope,” said Constance to the forlorn Senator, “that you will come
over to see me some afternoon while you are at Roseboro’. Malvern is
only six miles away.”

“Thank you,” cried Mulligan, at once rising into a mood of enthusiastic
optimism, “I’ll call early and often.”

“The fellow is a good-natured ruffian, but I hope I’ll be out when he
calls,” was Thorndyke’s remark to Constance as they left the sandy road
of Roseboro’ station and entered the cool and shaded highway which led
to Malvern.

As Constance and Thorndyke drove along the sweet-scented country lanes,
crossing streams by rickety bridges and bumping up and down hills,
Thorndyke felt himself near Paradise. Constance was so kind to him, so
unaffectedly glad to see him. Her country life had freshened up her
complexion, and she looked positively girlish, and her high spirits
were infectious. She described the house-party--Mrs. Willoughby, half a
dozen Virginia cousins of different ages and sexes, a French friend and
her husband travelling in America, and Cathcart, the navy man--at whose
name Thorndyke felt a sensible diminution of his happiness. Constance
was charmed with Malvern Court, and declared it had been the happiest
summer of her life--almost.

“And when I think of those weary, dreary foreign watering-places of
which I grew so tired, and of those tiresome Swiss hotels, I think I am
in Heaven to be once more in my own country among my own kith and kin,
and hearing no language but good, honest English.”

“I intended to go to Europe this summer,” said Thorndyke, meekly. “I
had planned it for two or three years.”

“Why did you not go?” asked Constance, heedlessly.

“Because you asked me to visit you,” replied Thorndyke, something
within him forcing the truth out of him against his will, and then he
added, hastily:

“Forgive me, I’m a perfect brute. I wouldn’t blame you in the least if
you sent me back north by the next train.”

“Get up, Frolic, you idiot!” cried Constance to her smart cob, and
flicking him with the whip. Her face coloured, her eyes shone--it was
plain she was not displeased. But a horrible suspicion occurred to
Thorndyke--possibly she was, after all, a thorough-going flirt! Many of
those Southern women are, and can’t imagine why a man should object to
having a football made of his dearest affections as long as it amuses
the lady in the case.

This gruesome and uncanny thought, together with Cathcart’s presence
at Malvern, was a huge fly in Thorndyke’s ointment, but misery is as
much a concomitant of love as joy is, and Thorndyke had his share of
miseries.

The great live oaks were casting long shadows on the large, smooth
lawn when Constance drove up to the doors of Malvern Court. It was
a spacious brick house with wings, and at the back a four-roomed
structure common to Virginia houses, and known as “the office,” where
the bachelors were lodged. The house-guests were having tea under the
trees, where the shadows were long, when Thorndyke and Constance joined
them. Scipio Africanus served the tea, which was iced, and was like
water in the desert to travellers. It was handed with much ceremony by
Scipio, who had doffed his smart livery, and appeared in a snow-white
linen jacket. He was assisted by one of the coloured maids, who now
wore the smartest of smart caps and the neatest of neat print gowns
instead of the short skirt, pink shirtwaist, and picture-hat which had
electrified Thorndyke at the Washington station a few weeks before.
Constance Maitland knew precisely when to relax and when to tighten
discipline among her staff of negro servants.

Like all people in a country house, the guests were glad to see some
one from the outside world. It was a pleasant and amiable party,
and Thorndyke enjoyed himself in spite of Cathcart’s presence; but
Cathcart, being a remarkably pleasant and personable man, everybody
except Thorndyke relished his company.

While they were lingering over tea, a ramshackly buggy of the
prehistoric age of buggies, with an unkempt horse, was seen driving
up the winding, shady road which led to the lawn. In the buggy sat no
less a person than Senator Mince Pie Mulligan. He had seen himself
ignominiously left in the lurch by Thorndyke, but with the same spirit
of enterprise which had made him the greatest pie-manufacturer on earth
he had investigated his resources, and promptly pursued his object
with the best means at hand--a sure mark of superiority.

When he alighted from his ancient buggy, Constance advanced to meet
him, and greeted him with a cordiality which inspired Mr. Mulligan
with admiration and hope. He did not know that Southerners in their
own habitat meet every guest, however undesirable, with the same
overflowing cordiality, which is reckoned as merely good manners.
Senator Mulligan, however, thought this custom of generations a special
tribute to himself, and gloated over that cool, supercilious Thorndyke,
who had smiled in a superior manner at the Senator’s predicament at
Roseboro’ station. So he replied genially to Constance’s greeting:

“As you were good enough to ask me to call, and as I don’t know how
long I’ll be in these parts, I said to myself, ‘Faith, I’ll pay Miss
Maitland a visit this very afternoon.’ And here I am with this ould
cruelty cart, when I’ve got a stable full of horses at home, and a
Panhard red devil that cost me six thousand dollars to buy and a
thousand a year to keep--but, like the butterfly, I get there just the
same.”

Constance, being a clever woman, looked into Michael Mulligan’s soul
and saw that it was honest, according to his lights, and that his
bragging was not bragging at all, but an innocent way of mentioning
what the pie business had brought him.

“I am very glad to see you, Senator,” she replied, smiling, and then
gravely introduced this member of the august Senate of the United
States to the group sitting about the tea-table.

Nobody but Thorndyke and Cathcart took in the situation. The Virginia
cousins, to whom political preferment means that the object of it
belongs to one of the first families in his own home, supposed that
Mr. Mulligan, although certainly very odd-looking, had a long line
of distinguished ancestors, and it was with much cordiality that an
ex-Confederate Colonel, grave and suave, with a snow-white moustache
and imperial, shook Mike Mulligan’s hand, saying:

“I am pleased, sir, to make your acquaintance, and to bid you welcome
upon the soil of old Virginia.”

The Frenchman, a retired army officer, and his wife, a thorough-bred
French gentlewoman, were equally polite, but they arrived at a much
more correct estimate of Senator Mulligan’s social status than the
ex-Confederate Colonel. As for the Honourable Mike, he started in
to enjoy himself in a whole-souled manner, which would commend him
to all sincere persons. He drank three glasses of iced tea running,
complimented the late President Davis and General Lee, declared that
he meant to buy up a good part of the State of Virginia, and worked
himself up into a whirlwind of enthusiasm over everything he saw. This
completely captivated all the ex-Confederates present, amazed the
French strangers, and amused Thorndyke and Cathcart beyond words. On
leaving, Senator Mulligan told Constance nothing but the truth when he
said that he had never enjoyed an afternoon more, or had found himself
among more “conjaynial company.”

Then began for Thorndyke a week of rapture, mixed with agonising
jealousy; for let no man suppose that his passions have no more power
to trouble him after his hair grows scanty and his moustache grows
grey. In all those years of separation from Constance, the edge of
Thorndyke’s pain had been dulled, but the ache was still there; and
from the April night he had first seen her, until then, he felt himself
being steadily and securely mastered by that great love of his life--as
steadily and securely as if he could have offered her his honest and
devoted heart. And to be thrown with her daily--to spend the bright
summer mornings in the cool, old drawing-room with Constance, listening
to the pleasant, languid talk of people in a country house, the shady
afternoons in driving over the rich, green, placid country, sometimes
with Constance by his side--the deep, blue nights, sitting on the
great stone porch, watching the silver moon rise over the distant
pine-crowned mountain-peaks, and looking at Constance, in a thin white
gown, seeming as young by night as in those sweet Italian nights long
past--it would have been bliss but for two things. One was that she was
as kind to Cathcart as to himself, and the other was that she was so
very kind to him. For since she could not possibly think of marrying
him, she could only be amusing herself at his expense.

Thorndyke was nearly forty-five years old, he was a member of
Congress, and reckoned a peculiarly cool-headed and long-headed man,
but he was thereby exempt from the agonies of love.

As for Senator Mulligan, Thorndyke did not need to recall the frank
confession made on the train to know that Mince Pie had speedily made
up his mind that Constance was worth the winning, and to go about it
with promptness and energy. On the very last afternoon, Thorndyke,
disgusted with the goodwill which Constance had shown Cathcart,
retired to a rustic summer-house on the lawn, to writhe in secret with
jealousy, and incidentally to read the New York newspapers. Presently
he saw Constance and Senator Mulligan walking across the sward toward
the house. Constance’s face was flushed, and she was walking rapidly.
Senator Mulligan was talking earnestly to her, and his brogue was more
evident than usual, under the stress of emotion. Immediately in front
of the summer-house Constance stopped and faced the Senator.

“I must beg of you,” she said, in a clear voice, with a faint ring of
indignation in it, “to say no more on this subject to me now, or at
any other time.”

“Well, I’ve said about all I had to say,” replied Senator Mulligan,
warmly. “I asked you to marry me, I did, and I tould you, I did, if
you had to lose what money you had because I’m an American, thank God,
that I’d make it up to you a dozen times over. I said that, I did,
and I didn’t desaive you about the senatorship.” The brogue by this
time was rampant. “The thing was going a-beggin’, and the Governor, he
sends for me, and he says to me, ‘Mike,’ says he, ‘you’ll be nothin’
but a stop-gap, and don’t get any other notion into your red head but
that--and ye’ll step down and out the first of January,’ says he; ‘and
don’t monkey with the buzz saw,’ says he. And I says, says I, ‘I won’t,
Governor, and I’ll have my fling at Washington, and I’ll take down my
Panhard red devil, and go a-scorchin’ over the Washington streets, and
have the time of my life,’ and bedad, I have. And I had no more thought
of falling in love and getting married than I have of trying to get up
a diligation to present my name to the next Prisidential convention.
But then I met you, Miss Maitland, and I came up here after you, and
you’ve bowled me over, senatorship and all, and I’ve tould the truth,
and not a lie in the bunch, and I’ve offered to give up your money, and
I don’t see that I’ve done anything for you to look at me like Lady
Macbeth, and I beg your pardon if I’ve offinded you.”

During this speech Constance Maitland’s heart softened toward Mince Pie
Mike. He had only claimed a man’s inalienable right, and he had behaved
as honourably as in him lay. So she said, with a softening of the voice
as well as the heart:

“I feel sure that all you say is true and I am sorry if I have wounded
you--but what you ask is not to be thought of for a moment.”

“Well,” remarked the Senator, resignedly, “it’s a disappointment,
it’s a great disappointment, but there are other things in life, Miss
Maitland. There’s the pleasure of helping widows and orphans, and I
swear to you I have done that as well as I could iver since I was a
clerk in good ould Danny Hogan’s corner store, and there’s the pleasure
of managing the primaries and handing over the biggest batch of votes
for the money of any man in the State----”

“Mr. Mulligan!” cried Constance, in horror.

“Yes, there’s no denying of it in some States--and there’s automobiling
and plenty of other clean, dacent pleasures to make up for love. But
I tell you, Miss Maitland, there never can be the time, if I’m still
single, that you can’t be Mrs. Michael Patrick Mulligan, and your money
may go to the bow-wows for all I care, and I honour and admire you
above all the women I iver knew, I do that. Good-bye. Don’t snub the
life out of me in Washington if I meet you next winter.”

“I shall not, I promise you--good-bye,” said Constance, and walking
briskly into the summer-house, while Senator Mulligan turned away, she
almost walked into Geoffrey Thorndyke’s arms.

“I couldn’t help hearing,” said Thorndyke, with a burning face. “I
couldn’t get out--it would have been beastly to the poor devil----”

And then both of them suddenly burst into a gale of laughter, nor could
they, all that day and evening, meet each other’s eyes without laughing
mysteriously.

Thorndyke’s visit lasted a week. It was a week of heaven and hell to
him. When he went away, Constance Maitland realised that, to accomplish
her heart’s desire, she would have to do the proposing herself, as
Queen Victoria did on a similar occasion.




_Chapter Twelve_

WHAT IS IT TO BE HONEST IN POLITICS AND TRUE IN LOVE?


On the first Monday in December--a gloriously bright winter day--the
flags were run up over the Senate and House wings of the Capitol
building. Congress had met once more.

There were the usual thronging multitudes in the corridors, the usual
pleasant buzz of meeting and greeting in cloak and committee rooms, and
the cheerfulness and exhilaration of the last session was flamboyant in
the present one.

Among the last members of the House to arrive was Julian Crane. He
had come late because he wished to put off as long as possible the
meeting with Senator Bicknell. Of course, they must meet early and
often, but that did not make Crane take any less pains to postpone, if
even for a day, the sight of the man he had betrayed. But almost the
first acquaintance he ran across was the Senator in a group of brother
senators who had strolled over to the House side.

Senator Bicknell greeted Crane with unusual cordiality. In the first
place, he really wished to attach Crane to the Bicknell chariot, but
he had such agreeable recollections of his August day in Circleville,
of Annette and her spotless table, her roast chicken and boiled corn,
her sweet, fresh spare bedroom, where he had enjoyed one of the best
naps of his life, and her impromptu reception in the afternoon, that he
felt an increased kindliness for Crane. He showed this by button-holing
Crane in the midst of the group of senators, and telling the story of
his day in Circleville. He paid Annette many sincere compliments, and
declared that if Crane should enter the senatorial contest a year and a
half hence, and should defeat him, it would simply be on account of the
charming Mrs. Crane. It was not fair to pit a man with such a lovely
wife against a hopeless and incurable bachelor like himself.

Under other circumstances Crane would have been highly gratified, but
now it tortured him. He heard once more ringing in his ears Governor
Sanders’s words, “It is absolutely necessary that Senator Bicknell be
not taken into our confidence.” To cap the climax, Senator Bicknell
said:

“Be sure and give my warmest regards to Mrs. Crane, and tell her
I shall take the first opportunity to call on her--she is here, I
suppose? She mentioned last summer that she was coming on with you.”

“Yes,” replied Crane, “we are established for the season”--and he gave
the name of a comfortable, but not expensive or fashionable, apartment
house where they had quarters.

“And say to her that, although I can’t give her a dinner half so good
as what she gave me, I shall expect her and you to arrange to dine with
me at my house at a very early day. Good morning.”

Crane escaped and went to his seat in the House. While he was
contemplating the baseness of his own conduct, Thorndyke came over and
spoke to him.

Thorndyke’s first impression of Crane was that he looked haggard and
worn, and Crane’s impression of Thorndyke was that he had grown about
ten years younger. His greeting to Thorndyke was very cordial, but he
was conscious of a strange thing--that ever since his bargain with
Sanders, the meeting with former friends, men of sterling probity,
gave him a vague uneasiness. It seemed to him as if, in duping Senator
Bicknell, he was duping every honest man he knew. Thorndyke, too, asked
after Mrs. Crane, and it began to dawn upon Crane’s mind that Annette
had the power, in a remarkable degree, of pleasing men of the world.
Still, he thought her not quite good enough for himself, particularly
if the brilliant future he planned should materialise--as it must and
should.

The proceedings of the day were perfunctory, and it was but little
after three o’clock when Thorndyke left the House. The afternoon was
briskly cold, and the sun glittered from a heaven as blue as June. Just
as Thorndyke came out on the plaza he encountered Crane, who would have
avoided him, but it was scarcely possible.

The two men walked down the hill, and toward Thorndyke’s old quarters.
They talked amicably and even intimately, but Thorndyke got a curious
impression of reserve from Crane--and reserve was the last thing in the
world to develop in Julian Crane. As they walked along the streets in
the dazzling sun of December in Washington, they were speaking of the
great economic questions with which the Congress would have to deal.
Thorndyke, as an accomplished lawyer, saw certain difficulties in the
way of regulating these matters which Crane did not at first perceive.

“After all,” said Thorndyke, “it comes down to whether either political
party will deal honestly with these questions. If they do, a solution
will be found, and the whole matter can, in the course of a few years,
be properly adjusted.”

“What do you call perfect honesty in politics?” asked Crane, after a
moment.

“That’s rather a large proposition,” replied Thorndyke, laughing.
“I should say, if called upon to give an immediate definition, that
perfect honesty in politics means keeping one’s hands clean in money
matters, and being an outspoken friend or enemy.”

Crane’s heart sank at this. He did not know why he should have asked
such a question, and he was hard hit by Thorndyke’s reply.

“There must be a good, wide margin allowed for offensive partisanship,”
Thorndyke continued. “That’s the trouble with the professors of
political economy in colleges--they leave human nature out of the
equation. There’s my boss, Senator Standiford. He is as honest as
the day as far as money goes, and honest in using his enormous power
for the good of the party, and he was born with the notion that his
party and the country are interchangeable terms. He uses dishonest
men sometimes, but not dishonest methods. It is both shameful and
ridiculous that a great State like ours should hand over such vast
power to one man as it has to Senator Standiford, but that’s not his
fault. It is rather to his credit that he has not misused his power.
The trouble is, that the people will get accustomed to the system of
one-man government, and when Senator Standiford goes hence, the party
will choose another dictator, probably neither as honest or as able as
he.”

“Senator Standiford is a rich man. Suppose he were poor? What
percentage would you allow a poor man in political life in his efforts
to be honest?”

“I can’t figure it out that way,” answered Thorndyke, “although I
ought to know public life from the viewpoint of the poor but honest
Congressman. I am not worth ten thousand dollars in the world outside
of my Congressional salary. But as the Kentucky colonel said on the
stump, ‘I am as honest as the times will allow.’”

“Don’t you think,” persisted Crane, for whom this discussion of honesty
in public life had a powerful fascination, “that the same man in
certain political circumstances would remain honest, while in different
circumstances he might succumb to temptation? Take the case of a poor
man in politics.”

“I admit that the most desperate venture on earth is for a man to
attempt to live by politics. Some men have done it, like Patrick Henry,
for example. But those men are quite beyond comparison with every-day
men. However, Marcus Aurelius says, ‘A man should _be_ upright, he
should not be made to be upright.’”

This saying of Marcus Aurelius troubled Crane. He did not fully
believe it. He thought that Marcus Aurelius, like the professors of
political economy in colleges and universities, left out of account the
great factor of human nature, which makes a bad man to do good acts,
and a good man to do bad acts, and makes a man good at one time, bad at
another, and both good and bad together. Presently he roused himself
and said:

“It would be a great thing for any public man if he could lead such a
life that every word he said or wrote could be printed.”

“Why, have you been writing letters lately?”

“God knows, no! I have always had sense enough for that--to write as
few letters as possible.”

At that moment Crane felt a thrill of satisfaction--not one line did
Governor Sanders have of his.

The two men then began to talk about the political situation generally,
and Thorndyke noticed in Crane an exultant spirit, a disposition to
brag which had been absent in him at the time of his first rise into
prominence, when it might have been expected to develop. The truth
was that Crane found the only solace for his moral lapses lay in
contemplating the splendid prizes which Sanders had dangled before his
eyes. He had come to believe that some of these splendid prizes must be
his; it was incredible that he should not receive the price for which
he had sold his honour. And as the case always is, whether a man is or
is not wholly bad, Crane promised himself at some future time, when
he had garnered all the fruits of his wrong-doing, to lead a life of
perfect rectitude.

Then they came to the street corner where their paths diverged, and
Thorndyke said at parting:

“Please give my warmest regards to Mrs. Crane, and tell her I mean
to presume upon her past kindness to me and call to see her in the
evening.”

“Have you seen Miss Maitland?” asked Crane.

“No,” replied Thorndyke, who had just proclaimed himself a man of
truth. He had not, indeed, seen Constance to speak to her, but the
night before, within two hours of his arrival, when he had gone out to
smoke his after-dinner cigar, he had sneaked up to her house, and had
watched her as she passed to and fro before the lighted windows of the
drawing-room.

Crane went upon his way gloomily, turning over in his mind his
conversation with Thorndyke, and all the difficulties of his situation,
which were accentuated by his being in Washington. The strong fancy
which Senator Bicknell had taken to Annette made everything harder. It
seemed as if all those things which might be reckoned an unmixed good
for an honest man were a burden and a perplexity to him, Julian Crane.

Thinking these uncomfortable thoughts, he found himself at the entrance
to the big apartment house, and went to his own quarters.

They were small and cramped, but the locality was good and the outlook
pleasant. Annette and the two children met him with smiles. The
children had grown acquainted with him and had become fairly fond of
him. As for Annette, she had never, in all her married life, so striven
to help her husband as in the last few months, when she had seen that
he was troubled and suspected that he was engaged in wrong-doing. All
her pity, all her loyalty as a wife, had risen within her. She had
gradually abandoned the attitude of reserve which she had maintained
toward him ever since that first unfortunate experience in Washington
so long ago. She reproached herself, as the good always do, for not
having been better. Had she given him more of her confidence and sought
his more, she might now be in a position to help him, or at least to
sympathise with his trouble, whatever it might be. But her conscience
should never upbraid her again for want of sympathy and tenderness to
him. He might tell her of his perplexities, or he might keep them to
himself, she would be all tenderness and softness to him. And then
the hope was born and lived in her heart, which every neglected wife
has, that calamities of the soul as well as the heart might bring her
husband once more to her side. For Annette had never ceased to love her
husband--and loving spells forgiveness with a woman.

Crane dutifully delivered Senator Bicknell’s and Thorndyke’s messages,
and Annette’s eyes sparkled with pleasure. She felt an increase of
courage. She thought Crane must have seen that she had been a help, not
a hinderance to him, socially and personally, when she had been given
a chance, and she meant to show him that she could hold her own in
Washington as well as in Circleville.

A week or two passed in all the gay confusion of the beginning of the
season in Washington. Thorndyke had watched his chance to call on
Constance Maitland. Carefully avoiding her usual day at home, he had
called on a peculiarly raw and disagreeable afternoon, very late, when
he felt sure that she must have returned from her daily drive. He found
her in her drawing-room, which was dusky, although it was not yet six
o’clock, with a bright fire leaping high and making the charming room
bright with its ruddy glow.

Constance, wrapped in rich dark furs, her cheeks tingling with the
fresh cold air without, her eyes sparkling, was standing before the
blazing fire. She was unaffectedly glad to see Thorndyke, and he felt
that sense of quiet well-being which always came upon him when he was
with her in her own house. They had much to talk about. Constance took
off her furs and the long, rich cloak which enveloped her, and sat down
on the deep, inviting sofa, and motioned Thorndyke to her side.

Among the persons they spoke of were Julian Crane and Annette.
Thorndyke volunteered the suggestion that Crane was passing through
some sort of a crisis--he was so changed, so silent where he was
formerly talkative, so full of vague exultation and of equally vague
depression. Thorndyke had seen Annette and the children. Annette had
asked to be remembered to Miss Maitland, and Constance replied that
she should call at once to see Mrs. Crane. She was not particularly
interested in Julian Crane’s crises, except that she said, woman
fashion, that he ought to be more attentive to his wife.

Thorndyke then mentioned that Senator Mulligan was in town, at which
they both laughed. But soon the conversation got down to the you
and I--the books each had read, the thoughts each had pondered, the
places each had been. Constance had remained continuously at Malvern
Court from June until late in November. She had had a succession of
house-parties during the summer, but in the golden autumn she had been
quite alone.

“It was the sweetest, the most peaceful life you can imagine,” she
said, thoughtfully. “All the world was shut out, except Virginia
cousins, but I even escaped most of them. All day I was out in the
woods and lanes, riding or driving or walking, and in the evening,
with a wood fire, a book, a piano, and a lamp--it was company enough,
yet it was solitude itself. It was like Omar’s shady tree and loaf of
bread and jug of wine and book of verse.”

“And thou,” added Thorndyke, under his breath. He was watching her with
a silent rapture which possessed him on meeting her after an absence.
She surely had the softest and sweetest voice in the world, and those
charming tricks of pronunciation--she called solitude “solee-tude”
and piano “pe-arno,” and was quite unconscious of it, and bitterly
denied any difference between her speech and Thorndyke’s. Constance was
conscious of the adoring look in Thorndyke’s eyes; she had heard the
one suggestive word; perhaps it was that which caused a happy smile to
flicker for a moment on her lips, revealing the faint, elusive dimple
in her cheek, but she continued as if she had neither heard, nor seen,
nor understood.

“I have heard about the solitude there is in crowds, but I never could
find it so. I am so dreadfully sociable--Southern and Creole French,
you know--that I always find troops of friends and acquaintances in a
crowd. But in that solitary old country house in the autumn--that, if
you please, was to be alone.”

“You seem to have a passion for solitude,” said Thorndyke, rather
crossly.

“Oh, no, only a taste for it at times. I never contemplated with
pleasure a solitary life, and I have a horror of a lonely old age.”

What did she mean? Was she proposing to him? Thorndyke was a good deal
staggered by this speech from the lady of his secret love.

The time sped fast with them, and both of them started when a
neighbouring clock struck seven. Constance rose at once.

“I must go and dress for dinner--and you--you will remain?”

Such an idea had never entered Thorndyke’s brain before, but in half a
quarter of a second he had accepted.

“Of course,” said Constance, airily, picking up her muff, and putting
her bare hands in it, “it’s very improper for you and me to dine
together without others, but we have reached that comfortable age when
we can commit all sorts of improprieties in perfect safety. It is a
fine thing to grow old.”

“That thought almost reconciles me to the loss of my hair,” replied
Thorndyke. “You will have to excuse my afternoon clothes, of course,
since you have asked me to stay.”

“Certainly. And out of consideration for your feelings, I shall make
only a demi-toilette.”

Presently they were seated at a small round table, and Scipio was
serving a dainty little dinner. How young they felt! There was no
débutante or fledgling youth present to remind them that Time had
meddled with their hair and complexions, no elderly persons to
claim them as pertaining to middle age. Thorndyke had rarely been
more exhilarated in his life. There might be a morrow; nothing was
changed by these stray hours of happiness, but still they were hours
of happiness. As for Constance, she was radiant with pleasure, and
was at no pains to conceal it. Thorndyke, it is true, always found
misery and disappointment waiting for him at his lodgings whenever he
returned from Constance’s house; but they could not frighten off those
occasional sweet hours which bloomed like snowdrops in a barren and
frosted field.

One of the first visits that Constance paid was to Annette Crane.
As Thorndyke had seen anxiety written all over Crane’s personality,
so Constance saw that Annette was not wholly at ease. But she was
unaffectedly glad to see Constance, and soon returned the visit. Crane
did not accompany her. He was beginning to feel a species of resentment
toward Constance. Why, although he had told her of the comforting and
sustaining power she had for him, had she chosen to treat him exactly
as she treated all other men, except the few whom she chose to favour
outrageously? Why, when she showed him any consideration, was Annette
the obvious cause? Self-love was beginning to do for Crane what
conscience had failed to do--emancipate him from his admiration for a
woman other than his wife.

A day or two after reaching Washington, Crane had left a card for
Senator Bicknell. When Senator Bicknell returned the visit, Crane,
luckily, was not at home, and the Senator paid his call on Annette and
enjoyed it very much. He had said to her at leaving:

“Remember, Mrs. Crane, you promised to dine with me many times in
Washington, so that I may repeat, as far as possible, that pleasant day
at Circleville.”

“I am prepared to fulfil my promise,” replied Annette, smiling, “but I
hope you will give me a better dinner than I gave you.”

“More kickshaws, perhaps, but nothing better. My dear lady, you must
remember the difference between a _gourmand_ and a _gourmet_. One,
the _gourmand_, is a crude product, and would prefer _my_ cook. The
_gourmet_, who is a critic by profession, would certainly prefer yours.”

It was arranged that Annette and Crane should dine with the Senator to
meet a large party the next week. If Crane should be found to have an
engagement, Annette was to notify the Senator.

But he had made none. When he returned from the House that, evening, at
six o’clock, Annette told him of the Senator’s visit and invitation,
and, as ever since the summer, as soon as Senator Bicknell’s name was
mentioned, a look of guilt and shame came upon Crane’s expressive and
mobile face. There was, however, no ground for declining, and, besides,
had he not agreed to keep on the best possible terms with Senator
Bicknell until--until the time came to betray him? And as he would be
obliged to meet Senator Bicknell socially many times in the two years
he would be plotting against him, Crane had no object in avoiding him
now; but in meeting him, Crane had the grace to suffer pain.

On the night of the dinner, Annette, arrayed in her white crêpe,
was among the prettiest women present. It was a very large dinner,
extremely magnificent, and made up of important persons, but Annette
Crane was by no means unobserved or unadmired. Crane was forced to see
that. She was placed near to Senator Bicknell, and he paid her a degree
of kind attention which would have been flattering to any woman.

When the dinner was over, and the gentlemen were about joining the
ladies in the superb Louis Seize drawing-room, Senator Bicknell
whispered to Crane as they passed from the Louis Quatorze dining-room,
“Remain half an hour after the others leave.”

Crane started--had the Senator heard anything? He reassured himself by
remembering that the Senator would not attack him, an invited guest,
and in the presence of his wife. But the thought of a private interview
with Senator Bicknell on any subject was disquieting to Crane.

When the last carriage had driven off, and only Crane and Annette
remained, Senator Bicknell said:

“Come into my den; and, as I propose to take Mrs. Crane into my
confidence, on account of the extraordinary political capacity she
manifested at my visit to Circleville, I shall ask her to let us smoke
while I unfold a scheme to you.”

The den was a small, luxurious room, in the Louis Quinze style, and fit
to harbour Madame Pompadour herself. It was shaded by opalescent lamps,
Turkish rugs covered the parquet floor, and pictures and bric-à-brac
worthy of a palace were to be found there. Some people thought that the
Senator’s den was one of the causes of the weakening of his political
power. Many rural legislators reckoned his “fixin’s” as wicked, and
were only reconciled by hearing of the prices paid by the Senator for
Percheron horses and Jersey heifers. The Senator did not care a rap
for either Percherons or Jerseys, and scarcely knew a Percheron horse
from a Jersey cow, but it was a concession to the rural statesmen, and
he wisely reckoned these bucolic luxuries in his political expenses.
Seated before a fire of aromatic wood, Senator Bicknell, offering a
choice cigar to Crane, and taking one himself, began to unfold his
scheme. Annette, her white gown brought into high relief by a ruby lamp
swinging overhead, sat silent and listened. She did not, apparently,
watch her husband’s face, but she knew every expression which passed
over it, and could have interpreted it, as well as every tone of his
voice.

“To come to the point,” said the Senator, blandly, “I am one of a
number of gentlemen interested in a deal of about two million acres
of land in Texas. We have had an offer to sell our holdings and we
have determined to accept. Part of the purchase-money is to be paid in
cash, and there is also a transfer of property contemplated for about
a million of dollars. Our attorneys are in Chicago, but meanwhile we
want a man to go down to Texas once in a while and see how things are
coming on, and attend to some matters of detail which I will state
later on. The whole matter will hardly be settled under a year. We
propose to pay a fee of ten thousand dollars and a small commission. I
should say there was something like twenty thousand dollars in it for
the right man. Several, of course, have been suggested, but you know,
Mr. Crane, I am like John Adams was about New England men--there never
was an office existing or created during John Adams’s time that he
hadn’t a constituent ready for it. So, when the necessity for a man for
this work became evident, I suggested I had a constituent, likewise a
colleague, in the lower House, who could manage the job if he would,
and mentioned your name.”

Twenty thousand dollars! It seemed to Crane an enormous sum. Then he
heard Senator Bicknell’s voice continuing:

“It would oblige you to take a trip to Texas during the Christmas
recess, and you would have to spend two or three months down there next
summer, but I am persuaded we shall reach an early adjournment, so it
would not necessarily interfere with you in any way. Besides, it might
be useful to you in other ways, and it would be decidedly useful to
me. It would show the people in the State that you and I are working
well together in harness, and God knows I need some assurances of the
sort to be given! That scoundrel, Governor Sanders, has been knifing me
right and left all over the State, and I look for trouble both at the
convention next summer and when I am up for re-election a year and a
half from now.”

Crane remained silent a minute or two and grew pale. Senator Bicknell
thought he was a little overcome at what was really a very magnificent
offer to a man in his situation in life.

Annette, who had taken in, with perfect intelligence, all Senator
Bicknell was saying, kept her eyes away from her husband. If he were in
league with Governor Sanders----

Crane was not only overcome, he was overwhelmed. The thought came
crashing through his brain, “This is the man I am secretly trying to
destroy.” Every word the Senator uttered seemed to have the force
of a thousand voices. “That scoundrel, Sanders.” Yes, Sanders was
a scoundrel, but he had never pretended to be a friend of Senator
Bicknell’s, nor was he indebted to the Senator for anything. Their
warfare had been open and above-board, while his--oh, God! Crane could
have cried aloud in his torture when he recalled the league with hell
into which he had entered. His head was reeling, he heard the Senator’s
voice afar off; the ruby light falling upon Annette, in her shining
white gown, seemed to be a hundred miles away. Yet, with a calm voice,
and with only a slight tremor of his hands, Crane answered:

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have made me a very
splendid proposition; twenty thousand dollars to a rural Congressman is
a great deal of money, and as for the confidence you show in me, I feel
it more than I can express.”

He was conscious that he was displaying wonderful nerve; when he
began to speak he scarcely knew whether he could get through with a
single sentence, but he had spoken with tolerable ease and composure.
Of course, he must appear as if he would accept; he could not on the
spur of the moment devise any plausible refusal; he must have time
to think; but it was utterly impossible that he should consider the
matter for a moment. He was not yet bad enough for that. If only he
had remained honest! For nothing brings home a man’s evil-doing to him
more than when he sees the result in a concrete form. His wrong-doing
comes out of the regions of mind and morals, and becomes a tangible and
visible thing, like an incarnate devil. He realises his sin when he
receives the wages of sin.

Annette listened to every note in Crane’s voice, and heard there
falseness. He was not happy, not grateful for the offer. But she, at
least, thanked Senator Bicknell from the bottom of her heart for his
kind wish to benefit them. When he finished speaking she leaned toward
him and laid her hand on his, while her eyes glowed with a lambent
light.

“I thank you--I thank you, not only for my husband and myself, but for
our little children. It means an education for them--many things their
father and I have longed that we might give them when they are older,
but feared we could not.”

Senator Bicknell raised her hand to his lips and kissed it gallantly.

“My dear lady,” he said, “I am glad to oblige your husband, and I
believe he will render a full equivalent for whatever he makes out
of this transaction. And I have frankly told him that I think our
co-operation in business will be a good thing for me politically. But
the day I spent at your house, the kind hospitality to your husband’s
friend, the sweetness of your home, the excellent behaviour of your
children, quickened very much the interest I felt in Mr. Crane, and
it was a factor in my effort to serve him. Come now, Crane,” said the
Senator, tapping him on the shoulder, “all I ask is that when I am
up for re-election, if you choose to contest the election with me,
you will please leave Mrs. Crane at home. If ever she enters into the
campaign, I am lost.”

“She will enter the campaign, but it will be for you,” replied Annette.

Crane then pulled himself together, and again expressed his
appreciation of Senator Bicknell’s kindness, and asked when they could
meet to go into details of the affair--a meeting at which Crane was
determined to decline the benefits offered him.

“Oh, some day next week. I’ll let you know when I hear from Chicago,”
replied the Senator, and after a little more desultory talk the Cranes
rose to go.

“I took the liberty of sending your carriage away, and my chauffeur
will take you home,” said the Senator, mindful of attentions to a
pretty and pleasing woman.

In a little while Annette and Crane were seated in the Senator’s
automobile, and rushing through the frosty December night toward home.




_Chapter Thirteen_

WAR AND PEACE


Crane remained perfectly silent. He did not speak a word from the time
they left Senator Bicknell’s house until they reached home. Annette
said nothing to him. The conviction was deepening in her mind that
her husband had secretly behaved ill to Senator Bicknell. Crane had
revealed unconsciously that night many things which Senator Bicknell
had not understood, but which Annette understood only too well. The
slight agitation and discomposure which Crane had shown was not the
mere shock of a grateful surprise. Annette detected that every word
Crane had uttered to Senator Bicknell was false; that his apparent
acceptance of the offer was false. The money was much--much to her; the
loss of it, after it had been held up to her gaze, would be much; but
the loss of Crane’s integrity--ah, could that but be preserved, she
would go out and dig for him and for her children! She would slave,
she would starve, she would do anything that any woman ever did, that
she might feel her children were the children of an honest man. She
remembered there was such a thing as heredity, and she trembled at the
thought that, if Crane were really a scoundrel, as Senator Bicknell
had said Governor Sanders was, her little black-eyed Roger might be a
scoundrel, too, before he died. These thoughts, surging through her
mind, kept her silent.

Crane felt her silence to be ominous as she felt his to be. As he sat
dumb, by her side, his agitation increased instead of diminishing. On
what possible ground could he excuse to Annette, as well as Senator
Bicknell, his declination of such an offer? But he could not accept
it--he was not yet a thorough villain. Had he been a free agent, he
would have preferred the splendid vista of power and preferment opened
to him by his deal with Sanders to more money even than what was
offered him; but he was not a free agent. He had promised Sanders, and
if his nerve failed him he would be ruined by Sanders politically, and
perhaps personally as well. True, Sanders did not have a line of his
writing--such agreements as theirs are not put on paper--nor had he, so
far, borrowed a dollar from Sanders, although he expected to do so the
first of the year when his notes fell due.

While he was thinking these thoughts, he found himself before the
door of the great caravanserai where they lived, and presently he was
sitting in their little drawing-room alone at last, and face to face
with the strange circumstances which had befallen him. He sat in a
great arm-chair drawn up to the embers of the fire. On the table at his
elbow a light was burning. He heard Annette go into the children’s room
and remain five minutes--she always said a little prayer above their
cribs every night before she slept--then she went into her own room.

She turned on the light by her dressing-table, and sat down to take
off her few simple ornaments and the ribbon-bow in her hair. The face
that met her gaze in the mirror looked so strange that it frightened
her. Yes, like Crane himself, she had been surprised at her own
self-control. But she knew as well as she knew she was alive that
Crane, in some way, had betrayed Senator Bicknell, the man who, after
honestly admitting that Crane could serve him, was yet animated by a
sincere wish to benefit Crane; who had given Crane his first political
start in life, and had treated him with unvarying kindness ever since.

The more she thought over what had happened that evening, the more
acute became her fear and her pain. She stopped in her employment,
and, leaning upon her arms, sat motionless for a long time. Suddenly,
the distant chiming of a clock told her it was midnight. She roused
herself, and then, following an influence stronger than herself, went
into the next room, where Crane had been going through his agony alone.
As she approached him, he raised a pale and conscience-stricken face to
hers, but it was quite calm. He had fought the battle out, and there
was no longer a conflict within him.

“Yes,” he said, as if continuing out aloud a consecutive train of
thought, “I should be very grateful to you--I _am_ grateful to you. No
doubt, Senator Bicknell was influenced very much in what he did by the
admiration and respect he has for you. But it only makes it the harder
for me.”

“There should be no question of gratitude between you and me,” replied
Annette, coming closer to him.

“There is much--much. I have not realised until within the last few
months how much I really owe you--but why do I say months? I might say
the last few hours--the last few minutes--and I have also realised how
much more I might have owed you, for I am beginning to think that few
women are as well adapted as you are for the wife of a man like me. Not
all women would have borne with poverty and seclusion as you have done.”

A deep blush suffused Annette’s face. The poverty and seclusion had
been in a way forced upon her by him, but, being a woman of invincible
discretion, she did not put her resentment into sarcastic words, or
words at all. She stood by him silently, and, seeing that Crane was
striving to speak, awaited his words gently, laying her free hand on
his shoulder.

At last it came--a full confession--made in broken words and phrases,
but of which Annette understood every word.

“I could have stood anything but his kindness,” said Crane, with a
pale face of woe. “That unnerved me completely. I made up my mind I
could not accept the money, and then it occurred to me that you had a
right to be consulted, and immediately I felt a conviction as loud as
a clap of thunder, as penetrating as lightning, that you would never
in the world let me accept that money. Ah, Annette, what a thing it is
to have an upright wife! To feel that however weak and wavering a man
may be, that half of his soul, of his heart, of his possessions, the
half owner of his children, stands like a rock for truth and honesty!
Thorndyke was saying something to me the other day about a man being
upright instead of being made to be upright. I tell you, there are many
men who can be made good or bad--and I am one of them--by their wives.
Many a poor wretch to-day is a rascal who might have led an honest and
respected life if but he had had a high-minded wife like you. It is you
who have saved me, and what a miserable return have I made you for all
you have done for me!”

“What you have just said repays me for all, because, you know, I have
always loved you--better than you cared to know, or than I cared to
show during the last few years,” Annette answered, in a calm voice.

Crane rose and opened his arms to her. It was the sweetest moment of
their lives. Shameful and dishonourable as Crane’s course had been,
here was one person who loved him, believed in him, and, oh, wonder of
love and faith, still honoured and trusted him!

After their first rapture of love and forgiveness, action occurred to
Annette’s practical mind.

“Well, then,” she said, as if a course of conduct had at once been
revealed to her, “you must at once withdraw from your agreement with
Governor Sanders. Of course, he will do everything he can to defeat
you----”

“And he will.”

“And we shall have to go back to Circleville and begin life over again.
But I am sure you can do well at your profession, and, remember, there
is as much chance for an ambitious man in law as in politics.”

“Yes, but you can’t imagine how the life gets hold of one. It seems
like death to me to leave Congress--and when I was steadily rising,
too--and to be driven out ignominiously by a creature like Sanders! But
I must do it; you would not let me do otherwise.”

“Yes; I would not let you do otherwise. Then you must go to Senator
Bicknell and tell him all.”

“Do you think I should? Do you think I _could_?”

“Oh, yes. He must know it some time. He must know why you decline
this scheme he has arranged to benefit you. You must go to him early
to-morrow morning.”

Crane looked at his watch.

“It is half-past twelve--he always sits up until two or three o’clock
in the morning.”

“Then go now.”

“He will think my repentance a mere emotion--he will believe that my
character was shown in my agreement with Sanders.”

“No matter.”

“Yes, no matter.”

Annette gave him his coat and hat and gloves. He turned to kiss her,
and instinctively he removed his hat with a respect that approached
reverence. This pretty pebble which he had so lightly regarded had
proved to be a jewel of great price.

Two hours later Crane re-entered the house and went softly to his own
rooms. As he noiselessly opened the door of the drawing-room he saw
that Annette had fallen asleep in the great chair in which she had
found him. She had thrown a fur cape around her bare neck and arms, but
it had slipped partly away, leaving her white throat exposed. There
were traces of tears upon her cheeks, but her face, though mournful,
was placid--and how young she looked! It seemed impossible that she
should be the mother of two children as old as Roger and Elizabeth.

As Crane approached her quietly, she stirred, opened her eyes, and sat
up, in full possession of her wits. Crane drew a chair up and took both
her hands in his.

“I haven’t felt so at ease in my mind since the day last summer that I
first met Governor Sanders. I have repented and confessed.”

“That is good,” said Annette, in a clear voice.

“I found Senator Bicknell just where I had left him, in his den; I
told him the whole story--how I had yielded, because I was poor and
ambitious, where a better man would have resisted. I told him there was
no fear of my falling away this time; that you would not let me; and
if I had kept you with me, and had taken you more into my confidence,
I believe I should never have entered into this damnable bargain with
Sanders. The Senator was staggered at first. I don’t believe the
slightest idea of my being disloyal to him had entered his head, but as
soon as he recovered from the first shock he behaved nobly. I told him
that I had not written a line to Sanders, he had not loaned me a penny,
although I had expected to call upon him the first of January. Then
Senator Bicknell said:

“‘So, you have not committed any overt act against me?’

“‘No,’ I said, ‘but chiefly because the time was not ripe.’

“‘You have, so far, only agreed to betray me?’

“I said yes, but that was crime enough. He reflected a while, and then
he held out his hand and said:

“‘Let bygones be bygones. Sanders will make you pay for this, and that
will be punishment enough. But I am ready and willing to believe that,
no matter how much you might have agreed to knife me, when the time
came you wouldn’t have done it. At the first moment we meet in private,
at the first hint of kindness on my part, your resolution to do me
wrong melts away. That must count.’

“‘And something else,’ I said. ‘Of course, I can’t accept the benefit
you thought to confer on me. That would invalidate all.’

“‘What does your wife say to this?’ he said. ‘You remember the offer
was made in her presence. Or does she know that you wish to refuse it?’

“‘My wife would not let me take it if I wished to,’ I replied. ‘She is
a much more high-minded person than I am or ever can be.’

“‘She must indeed be high-minded,’ he said, ‘and you are right in
saying that to accept it would invalidate everything. I am of the
opinion that your wife has seen clearly in this instance. But’--here
he took a turn or two up and down the floor--‘I don’t think it would
invalidate my promoting your candidacy before the Legislature in
January. It seems to me now to be the best thing for both of us. The
fight with Sanders has got to come, and the sooner the better, so that
the field can be cleared for my own fight a year and a half from now.
Yes, it is decidedly best. You may recall I indicated last spring that
I would support your senatorial aspirations in certain contingencies.
These contingencies have come to pass. I doubt if we can save the State
to the party without joining forces now.’

“Then I told him that I owed money, and could hardly support the
position of a Senator here with the salary, less what I was obliged to
pay in interest.

“‘Nonsense,’ he said; ‘turn your salary over to your wife; she is a
woman of uncommonly sound sense, a good manager--that I saw in her
house. Of course you can’t go into society on less than your salary,
but you can live comfortably and respectably. And let me tell you, this
town is full of big houses which caused the Senators who built them
to lose their elections. It doesn’t hurt a man with his constituents
in the least to live simply. Some of the gentlemen from the rural
districts have complained bitterly of this little place----’

“And then, after more talk, everything was settled. I wasn’t to write
to Sanders, of course, but to go and see him. Sanders wouldn’t dare to
proclaim what we agreed to do, but he will fight me with every weapon
at his command. I shouldn’t much care how things went--that is, so I
feel now--except for Senator Bicknell, but every blow at Sanders helps
the Senator, and I shall fight for him as long as breath warms my body.
When we parted I was much overcome, and I think Senator Bicknell was,
too. Coming home, it occurred to me how well you had managed on the
pittance I allowed you at Circleville.”

“It was not much, but it could hardly be called a pittance,” replied
Annette, smiling through her tears, for the stress of emotion under
which she had suffered had found its natural vent at last, and she was
weeping a little. But they were happy tears. Crane had reached the turn
in life when it was to be determined whether God or the devil should
be his master, and he had turned his back on Satan. He took his wife
in his arms and kissed her tenderly and reverently. No one knew better
then than he the moral beauty, the power to charm, to sustain, to lead
forward, of the woman he had not thought worthy to stand by him in
Washington.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning early, Crane started West. He had his fateful
interview with Sanders and returned to Washington within a week.
Sanders’s words had been few, but full of meaning.

“All right,” he said. “I don’t take any stock in this awakening of
conscience business. You think Bicknell can serve you better than I
can. Very well. We will see.”

Suddenly, and apparently without volition, Crane’s right arm shot out
and his open palm struck Sanders’s check. The Governor, as quick as
thought, hit back. He was a brute, but not a coward. Then both men
came to their senses, and, hating each other worse than ever, each was
ashamed of his violence.

The Governor, taking out his handkerchief, coolly wiped the blood from
his nose, and said:

“I don’t care to engage in a fist fight with you. We can settle all our
quarrels when the Legislature meets. You will need all your courage
then.”

When Crane returned to Washington, he went straight to Senator Bicknell
and told him all.

“All right,” replied the Senator, as Governor Sanders had said. “This
is my fight now,” and straightway the Senator took the midnight train
for the State capital to pull off his coat and do yeoman’s work for
Crane, and incidentally for himself.

The month of December was bright and beautiful all the way through,
and the sunshine lasted into January. Thorndyke thought he had not
been so nearly happy for a long time. He saw Constance often, and she
was beautifully kind to him. He scarcely went into society at all, and
had the hardihood to decline an invitation to one of the Secretary
of State’s small dinners on the comprehensive excuse of “a previous
engagement,” which Mrs. Hill-Smith, who had invited him, did not
believe in the least; and when she had plaintively mentioned the names
of various English, French, Russian, Austrian, and German diplomats who
were to be present, Thorndyke had replied in a manner which mightily
discomposed Mrs. Hill-Smith:

“Oh, then, you won’t miss a stray American or two!”

If Mrs. Hill-Smith had had her way, she would have missed every
American invited.

Thorndyke saw much of the Cranes and of the children, who showered
their favour upon him. He could not but be struck by the new note in
Crane--something subdued, yet full of hope--and he had quite lost
that look of harassment and dejection which, on first meeting him,
had struck Thorndyke. Crane was normally a lover of fighting, and,
although Senator Bicknell, for strategic reasons, chose to keep him in
Washington while the preliminaries to the senatorial fight were raging,
yet he delivered some good shots at long range, and it began to look as
if he might be elected for the short term in spite of Governor Sanders.
The National Committee was not indifferent to this fight, and Senator
Bicknell went into it with all his old-time vigour. He worked, ate and
drank, waked and slept, with members of the Legislature for three
weeks before the election came off. It was a stupendous battle, and
neither side got any odds in the betting.

During the latter part of the Christmas recess, Thorndyke went north to
pay his sister, Elizabeth, a visit. Her first words to him were:

“Why, Geoffrey, how young you look!”

And everybody who met him told him he looked young, or looked well, or
looked prosperous, and one horny-handed old constituent hazarded the
opinion that Mr. Thorndyke was “thinkin’ o’ gittin’ spliced.” It was
all because Constance Maitland had been kind to him.

On his way back to Washington he found himself in the same car with
James Brentwood Baldwin, Junior, who was coming home to be nursed
and taken to Palm Beach after an attack of the chicken-pox. This
fifteen-year-old youth was in charge of a valet who attended to him
assiduously, and even went into the dining-car with him to see that
he exercised due prudence with regard to his diet. This, however, was
superfluous, as the scion of the house of Baldwin was the very epitome
of prudence, and turned away from entrées, sweets, and ices with a
degree of virtue which, to Thorndyke, dining at the same table with
him, seemed superhuman in a boy of any age. Thorndyke watched the
Baldwin boy curiously; it was one of the most deadly and fascinating
phases of the whole newly-rich question to him, how the children of
the newly rich were brought up. He observed in the Baldwin boy a total
lack of the normal faults and virtues of the normal boy. Young Baldwin
eyed Thorndyke at first with suspicion, but Thorndyke, wishing to
examine and classify the specimen of a boy before him, intimated that
he was acquainted with the James Brentwood Baldwins in Washington. Then
James, Junior, abandoned something of his hauteur. He acknowledged
being the pupil of a school at which Thorndyke happened to know the
fees were made purposely so high as to exclude any but the sons of the
very rich. They had an Anglican nomenclature, a resident chaplain,
and the spiritual direction of the masters as well as the pupils was
attended to by the Bishop of the diocese--the brother of the Secretary
of State. All this James, Junior, communicated while toying with
his rice-pudding, and turning an eye of stern disapproval at the
tutti-frutti ice.

“And what do you expect to be when you grow up, my lad?” asked
Thorndyke.

“I shall be a philanthropist,” replied James, Junior, with dignity.
“I shall try to use my wealth as a means of benefiting others. I am
president of our association for giving Christmas gifts to poor boys,
and I like it very much. We, who have superior advantages, should try
and extend a helping hand to others less fortunately placed.”

Less fortunately placed! Thorndyke looked at the boy with the deepest
commiseration, and pitied the poor children of the rich.

“You can learn a great deal from a poor boy,” said he, presently,
watching the boy’s solemn, handsome face. He might have been a hearty,
wholesome youngster, this grandson of Danny Hogan’s, had he but been
given a chance. “The poor boy is the normal boy; a boy should be
generally dirty and noisy; he should occasionally get a lecture from
his mother and a licking from his father, and a black eye from some
other boy. He must be a fighter. No less a man than Paul Jones has
said that he never saw a liar who would fight, or a fighter who would
lie; and he must not only tell the truth himself, but be ready to lick
any other boy who tells him a lie, for boys are, to themselves, a
law-making body, and must enforce their own laws.”

“That is not the way of the boys at our school,” icily replied James
Brentwood Baldwin, Junior, rising with dignity and receiving his hat
from the hand of his valet.

The day of Thorndyke’s arrival in Washington he was walking along the
street in the bright, sunny, early afternoon of winter. He stopped to
buy an afternoon newspaper, that he might see how the balloting for
Senator was going in Crane’s State, when a shout aroused him, and Letty
Standiford, in a gorgeous crimson automobile, with Senator Mince Pie
Mulligan by her side, dashed up to the sidewalk.

“Mr. Thorndyke,” shrieked Letty, playfully pretending she meant to run
Thorndyke down. “I have a piece of news for you. Look out, this is my
new red devil--I don’t mean Senator Mulligan, but my auto.”

“I certainly shall look out when you are around in that death-dealing
machine,” replied Thorndyke, dodging barely in time to save his legs.
“What is your news?”

“Just this. Dad gave me his word this morning that he would not be a
candidate for re-election next year. I went after the doctors myself,
and made them tell me the truth about Dad--he’s the only father I’ve
got, you know. And they all told me the same thing--that if he could
slack up work, and retire at the end of his term, he was good for
twenty years more, but that if he kept at the grind, his life wasn’t
worth a pin’s purchase. Dad wasn’t scared by that, but when I told
him that I should die of fright and distress if he went away and left
me, the poor old thing weakened, and said he’d decline a re-election,
and--oh, good gracious! He told me not to breathe it to a soul! He
actually shook his finger at me when he said it. Oh, heavens! If you or
Senator Mulligan give me away----”

“Dad will shake his finger at you again,” replied Thorndyke, laughing.
Nevertheless, his pulses had started off at a great rate.

“It’s not that--it’s not that I’m afraid of him--but it would break
his dear old heart to think I had disobeyed him.”

Letty Standiford, as she said this, was an object for angels to love,
in spite of her wild air, her mannish hat and coat, her flying and
dishevelled locks.

“It is safe with me,” said Thorndyke, gravely, and Senator Mulligan
spoke up:

“Divil a word will I say about it. I’m too much afraid of th’ ould
chap--and of you, too, Miss Letty.”

“Glad to hear it, Sinitor,” replied madcap Letty, viciously mimicking
the Senator’s unfortunate accent, “and, oh, Mr. Thorndyke, have you
heard that Miss Maitland is engaged to Mr. Cathcart, the navy man, who
is always hanging around her? It was announced this morning. Good-bye.”

Letty flashed off, with a bicycle policeman after her full tilt.

Thorndyke was near his lodgings. He did not know how he got there, but
presently he found himself sitting in his arm-chair before the fire.
Two hours later, when the maid-servant brought him a letter, he was
sitting in the same position.

The dusk was closing in, but he saw that the address was in Constance
Maitland’s handwriting. Of course she had written to tell him of her
engagement--it was kind of her so to break his calamity to him.

The letter lay unopened for half an hour. Then, with a desperate
courage, Thorndyke tore open the envelope. It was an invitation to
dinner two weeks hence. It was unfeeling of her to do this. It was
ignoble to forget that dear, lost past of which she had often spoken to
him, and had allowed him freely to speak to her. It was impossible that
he should accept; it was impossible that he should voluntarily meet
Constance again, except for one last interview--that final leave-taking
which is like the last farewell to the dying. And the sooner it was
over the better. Thorndyke pulled himself together, and made up his
mind to go to Constance at once.

As he walked along the streets in the sharp air of the January
twilight, everything looked unfamiliar to him. His interior world was
destroyed--engulfed. Never more could he know hope or happiness; for
him was only that stolid endurance of life which is like a prisoner’s
endurance of his cell and his shackles.

When he reached Constance Maitland’s door, she was at home, and he
walked into the familiar drawing-room. She was sitting on the great,
deep sofa, with no light but that of the blazing wood fire, although it
was quite six o’clock. She rose as Thorndyke entered and greeted him
gaily. Her meditations seemed to have been singularly happy.

Thorndyke sat down on the sofa by her, and, as all men do under stress
of feeling, put his pain into the fewest words possible.

“I heard this afternoon,” he said, in a strange, cold voice, “of your
engagement to Cathcart.”

“Did you?” replied Constance, smiling brightly. “From whom, pray?”

“From Miss Standiford.”

“So that crazy Letty Standiford goes about announcing my engagement!”
There was a pause, and then Thorndyke said, in the same strange, cold
voice:

“Cathcart is an admirable man.”

“So everybody says,” brightly responded Constance. “Many persons have
assured me of that.”

A longer pause followed. It might be ungenerous to interject a note of
pain into her first happiness, but it is human to cry out, to justify
one’s self, to call attention to the gift, when one has given a heart
and a soul.

“If Cathcart can give you even a part of the fortune you will lose by
marrying him, he is right to ask you. I could give you nothing. And so,
although I have loved you for nineteen years, I could not ask you to
descend from wealth to poverty with me.”

“I shall not lose, perhaps, as much as you think by marrying an
American,” replied Constance to this, adjusting her draperies in the
light of the fire, which played over her face. How bright, how smiling
she was! Her dark eyes shone, and the faint dimple in her cheek kept
coming and going. “I did not, of course, relish the thought of spending
all my life alone,” she continued, laughing shamelessly. “I was very
young, you may remember. So I determined to save up all I could of
my income. It was easy enough, living, as I did, with a person who
was most of the time a helpless invalid. Then, my uncle, von Hesselt,
realising the injustice done me by my aunt, left in his will a
considerable sum of money, which was to be paid me if I lost my aunt’s
fortune through marrying an American. This was no more than fair, as
my aunt left the money to the von Hesselts in case I should marry an
American. My lawyers here have assured me that it is an open question
whether I could not, after all, marry whom I will, and retain the
money, because the terms of the reversion to the von Hesselts are very
obscure, and it might come at last to my aunt’s heirs-at-law, of which
I am the chief. But I hate publicity and lawsuits and all such things,
and as I am still reasonably well off, I concluded to spare myself
such agonies, and to be satisfied with much less than I have now. But
it will be enough to give me all I want in any event. I can keep this
house, my carriage and servants, and dress well. What more does any one
want?”

As she continued speaking, Thorndyke’s agony increased with every word.
If only he had known before! Possibly--ah, how vain now was it! How
hopeless, how full of everlasting pain!

“But,” Constance kept on, “Mr. Cathcart is not the man for whom I
should sacrifice even so much. He has never hinted that I should marry
him. I am sure he does not want me. I cannot imagine how such an absurd
report got out.”

Thorndyke felt stunned. He said, after a moment:

“So you are not engaged to Cathcart?”

“Certainly not. Have I not just said that he has never asked me to
marry him? And that _he_ is not the man for whom I would sacrifice any
part of my fortune?”

She emphasised the “he,” and her words were full of meaning.

Poor Thorndyke was so dazed, so overwhelmed, that he could do nothing
but stare stupidly into Constance’s face. The man who really loves and
suffers is generally stupid at the supreme moment. And as she looked
into his eyes, so full of longing and yet half-despairing, she turned
her head aside and held out her hand a little way, and he caught it in
his.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ten minutes afterward Scipio Africanus poked his head in the door and
saw that which made his eyeballs bulge an inch from his head. At the
same moment the bell rang sharply.

Scipio opened the front door, and, announcing that Miss Maitland was at
home, showed Julian Crane and Annette into the drawing-room. As they
walked briskly to the fireplace, they saw the two persons on the sofa
start apart. Thorndyke rose to his feet. Having been accepted, he was
once more master of himself and of the situation. Constance cowered in
the corner of the sofa.

“Pray excuse us,” cried Annette, laughing, blushing, and hesitating.

“There is nothing to excuse,” replied Thorndyke, smiling coolly. “Miss
Maitland has just promised to marry me. I am sure I don’t know why, but
I am very much obliged to her all the same.”

Annette reached out and took Thorndyke’s hand in hers.

“I know why,” she said, “any woman would know why.”

Crane shook Thorndyke’s hand warmly.

Constance, too, rose, and without a word, but with rapture in her eyes
and smile, received Annette’s kiss and Crane’s cordial grasp of the
hand.

“I suppose,” said Annette, “you are too blissfully happy to be
interested in anything now, but when you come to your senses, I am sure
both of you will rejoice with us. We have just had a despatch from
Senator Bicknell, saying my husband was elected Senator at four o’clock
to-day on the fifth ballot.”

And then Crane spoke, with sincerity in his eye and his smile:

“We came straight to you for sympathy in our good fortune, for which we
are wholly indebted to Senator Bicknell. And we find you enjoying the
good fortune that befell us ten years ago. Ah, there is no such good
fortune on this earth, Thorndyke, as a good wife!”


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.



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