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Democracy, an American novel

by Henry Adams · English · Gutenberg #2815 · 418,757 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Democracy, an American novel

Author: Henry Adams


        
Release date: September 1, 2001 [eBook #2815]
                Most recently updated: March 14, 2018

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger


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Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





DEMOCRACY AN AMERICAN NOVEL

By Henry Adams




First published anonymously, March 1880, and soon in various
unauthorized editions. It wasn't until the 1925 edition that Adams
was listed as author. Henry Adams remarked (ironically as usual),
“The wholesale piracy of Democracy was the single real triumph of my
life.”--it was very popular, as readers tried to guess who the author
was and who the characters really were. Chapters XII and XIII were
originally misnumbered.




Chapter I


FOR reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee
decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was in excellent health,
but she said that the climate would do her good. In New York she had
troops of friends, but she suddenly became eager to see again the very
small number of those who lived on the Potomac. It was only to her
closest intimates that she honestly acknowledged herself to be tortured
by ennui. Since her husband's death, five years before, she had lost
her taste for New York society; she had felt no interest in the price
of stocks, and very little in the men who dealt in them; she had become
serious. What was it all worth, this wilderness of men and women as
monotonous as the brown stone houses they lived in? In her despair
she had resorted to desperate measures. She had read philosophy in the
original German, and the more she read, the more she was disheartened
that so much culture should lead to nothing--nothing.

After talking of Herbert Spencer for an entire evening with a very
literary transcendental commission-merchant, she could not see that her
time had been better employed than when in former days she had passed it
in flirting with a very agreeable young stock-broker; indeed, there
was an evident proof to the contrary, for the flirtation might lead to
something--had, in fact, led to marriage; while the philosophy could
lead to nothing, unless it were perhaps to another evening of the
same kind, because transcendental philosophers are mostly elderly men,
usually married, and, when engaged in business, somewhat apt to be
sleepy towards evening. Nevertheless Mrs. Lee did her best to turn her
study to practical use. She plunged into philanthropy, visited prisons,
inspected hospitals, read the literature of pauperism and crime,
saturated herself with the statistics of vice, until her mind had nearly
lost sight of virtue. At last it rose in rebellion against her, and
she came to the limit of her strength. This path, too, seemed to lead
nowhere. She declared that she had lost the sense of duty, and that, so
far as concerned her, all the paupers and criminals in New York might
henceforward rise in their majesty and manage every railway on the
continent. Why should she care? What was the city to her? She could
find nothing in it that seemed to demand salvation. What gave peculiar
sanctity to numbers? Why were a million people, who all resembled each
other, any way more interesting than one person? What aspiration could
she help to put into the mind of this great million-armed monster that
would make it worth her love or respect? Religion? A thousand powerful
churches were doing their best, and she could see no chance for a
new faith of which she was to be the inspired prophet. Ambition? High
popular ideals? Passion for whatever is lofty and pure? The very words
irritated her. Was she not herself devoured by ambition, and was she not
now eating her heart out because she could find no one object worth a
sacrifice?

Was it ambition--real ambition--or was it mere restlessness that
made Mrs. Lightfoot Lee so bitter against New York and Philadelphia,
Baltimore and Boston, American life in general and all life in
particular? What did she want? Not social position, for she herself was
an eminently respectable Philadelphian by birth; her father a famous
clergyman; and her husband had been equally irreproachable, a descendant
of one branch of the Virginia Lees, which had drifted to New York in
search of fortune, and had found it, or enough of it to keep the young
man there. His widow had her own place in society which no one disputed.
Though not brighter than her neighbours, the world persisted in classing
her among clever women; she had wealth, or at least enough of it to give
her all that money can give by way of pleasure to a sensible woman in an
American city; she had her house and her carriage; she dressed well; her
table was good, and her furniture was never allowed to fall behind the
latest standard of decorative art. She had travelled in Europe, and
after several visits, covering some years of time, had returned home,
carrying in one hand, as it were, a green-grey landscape, a remarkably
pleasing specimen of Corot, and in the other some bales of Persian and
Syrian rugs and embroideries, Japanese bronzes and porcelain. With this
she declared Europe to be exhausted, and she frankly avowed that she was
American to the tips of her fingers; she neither knew nor greatly cared
whether America or Europe were best to live in; she had no violent love
for either, and she had no objection to abusing both; but she meant to
get all that American life had to offer, good or bad, and to drink it
down to the dregs, fully determined that whatever there was in it
she would have, and that whatever could be made out of it she would
manufacture. “I know,” said she, “that America produces petroleum and
pigs; I have seen both on the steamers; and I am told it produces silver
and gold. There is choice enough for any woman.”

Yet, as has been already said, Mrs. Lee's first experience was not a
success. She soon declared that New York might represent the petroleum
or the pigs, but the gold of life was not to be discovered there by her
eyes.

Not but that there was variety enough; a variety of people, occupations,
aims, and thoughts; but that all these, after growing to a certain
height, stopped short. They found nothing to hold them up. She knew,
more or less intimately, a dozen men whose fortunes ranged between one
million and forty millions. What did they do with their money? What
could they do with it that was different from what other men did? After
all, it is absurd to spend more money than is enough to satisfy all
one's wants; it is vulgar to live in two houses in the same street, and
to drive six horses abreast. Yet, after setting aside a certain income
sufficient for all one's wants, what was to be done with the rest? To
let it accumulate was to own one's failure; Mrs. Lee's great grievance
was that it did accumulate, without changing or improving the quality
of its owners. To spend it in charity and public works was doubtless
praiseworthy, but was it wise? Mrs. Lee had read enough political
economy and pauper reports to be nearly convinced that public work
should be public duty, and that great benefactions do harm as well as
good.

And even supposing it spent on these objects, how could it do more than
increase and perpetuate that same kind of human nature which was her
great grievance? Her New York friends could not meet this question
except by falling back upon their native commonplaces, which she
recklessly trampled upon, averring that, much as she admired the genius
of the famous traveller, Mr. Gulliver, she never had been able, since
she became a widow, to accept the Brobdingnagian doctrine that he who
made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before deserved better
of mankind than the whole race of politicians. She would not find fault
with the philosopher had he required that the grass should be of an
improved quality; “but,” said she, “I cannot honestly pretend that I
should be pleased to see two New York men where I now see one; the idea
is too ridiculous; more than one and a half would be fatal to me.”

Then came her Boston friends, who suggested that higher education was
precisely what she wanted; she should throw herself into a crusade for
universities and art-schools. Mrs. Lee turned upon them with a sweet
smile; “Do you know,” said she, “that we have in New York already the
richest university in America, and that its only trouble has always been
that it can get no scholars even by paying for them? Do you want me to
go out into the streets and waylay boys? If the heathen refuse to be
converted, can you give me power over the stake and the sword to compel
them to come in? And suppose you can? Suppose I march all the boys in
Fifth Avenue down to the university and have them all properly taught
Greek and Latin, English literature, ethics, and German philosophy.
What then? You do it in Boston. Now tell me honestly what comes of it. I
suppose you have there a brilliant society; numbers of poets, scholars,
philosophers, statesmen, all up and down Beacon Street. Your evenings
must be sparkling. Your press must scintillate. How is it that we New
Yorkers never hear of it? We don't go much into your society; but when
we do, it doesn't seem so very much better than our own. You are just
like the rest of us. You grow six inches high, and then you stop. Why
will not somebody grow to be a tree and cast a shadow?”

The average member of New York society, although not unused to this
contemptuous kind of treatment from his leaders, retaliated in his
blind, common-sense way. “What does the woman want?” he said. “Is her
head turned with the Tulieries and Marlborough House? Does she think
herself made for a throne? Why does she not lecture for women's rights?
Why not go on the stage? If she cannot be contented like other people,
what need is there for abusing us just because she feels herself no
taller than we are? What does she expect to get from her sharp tongue?
What does she know, any way?”

Mrs. Lee certainly knew very little. She had read voraciously and
promiscuously one subject after another. Ruskin and Taine had danced
merrily through her mind, hand in hand with Darwin and Stuart Mill,
Gustave Droz and Algernon Swinburne. She had even laboured over the
literature of her own country. She was perhaps, the only woman in New
York who knew something of American history. Certainly she could not
have repeated the list of Presidents in their order, but she knew that
the Constitution divided the government into Executive, Legislative, and
Judiciary; she was aware that the President, the Speaker, and the
Chief Justice were important personages, and instinctively she wondered
whether they might not solve her problem; whether they were the shade
trees which she saw in her dreams.

Here, then, was the explanation of her restlessness, discontent,
ambition,--call it what you will. It was the feeling of a passenger on
an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he has been in
the engine-room and talked with the engineer. She wanted to see with her
own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the
massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity
of the motive power. She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great
American mystery of democracy and government. She cared little where
her pursuit might lead her, for she put no extravagant value upon life,
having already, as she said, exhausted at least two lives, and being
fairly hardened to insensibility in the process. “To lose a husband and
a baby,” said she, “and keep one's courage and reason, one must become
very hard or very soft. I am now pure steel. You may beat my heart with
a trip-hammer and it will beat the trip-hammer back again.”

Perhaps after exhausting the political world she might try again
elsewhere; she did not pretend to say where she might then go, or what
she should do; but at present she meant to see what amusement there
might be in politics.

Her friends asked what kind of amusement she expected to find among
the illiterate swarm of ordinary people who in Washington represented
constituencies so dreary that in comparison New York was a New
Jerusalem, and Broad Street a grove of Academe. She replied that if
Washington society were so bad as this, she should have gained all she
wanted, for it would be a pleasure to return,--precisely the feeling she
longed for. In her own mind, however, she frowned on the idea of
seeking for men. What she wished to see, she thought, was the clash
of interests, the interests of forty millions of people and a whole
continent, centering at Washington; guided, restrained, controlled,
or unrestrained and uncontrollable, by men of ordinary mould; the
tremendous forces of government, and the machinery of society, at work.
What she wanted, was POWER.

Perhaps the force of the engine was a little confused in her mind with
that of the engineer, the power with the men who wielded it. Perhaps the
human interest of politics was after all what really attracted her, and,
however strongly she might deny it, the passion for exercising power,
for its own sake, might dazzle and mislead a woman who had exhausted all
the ordinary feminine resources. But why speculate about her motives?
The stage was before her, the curtain was rising, the actors were ready
to enter; she had only to go quietly on among the supernumeraries and
see how the play was acted and the stage effects were produced; how the
great tragedians mouthed, and the stage-manager swore.



Chapter II

ON the first of December, Mrs. Lee took the train for Washington, and
before five o'clock that evening she was entering her newly hired
house on Lafayette Square. She shrugged her shoulders with a mingled
expression of contempt and grief at the curious barbarism of the
curtains and the wall-papers, and her next two days were occupied with
a life-and-death struggle to get the mastery over her surroundings. In
this awful contest the interior of the doomed house suffered as though
a demon were in it; not a chair, not a mirror, not a carpet, was left
untouched, and in the midst of the worst confusion the new mistress sat,
calm as the statue of Andrew Jackson in the square under her eyes, and
issued her orders with as much decision as that hero had ever shown.
Towards the close of the second day, victory crowned her forehead. A
new era, a nobler conception of duty and existence, had dawned upon
that benighted and heathen residence. The wealth of Syria and Persia was
poured out upon the melancholy Wilton carpets; embroidered comets and
woven gold from Japan and Teheran depended from and covered over every
sad stuff-curtain; a strange medley of sketches, paintings, fans,
embroideries, and porcelain was hung, nailed, pinned, or stuck against
the wall; finally the domestic altarpiece, the mystical Corot landscape,
was hoisted to its place over the parlour fire, and then all was over.
The setting sun streamed softly in at the windows, and peace reigned in
that redeemed house and in the heart of its mistress.

“I think it will do now, Sybil,” said she, surveying the scene.

“It must,” replied Sybil. “You haven't a plate or a fan or coloured
scarf left. You must send out and buy some of these old negro-women's
bandannas if you are going to cover anything else. What is the use? Do
you suppose any human being in Washington will like it? They will think
you demented.”

“There is such a thing as self-respect,” replied her sister, calmly.

Sybil--Miss Sybil Ross--was Madeleine Lee's sister. The keenest
psychologist could not have detected a single feature quality which they
had in common, and for that reason they were devoted friends. Madeleine
was thirty, Sybil twenty-four. Madeleine was indescribable; Sybil was
transparent. Madeleine was of medium height with a graceful figure,
a well-set head, and enough golden-brown hair to frame a face full of
varying expression. Her eyes were never for two consecutive hours of the
same shade, but were more often blue than grey. People who envied her
smile said that she cultivated a sense of humour in order to show her
teeth. Perhaps they were right; but there was no doubt that her habit
of talking with gesticulation would never have grown upon her unless
she had known that her hands were not only beautiful but expressive.
She dressed as skilfully as New York women do, but in growing older
she began to show symptoms of dangerous unconventionality. She had been
heard to express a low opinion of her countrywomen who blindly fell down
before the golden calf of Mr. Worth, and she had even fought a battle
of great severity, while it lasted, with one of her best-dressed
friends who had been invited--and had gone--to Mr. Worth's afternoon
tea-parties. The secret was that Mrs. Lee had artistic tendencies, and
unless they were checked in time, there was no knowing what might be
the consequence. But as yet they had done no harm; indeed, they rather
helped to give her that sort of atmosphere which belongs only to certain
women; as indescribable as the afterglow; as impalpable as an Indian
summer mist; and non-existent except to people who feel rather than
reason. Sybil had none of it. The imagination gave up all attempts
to soar where she came. A more straightforward, downright, gay,
sympathetic, shallow, warm-hearted, sternly practical young woman has
rarely touched this planet. Her mind had room for neither grave-stones
nor guide-books; she could not have lived in the past or the future if
she had spent her days in churches and her nights in tombs. “She was
not clever, like Madeleine, thank Heaven.” Madeleine was not an orthodox
member of the church; sermons bored her, and clergymen never failed to
irritate every nerve in her excitable system. Sybil was a simple and
devout worshipper at the ritualistic altar; she bent humbly before the
Paulist fathers. When she went to a ball she always had the best partner
in the room, and took it as a matter of course; but then, she always
prayed for one; somehow it strengthened her faith. Her sister took care
never to laugh at her on this score, or to shock her religious opinions.
“Time enough,” said she, “for her to forget religion when religion
fails her.” As for regular attendance at church, Madeleine was able to
reconcile their habits without trouble. She herself had not entered a
church for years; she said it gave her unchristian feelings; but Sybil
had a voice of excellent quality, well trained and cultivated:
Madeleine insisted that she should sing in the choir, and by this
little manoeuvre, the divergence of their paths was made less evident.
Madeleine did not sing, and therefore could not go to church with Sybil.
This outrageous fallacy seemed perfectly to answer its purpose, and
Sybil accepted it, in good faith, as a fair working principle which
explained itself.

Madeleine was sober in her tastes. She wasted no money. She made no
display.

She walked rather than drove, and wore neither diamonds nor brocades.
But the general impression she made was nevertheless one of luxury. On
the other hand, her sister had her dresses from Paris, and wore them
and her ornaments according to all the formulas; she was good-naturedly
correct, and bent her round white shoulders to whatever burden the
Parisian autocrat chose to put upon them. Madeleine never interfered,
and always paid the bills.

Before they had been ten days in Washington, they fell gently into their
place and were carried along without an effort on the stream of social
life.

Society was kind; there was no reason for its being otherwise. Mrs. Lee
and her sister had no enemies, held no offices, and did their best to
make themselves popular. Sybil had not passed summers at Newport and
winters in New York in vain; and neither her face nor her figure, her
voice nor her dancing, needed apology. Politics were not her strong
point. She was induced to go once to the Capitol and to sit ten minutes
in the gallery of the Senate. No one ever knew what her impressions
were; with feminine tact she managed not to betray herself But, in
truth, her notion of legislative bodies was vague, floating between her
experience at church and at the opera, so that the idea of a performance
of some kind was never out of her head. To her mind the Senate was a
place where people went to recite speeches, and she naively assumed that
the speeches were useful and had a purpose, but as they did not interest
her she never went again. This is a very common conception of Congress;
many Congressmen share it.

Her sister was more patient and bolder. She went to the Capitol nearly
every day for at least two weeks. At the end of that time her interest
began to flag, and she thought it better to read the debates every
morning in the Congressional Record. Finding this a laborious and not
always an instructive task, she began to skip the dull parts; and in
the absence of any exciting question, she at last resigned herself
to skipping the whole. Nevertheless she still had energy to visit the
Senate gallery occasionally when she was told that a splendid orator
was about to speak on a question of deep interest to his country.
She listened with a little disposition to admire, if she could; and,
whenever she could, she did admire. She said nothing, but she listened
sharply. She wanted to learn how the machinery of government worked,
and what was the quality of the men who controlled it. One by one, she
passed them through her crucibles, and tested them by acids and by fire.

A few survived her tests and came out alive, though more or less
disfigured, where she had found impurities. Of the whole number, only
one retained under this process enough character to interest her.

In these early visits to Congress, Mrs. Lee sometimes had the company
of John Carrington, a Washington lawyer about forty years old, who, by
virtue of being a Virginian and a distant connection of her husband,
called himself a cousin, and took a tone of semi-intimacy, which Mrs.
Lee accepted because Carrington was a man whom she liked, and because
he was one whom life had treated hardly. He was of that unfortunate
generation in the south which began existence with civil war, and he was
perhaps the more unfortunate because, like most educated Virginians of
the old Washington school, he had seen from the first that, whatever
issue the war took, Virginia and he must be ruined. At twenty-two he had
gone into the rebel army as a private and carried his musket modestly
through a campaign or two, after which he slowly rose to the rank of
senior captain in his regiment, and closed his services on the staff of
a major-general, always doing scrupulously enough what he conceived to
be his duty, and never doing it with enthusiasm. When the rebel armies
surrendered, he rode away to his family plantation--not a difficult
thing to do, for it was only a few miles from Appomatox--and at once
began to study law; then, leaving his mother and sisters to do what
they could with the worn-out plantation, he began the practice of law
in Washington, hoping thus to support himself and them. He had succeeded
after a fashion, and for the first time the future seemed not absolutely
dark. Mrs. Lee's house was an oasis to him, and he found himself, to
his surprise, almost gay in her company. The gaiety was of a very quiet
kind, and Sybil, while friendly with him, averred that he was certainly
dull; but this dulness had a fascination for Madeleine, who, having
tasted many more kinds of the wine of life than Sybil, had learned to
value certain delicacies of age and flavour that were lost upon younger
and coarser palates. He talked rather slowly and almost with effort, but
he had something of the dignity--others call it stiffness--of the
old Virginia school, and twenty years of constant responsibility
and deferred hope had added a touch of care that bordered closely on
sadness. His great attraction was that he never talked or seemed to
think of himself. Mrs. Lee trusted in him by instinct. “He is a type!”
 said she; “he is my idea of George Washington at thirty.”

One morning in December, Carrington entered Mrs. Lee's parlour towards
noon, and asked if she cared to visit the Capitol.

“You will have a chance of hearing to-day what may be the last great
speech of our greatest statesman,” said he; “you should come.”

“A splendid sample of our native raw material, sir?” asked she,
fresh from a reading of Dickens, and his famous picture of American
statesmanship.

“Precisely so,” said Carrington; “the Prairie Giant of Peonia, the
Favourite Son of Illinois; the man who came within three votes of
getting the party nomination for the Presidency last spring, and was
only defeated because ten small intriguers are sharper than one big one.
The Honourable Silas P. Ratcliffe, Senator from Illinois; he will be run
for the Presidency yet.”

“What does the P. stand for?” asked Sybil.

“I don't remember ever to have heard his middle name,” said Carrington.

“Perhaps it is Peonia or Prairie; I can't say.”

“He is the man whose appearance struck me so much when we were in the
Senate last week, is he not? A great, ponderous man, over six feet
high, very senatorial and dignified, with a large head and rather good
features?” inquired Mrs. Lee.

“The same,” replied Carrington. “By all means hear him speak. He is
the stumbling-block of the new President, who is to be allowed no peace
unless he makes terms with Ratcliffe; and so every one thinks that the
Prairie Giant of Peonia will have the choice of the State or Treasury
Department. If he takes either it will be the Treasury, for he is a
desperate political manager, and will want the patronage for the next
national convention.”

Mrs. Lee was delighted to hear the debate, and Carrington was delighted
to sit through it by her side, and to exchange running comments with her
on the speeches and the speakers.

“Have you ever met the Senator?” asked she.

“I have acted several times as counsel before his committees. He is an
excellent chairman, always attentive and generally civil.”

“Where was he born?”

“The family is a New England one, and I believe respectable. He came, I
think, from some place in the Connecticut Valley, but whether Vermont,
New Hampshire, or Massachusetts, I don't know.”

“Is he an educated man?”

“He got a kind of classical education at one of the country colleges
there. I suspect he has as much education as is good for him. But he
went West very soon after leaving college, and being then young and
fresh from that hot-bed of abolition, he threw himself into the
anti-slavery movement in Illinois, and after a long struggle he rose
with the wave. He would not do the same thing now.”

“Why not?”

“He is older, more experienced, and not so wise. Besides, he has no
longer the time to wait. Can you see his eyes from here? I call them
Yankee eyes.”

“Don't abuse the Yankees,” said Mrs. Lee; “I am half Yankee myself.”

“Is that abuse? Do you mean to deny that they have eyes?”

“I concede that there may be eyes among them; but Virginians are not
fair judges of their expression.”

“Cold eyes,” he continued; “steel grey, rather small, not unpleasant in
good-humour, diabolic in a passion, but worst when a little suspicious;
then they watch you as though you were a young rattle-snake, to be
killed when convenient.”

“Does he not look you in the face?”

“Yes; but not as though he liked you. His eyes only seem to ask the
possible uses you might be put to. Ah, the vice-president has given him
the floor; now we shall have it. Hard voice, is it not? like his eyes.
Hard manner, like his voice. Hard all through.”

“What a pity he is so dreadfully senatorial!” said Mrs. Lee; “otherwise
I rather admire him.”

“Now he is settling down to his work,” continued Carrington. “See how he
dodges all the sharp issues. What a thing it is to be a Yankee! What a
genius the fellow has for leading a party! Do you see how well it is all
done? The new President flattered and conciliated, the party united and
given a strong lead. And now we shall see how the President will deal
with him. Ten to one on Ratcliffe. Come, there is that stupid ass from
Missouri getting up. Let us go.”

As they passed down the steps and out into the Avenue, Mrs. Lee turned
to Carrington as though she had been reflecting deeply and had at length
reached a decision.

“Mr. Carrington,” said she, “I want to know Senator Ratcliffe.”

“You will meet him to-morrow evening,” replied Carrington, “at your
senatorial dinner.”

The Senator from New York, the Honourable Schuyler Clinton, was an old
admirer of Mrs. Lee, and his wife was a cousin of hers, more or less
distant. They had lost no time in honouring the letter of credit she
thus had upon them, and invited her and her sister to a solemn dinner,
as imposing as political dignity could make it. Mr. Carrington, as a
connection of hers, was one of the party, and almost the only one among
the twenty persons at table who had neither an office, nor a title, nor
a constituency.

Senator Clinton received Mrs. Lee and her sister with tender enthusiasm,
for they were attractive specimens of his constituents. He pressed their
hands and evidently restrained himself only by an effort from embracing
them, for the Senator had a marked regard for pretty women, and had made
love to every girl with any pretensions to beauty that had appeared
in the State of New York for fully half a century. At the same time
he whispered an apology in her ear; he regretted so much that he was
obliged to forego the pleasure of taking her to dinner; Washington was
the only city in America where this could have happened, but it was a
fact that ladies here were very great stickiers for etiquette; on the
other hand he had the sad consolation that she would be the gainer,
for he had allotted to her Lord Skye, the British Minister, “a most
agreeable man and not married, as I have the misfortune to be;” and on
the other side “I have ventured to place Senator Ratcliffe, of Illinois,
whose admirable speech I saw you listening to with such rapt attention
yesterday. I thought you might like to know him. Did I do right?”

Madeleine assured him that he had divined her inmost wishes, and he
turned with even more warmth of affection to her sister: “As for you, my
dear--dear Sybil, what can I do to make your dinner agreeable? If I give
your sister a coronet, I am only sorry not to have a diadem for you. But
I have done everything in my power. The first Secretary of the Russian
Legation, Count Popoff, will take you in; a charming young man, my dear
Sybil; and on your other side I have placed the Assistant Secretary of
State, whom you know.”

And so, after the due delay, the party settled themselves at the
dinner-table, and Mrs. Lee found Senator Ratcliffe's grey eyes resting
on her face for a moment as they sat down.

Lord Skye was very agreeable, and, at almost any other moment of her
life, Mrs. Lee would have liked nothing better than to talk with him
from the beginning to the end of her dinner. Tall, slender, bald-headed,
awkward, and stammering with his elaborate British stammer whenever it
suited his convenience to do so; a sharp observer who had wit which he
commonly concealed; a humourist who was satisfied to laugh silently at
his own humour; a diplomatist who used the mask of frankness with great
effect; Lord Skye was one of the most popular men in Washington. Every
one knew that he was a ruthless critic of American manners, but he had
the art to combine ridicule with good-humour, and he was all the more
popular accordingly. He was an outspoken admirer of American women
in everything except their voices, and he did not even shrink from
occasionally quizzing a little the national peculiarities of his own
countrywomen; a sure piece of flattery to their American cousins. He
would gladly have devoted himself to Mrs. Lee, but decent civility
required that he should pay some attention to his hostess, and he was
too good a diplomatist not to be attentive to a hostess who was the wife
of a Senator, and that Senator the chairman of the committee of foreign
relations.

The moment his head was turned, Mrs. Lee dashed at her Peonia Giant, who
was then consuming his fish, and wishing he understood why the British
Minister had worn no gloves, while he himself had sacrificed his
convictions by wearing the largest and whitest pair of French kids that
could be bought for money on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a little
touch of mortification in the idea that he was not quite at home among
fashionable people, and at this instant he felt that true happiness was
only to be found among the simple and honest sons and daughters of toil.
A certain secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in
the breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democratic; for
democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by the
people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger that
the British Minister may not understand this political principle as he
should. Lord Skye had run the risk of making two blunders; of offending
the Senator from New York by neglecting his wife, and the Senator from
Illinois by engrossing the attention of Mrs. Lee. A young Englishman
would have done both, but Lord Skye had studied the American
constitution. The wife of the Senator from New York now thought him most
agreeable, and at the same moment the Senator from Illinois awoke to the
conviction that after all, even in frivolous and fashionable circles,
true dignity is in no danger of neglect; an American Senator
represents a sovereign state; the great state of Illinois is as big
as England--with the convenient omission of Wales, Scotland, Ireland,
Canada, India, Australia, and a few other continents and islands; and in
short, it was perfectly clear that Lord Skye was not formidable to him,
even in light society; had not Mrs. Lee herself as good as said that no
position equalled that of an American Senator?

In ten minutes Mrs. Lee had this devoted statesman at her feet. She had
not studied the Senate without a purpose. She had read with unerring
instinct one general characteristic of all Senators, a boundless
and guileless thirst for flattery, engendered by daily draughts from
political friends or dependents, then becoming a necessity like a dram,
and swallowed with a heavy smile of ineffable content. A single glance
at Mr. Ratcliffe's face showed Madeleine that she need not be afraid
of flattering too grossly; her own self-respect, not his, was the only
restraint upon her use of this feminine bait.

She opened upon him with an apparent simplicity and gravity, a quiet
repose of manner, and an evident consciousness of her own strength,
which meant that she was most dangerous.

“I heard your speech yesterday, Mr. Ratcliffe. I am glad to have a
chance of telling you how much I was impressed by it. It seemed to me
masterly. Do you not find that it has had a great effect?”

“I thank you, madam. I hope it will help to unite the party, but as yet
we have had no time to measure its results. That will require several
days more.” The Senator spoke in his senatorial manner, elaborate,
condescending, and a little on his guard.

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Lee, turning towards him as though he were a
valued friend, and looking deep into his eyes, “Do you know that every
one told me I should be shocked by the falling off in political ability
at Washington? I did not believe them, and since hearing your speech I
am sure they are mistaken. Do you yourself think there is less ability
in Congress than there used to be?”

“Well, madam, it is difficult to answer that question. Government is not
so easy now as it was formerly. There are different customs. There are
many men of fair abilities in public life; many more than there used to
be; and there is sharper criticism and more of it.”

“Was I right in thinking that you have a strong resemblance to Daniel
Webster in your way of speaking? You come from the same neighbourhood,
do you not?”

Mrs. Lee here hit on Ratcliffe's weak point; the outline of his head
had, in fact, a certain resemblance to that of Webster, and he prided
himself upon it, and on a distant relationship to the Expounder of the
Constitution; he began to think that Mrs. Lee was a very intelligent
person. His modest admission of the resemblance gave her the opportunity
to talk of Webster's oratory, and the conversation soon spread to a
discussion of the merits of Clay and Calhoun. The Senator found that his
neighbour--a fashionable New York woman, exquisitely dressed, and with
a voice and manner seductively soft and gentle--had read the speeches of
Webster and Calhoun. She did not think it necessary to tell him that she
had persuaded the honest Carrington to bring her the volumes and to mark
such passages as were worth her reading; but she took care to lead the
conversation, and she criticised with some skill and more humour the
weak points in Websterian oratory, saying with a little laugh and a
glance into his delighted eyes:

“My judgment may not be worth much, Mr. Senator, but it does seem to me
that our fathers thought too much of themselves, and till you teach
me better I shall continue to think that the passage in your speech
of yesterday which began with, 'Our strength lies in this twisted and
tangled mass of isolated principles, the hair of the half-sleeping giant
of Party,' is both for language and imagery quite equal to anything of
Webster's.”

The Senator from Illinois rose to this gaudy fly like a huge,
two-hundred-pound salmon; his white waistcoat gave out a mild silver
reflection as he slowly came to the surface and gorged the hook. He made
not even a plunge, not one perceptible effort to tear out the barbed
weapon, but, floating gently to her feet, allowed himself to be landed
as though it were a pleasure. Only miserable casuists will ask whether
this was fair play on Madeleine's part; whether flattery so gross
cost her conscience no twinge, and whether any woman can without
self-abasement be guilty of such shameless falsehood. She, however,
scorned the idea of falsehood. She would have defended herself by saying
that she had not so much praised Ratcliffe as depreciated Webster,
and that she was honest in her opinion of the old-fashioned American
oratory. But she could not deny that she had wilfully allowed the
Senator to draw conclusions very different from any she actually held.
She could not deny that she had intended to flatter him to the extent
necessary for her purpose, and that she was pleased at her success.
Before they rose from table the Senator had quite unbent himself; he
was talking naturally, shrewdly, and with some humour; he had told her
Illinois stories; spoken with extraordinary freedom about his political
situation; and expressed the wish to call upon Mrs. Lee, if he could
ever hope to find her at home.

“I am always at home on Sunday evenings,” said she.

To her eyes he was the high-priest of American politics; he was charged
with the meaning of the mysteries, the clue to political hieroglyphics.
Through him she hoped to sound the depths of statesmanship and to
bring up from its oozy bed that pearl of which she was in search; the
mysterious gem which must lie hidden somewhere in politics. She wanted
to understand this man; to turn him inside out; to experiment on him and
use him as young physiologists use frogs and kittens. If there was good
or bad in him, she meant to find its meaning.

And he was a western widower of fifty; his quarters in Washington were
in gaunt boarding-house rooms, furnished only with public documents and
enlivened by western politicians and office-seekers. In the summer he
retired to a solitary, white framehouse with green blinds, surrounded
by a few feet of uncared-for grass and a white fence; its interior more
dreary still, with iron stoves, oil-cloth carpets, cold white walls, and
one large engraving of Abraham Lincoln in the parlour; all in Peonia,
Illinois! What equality was there between these two combatants? what
hope for him? what risk for her? And yet Madeleine Lee had fully her
match in Mr. Silas P. Ratcliffe.



Chapter III

MRS. Lee soon became popular. Her parlour was a favourite haunt of
certain men and women who had the art of finding its mistress at home;
an art which seemed not to be within the powers of everybody. Carrington
was apt to be there more often than any one else, so that he was looked
on as almost a part of the family, and if Madeleine wanted a book from
the library, or an extra man at her dinner-table, Carrington was pretty
certain to help her to the one or the other. Old Baron Jacobi, the
Bulgarian minister, fell madly in love with both sisters, as he commonly
did with every pretty face and neat figure. He was a witty, cynical,
broken-down Parisian roué, kept in Washington for years past by his
debts and his salary; always grumbling because there was no opera, and
mysteriously disappearing on visits to New York; a voracious devourer of
French and German literature, especially of novels; a man who seemed to
have met every noted or notorious personage of the century, and whose
mind was a magazine of amusing information; an excellent musical critic,
who was not afraid to criticise Sybil's singing; a connoisseur in
bric-à-brac, who laughed at Madeleine's display of odds and ends, and
occasionally brought her a Persian plate or a bit of embroidery, which
he said was good and would do her credit. This old sinner believed in
everything that was perverse and wicked, but he accepted the prejudices
of Anglo-Saxon society, and was too clever to obtrude his opinions upon
others.

He would have married both sisters at once more willingly than either
alone, but as he feelingly said, “If I were forty years younger,
mademoiselle, you should not sing to me so calmly.” His friend
Popoff, an intelligent, vivacious Russian, with very Calmuck features,
susceptible as a girl, and passionately fond of music, hung over Sybil's
piano by the hour; he brought Russian airs which he taught her to sing,
and, if the truth were known, he bored Madeleine desperately, for she
undertook to act the part of duenna to her younger sister.

A very different visitor was Mr. C. C. French, a young member of
Congress from Connecticut, who aspired to act the part of the educated
gentleman in politics, and to purify the public tone. He had reform
principles and an unfortunately conceited maimer; he was rather wealthy,
rather clever, rather well-educated, rather honest, and rather vulgar.
His allegiance was divided between Mrs. Lee and her sister, whom he
infuriated by addressing as “Miss Sybil” with patronising familiarity.
He was particularly strong in what he called “badinaige,” and his
playful but ungainly attempts at wit drove Mrs.

Lee beyond the bounds of patience. When in a solemn mood, he talked as
though he were practising for the ear of a college debating society,
and with a still worse effect on the patience; but with all this he was
useful, always bubbling with the latest political gossip, and deeply
interested in the fate of party stakes. Quite another sort of person was
Mr. Hartbeest Schneidekoupon, a citizen of Philadelphia, though commonly
resident in New York, where he had fallen a victim to Sybil's charms,
and made efforts to win her young affections by instructing her in the
mysteries of currency and protection, to both which subjects he was
devoted. To forward these two interests and to watch over Miss Ross's
welfare, he made periodical visits to Washington, where he closeted
himself with committee-men and gave expensive dinners to members of
Congress. Mr. Schneidekoupon was rich, and about thirty years old, tall
and thin, with bright eyes and smooth face, elaborate manners and
much loquacity. He had the reputation of turning rapid intellectual
somersaults, partly to amuse himself and partly to startle society. At
one moment he was artistic, and discoursed scientifically about his
own paintings; at another he was literary, and wrote a book on “Noble
Living,” with a humanitarian purpose; at another he was devoted to
sport, rode a steeplechase, played polo, and set up a four-in-hand; his
last occupation was to establish in Philadelphia the Protective Review,
a periodical in the interests of American industry, which he edited
himself, as a stepping-stone to Congress, the Cabinet, and the
Presidency. At about the same time he bought a yacht, and heavy bets
were pending among his sporting friends whether he would manage to
sink first his Review or his yacht. But he was an amiable and excellent
fellow through all his eccentricities, and he brought to Mrs. Lee the
simple outpourings of the amateur politician.

A much higher type of character was Mr. Nathan Gore, of Massachusetts,
a handsome man with a grey beard, a straight, sharply cut nose, and a
fine, penetrating eye; in his youth a successful poet whose satires made
a noise in their day, and are still remembered for the pungency and wit
of a few verses; then a deep student in Europe for many years, until his
famous “History of Spain in America” placed him instantly at the head of
American historians, and made him minister at Madrid, where he remained
four years to his entire satisfaction, this being the nearest approach
to a patent of nobility and a government pension which the American
citizen can attain. A change of administration had reduced him to
private life again, and after some years of retirement he was now in
Washington, willing to be restored to his old mission. Every President
thinks it respectable to have at least one literary man in his pay, and
Mr. Gore's prospects were fair for obtaining his object, as he had the
active support of a majority of the Massachusetts delegation. He was
abominably selfish, colossally egoistic, and not a little vain; but
he was shrewd; he knew how to hold his tongue; he could flatter
dexterously, and he had learned to eschew satire. Only in confidence and
among friends he would still talk freely, but Mrs. Lee was not yet on
those terms with him. These were all men, and there was no want of women
in Mrs.

Lee's parlour; but, after all, they are able to describe themselves
better than any poor novelist can describe them. Generally two currents
of conversation ran on together--one round Sybil, the other about
Madeleine.

“Mees Ross,” said Count Popoff, leading in a handsome young foreigner,
“I have your permission to present to you my friend Count Orsini,
Secretary of the Italian Legation. Are you at home this afternoon? Count
Orsini sings also.”

“We are charmed to see Count Orsini. It is well you came so late, for I
have this moment come in from making Cabinet calls. They were so queer!
I have been crying with laughter for an hour past.” “Do you find these
calls amusing?” asked Popoff, gravely and diplomatically. “Indeed I
do! I went with Julia Schneidekoupon, you know, Madeleine; the
Schneidekoupons are descended from all the Kings of Israel, and are
prouder than Solomon in his glory. And when we got into the house of
some dreadful woman from Heaven knows where, imagine my feelings at
overhearing this conversation: 'What may be your family name, ma'am?'
'Schneidekoupon is my name,' replies Julia, very tall and straight.
'Have you any friends whom I should likely know?' 'I think not,' says
Julia, severely. 'Wal! I don't seem to remember of ever having heerd the
name. But I s'pose it's all right. I like to know who calls.' I almost
had hysterics when we got into the street, but Julia could not see the
joke at all.”

Count Orsini was not quite sure that he himself saw the joke, so he only
smiled becomingly and showed his teeth. For simple, childlike vanity and
self-consciousness nothing equals an Italian Secretary of Legation at
twenty-five. Yet conscious that the effect of his personal beauty
would perhaps be diminished by permanent silence, he ventured to murmur
presently:

“Do you not find it very strange, this society in America?”

“Society!” laughed Sybil with gay contempt. “There are no snakes in
America, any more than in Norway.”

“Snakes, mademoiselle!” repeated Orsini, with the doubtful expression of
one who is not quite certain whether he shall risk walking on thin ice,
and decides to go softly: “Snakes! Indeed they would rather be doves I
would call them.”

A kind laugh from Sybil strengthened into conviction his hope that
he had made a joke in this unknown tongue. His face brightened, his
confidence returned; once or twice he softly repeated to himself: “Not
snakes; they would be doves!” But Mrs. Lee's sensitive ear had caught
Sybil's remark, and detected in it a certain tone of condescension which
was not to her taste.

The impassive countenances of these bland young Secretaries of Legation
seemed to acquiesce far too much as a matter of course in the idea
that there was no society except in the old world. She broke into the
conversation with an emphasis that fluttered the dove-cote:

“Society in America? Indeed there is society in America, and very
good society too; but it has a code of its own, and new-comers seldom
understand it. I will tell you what it is, Mr. Orsini, and you will
never be in danger of making any mistake. 'Society' in America means all
the honest, kindly-mannered, pleasant-voiced women, and all the good,
brave, unassuming men, between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Each
of these has a free pass in every city and village, 'good for this
generation only,' and it depends on each to make use of this pass or
not as it may happen to suit his or her fancy. To this rule there are
no exceptions, and those who say 'Abraham is our father' will surely
furnish food for that humour which is the staple product of our
country.”

The alarmed youths, who did not in the least understand the meaning of
this demonstration, looked on with a feeble attempt at acquiescence,
while Mrs.

Lee brandished her sugar-tongs in the act of transferring a lump of
sugar to her cup, quite unconscious of the slight absurdity of the
gesture, while Sybil stared in amazement, for it was not often that
her sister waved the stars and stripes so energetically. Whatever their
silent criticisms might be, however, Mrs. Lee was too much in earnest to
be conscious of them, or, indeed, to care for anything but what she
was saying. There was a moment's pause when she came to the end of her
speech, and then the thread of talk was quietly taken up again where
Sybil's incipient sneer had broken it.

Carrington came in. “What have you been doing at the Capitol?” asked
Madeleine.

“Lobbying!” was the reply, given in the semi-serious tone of
Carrington's humour.

“So soon, and Congress only two days old?” exclaimed Mrs. Lee.

“Madam,” rejoined Carrington, with his quietest malice, “Congressmen are
like birds of the air, which are caught only by the early worm.” “Good
afternoon, Mrs. Lee. Miss Sybil, how do you do again? Which of these
gentlemen's hearts are you feeding upon now?” This was the refined style
of Mr. French, indulging in what he was pleased to term “badinaige.” He,
too, was on his way from the Capitol, and had come in for a cup of tea
and a little human society. Sybil made a face which plainly expressed a
longing to inflict on Mr. French some grievous personal wrong, but she
pretended not to hear. He sat down by Madeleine, and asked, “Did you see
Ratcliffe yesterday?”

“Yes,” said Madeleine; “he was here last evening with Mr. Carrington and
one or two others.”

“Did he say anything about politics?”

“Not a word. We talked mostly about books.”

“Books! What does he know about books?”

“You must ask him.”

“Well, this is the most ridiculous situation we are all in. No one
knows anything about the new President. You could take your oath that
everybody is in the dark. Ratcliffe says he knows as little as the rest
of us, but it can't be true; he is too old a politician not to have
wires in his hand; and only to-day one of the pages of the Senate told
my colleague Cutter that a letter sent off by him yesterday was directed
to Sam Grimes, of North Bend, who, as every one knows, belongs to the
President's particular crowd.--Why, Mr. Schneidekoupon! How do you do?
When did you come on?”

“Thank you; this morning,” replied Mr. Schneidekoupon, just entering the
room. “So glad to see you again, Mrs. Lee. How do you and your sister
like Washington? Do you know I have brought Julia on for a visit? I
thought I should find her here.

“She has just gone. She has been all the afternoon with Sybil, making
calls. She says you want her here to lobby for you, Mr. Schneidekoupon.
Is it true?”

“So I did,” replied he, with a laugh, “but she is precious little use.
So I've come to draft you into the service.”

“Me!”

“Yes; you know we all expect Senator Ratcliffe to be Secretary of the
Treasury, and it is very important for us to keep him straight on the
currency and the tariff. So I have come on to establish more intimate
relations with him, as they say in diplomacy. I want to get him to dine
with me at Welckley's, but as I know he keeps very shy of politics I
thought my only chance was to make it a ladies' dinner, so I brought on
Julia. I shall try and get Mrs. Schuyler Clinton, and I depend upon you
and your sister to help Julia out.”

“Me! at a lobby dinner! Is that proper?”

“Why not? You shall choose the guests.”

“I never heard of such a thing; but it would certainly be amusing. Sybil
must not go, but I might.” “Excuse me; Julia depends upon Miss Ross, and
will not go to table without her.”

“Well,” assented Mrs. Lee, hesitatingly, “perhaps if you get Mrs.
Clinton, and if your sister is there And who else?”

“Choose your own company.”

“I know no one.”

“Oh yes; here is French, not quite sound on the tariff, but good for
what we want just now. Then we can get Mr. Gore; he has his little
hatchet to grind too, and will be glad to help grind ours. We only want
two or three more, and I will have an extra man or so to fill up.”

“Do ask the Speaker. I want to know him.”

“I will, and Carrington, and my Pennsylvania Senator. That will do
nobly. Remember, Welckley's, Saturday at seven.”

Meanwhile Sybil had been at the piano, and when she had sung for a time,
Orsini was induced to take her place, and show that it was possible
to sing without injury to one's beauty. Baron Jacobi came in and found
fault with them both. Little Miss Dare--commonly known among her male
friends as little Daredevil--who was always absorbed in some flirtation
with a Secretary of Legation, came in, quite unaware that Popoff was
present, and retired with him into a corner, while Orsini and Jacobi
bullied poor Sybil, and fought with each other at the piano; everybody
was talking with very little reference to any reply, when at last Mrs.
Lee drove them all out of the room: “We are quiet people,” said she,
“and we dine at half-past six.”

Senator Ratcliffe had not failed to make his Sunday evening call upon
Mrs.

Lee. Perhaps it was not strictly correct to say that they had talked
books all the evening, but whatever the conversation was, it had
only confirmed Mr. Ratcliffe's admiration for Mrs. Lee, who, without
intending to do so, had acted a more dangerous part than if she had been
the most accomplished of coquettes. Nothing could be more fascinating
to the weary politician in his solitude than the repose of Mrs. Lee's
parlour, and when Sybil sang for him one or two simple airs--she
said they were foreign hymns, the Senator being, or being considered,
orthodox--Mr. Ratcliffe's heart yearned toward the charming girl quite
with the sensations of a father, or even of an elder brother.

His brother senators very soon began to remark that the Prairie Giant
had acquired a trick of looking up to the ladies' gallery. One day Mr.
Jonathan Andrews, the special correspondent of the New York Sidereal
System, a very friendly organ, approached Senator Schuyler Clinton with
a puzzled look on his face.

“Can you tell me,” said he, “what has happened to Silas P. Ratcliffe?
Only a moment ago I was talking with him at his seat on a very important
subject, about which I must send his opinions off to New York to-night,
when, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped short, got up without
looking at me, and left the Senate Chamber, and now I see him in the
gallery talking with a lady whose face I don't know.”

Senator Clinton slowly adjusted his gold eye-glasses and looked up at
the place indicated: “Ah! Mrs. Lightfoot Lee! I think I will say a word
to her myself;” and turning his back on the special correspondent, he
skipped away with youthful agility after the Senator from Illinois.

“Devil!” muttered Mr. Andrews; “what has got into the old fools?” and in
a still less audible murmur as he looked up to Mrs. Lee, then in close
conversation with Ratcliffe: “Had I better make an item of that?”

When young Mr. Schneidekoupon called upon Senator Ratcliffe to invite
him to the dinner at Welckley's, he found that gentleman overwhelmed
with work, as he averred, and very little disposed to converse. No! he
did not now go out to dinner. In the present condition of the public
business he found it impossible to spare the time for such amusements.
He regretted to decline Mr. Schneidekoupon's civility, but there were
imperative reasons why he should abstain for the present from social
entertainments; he had made but one exception to his rule, and only at
the pressing request of his old friend Senator Clinton, and on a very
special occasion.

Mr. Schneidekoupon was deeply vexed--the more, he said, because he had
meant to beg Mr. and Mrs. Clinton to be of the party, as well as a very
charming lady who rarely went into society, but who had almost consented
to come.

“Who is that?” inquired the Senator.

“A Mrs. Lightfoot Lee, of New York. Probably you do not know her well
enough to admire her as I do; but I think her quite the most intelligent
woman I ever met.”

The Senator's cold eyes rested for a moment on the young man's open face
with a peculiar expression of distrust. Then he solemnly said, in his
deepest senatorial tones:

“My young friend, at my time of life men have other things to occupy
them than women, however intelligent they may be. Who else is to be of
your party?”

Mr. Schneidekoupon named his list.

“And for Saturday evening at seven, did you say?”

“Saturday at seven.”

“I fear there is little chance of my attending, but I will not
absolutely decline. Perhaps when the moment arrives, I may find myself
able to be there. But do not count upon me--do not count upon me. Good
day, Mr. Schneidekoupon.”

Schneidekoupon was rather a simple-minded young man, who saw no deeper
than his neighbours into the secrets of the universe, and he went off
swearing roundly at “the infernal airs these senators give themselves.”
 He told Mrs.

Lee all the conversation, as indeed he was compelled to do under penalty
of bringing her to his party under false pretences.

“Just my luck,” said he; “here I am forced to ask no end of people to
meet a man, who at the same time says he shall probably not come. Why,
under the stars, couldn't he say, like other people, whether he was
coming or not? I've known dozens of senators, Mrs. Lee, and they're all
like that. They never think of any one but themselves.”

Mrs. Lee smiled rather a forced smile, and soothed his wounded feelings;
she had no doubt the dinner would be very agreeable whether the Senator
were there or not; at any rate she would do all she could to carry it
off well, and Sybil should wear her newest dress. Still she was a little
grave, and Mr. Schneidekoupon could only declare that she was a trump;
that he had told Ratcliffe she was the cleverest woman he ever met, and
he might have added the most obliging, and Ratcliffe had only looked
at him as though he were a green ape. At all which Mrs. Lee laughed
good-naturedly, and sent him away as soon as she could.

When he was gone, she walked up and down the room and thought. She saw
the meaning of Ratcliffe's sudden change in tone. She had no more doubt
of his coming to the dinner than she had of the reason why he came.
And was it possible that she was being drawn into something very near
a flirtation with a man twenty years her senior; a politician from
Illinois; a huge, ponderous, grey-eyed, bald senator, with a Websterian
head, who lived in Peonia? The idea was almost too absurd to be
credited; but on the whole the thing itself was rather amusing. “I
suppose senators can look out for themselves like other men,” was her
final conclusion. She thought only of his danger, and she felt a sort
of compassion for him as she reflected on the possible consequences of a
great, absorbing love at his time of life.

Her conscience was a little uneasy; but of herself she never thought.
Yet it is a historical fact that elderly senators have had a curious
fascination for young and handsome women. Had they looked out for
themselves too? And which parties most needed to be looked after?

When Madeleine and her sister arrived at Welckley's 's the next Saturday
evening, they found poor Schneidekoupon in a temper very unbecoming a
host.

“He won't come! I told you he wouldn't come!” said he to Madeleine, as
he handed her into the house. “If I ever turn communist, it will be for
the fun of murdering a senator.”

Madeleine consoled him gently, but he continued to use, behind Mr.
Clinton's back, language the most offensive and improper towards the
Senate, and at last, ringing the bell, he sharply ordered the head
waiter to serve dinner.

At that very moment the door opened, and Senator Ratcliffe's stately
figure appeared on the threshold. His eye instantly caught Madeleine's,
and she almost laughed aloud, for she saw that the Senator was dressed
with very unsenatorial neatness; that he had actually a flower in his
burton-hole and no gloves!

After the enthusiastic description which Schneidekoupon had given of
Mrs.

Lee's charms, he could do no less than ask Senator Ratcliffe to take her
in to dinner, which he did without delay. Either this, or the champagne,
or some occult influence, had an extraordinary effect upon him. He
appeared ten years younger than usual; his face was illuminated; his
eyes glowed; he seemed bent on proving his kinship to the immortal
Webster by rivalling his convivial powers. He dashed into the
conversation; laughed, jested, and ridiculed; told stories in Yankee
and Western dialect; gave sharp little sketches of amusing political
experiences.

“Never was more surprised in my life,” whispered Senator Krebs, of
Pennsylvania, across the table to Schneidekoupon. “Hadn't an idea that
Ratcliffe was so entertaining.”

And Mr. Clinton, who sat by Madeleine on the other side, whispered low
into her ear: “I am afraid, my dear Mrs. Lee, that you are responsible
for this. He never talks so to the Senate.”

Nay, he even rose to a higher flight, and told the story of President
Lincoln's death-bed with a degree of feeling that brought tears into
their eyes. The other guests made no figure at all. The Speaker consumed
his solitary duck and his lonely champagne in a corner without giving a
sign.

Even Mr. Gore, who was not wont to hide his light under any kind of
extinguisher, made no attempt to claim the floor, and applauded with
enthusiasm the conversation of his opposite neighbour. Ill-natured
people might say that Mr. Gore saw in Senator Ratcliffe a possible
Secretary of State; be this as it may, he certainly said to Mrs.
Clinton, in an aside that was perfectly audible to every one at the
table: “How brilliant! what an original mind! what a sensation he would
make abroad!” And it was quite true, apart from the mere momentary
effect of dinner-table talk, that there was a certain bigness about
the man; a keen practical sagacity; a bold freedom of self-assertion; a
broad way of dealing with what he knew.

Carrington was the only person at table who looked on with a perfectly
cool head, and who criticised in a hostile spirit. Carrington's
impression of Ratcliffe was perhaps beginning to be warped by a shade
of jealousy, for he was in a peculiarly bad temper this evening, and his
irritation was not wholly concealed.

“If one only had any confidence in the man!” he muttered to French, who
sat by him.

This unlucky remark set French to thinking how he could draw
Ratcliffe out, and accordingly, with his usual happy manner, combining
self-conceit and high principles, he began to attack the Senator with
some “badinaige” on the delicate subject of Civil Service Reform, a
subject almost as dangerous in political conversation at Washington as
slavery itself in old days before the war. French was a reformer, and
lost no occasion of impressing his views; but unluckily he was a very
light weight, and his manner was a little ridiculous, so that even Mrs.
Lee, who was herself a warm reformer, sometimes went over to the other
side when he talked. No sooner had he now shot his little arrow at the
Senator, than that astute man saw his opportunity, and promised himself
the pleasure of administering to Mr.

French punishment such as he knew would delight the company. Reformer
as Mrs. Lee was, and a little alarmed at the roughness of Ratcliffe's
treatment, she could not blame the Prairie Giant, as she ought, who,
after knocking poor French down, rolled him over and over in the mud.

“Are you financier enough, Mr. French, to know what are the most famous
products of Connecticut?”

Mr. French modestly suggested that he thought its statesmen best
answered that description.

“No, sir! even there you're wrong. The showmen beat you on your own
ground. But every child in the union knows that the most famous products
of Connecticut are Yankee notions, nutmegs made of wood and clocks that
won't go. Now, your Civil Service Reform is just such another Yankee
notion; it's a wooden nutmeg; it's a clock with a show case and sham
works. And you know it! You are precisely the old-school Connecticut
peddler. You have gone about peddling your wooden nutmegs until you have
got yourself into Congress, and now you pull them out of your pockets
and not only want us to take them at your own price, but you lecture us
on our sins if we don't. Well! we don't mind your doing that at home.
Abuse us as much as you like to your constituents. Get as many votes as
you can. But don't electioneer here, because we know you intimately, and
we've all been a little in the wooden nutmeg business ourselves.”

Senator Clinton and Senator Krebs chuckled high approval over this
punishment of poor French, which was on the level of their idea of wit.
They were all in the nutmeg business, as Ratcliffe said. The victim
tried to make head against them; he protested that his nutmegs were
genuine; he sold no goods that he did not guarantee; and that this
particular article was actually guaranteed by the national conventions
of both political parties.

“Then what you want, Mr. French, is a common school education. You
need a little study of the alphabet. Or if you won't believe me, ask my
brother senators here what chance there is for your Reforms so long
as the American citizen is what he is.”

“You'll not get much comfort in my State, Mr. French,” growled the
senator from Pennsylvania, with a sneer; “suppose you come and try.”

“Well, well!” said the benevolent Mr. Schuyler Clinton, gleaming
benignantly through his gold spectacles; “don't be too hard on French.
He means well. Perhaps he's not very wise, but he does good. I know more
about it than any of you, and I don't deny that the thing is all bad.
Only, as Mr. Ratcliffe says, the difficulty is in the people, not in us.
Go to work on them, French, and let us alone.”

French repented of his attack, and contented himself by muttering to
Carrington: “What a set of damned old reprobates they are!”

“They are right, though, in one thing,” was Carrington's reply: “their
advice is good. Never ask one of them to reform anything; if you do, you
will be reformed yourself.”

The dinner ended as brilliantly as it began, and Schneidekoupon was
delighted with his success. He had made himself particularly agreeable
to Sybil by confiding in her all his hopes and fears about the tariff
and the finances. When the ladies left the table, Ratcliffe could not
stay for a cigar; he must get back to his rooms, where he knew several
men were waiting for him; he would take his leave of the ladies and
hurry away. But when the gentlemen came up nearly an hour afterwards
they found Ratcliffe still taking his leave of the ladies, who were
delighted at his entertaining conversation; and when at last he really
departed, he said to Mrs. Lee, as though it were quite a matter of
course: “You are at home as usual to-morrow evening?” Madeleine smiled,
bowed, and he went his way.

As the two sisters drove home that night, Madeleine was unusually
silent.

Sybil yawned convulsively and then apologized:

“Mr. Schneidekoupon is very nice and good-natured, but a whole evening
of him goes a long way; and that horrid Senator Krebs would not say a
word, and drank a great deal too much wine, though it couldn't make him
any more stupid than he is. I don't think I care for senators.” Then,
wearily, after a pause: “Well, Maude, I do hope you've got what you
wanted. I'm sure you must have had politics enough. Haven't you got to
the heart of your great American mystery yet?”

“Pretty near it, I think,” said Madeleine, half to herself.



Chapter IV

SUNDAY evening was stormy, and some enthusiasm was required to make one
face its perils for the sake of society. Nevertheless, a few intimates
made their appearance as usual at Mrs. Lee's. The faithful Popoff was
there, and Miss Dare also ran in to pass an hour with her dear Sybil;
but as she passed the whole evening in a corner with Popoff, she must
have been disappointed in her object. Carrington came, and Baron Jacobi.
Schneidekoupon and his sister dined with Mrs. Lee, and remained after
dinner, while Sybil and Julia Schneidekoupon compared conclusions about
Washington society. The happy idea also occurred to Mr. Gore that,
inasmuch as Mrs. Lee's house was but a step from his hotel, he might as
well take the chance of amusement there as the certainty of solitude
in his rooms. Finally, Senator Ratcliffe duly made his appearance, and,
having established himself with a cup of tea by Madeleine's side, was
soon left to enjoy a quiet talk with her, the rest of the party by
common consent occupying themselves with each other. Under cover of
the murmur of conversation in the room, Mr. Ratcliffe quickly became
confidential.

“I came to suggest that, if you want to hear an interesting debate,
you should come up to the Senate to-morrow. I am told that Garrard, of
Louisiana, means to attack my last speech, and I shall probably in that
case have to answer him. With you for a critic I shall speak better.”

“Am I such an amiable critic?” asked Madeleine.

“I never heard that amiable critics were the best,” said he; “justice is
the soul of good criticism, and it is only justice that I ask and expect
from you.”

“What good does this speaking do?” inquired she. “Are you any nearer the
end of your difficulties by means of your speeches?”

“I hardly know yet. Just now we are in dead water; but this can't last
long. In fact, I am not afraid to tell you, though of course you will
not repeat it to any human being, that we have taken measures to force
an issue. Certain gentlemen, myself among the rest, have written letters
meant for the President's eye, though not addressed directly to him, and
intended to draw out an expression of some sort that will show us what
to expect.”

“Oh!” laughed Madeleine, “I knew about that a week ago.”

“About what?”

“About your letter to Sam Grimes, of North Bend.”

“What have you heard about my letter to Sam Grimes, of North Bend?”
 ejaculated Ratcliffe, a little abruptly.

“Oh, you do not know how admirably I have organised my secret service
bureau,” said she. “Representative Cutter cross-questioned one of the
Senate pages, and obliged him to confess that he had received from you a
letter to be posted, which letter was addressed to Mr. Grimes, of North
Bend.”

“And, of course, he told this to French, and French told you,” said
Ratcliffe; “I see. If I had known this I would not have let French off
so gently last night, for I prefer to tell you my own story without his
embellishments. But it was my fault. I should not have trusted a page.
Nothing is a secret here long. But one thing that Mr. Cutter did not
find out was that several other gentlemen wrote letters at the same
time, for the same purpose. Your friend, Mr. Clinton, wrote; Krebs
wrote; and one or two members.”

“I suppose I must not ask what you said?”

“You may. We agreed that it was best to be very mild and conciliatory,
and to urge the President only to give us some indication of his
intentions, in order that we might not run counter to them. I drew a
strong picture of the effect of the present situation on the party, and
hinted that I had no personal wishes to gratify.”

“And what do you think will be the result?”

“I think we shall somehow manage to straighten things out,” said
Ratcliffe.

“The difficulty is only that the new President has little experience,
and is suspicious. He thinks we shall intrigue to tie his hands, and he
means to tie ours in advance. I don't know him personally, but those
who do, and who are fair judges, say that, though rather narrow and
obstinate, he is honest enough, and will come round. I have no doubt
I could settle it all with him in an hour's talk, but it is out of the
question for me to go to him unless I am asked, and to ask me to come
would be itself a settlement.”

“What, then, is the danger you fear?”

“That he will offend all the important party leaders in order to
conciliate unimportant ones, perhaps sentimental ones, like your friend
French; that he will make foolish appointments without taking advice. By
the way, have you seen French to-day?”

“No,” replied Madeleine; “I think he must be sore at your treatment of
him last evening. You were very rude to him.”

“Not a bit,” said Ratcliffe; “these reformers need it. His attack on me
was meant for a challenge. I saw it in his manner.

“But is reform really so impossible as you describe it? Is it quite
hopeless?”

“Reform such as he wants is utterly hopeless, and not even desirable.”

Mrs. Lee, with much earnestness of manner, still pressed her question:

“Surely something can be done to check corruption. Are we for ever to
be at the mercy of thieves and ruffians? Is a respectable government
impossible in a democracy?”

Her warmth attracted Jacobi's attention, and he spoke across the room.
“What is that you say, Mrs. Lee? What is it about corruption?”

All the gentlemen began to listen and gather about them.

“I am asking Senator Ratcliffe,” said she, “what is to become of us if
corruption is allowed to go unchecked.”

“And may I venture to ask permission to hear Mr. Ratcliffe's reply?”
 asked the baron.

“My reply,” said Ratcliffe, “is that no representative government can
long be much better or much worse than the society it represents. Purify
society and you purify the government. But try to purify the government
artificially and you only aggravate failure.”

“A very statesmanlike reply,” said Baron Jacobi, with a formal bow, but
his tone had a shade of mockery. Carrington, who had listened with
a darkening face, suddenly turned to the baron and asked him what
conclusion he drew from the reply.

“Ah!” exclaimed the baron, with his wickedest leer, “what for is my
conclusion good? You Americans believe yourselves to be excepted from
the operation of general laws. You care not for experience. I have lived
seventy-five years, and all that time in the midst of corruption. I am
corrupt myself, only I do have courage to proclaim it, and you others
have it not. Rome, Paris, Vienna, Petersburg, London, all are corrupt;
only Washington is pure! Well, I declare to you that in all my
experience I have found no society which has had elements of corruption
like the United States. The children in the street are corrupt, and know
how to cheat me. The cities are all corrupt, and also the towns and the
counties and the States' legislatures and the judges. Everywhere men
betray trusts both public and private, steal money, run away with public
funds. Only in the Senate men take no money. And you gentlemen in the
Senate very well declare that your great United States, which is the
head of the civilized world, can never learn anything from the example
of corrupt Europe. You are right--quite right! The great United States
needs not an example. I do much regret that I have not yet one hundred
years to live. If I could then come back to this city, I should find
myself very content--much more than now. I am always content where there
is much corruption, and ma parole d'honneur!” broke out the old man with
fire and gesture, “the United States will then be more corrupt than Rome
under Caligula; more corrupt than the Church under Leo X.; more corrupt
than France under the Regent!”

As the baron closed his little harangue, which he delivered directly at
the senator sitting underneath him, he had the satisfaction to see that
every one was silent and listening with deep attention. He seemed to
enjoy annoying the senator, and he had the satisfaction of seeing that
the senator was visibly annoyed. Ratcliffe looked sternly at the baron
and said, with some curtness, that he saw no reason to accept such
conclusions.

Conversation flagged, and all except the baron were relieved when Sybil,
at Schneidekoupon's request, sat down at the piano to sing what she
called a hymn. So soon as the song was over, Ratcliffe, who seemed to
have been curiously thrown off his balance by Jacobi's harangue, pleaded
urgent duties at his rooms, and retired. The others soon afterwards went
off in a body, leaving only Carrington and Gore, who had seated himself
by Madeleine, and was at once dragged by her into a discussion of the
subject which perplexed her, and for the moment threw over her mind a
net of irresistible fascination.

“The baron discomfited the senator,” said Gore, with a certain
hesitation.

“Why did Ratcliffe let himself be trampled upon in that manner?”

“I wish you would explain why,” replied Mrs. Lee; “tell me,
Mr. Gore--you who represent cultivation and literary taste
hereabouts--please tell me what to think about Baron Jacobi's speech.
Who and what is to be believed? Mr. Ratcliffe seems honest and wise. Is
he a corruptionist? He believes in the people, or says he does. Is he
telling the truth or not?”

Gore was too experienced in politics to be caught in such a trap as
this. He evaded the question. “Mr. Ratcliffe has a practical piece of
work to do; his business is to make laws and advise the President;
he does it extremely well. We have no other equally good practical
politician; it is unfair to require him to be a crusader besides.”

“No!” interposed Carrington, curtly; “but he need not obstruct crusades.
He need not talk virtue and oppose the punishment of vice.”

“He is a shrewd practical politician,” replied Gore, “and he feels first
the weak side of any proposed political tactics.”

With a sigh of despair Madeleine went on: “Who, then, is right? How can
we all be right? Half of our wise men declare that the world is going
straight to perdition; the other half that it is fast becoming perfect.
Both cannot be right. There is only one thing in life,” she went on,
laughing, “that I must and will have before I die. I must know whether
America is right or wrong. Just now this question is a very practical
one, for I really want to know whether to believe in Mr. Ratcliffe. If I
throw him overboard, everything must go, for he is only a specimen.”

“Why not believe in Mr. Ratcliffe?” said Gore; “I believe in him myself,
and am not afraid to say so.”

Carrington, to whom Ratcliffe now began to represent the spirit of evil,
interposed here, and observed that he imagined Mr. Gore had other
guides besides, and steadier ones than Ratcliffe, to believe in; while
Madeleine, with a certain feminine perspicacity, struck at a much weaker
point in Mr.

Gore's armour, and asked point-blank whether he believed also in
what Ratcliffe represented: “Do you yourself think democracy the best
government, and universal suffrage a success?”

Mr. Gore saw himself pinned to the wall, and he turned at bay with
almost the energy of despair:

“These are matters about which I rarely talk in society; they are like
the doctrine of a personal God; of a future life; of revealed religion;
subjects which one naturally reserves for private reflection. But since
you ask for my political creed, you shall have it. I only condition that
it shall be for you alone, never to be repeated or quoted as mine. I
believe in democracy. I accept it. I will faithfully serve and defend
it. I believe in it because it appears to me the inevitable consequence
of what has gone before it. Democracy asserts the fact that the masses
are now raised to a higher intelligence than formerly. All our
civilisation aims at this mark. We want to do what we can to help it. I
myself want to see the result. I grant it is an experiment, but it is
the only direction society can take that is worth its taking; the only
conception of its duty large enough to satisfy its instincts; the only
result that is worth an effort or a risk. Every other possible step is
backward, and I do not care to repeat the past. I am glad to see society
grapple with issues in which no one can afford to be neutral.”

“And supposing your experiment fails,” said Mrs. Lee; “suppose society
destroys itself with universal suffrage, corruption, and communism.”

“I wish, Mrs. Lee, you would visit the Observatory with me some evening,
and look at Sirius. Did you ever make the acquaintance of a fixed star?
I believe astronomers reckon about twenty millions of them in sight, and
an infinite possibility of invisible millions, each one of which is a
sun, like ours, and may have satellites like our planet. Suppose you see
one of these fixed stars suddenly increase in brightness, and are
told that a satellite has fallen into it and is burning up, its career
finished, its capacities exhausted? Curious, is it not; but what does it
matter? Just as much as the burning up of a moth at your candle.”

Madeleine shuddered a little. “I cannot get to the height of your
philosophy,” said she. “You are wandering among the infinites, and I am
finite.”

“Not at all! But I have faith; not perhaps in the old dogmas, but in the
new ones; faith in human nature; faith in science; faith in the survival
of the fittest. Let us be true to our time, Mrs. Lee! If our age is to
be beaten, let us die in the ranks. If it is to be victorious, let us be
first to lead the column. Anyway, let us not be skulkers or grumblers.
There! have I repeated my catechism correctly? You would have it! Now
oblige me by forgetting it. I should lose my character at home if it got
out. Good night!”

Mrs. Lee duly appeared at the Capitol the next day, as she could not but
do after Senator Ratcliffe's pointed request. She went alone, for Sybil
had positively refused to go near the Capitol again, and Madeleine
thought that on the whole this was not an occasion for enrolling
Carrington in her service. But Ratcliffe did not speak. The debate was
unexpectedly postponed.

He joined Mrs. Lee in the gallery, however, sat with her as long as she
would allow, and became still more confidential, telling her that he had
received the expected reply from Grimes, of North Bend, and that it had
enclosed a letter written by the President-elect to Mr. Grimes in regard
to the advances made by Mr. Ratcliffe and his friends.

“It is not a handsome letter,” said he; “indeed, a part of it is
positively insulting. I would like to read you one extract from it, and
hear your opinion as to how it should be treated.” Taking the letter
from his pocket, he sought out the passage, and read as follows: “'I
cannot lose sight, too, of the consideration that these three Senators'
(he means Clinton, Krebs, and me) are popularly considered to be the
most influential members of that so-called senatorial ring, which has
acquired such general notoriety. While I shall always receive their
communications with all due respect, I must continue to exercise
complete freedom of action in consulting other political advisers as
well as these, and I must in all cases make it my first object to follow
the wishes of the people, not always most truly represented by their
nominal representatives.' What say you to that precious piece of
presidential manners?”

“At least I like his courage,” said Mrs. Lee.

“Courage is one thing; common sense is another. This letter is a studied
insult. He has knocked me off the track once. He means to do it again.
It is a declaration of war. What ought I to do?”

“Whatever is most for the public good.” said Madeleine, gravely.

Ratcliffe looked into her face with such undisguised delight--there was
so little possibility of mistaking or ignoring the expression of his
eyes, that she shrank back with a certain shock. She was not prepared
for so open a demonstration. He hardened his features at once, and went
on:

“But what is most for the public good?”

“That you know better than I,” said Madeleine; “only one thing is clear
to me. If you let yourself be ruled by your private feelings, you will
make a greater mistake than he. Now I must go, for I have visits to
make. The next time I come, Mr. Ratcliffe, you must keep your word
better.”

When they next met, Ratcliffe read to her a part of his reply to Mr.
Grimes, which ran thus: “It is the lot of every party leader to suffer
from attacks and to commit errors. It is true, as the President says,
that I have been no exception to this law. Believing as I do that great
results can only be accomplished by great parties, I have uniformly
yielded my own personal opinions where they have failed to obtain
general assent. I shall continue to follow this course, and the
President may with perfect confidence count upon my disinterested
support of all party measures, even though I may not be consulted in
originating them.”

Mrs. Lee listened attentively, and then said: “Have you never refused to
go with your party?”

“Never!” was Ratcliffe's firm reply.

Madeleine still more thoughtfully inquired again: “Is nothing more
powerful than party allegiance?”

“Nothing, except national allegiance,” replied Ratcliffe, still more
firmly.



Chapter V

TO tie a prominent statesman to her train and to lead him about like a
tame bear, is for a young and vivacious woman a more certain amusement
than to tie herself to him and to be dragged about like an Indian
squaw. This fact was Madeleine Lee's first great political discovery in
Washington, and it was worth to her all the German philosophy she had
ever read, with even a complete edition of Herbert Spencer's works into
the bargain. There could be no doubt that the honours and dignities of
a public career were no fair consideration for its pains. She made a
little daily task for herself of reading in succession the lives and
letters of the American Presidents, and of their wives, when she could
find that there was a trace of the latter's existence. What a melancholy
spectacle it was, from George Washington down to the last incumbent;
what vexations, what disappointments, what grievous mistakes, what very
objectionable manners! Not one of them, who had aimed at high purpose,
but had been thwarted, beaten, and habitually insulted! What a gloom lay
on the features of those famous chieftains, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster;
what varied expression of defeat and unsatisfied desire; what a sense
of self-importance and senatorial magniloquence; what a craving for
flattery; what despair at the sentence of fate! And what did they amount
to, after all?

They were practical men, these! they had no great problems of thought to
settle, no questions that rose above the ordinary rules of common
morals and homely duty. How they had managed to befog the subject!
What elaborate show-structures they had built up, with no result but
to obscure the horizon! Would not the country have done better without
them? Could it have done worse? What deeper abyss could have opened
under the nation's feet, than that to whose verge they brought it?

Madeleine's mind wearied with the monotony of the story. She discussed
the subject with Ratcliffe, who told her frankly that the pleasure of
politics lay in the possession of power. He agreed that the country
would do very well without him. “But here I am,” said he, “and here I
mean to stay.” He had very little sympathy for thin moralising, and a
statesmanlike contempt for philosophical politics. He loved power, and
he meant to be President.

That was enough.

Sometimes the tragic and sometimes the comic side was uppermost in her
mind, and sometimes she did not herself know whether to cry or to laugh.

Washington more than any other city in the world swarms with
simple-minded exhibitions of human nature; men and women curiously out
of place, whom it would be cruel to ridicule and ridiculous to weep
over. The sadder exhibitions are fortunately seldom seen by respectable
people; only the little social accidents come under their eyes. One
evening Mrs. Lee went to the President's first evening reception. As
Sybil flatly refused to face the crowd, and Carrington mildly said that
he feared he was not sufficiently reconstructed to appear at home in
that august presence, Mrs. Lee accepted Mr. French for an escort, and
walked across the Square with him to join the throng that was pouring
into the doors of the White House. They took their places in the line
of citizens and were at last able to enter the reception-room. There
Madeleine found herself before two seemingly mechanical figures, which
might be wood or wax, for any sign they showed of life. These two
figures were the President and his wife; they stood stiff and awkward by
the door, both their faces stripped of every sign of intelligence, while
the right hands of both extended themselves to the column of visitors
with the mechanical action of toy dolls. Mrs. Lee for a moment began
to laugh, but the laugh died on her lips. To the President and his
wife this was clearly no laughing matter. There they stood, automata,
representatives of the society which streamed past them. Madeleine
seized Mr. French by the arm.

“Take me somewhere at once,” said she, “where I can look at it. Here! in
the corner. I had no conception how shocking it was!”

Mr. French supposed she was thinking of the queer-looking men and women
who were swarming through the rooms, and he made, after his own delicate
notion of humour, some uncouth jests on those who passed by. Mrs. Lee,
however, was in no humour to explain or even to listen. She stopped him
short:--

“There, Mr. French! Now go away and leave me. I want to be alone for
half an hour. Please come for me then.” And there she stood, with her
eyes fixed on the President and his wife, while the endless stream of
humanity passed them, shaking hands.

What a strange and solemn spectacle it was, and how the deadly
fascination of it burned the image in upon her mind! What a horrid
warning to ambition!

And in all that crowd there was no one besides herself who felt the
mockery of this exhibition. To all the others this task was a regular
part of the President's duty, and there was nothing ridiculous about
it. They thought it a democratic institution, this droll a ping of
monarchical forms. To them the deadly dulness of the show was as natural
and proper as ever to the courtiers of the Philips and Charleses seemed
the ceremonies of the Escurial. To her it had the effect of a nightmare,
or of an opium-eater's vision, She felt a sudden conviction that this
was to be the end of American society; its realisation and dream at
once. She groaned in spirit.

“Yes! at last I have reached the end! We shall grow to be wax images,
and our talk will be like the squeaking of toy dolls. We shall all
wander round and round the earth and shake hands. No one will have
any object in this world, and there will be no other. It is worse than
anything in the 'Inferno.' What an awful vision of eternity!”

Suddenly, as through a mist, she saw the melancholy face of Lord Skye
approaching. He came to her side, and his voice recalled her to reality.

“Does it amuse you, this sort of thing?” he asked in a vague way.

“We take our amusement sadly, after the manner of our people,” she
replied; “but it certainly interests me.”

They stood for a time in silence, watching the slowly eddying dance of
Democracy, until he resumed:

“Whom do you take that man to be--the long, lean one, with a long woman
on each arm?”

“That man,” she replied, “I take to be a Washington department-clerk, or
perhaps a member of Congress from Iowa, with a wife and wife's sister.
Do they shock your nobility?”

He looked at her with comical resignation. “You mean to tell me
that they are quite as good as dowager-countesses. I grant it. My
aristocratic spirit is broken, Mrs. Lee. I will even ask them to dinner
if you bid me, and if you will come to meet them. But the last time I
asked a member of Congress to dine, he sent me back a note in pencil on
my own envelope that he would bring two of his friends with him, very
respectable constituents from Yahoo city, or some such place; nature's
noblemen, he said.”

“You should have welcomed them.”

“I did. I wanted to see two of nature's noblemen, and I knew they would
probably be pleasanter company than their representative. They came;
very respectable persons, one with a blue necktie, the other with a red
one: both had diamond pins in their shirts, and were carefully brushed
in respect to their hair. They said nothing, ate little, drank less,
and were much better behaved than I am. When they went away, they
unanimously asked me to stay with them when I visited Yahoo city.”

“You will not want guests if you always do that.”

“I don't know. I think it was pure ignorance on their part. They knew
no better, and they seemed modest enough. My only complaint was that I
could get nothing out of them. I wonder whether their wives would have
been more amusing.”

“Would they be so in England, Lord Skye?”

He looked down at her with half-shut eyes, and drawled: “You know my
countrywomen?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Then let us discuss some less serious subject.”

“Willingly. I have waited for you to explain to me why you have to-night
an expression of such melancholy.”

“Is that quite friendly, Mrs. Lee? Do I really look melancholy?”

“Unutterably, as I feel. I am consumed with curiosity to know the
reason.”

The British minister coolly took a complete survey of the whole room,
ending with a prolonged stare at the President and his wife, who were
still mechanically shaking hands; then he looked back into her face, and
said never a word.

She insisted: “I must have this riddle answered. It suffocates me. I
should not be sad at seeing these same people at work or at play, if
they ever do play; or in a church or a lecture-room. Why do they weigh
on me like a horrid phantom here?”

“I see no riddle, Mrs. Lee. You have answered your own question; they
are neither at work nor at play.”

“Then please take me home at once. I shall have hysterics. The sight of
those two suffering images at the door is too mournful to be borne. I am
dizzy with looking at these stalking figures. I don't believe they're
real. I wish the house would take fire. I want an earthquake. I wish
some one would pinch the President, or pull his wife's hair.”

Mrs. Lee did not repeat the experiment of visiting the White House, and
indeed for some time afterwards she spoke with little enthusiasm of the
presidential office. To Senator Ratcliffe she expressed her opinions
strongly. The Senator tried in vain to argue that the people had a right
to call upon their chief magistrate, and that he was bound to receive
them; this being so, there was no less objectionable way of proceeding
than the one which had been chosen. “Who gave the people any such
right?” asked Mrs. Lee. “Where does it come from? What do they want it
for? You know better, Mr. Ratcliffe! Our chief magistrate is a citizen
like any one else. What puts it into his foolish head to cease being a
citizen and to ape royalty? Our governors never make themselves
ridiculous. Why cannot the wretched being content himself with living
like the rest of us, and minding his own business? Does he know what a
figure of fun he is?” And Mrs. Lee went so far as to declare that she
would like to be the President's wife only to put an end to this folly;
nothing should ever induce her to go through such a performance; and if
the public did not approve of this, Congress might impeach her, and
remove her from office; all she demanded was the right to be heard
before the Senate in her own defence.

Nevertheless, there was a very general impression in Washington that
Mrs.

Lee would like nothing better than to be in the White House. Known
to comparatively few people, and rarely discussing even with them the
subjects which deeply interested her, Madeleine passed for a clever,
intriguing woman who had her own objects to gain. True it is, beyond
peradventure, that all residents of Washington may be assumed to be in
office or candidates for office; unless they avow their object, they are
guilty of an attempt--and a stupid one--to deceive; yet there is a small
class of apparent exceptions destined at last to fall within the rule.
Mrs. Lee was properly assumed to be a candidate for office. To the
Washingtonians it was a matter of course that Mrs. Lee should marry
Silas P. Ratcliffe. That he should be glad to get a fashionable and
intelligent wife, with twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year, was not
surprising. That she should accept the first public man of the day, with
a flattering chance for the Presidency--a man still comparatively
young and not without good looks--was perfectly natural, and in her
undertaking she had the sympathy of all well-regulated Washington women
who were not possible rivals; for to them the President's wife is of
more consequence than the President; and, indeed, if America only knew
it, they are not very far from the truth.

Some there were, however, who did not assent to this good-natured though
worldly view of the proposed match. These ladies were severe in their
comments upon Mrs. Lee's conduct, and did not hesitate to declare their
opinion that she was the calmest and most ambitious minx who had ever
come within their observation. Unfortunately it happened that the
respectable and proper Mrs. Schuyler Clinton took this view of the case,
and made little attempt to conceal her opinion. She was justly indignant
at her cousin's gross worldliness, and possible promotion in rank.

“If Madeleine Ross marries that coarse, horrid old Illinois politician,”
 said she to her husband, “I never will forgive her so long as I live.”

Mr. Clinton tried to excuse Madeleine, and even went so far as to
suggest that the difference of age was no greater than in their own
case; but his wife trampled ruthlessly on his argument.

“At any rate,” said she, “I never came to Washington as a widow on
purpose to set my cap for the first candidate for the Presidency, and
I never made a public spectacle of my indecent eagerness in the very
galleries of the Senate; and Mrs. Lee ought to be ashamed of herself.
She is a cold-blooded, heartless, unfeminine cat.”

Little Victoria Dare, who babbled like the winds and streams, with utter
indifference as to what she said or whom she addressed, used to bring
choice bits of this gossip to Mrs. Lee. She always affected a little
stammer when she said anything uncommonly impudent, and put on a manner
of languid simplicity. She felt keenly the satisfaction of seeing
Madeleine charged with her own besetting sins. For years all Washington
had agreed that Victoria was little better than one of the wicked; she
had done nothing but violate every rule of propriety and scandalise
every well-regulated family in the city, and there was no good in her.
Yet it could not be denied that Victoria was amusing, and had a sort of
irregular fascination; consequently she was universally tolerated. To
see Mrs. Lee thrust down to her own level was an unmixed pleasure to
her, and she carefully repeated to Madeleine the choice bits of dialogue
which she picked up in her wanderings.

“Your cousin, Mrs. Clinton, says you are a ca-ca-cat, Mrs. Lee.”

“I don't believe it, Victoria. Mrs. Clinton never said anything of the
sort.”

“Mrs. Marston says it is because you have caught a ra-ra-rat, and
Senator Clinton was only a m-m-mouse!”

Naturally all this unexpected publicity irritated Mrs. Lee not a little,
especially when short and vague paragraphs, soon followed by longer
and more positive ones, in regard to Senator Ratcliffe's matrimonial
prospects, began to appear in newspapers, along with descriptions of
herself from the pens of enterprising female correspondents for the
press, who had never so much as seen her. At the first sight of one of
these newspaper articles, Madeleine fairly cried with mortification and
anger. She wanted to leave Washington the next day, and she hated the
very thought of Ratcliffe. There was something in the newspaper style so
inscrutably vulgar, something so inexplicably revolting to the sense of
feminine decency, that she shrank under it as though it were a poisonous
spider. But after the first acute shame had passed, her temper was
roused, and she vowed that she would pursue her own path just as she
had begun, without regard to all the malignity and vulgarity in the wide
United States. She did not care to marry Senator Ratcliffe; she liked
his society and was flattered by his confidence; she rather hoped to
prevent him from ever making a formal offer, and if not, she would at
least push it off to the last possible moment; but she was not to be
frightened from marrying him by any amount of spitefulness or gossip,
and she did not mean to refuse him except for stronger reasons than
these. She even went so far in her desperate courage as to laugh at her
cousin, Mrs.

Clinton, whose venerable husband she allowed and even encouraged to pay
her such public attention and to express sentiments of such youthful
ardour as she well knew would inflame and exasperate the excellent lady
his wife.

Carrington was the person most unpleasantly affected by the course which
this affair had taken. He could no longer conceal from himself the fact
that he was as much m love as a dignified Virginian could be. With
him, at all events, she had shown no coquetry, nor had she ever either
flattered or encouraged him. But Carrington, m his solitary struggle
against fate, had found her a warm friend; always ready to assist where
assistance was needed, generous with her money in any cause which he
was willing to vouch for, full of sympathy where sympathy was more than
money, and full of resource and suggestion where money and sympathy
failed. Carrington knew her better than she knew herself. He selected
her books; he brought the last speech or the last report from the
Capitol or the departments; he knew her doubts and her vagaries, and as
far as he understood them at all, helped her to solve them.

Carrington was too modest, and perhaps too shy, to act the part of a
declared lover, and he was too proud to let it be thought that he wanted
to exchange his poverty for her wealth. But he was all the more anxious
when he saw the evident attraction which Ratcliffe's strong will and
unscrupulous energy exercised over her. He saw that Ratcliffe was
steadily pushing his advances; that he flattered all Mrs. Lee's
weaknesses by the confidence and deference with which he treated her;
and that in a very short time, Madeleine must either marry him or find
herself looked upon as a heartless coquette. He had his own reasons for
thinking ill of Senator Ratcliffe, and he meant to prevent a marriage;
but he had an enemy to deal with not easily driven from the path, and
quite capable of routing any number of rivals.

Ratcliffe was afraid of no one. He had not fought his own way in
life for nothing, and he knew all the value of a cold head and dogged
self-assurance.

Nothing but this robust Americanism and his strong will carried him
safely through the snares and pitfalls of Mrs. Lee's society, where
rivals and enemies beset him on every hand. He was little better than a
schoolboy, when he ventured on their ground, but when he could draw
them over upon his own territory of practical life he rarely failed to
trample on his assailants.

It was this practical sense and cool will that won over Mrs. Lee, who
was woman enough to assume that all the graces were well enough
employed in decorating her, and it was enough if the other sex felt her
superiority. Men were valuable only in proportion to their strength and
their appreciation of women. If the senator had only been strong enough
always to control his temper, he would have done very well, but his
temper was under a great strain in these times, and his incessant effort
to control it in politics made him less watchful in private life.
Mrs. Lee's tacit assumption of superior refinement irritated him,
and sometimes made him show his teeth like a bull-dog, at the cost of
receiving from Mrs. Lee a quick stroke in return such as a well-bred
tortoise-shell cat administers to check over-familiarity; innocent to
the eye, but drawing blood. One evening when he was more than commonly
out of sorts, after sitting some time in moody silence, he roused
himself, and, taking up a book that lay on her table, he glanced at its
title and turned over the leaves. It happened by ill luck to be a volume
of Darwin that Mrs. Lee had just borrowed from the library of Congress.

“Do you understand this sort of thing?” asked the Senator abruptly, in a
tone that suggested a sneer.

“Not very well,” replied Mrs. Lee, rather curtly.

“Why do you want to understand it?” persisted the Senator. “What good
will it do you?”

“Perhaps it will teach us to be modest,” answered Madeleine, quite equal
to the occasion.

“Because it says we descend from monkeys?” rejoined the Senator,
roughly.

“Do you think you are descended from monkeys?”

“Why not?” said Madeleine.

“Why not?” repeated Ratcliffe, laughing harshly. “I don't like the
connection. Do you mean to introduce your distant relations into
society?”

“They would bring more amusement into it than most of its present
members,” rejoined Mrs. Lee, with a gentle smile that threatened
mischief. But Ratcliffe would not be warned; on the contrary, the only
effect of Mrs. Lee's defiance was to exasperate his ill-temper, and
whenever he lost his temper he became senatorial and Websterian. “Such
books,” he began, “disgrace our civilization; they degrade and stultify
our divine nature; they are only suited for Asiatic despotisms where men
are reduced to the level of brutes; that they should be accepted by a
man like Baron Jacobi, I can understand; he and his masters have nothing
to do in the world but to trample on human rights. Mr. Carrington, of
course, would approve those ideas; he believes in the divine doctrine
of flogging negroes; but that you, who profess philanthropy and free
principles, should go with them, is astonishing; it is incredible; it is
unworthy of you.”

“You are very hard on the monkeys,” replied Madeleine, rather sternly,
when the Senator's oration was ended. “The monkeys never did you any
harm; they are not in public life; they are not even voters; if they
were, you would be enthusiastic about their intelligence and virtue.
After all, we ought to be grateful to them, for what would men do
in this melancholy world if they had not inherited gaiety from the
monkeys--as well as oratory.”

Ratcliffe, to do him justice, took punishment well, at least when
it came from Mrs. Lee's hands, and his occasional outbursts of
insubordination were sure to be followed by improved discipline; but if
he allowed Mrs. Lee to correct his faults, he had no notion of letting
himself be instructed by her friends, and he lost no chance of telling
them so. But to do this was not always enough. Whether it were that he
had few ideas outside of his own experience, or that he would not
trust himself on doubtful ground, he seemed compelled to bring every
discussion down to his own level. Madeleine puzzled herself in vain to
find out whether he did this because he knew no better, or because he
meant to cover his own ignorance.

“The Baron has amused me very much with his account of Bucharest
society,” Mrs. Lee would say: “I had no idea it was so gay.”

“I would like to show him our society in Peonia,” was Ratcliffe's reply;
“he would find a very brilliant circle there of nature's true noblemen.”

“The Baron says their politicians are precious sharp chaps,” added Mr.

French.

“Oh, there are politicians in Bulgaria, are there?” asked the Senator,
whose ideas of the Roumanian and Bulgarian neighbourhood were vague,
and who had a general notion that all such people lived in tents,
wore sheepskins with the wool inside, and ate curds: “Oh, they have
politicians there! I would like to see them try their sharpness in the
west.”

“Really!” said Mrs. Lee. “Think of Attila and his hordes running an
Indiana caucus?”

“Anyhow,” cried French with a loud laugh, “the Baron said that a set of
bigger political scoundrels than his friends couldn't be found in all
Illinois.”

“Did he say that?” exclaimed Ratcliffe angrily.

“Didn't he, Mrs. Lee? but I don't believe it; do you? What's your candid
opinion, Ratcliffe? What you don't know about Illinois politics isn't
worth knowing; do you really think those Bulgrascals couldn't run an
Illinois state convention?”

Ratcliffe did not like to be chaffed, especially on this subject, but he
could not resent French's liberty which was only a moderate return
for the wooden nutmeg. To get the conversation away from Europe, from
literature, from art, was his great object, and chaff was a way of
escape.

Carrington was very well aware that the weak side of the Senator lay in
his blind ignorance of morals. He flattered himself that Mrs. Lee must
see this and be shocked by it sooner or later, so that nothing more was
necessary than to let Ratcliffe expose himself. Without talking very
much, Carrington always aimed at drawing him out. He soon found,
however, that Ratcliffe understood such tactics perfectly, and instead
of injuring, he rather improved his position. At times the man's
audacity was startling, and even when Carrington thought him hopelessly
entangled, he would sweep away all the hunter's nets with a sheer effort
of strength, and walk off bolder and more dangerous than ever.

When Mrs. Lee pressed him too closely, he frankly admitted her charges.

“What you say is in great part true. There is much in politics that
disgusts and disheartens; much that is coarse and bad. I grant you there
is dishonesty and corruption. We must try to make the amount as small as
possible.”

“You should be able to tell Mrs. Lee how she must go to work,” said
Carrington; “you have had experience. I have heard, it seems to me, that
you were once driven to very hard measures against corruption.”

Ratcliffe looked ill-pleased at this compliment, and gave Carrington one
of his cold glances that meant mischief. But he took up the challenge on
the spot:--

“Yes, I was, and am very sorry for it. The story is this, Mrs. Lee;
and it is well-known to every man, woman, and child in the State of
Illinois, so that I have no reason for softening it. In the worst days
of the war there was almost a certainty that my State would be carried
by the peace party, by fraud, as we thought, although, fraud or not, we
were bound to save it. Had Illinois been lost then, we should certainly
have lost the Presidential election, and with it probably the Union. At
any rate, I believed the fate of the war to depend on the result. I
was then Governor, and upon me the responsibility rested. We had entire
control of the northern counties and of their returns. We ordered the
returning officers in a certain number of counties to make no returns
until they heard from us, and when we had received the votes of all the
southern counties and learned the precise number of votes we needed to
give us a majority, we telegraphed to our northern returning officers
to make the vote of their districts such and such, thereby overbalancing
the adverse returns and giving the State to us. This was done, and as I
am now senator I have a right to suppose that what I did was approved. I
am not proud of the transaction, but I would do it again, and worse than
that, if I thought it would save this country from disunion. But of
course I did not expect Mr. Carrington to approve it. I believe he was
then carrying out his reform principles by bearing arms against the
government.”

“Yes!” said Carrington drily; “you got the better of me, too. Like the
old Scotchman, you didn't care who made the people's wars provided you
made its ballots.”

Carrington had missed his point. The man who has committed a murder for
his country, is a patriot and not an assassin, even when he receives a
seat in the Senate as his share of the plunder. Women cannot be expected
to go behind the motives of that patriot who saves his country and his
election in times of revolution.

Carrington's hostility to Ratcliffe was, however, mild, when compared
with that felt by old Baron Jacobi. Why the baron should have taken so
violent a prejudice it is not easy to explain, but a diplomatist and a
senator are natural enemies, and Jacobi, as an avowed admirer of
Mrs. Lee, found Ratcliffe in his way. This prejudiced and immoral old
diplomatist despised and loathed an American senator as the type
which, to his bleared European eyes, combined the utmost pragmatical
self-assurance and overbearing temper with the narrowest education and
the meanest personal experience that ever existed in any considerable
government. As Baron Jacobi's country had no special relations with that
of the United States, and its Legation at Washington was a mere job to
create a place for Jacobi to fill, he had no occasion to disguise his
personal antipathies, and he considered himself in some degree as having
a mission to express that diplomatic contempt for the Senate which his
colleagues, if they felt it, were obliged to conceal. He performed his
duties with conscientious precision. He never missed an opportunity to
thrust the sharp point of his dialectic rapier through the joints of the
clumsy and hide-bound senatorial self-esteem. He delighted in skilfully
exposing to Madeleine's eyes some new side of Ratcliffe's ignorance.
His conversation at such times sparkled with historical allusions,
quotations in half a dozen different languages, references to well-known
facts which an old man's memory could not recall with precision in all
their details, but with which the Honourable Senator was familiarly
acquainted, and which he could readily supply. And his Voltairian
face leered politely as he listened to Ratcliffe's reply, which showed
invariable ignorance of common literature, art, and history. The climax
of his triumph came one evening when Ratcliffe unluckily, tempted by
some allusion to Molière which he thought he understood, made reference
to the unfortunate influence of that great man on the religious opinions
of his time. Jacobi, by a flash of inspiration, divined that he had
confused Molière with Voltaire, and assuming a manner of extreme
suavity, he put his victim on the rack, and tortured him with affected
explanations and interrogations, until Madeleine was in a manner forced
to interrupt and end the scene. But even when the senator was not to be
lured into a trap, he could not escape assault. The baron in such a
case would cross the lines and attack him on his own ground, as on one
occasion, when Ratcliffe was defending his doctrine of party allegiance,
Jacobi silenced him by sneering somewhat thus:

“Your principle is quite correct, Mr. Senator. I, too, like yourself,
was once a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was
ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church;
your National Convention is our OEcumenic Council; you abdicate reason,
as we do, before its decisions; and you yourself, Mr. Ratcliffe, you are
a Cardinal. They are able men, those cardinals; I have known many; they
were our best friends, but they were not reformers. Are you a reformer,
Mr. Senator?”

Ratcliffe grew to dread and hate the old man, but all his ordinary
tactics were powerless against this impenetrable eighteenth century
cynic. If he resorted to his Congressional practise of browbeating
and dogmatism, the Baron only smiled and turned his back, or made some
remark in French which galled his enemy all the more, because, while
he did not understand it, he knew well that Madeleine did, and that she
tried to repress her smile.

Ratcliffe's grey eyes grew colder and stonier than ever as he gradually
perceived that Baron Jacobi was carrying on a set scheme with malignant
ingenuity, to drive him out of Madeleine's house, and he swore
a terrible oath that he would not be beaten by that monkey-faced
foreigner. On the other hand Jacobi had little hope of success: “What
can an old man do?” said he with perfect sincerity to Carrington; “If
I were forty years younger, that great oaf should not have his own way.
Ah! I wish I were young again and we were in Vienna!” From which it was
rightly inferred by Carrington that the venerable diplomatist would, if
such acts were still in fashion, have coolly insulted the Senator, and
put a bullet through his heart.



Chapter VI

IN February the weather became warmer and summer-like. In Virginia there
comes often at this season a deceptive gleam of summer, slipping in
between heavy storm-clouds of sleet and snow; days and sometimes weeks
when the temperature is like June; when the earliest plants begin to
show their hardy flowers, and when the bare branches of the forest trees
alone protest against the conduct of the seasons. Then men and women are
languid; life seems, as in Italy, sensuous and glowing with colour; one
is conscious of walking in an atmosphere that is warm, palpable, radiant
with possibilities; a delicate haze hangs over Arlington, and softens
even the harsh white glare of the Capitol; the struggle of existence
seems to abate; Lent throws its calm shadow over society; and youthful
diplomatists, unconscious of their danger, are lured into asking foolish
girls to marry them; the blood thaws in the heart and flows out into the
veins, like the rills of sparkling water that trickle from every lump
of ice or snow, as though all the ice and snow on earth, and all the
hardness of heart, all the heresy and schism, all the works of the
devil, had yielded to the force of love and to the fresh warmth of
innocent, lamb-like, confiding virtue. In such a world there should be
no guile--but there is a great deal of it notwithstanding. Indeed, at
no other season is there so much. This is the moment when the two whited
sepulchres at either end of the Avenue reek with the thick atmosphere of
bargain and sale. The old is going; the new is coming. Wealth, office,
power are at auction. Who bids highest? who hates with most venom? who
intrigues with most skill? who has done the dirtiest, the meanest, the
darkest, and the most, political work? He shall have his reward.

Senator Ratcliffe was absorbed and ill at ease. A swarm of applicants
for office dogged his steps and beleaguered his rooms in quest of his
endorsement of their paper characters. The new President was to arrive
on Monday. Intrigues and combinations, of which the Senator was the
soul, were all alive, awaiting this arrival. Newspaper correspondents
pestered him with questions. Brother senators called him to conferences.
His mind was pre-occupied with his own interests. One might have
supposed that, at this instant, nothing could have drawn him away from
the political gaming-table, and yet when Mrs. Lee remarked that she was
going to Mount Vernon on Saturday with a little party, including the
British Minister and an Irish gentleman staying as a guest at the
British Legation, the Senator surprised her by expressing a strong wish
to join them. He explained that, as the political lead was no longer
in his hands, the chances were nine in ten that if he stirred at all
he should make a blunder; that his friends expected him to do something
when, in fact, nothing could be done; that every preparation had already
been made, and that for him to go on an excursion to Mount Vernon, at
this moment, with the British Minister, was, on the whole, about the
best use he could make of his time, since it would hide him for one day
at least.

Lord Skye had fallen into the habit of consulting Mrs. Lee when his own
social resources were low, and it was she who had suggested this party
to Mount Vernon, with Carrington for a guide and Mr. Gore for variety,
to occupy the time of the Irish friend whom Lord Skye was bravely
entertaining.

This gentleman, who bore the title of Dunbeg, was a dilapidated peer,
neither wealthy nor famous. Lord Skye brought him to call on Mrs. Lee,
and in some sort put him under her care. He was young, not ill-looking,
quite intelligent, rather too fond of facts, and not quick at humour.
He was given to smiling in a deprecatory way, and when he talked, he
was either absent or excited; he made vague blunders, and then smiled
in deprecation of offence, or his words blocked their own path in their
rush. Perhaps his manner was a little ridiculous, but he had a good
heart, a good head, and a title. He found favour in the eyes of Sybil
and Victoria Dare, who declined to admit other women to the party,
although they offered no objection to Mr.

Ratcliffe's admission. As for Lord Dunbeg, he was an enthusiastic
admirer of General Washington, and, as he privately intimated, eager to
study phases of American society. He was delighted to go with a small
party, and Miss Dare secretly promised herself that she would show him a
phase.

The morning was warm, the sky soft, the little steamer lay at the quiet
wharf with a few negroes lazily watching her preparations for departure.

Carrington, with Mrs. Lee and the young ladies, arrived first, and stood
leaning against the rail, waiting the arrival of their companions. Then
came Mr. Gore, neatly attired and gloved, with a light spring overcoat;
for Mr.

Gore was very careful of his personal appearance, and not a little vain
of his good looks. Then a pretty woman, with blue eyes and blonde hair,
dressed in black, and leading a little girl by the hand, came on board,
and Carrington went to shake hands with her. On his return to Mrs. Lee's
side, she asked about his new acquaintance, and he replied with a
half-laugh, as though he were not proud of her, that she was a client,
a pretty widow, well known in Washington. “Any one at the Capitol would
tell you all about her. She was the wife of a noted lobbyist, who died
about two years ago. Congressmen can refuse nothing to a pretty face,
and she was their idea of feminine perfection. Yet she is a silly little
woman, too. Her husband died after a very short illness, and, to my
great surprise, made me executor under his will. I think he had an idea
that he could trust me with his papers, which were important and
compromising, for he seems to have had no time to go over them and
destroy what were best out of the way. So, you see, I am left with his
widow and child to look after. Luckily, they are well provided for.”

“Still you have not told me her name.”

“Her name is Baker--Mrs. Sam Baker. But they are casting off, and Mr.
Ratcliffe will be left behind. I'll ask the captain to wait.” About a
dozen passengers had arrived, among them the two Earls, with a footman
carrying a promising lunch-basket, and the planks were actually hauled
in when a carriage dashed up to the wharf, and Mr. Ratcliffe leaped out
and hurried on board. “Off with you as quick as you can!” said he to
the negro-hands, and in another moment the little steamer had begun her
journey, pounding the muddy waters of the Potomac and sending up its
small column of smoke as though it were a newly invented incense-burner
approaching the temple of the national deity. Ratcliffe explained in
great glee how he had barely managed to escape his visitors by telling
them that the British Minister was waiting for him, and that he would
be back again presently. “If they had known where I was going,” said
he, “you would have seen the boat swamped with office-seekers. Illinois
alone would have brought you to a watery grave.” He was in high spirits,
bent upon enjoying his holiday, and as they passed the arsenal with
its solitary sentry, and the navy-yard, with its one unseaworthy wooden
war-steamer, he pointed out these evidences of national grandeur to Lord
Skye, threatening, as the last terror of diplomacy, to send him home in
an American frigate. They were thus indulging in senatorial humour on
one side of the boat, while Sybil and Victoria, with the aid of Mr. Gore
and Carrington, were improving Lord Dunbeg's mind on the other.

Miss Dare, finding for herself at last a convenient seat where she could
repose and be mistress of the situation, put on a more than usually
demure expression and waited with gravity until her noble neighbour
should give her an opportunity to show those powers which, as she
believed, would supply a phase in his existence. Miss Dare was one of
those young persons, sometimes to be found in America, who seem to have
no object in life, and while apparently devoted to men, care nothing
about them, but find happiness only in violating rules; she made no
parade of whatever virtues she had, and her chief pleasure was to make
fun of all the world and herself.

“What a noble river!” remarked Lord Dunbeg, as the boat passed out upon
the wide stream; “I suppose you often sail on it?”

“I never was here in my life till now,” replied the untruthful Miss
Dare; “we don't think much of it; it s too small; we're used to so much
larger rivers.”

“I am afraid you would not like our English rivers then; they are mere
brooks compared with this.”

“Are they indeed?” said Victoria, with an appearance of vague surprise;
“how curious! I don't think I care to be an Englishwoman then. I could
not live without big rivers.”

Lord Dunbeg stared, and hinted that this was almost unreasonable.

“Unless I were a Countess!” continued Victoria, meditatively, looking
at Alexandria, and paying no attention to his lordship; “I think I could
manage if I were a C-c-countess. It is such a pretty title!”

“Duchess is commonly thought a prettier one,” stammered Dunbeg, much
embarrassed. The young man was not used to chaff from women.

“I should be satisfied with Countess. It sounds well. I am surprised
that you don't like it.” Dunbeg looked about him uneasily for some means
of escape but he was barred in. “I should think you would feel an awful
responsibility in selecting a Countess. How do you do it?”

Lord Dunbeg nervously joined in the general laughter as Sybil
ejaculated:

“Oh, Victoria!” but Miss Dare continued without a smile or any elevation
of her monotonous voice:

“Now, Sybil, don't interrupt me, please. I am deeply interested in Lord
Dunbeg's conversation. He understands that my interest is purely
scientific, but my happiness requires that I should know how Countesses
are selected. Lord Dunbeg, how would you recommend a friend to choose a
Countess?”

Lord Dunbeg began to be amused by her impudence, and he even tried to
lay down for her satisfaction one or two rules for selecting Countesses,
but long before he had invented his first rule, Victoria had darted off
to a new subject.

“Which would you rather be, Lord Dunbeg? an Earl or George Washington?”

“George Washington, certainly,” was the Earl's courteous though rather
bewildered reply.

“Really?” she asked with a languid affectation of surprise; “it is
awfully kind of you to say so, but of course you can't mean it.

“Indeed I do mean it.”

“Is it possible? I never should have thought it.”

“Why not, Miss Dare?”

“You have not the air of wishing to be George Washington.”

“May I again ask, why not?”

“Certainly. Did you ever see George Washington?”

“Of course not. He died fifty years before I was born.”

“I thought so. You see you don't know him. Now, will you give us an idea
of what you imagine General Washington to have looked like?”

Dunbeg gave accordingly a flattering description of General Washington,
compounded of Stuart's portrait and Greenough's statue of Olympian Jove
with Washington's features, in the Capitol Square. Miss Dare listened
with an expression of superiority not unmixed with patience, and then
she enlightened him as follows:

“All you have been saying is perfect stuff--excuse the vulgarity of the
expression. When I am a Countess I will correct my language. The
truth is that General Washington was a raw-boned country farmer, very
hard-featured, very awkward, very illiterate and very dull; very bad
tempered, very profane, and generally tipsy after dinner.”

“You shock me, Miss Dare!” exclaimed Dunbeg.

“Oh! I know all about General Washington. My grandfather knew him
intimately, and often stayed at Mount Vernon for weeks together. You
must not believe what you read, and not a word of what Mr. Carrington
will say. He is a Virginian and will tell you no end of fine stories and
not a syllable of truth in one of them. We are all patriotic about
Washington and like to hide his faults. If I weren't quite sure you
would never repeat it, I would not tell you this. The truth is that even
when George Washington was a small boy, his temper was so violent that
no one could do anything with him. He once cut down all his father's
fruit-trees in a fit of passion, and then, just because they wanted to
flog him, he threatened to brain his father with the hatchet. His aged
wife suffered agonies from him. My grandfather often told me how he had
seen the General pinch and swear at her till the poor creature left the
room in tears; and how once at Mount Vernon he saw Washington, when
quite an old man, suddenly rush at an unoffending visitor, and chase him
off the place, beating him all the time over the head with a great stick
with knots in it, and all just because he heard the poor man stammer; he
never could abide s-s-stammering.”

Carrington and Gore burst into shouts of laughter over this description
of the Father of his country, but Victoria continued in her gentle drawl
to enlighten Lord Dunbeg in regard to other subjects with information
equally mendacious, until he decided that she was quite the most
eccentric person he had ever met. The boat arrived at Mount Vernon while
she was still engaged in a description of the society and manners of
America, and especially of the rules which made an offer of marriage
necessary. According to her, Lord Dunbeg was in imminent peril;
gentlemen, and especially foreigners, were expected, in all the States
south of the Potomac, to offer themselves to at least one young lady in
every city: “and I had only yesterday,” said Victoria, “a letter from a
lovely girl in North Carolina, a dear friend of mine, who wrote me that
she was right put out because her brothers had called on a young English
visitor with shot guns, and she was afraid he wouldn't recover, and,
after all, she says she should have refused him.”

Meanwhile Madeleine, on the other side of the boat, undisturbed by the
laughter that surrounded Miss Dare, chatted soberly and seriously with
Lord Skye and Senator Ratcliffe. Lord Skye, too, a little intoxicated
by the brilliancy of the morning, broke out into admiration of the noble
river, and accused Americans of not appreciating the beauties of their
own country.

“Your national mind,” said he, “has no eyelids. It requires a broad
glare and a beaten road. It prefers shadows which you can cut out with a
knife. It doesn't know the beauty of this Virginia winter softness.”

Mrs. Lee resented the charge. America, she maintained, had not worn her
feelings threadbare like Europe. She had still her story to tell; she
was waiting for her Burns and Scott, her Wordsworth and Byron, her
Hogarth and Turner. “You want peaches in spring,” said she. “Give us
our thousand years of summer, and then complain, if you please, that our
peach is not as mellow as yours. Even our voices may be soft then,” she
added, with a significant look at Lord Skye.

“We are at a disadvantage in arguing with Mrs. Lee,” said he to
Ratcliffe; “when she ends as counsel, she begins as witness. The famous
Duchess of Devonshire's lips were not half as convincing as Mrs. Lee's
voice.”

Ratcliffe listened carefully, assenting whenever he saw that Mrs. Lee
wished it. He wished he understood precisely what tones and half-tones,
colours and harmonies, were.

They arrived and strolled up the sunny path. At the tomb they halted,
as all good Americans do, and Mr. Gore, in a tone of subdued sorrow,
delivered a short address--

“It might be much worse if they improved it,” he said, surveying its
proportions with the æsthetic eye of a cultured Bostonian. “As it
stands, this tomb is a simple misfortune which might befall any of us;
we should not grieve over it too much. What would our feelings be if
a Congressional committee reconstructed it of white marble with Gothic
pepper-pots, and gilded it inside on machine-moulded stucco!”

Madeleine, however, insisted that the tomb, as it stood, was the only
restless spot about the quiet landscape, and that it contradicted all
her ideas about repose in the grave. Ratcliffe wondered what she meant.

They passed on, wandering across the lawn, and through the house. Their
eyes, weary of the harsh colours and forms of the city, took pleasure in
the worn wainscots and the stained walls. Some of the rooms were still
occupied; fires were burning in the wide fire-places. All were tolerably
furnished, and there was no uncomfortable sense of repair or newness.
They mounted the stairs, and Mrs. Lee fairly laughed when she was shown
the room in which General Washington slept, and where he died.

Carrington smiled too. “Our old Virginia houses were mostly like this,”
 said he; “suites of great halls below, and these gaunt barracks above.
The Virginia house was a sort of hotel. When there was a race or a
wedding, or a dance, and the house was full, they thought nothing of
packing half a dozen people in one room, and if the room was large, they
stretched a sheet a cross to separate the men from the women. As for
toilet, those were not the mornings of cold baths. With our ancestors a
little washing went a long way.”

“Do you still live so in Virginia?” asked Madeleine.

“Oh no, it is quite gone. We live now like other country people, and try
to pay our debts, which that generation never did. They lived from hand
to mouth. They kept a stable-full of horses. The young men were always
riding about the country, betting on horse-races, gambling, drinking,
fighting, and making love. No one knew exactly what he was worth until
the crash came about fifty years ago, and the whole thing ran out.”

“Just what happened in Ireland!” said Lord Dunbeg, much interested and
full of his article in the Quarterly; “the resemblance is perfect, even
down to the houses.”

Mrs. Lee asked Carrington bluntly whether he regretted the destruction
of this old social arrangement.

“One can't help regretting,” said he, “whatever it was that produced
George Washington, and a crowd of other men like him. But I think we
might produce the men still if we had the same field for them.”

“And would you bring the old society back again if you could?” asked
she.

“What for? It could not hold itself up. General Washington himself could
not save it. Before he died he had lost his hold on Virginia, and his
power was gone.”

The party for a while separated, and Mrs. Lee found herself alone in the
great drawing-room. Presently the blonde Mrs. Baker entered, with her
child, who ran about making more noise than Mrs. Washington would have
permitted.

Madeleine, who had the usual feminine love of children, called the girl
to her and pointed out the shepherds and shepherdesses carved on the
white Italian marble of the fireplace; she invented a little story
about them to amuse the child, while the mother stood by and at the end
thanked the story-teller with more enthusiasm than seemed called for.
Mrs. Lee did not fancy her effusive manner, or her complexion, and was
glad when Dunbeg appeared at the doorway.

“How do you like General Washington at home?” asked she.

“Really, I assure you I feel quite at home myself,” replied Dunbeg, with
a more beaming smile than ever. “I am sure General Washington was an
Irishman. I know it from the look of the place. I mean to look it up and
write an article about it.”

“Then if you have disposed of him,” said Madeleine, “I think we will
have luncheon, and I have taken the liberty to order it to be served
outside.”

There a table had been improvised, and Miss Dare was inspecting the
lunch, and making comments upon Lord Skye's cuisine and cellar.

“I hope it is very dry champagne,” said she, “the taste for sweet
champagne is quite awfully shocking.”

The young woman knew no more about dry and sweet champagne than of the
wine of Ulysses, except that she drank both with equal satisfaction, but
she was mimicking a Secretary of the British Legation who had provided
her with supper at her last evening party. Lord Skye begged her to try
it, which she did, and with great gravity remarked that it was about
five per cent. she presumed. This, too, was caught from her Secretary,
though she knew no more what it meant than if she had been a parrot.

The luncheon was very lively and very good. When it was over, the
gentlemen were allowed to smoke, and conversation fell into a sober
strain, which at last threatened to become serious.

“You want half-tones!” said Madeleine to Lord Skye: “are there not
half-tones enough to suit you on the walls of this house?”

Lord Skye suggested that this was probably owing to the fact that
Washington, belonging, as he did, to the universe, was in his taste an
exception to local rules.

“Is not the sense of rest here captivating?” she continued. “Look at
that quaint garden, and this ragged lawn, and the great river in front,
and the superannuated fort beyond the river! Everything is peaceful,
even down to the poor old General's little bed-room. One would like to
lie down in it and sleep a century or two. And yet that dreadful Capitol
and its office-seekers are only ten miles off.”

“No! that is more than I can bear!” broke in Miss Victoria in a stage
whisper, “that dreadful Capitol! Why, not one of us would be here
without that dreadful Capitol! except, perhaps, myself.”

“You would appear very well as Mrs. Washington, Victoria.”

“Miss Dare has been so very obliging as to give us her views of General
Washington's character this morning,” said Dunbeg, “but I have not yet
had time to ask Mr. Carrington for his.”

“Whatever Miss Dare says is valuable,” replied Carrington, “but her
strong point is facts.”

“Never flatter! Mr. Carrington,” drawled Miss Dare; “I do not need it,
and it does not become your style. Tell me, Lord Dunbeg, is not Mr.
Carrington a little your idea of General Washington restored to us in
his prime?”

“After your account of General Washington, Miss Dare, how can I agree
with you?”

“After all,” said Lord Skye, “I think we must agree that Miss Dare is in
the main right about the charms of Mount Vernon. Even Mrs. Lee, on the
way up, agreed that the General, who is the only permanent resident
here, has the air of being confoundedly bored in his tomb. I don't
myself love your dreadful Capitol yonder, but I prefer it to a bucolic
life here. And I account in this way for my want of enthusiasm for your
great General. He liked no kind of life but this. He seems to have been
greater in the character of a home-sick Virginia planter than as General
or President. I forgive him his inordinate dulness, for he was not a
diplomatist and it was not his business to lie, but he might once in a
way have forgotten Mount Vernon.”

Dunbeg here burst in with an excited protest; all his words seemed to
shove each other aside in their haste to escape first. “All our greatest
Englishmen have been home-sick country squires. I am a home-sick country
squire myself.”

“How interesting!” said Miss Dare under her breath.

Mr. Gore here joined in: “It is all very well for you gentlemen to
measure General Washington according to your own private twelve-inch
carpenter's rule. But what will you say to us New Englanders who never
were country gentlemen at all, and never had any liking for Virginia?
What did Washington ever do for us? He never even pretended to like us.
He never was more than barely civil to us. I'm not finding fault with
him; everybody knows that he never cared for anything but Mount Vernon.
For all that, we idolize him. To us he is Morality, Justice, Duty,
Truth; half a dozen Roman gods with capital letters. He is austere,
solitary, grand; he ought to be deified. I hardly feel easy, eating,
drinking, smoking here on his portico without his permission, taking
liberties with his house, criticising his bedrooms in his absence.
Suppose I heard his horse now trotting up on the other side, and he
suddenly appeared at this door and looked at us. I should abandon you to
his indignation. I should run away and hide myself on the steamer. The
mere thought unmans me.”

Ratcliffe seemed amused at Gore's half-serious notions. “You recall
to me,” said he, “my own feelings when I was a boy and was made by my
father to learn the Farewell Address by heart. In those days General
Washington was a sort of American Jehovah. But the West is a poor
school for Reverence. Since coming to Congress I have learned more about
General Washington, and have been surprised to find what a narrow
base his reputation rests on. A fair military officer, who made many
blunders, and who never had more men than would make a full army-corps
under his command, he got an enormous reputation in Europe because he
did not make himself king, as though he ever had a chance of doing it.
A respectable, painstaking President, he was treated by the Opposition
with an amount of deference that would have made government easy to a
baby, but it worried him to death. His official papers are fairly done,
and contain good average sense such as a hundred thousand men in the
United States would now write. I suspect that half of his attachment to
this spot rose from his consciousness of inferior powers and his dread
of responsibility. This government can show to-day a dozen men of equal
abilities, but we don't deify them. What I most wonder at in him is
not his military or political genius at all, for I doubt whether he
had much, but a curious Yankee shrewdness in money matters. He thought
himself a very rich man, yet he never spent a dollar foolishly. He was
almost the only Virginian I ever heard of, in public life, who did not
die insolvent.”

During this long speech, Carrington glanced across at Madeleine, and
caught her eye. Ratcliffe's criticism was not to her taste. Carrington
could see that she thought it unworthy of him, and he knew that it would
irritate her.

“I will lay a little trap for Mr. Ratcliffe,” thought he to himself;
“we will see whether he gets out of it.” So Carrington began, and all
listened closely, for, as a Virginian, he was supposed to know much
about the subject, and his family had been deep in the confidence of
Washington himself.

“The neighbours hereabout had for many years, and may have still, some
curious stories about General Washington's closeness in money matters.
They said he never bought anything by weight but he had it weighed over
again, nor by tale but he had it counted, and if the weight or number
were not exact, he sent it back. Once, during his absence, his steward
had a room plastered, and paid the plasterer's bill. On the General's
return, he measured the room, and found that the plasterer had charged
fifteen shillings too much. Meanwhile the man had died, and the General
made a claim of fifteen shillings on his estate, which was paid. Again,
one of his tenants brought him the rent. The exact change of fourpence
was required. The man tendered a dollar, and asked the General to credit
him with the balance against the next year's rent. The General refused
and made him ride nine miles to Alexandria and back for the fourpence.
On the other hand, he sent to a shoemaker in Alexandria to come and
measure him for shoes. The man returned word that he did not go to any
one's house to take measures, and the General mounted his horse and rode
the nine miles to him. One of his rules was to pay at taverns the same
sum for his servants' meals as for his own. An inn-keeper brought him a
bill of three-and-ninepence for his own breakfast, and three shillings
for his servant. He insisted upon adding the extra ninepence, as he did
not doubt that the servant had eaten as much as he. What do you say to
these anecdotes? Was this meanness or not?”

Ratcliffe was amused. “The stories are new to me,” he said. “It is just
as I thought. These are signs of a man who thinks much of trifles; one
who fusses over small matters. We don't do things in that way now that
we no longer have to get crops from granite, as they used to do in New
Hampshire when I was a boy.”

Carrington replied that it was unlucky for Virginians that they had not
done things in that way then: if they had, they would not have gone to
the dogs.

Gore shook his head seriously; “Did I not tell you so?” said he. “Was
not this man an abstract virtue? I give you my word I stand in awe
before him, and I feel ashamed to pry into these details of his life.
What is it to us how he thought proper to apply his principles to
nightcaps and feather dusters? We are not his body servants, and we
care nothing about his infirmities. It is enough for us to know that he
carried his rules of virtue down to a pin's point, and that we ought,
one and all, to be on our knees before his tomb.”

Dunbeg, pondering deeply, at length asked Carrington whether all this
did not make rather a clumsy politician of the father of his country.

“Mr. Ratcliffe knows more about politics than I. Ask him,” said
Carrington.

“Washington was no politician at all, as we understand the word,”
 replied Ratcliffe abruptly. “He stood outside of politics. The thing
couldn't be done to-day. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.”

“I don't understand!” said Mrs. Lee. “Why could you not do it now?”

“Because I should make a fool of myself;” replied Ratcliffe, pleased to
think that Mrs. Lee should put him on a level with Washington. She had
only meant to ask why the thing could not be done, and this little touch
of Ratcliffe's vanity was inimitable.

“Mr. Ratcliffe means that Washington was too respectable for our time,”
 interposed Carrington.

This was deliberately meant to irritate Ratcliffe, and it did so all
the more because Mrs. Lee turned to Carrington, and said, with some
bitterness:

“Was he then the only honest public man we ever had?”

“Oh no!” replied Carrington cheerfully; “there have been one or two
others.”

“If the rest of our Presidents had been like him,” said Gore, “we should
have had fewer ugly blots on our short history.”

Ratcliffe was exasperated at Carrington's habit of drawing discussion to
this point. He felt the remark as a personal insult, and he knew it to
be intended. “Public men,” he broke out, “cannot be dressing themselves
to-day in Washington's old clothes. If Washington were President now, he
would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and
theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long
poles. One must make one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our
purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office,
and this was as true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will
be.”

“Come,” said Lord Skye, who was beginning to fear an open quarrel; “the
conversation verges on treason, and I am accredited to this government.
Why not examine the grounds?”

A kind of natural sympathy led Lord Dunbeg to wander by the side of Miss
Dare through the quaint old garden. His mind being much occupied by the
effort of stowing away the impressions he had just received, he was more
than usually absent in his manner, and this want of attention irritated
the young lady. She made some comments on flowers; she invented some
new species with startling names; she asked whether these were known in
Ireland; but Lord Dunbeg was for the moment so vague in his answers that
she saw her case was perilous.

“Here is an old sun-dial. Do you have sun-dials in Ireland, Lord
Dunbeg?”

“Yes; oh, certainly! What! sun-dials? Oh, yes! I assure you there are a
great many sun-dials in Ireland, Miss Dare.”

“I am so glad. But I suppose they are only for ornament. Here it is just
the other way. Look at this one! they all behave like that. The wear and
tear of our sun is too much for them; they don't last. My uncle, who has
a place at Long Branch, had five sun-dials in ten years.”

“How very odd! But really now, Miss Dare, I don't see how a sun--dial
could wear out.”

“Don't you? How strange! Don't you see, they get soaked with sunshine so
that they can't hold shadow. It's like me, you know. I have such a
good time all the time that I can't be unhappy. Do you ever read the
Burlington Hawkeye, Lord Dunbeg?”

“I don't remember; I think not. Is it an American serial?” gasped
Dunbeg, trying hard to keep pace with Miss Dare in her reckless dashes
across country.

“No, not serial at all!” replied Virginia; “but I am afraid you would
find it very hard reading. I shouldn't try.”

“Do you read it much, Miss Dare?”

“Oh, always! I am not really as light as I seem. But then I have an
advantage over you because I know the language.”

By this time Dunbeg was awake again, and Miss Dare, satisfied with her
success, allowed herself to become more reasonable, until a slight shade
of sentiment began to flicker about their path.

The scattered party, however, soon had to unite again. The boat rang
its bell for return, they filed down the paths and settled themselves
in their old places. As they steamed away, Mrs. Lee watched the sunny
hill-side and the peaceful house above, until she could see them no
more, and the longer she looked, the less she was pleased with herself.
Was it true, as Victoria Dare said, that she could not live in so pure
an air? Did she really need the denser fumes of the city? Was she,
unknown to herself; gradually becoming tainted with the life about her?
or was Ratcliffe right in accepting the good and the bad together, and
in being of his time since he was in it? Why was it, she said bitterly
to herself; that everything Washington touched, he purified, even down
to the associations of his house? and why is it that everything we touch
seems soiled? Why do I feel unclean when I look at Mount Vernon? In
spite of Mr. Ratcliffe, is it not better to be a child and to cry for
the moon and stars?

The little Baker girl came up to her where she stood, and began playing
with her parasol.

“Who is your little friend?” asked Ratcliffe.

Mrs. Lee rather vaguely replied that she was the daughter of that pretty
woman in black; she believed her name was Baker.

“Baker, did you say?” repeated Ratcliffe.

“Baker--Mrs. Sam Baker; at least so Mr. Carrington told me; he said she
was a client of his.”

In fact Ratcliffe soon saw Carrington go up to her and remain by her
side during the rest of the trip. Ratcliffe watched them sharply and
grew more and more absorbed in his own thoughts as the boat drew nearer
and nearer the shore.

Carrington was in high spirits. He thought he had played his cards with
unusual success. Even Miss Dare deigned to acknowledge his charms that
day.

She declared herself to be the moral image of Martha Washington, and she
started a discussion whether Carrington or Lord Dunbeg would best suit
her in the rôle of the General.

“Mr. Carrington is exemplary,” she said, “but oh, what joy to be Martha
Washington and a Countess too!”



Chapter VII

WHEN he reached his rooms that afternoon, Senator Ratcliffe found
there, as he expected, a choice company of friends and admirers, who had
beguiled their leisure hours since noon by cursing him in every variety
of profane language that experience could suggest and impatience
stimulate. On his part, had he consulted his own feelings only, he would
then and there have turned them out, and locked the doors behind them.
So far as silent maledictions were concerned, no profanity of theirs
could hold its own against the intensity and deliberation with which,
as he found himself approaching his own door, he expressed between his
teeth his views in respect to their eternal interests. Nothing could be
less suited to his present humour than the society which awaited him in
his rooms. He groaned in spirit as he sat down at his writing-table and
looked about him. Dozens of office-seekers were besieging the house;
men whose patriotic services in the last election called loudly for
recognition from a grateful country.

They brought their applications to the Senator with an entreaty that he
would endorse and take charge of them. Several members and senators who
felt that Ratcliffe had no reason for existence except to fight their
battle for patronage, were lounging about his room, reading newspapers,
or beguiling their time with tobacco in various forms; at long
intervals making dull remarks, as though they were more weary than their
constituents of the atmosphere that surrounds the grandest government
the sun ever shone upon.

Several newspaper correspondents, eager to barter their news for
Ratcliffe's hints or suggestions, appeared from time to time on the
scene, and, dropping into a chair by Ratcliffe's desk, whispered with
him in mysterious tones.

Thus the Senator worked on, hour after hour, mechanically doing what was
required of him, signing papers without reading them, answering remarks
without hearing them, hardly looking up from his desk, and appearing
immersed in labour. This was his protection against curiosity and
garrulity.

The pretence of work was the curtain he drew between himself and the
world.

Behind this curtain his mental operations went on, undisturbed by what
was about him, while he heard all that was said, and said little or
nothing himself. His followers respected this privacy, and left him
alone. He was their prophet, and had a right to seclusion. He was their
chieftain, and while he sat in his monosyllabic solitude, his ragged
tail reclined in various attitudes about him, and occasionally one man
spoke, or another swore. Newspapers and tobacco were their resource in
periods of absolute silence.

A shade of depression rested on the faces and the voices of Clan
Ratcliffe that evening, as is not unusual with forces on the eve of
battle. Their remarks came at longer intervals, and were more pointless
and random than usual. There was a want of elasticity in their bearing
and tone, partly coming from sympathy with the evident depression of
their chief; partly from the portents of the time. The President was to
arrive within forty-eight hours, and as yet there was no sign that
he properly appreciated their services; there were signs only too
unmistakeable that he was painfully misled and deluded, that his
countenance was turned wholly in another direction, and that all their
sacrifices were counted as worthless. There was reason to believe that
he came with a deliberate purpose of making war upon Ratcliffe and
breaking him down; of refusing to bestow patronage on them, and of
bestowing it wherever it would injure them most deeply. At the thought
that their honestly earned harvest of foreign missions and consulates,
department-bureaus, custom-house and revenue offices, postmasterships,
Indian agencies, and army and navy contracts, might now be wrung from
their grasp by the selfish greed of a mere accidental intruder--a man
whom nobody wanted and every one ridiculed--their natures rebelled, and
they felt that such things must not be; that there could be no more hope
for democratic government if such things were possible. At this point
they invariably became excited, lost their equanimity, and swore. Then
they fell back on their faith in Ratcliffe: if any man could pull them
through, he could; after all, the President must first reckon with him,
and he was an uncommon tough customer to tackle.

Perhaps, however, even their faith in Ratcliffe might have been shaken,
could they at that moment have looked into his mind and understood what
was passing there. Ratcliffe was a man vastly their superior, and he
knew it. He lived in a world of his own and had instincts of refinement.
Whenever his affairs went unfavourably, these instincts revived, and for
the time swept all his nature with them. He was now filled with disgust
and cynical contempt for every form of politics. During long years
he had done his best for his party; he had sold himself to the devil,
coined his heart's blood, toiled with a dogged persistence that no
day-labourer ever conceived; and all for what? To be rejected as its
candidate; to be put under the harrow of a small Indiana farmer who
made no secret of the intention to “corral” him, and, as he elegantly
expressed it, to “take his hide and tallow.” Ratcliffe had no great fear
of losing his hide, but he felt aggrieved that he should be called
upon to defend it, and that this should be the result of twenty years'
devotion. Like most men in the same place, he did not stop to cast
up both columns of his account with the party, nor to ask himself the
question that lay at the heart of his grievance: How far had he served
his party and how far himself? He was in no humour for self-analysis:
this requires more repose of mind than he could then command. As for
the President, from whom he had not heard a whisper since the insolent
letter to Grimes, which he had taken care not to show, the Senator felt
only a strong impulse to teach him better sense and better manners. But
as for political life, the events of the last six months were calculated
to make any man doubt its value. He was quite out of sympathy with it.
He hated the sight of his tobacco-chewing, newspaper-reading satellites,
with their hats tipped at every angle except the right one, and their
feet everywhere except on the floor. Their conversation bored him and
their presence was a nuisance. He would not submit to this slavery
longer. He would have given his Senatorship for a civilized house like
Mrs. Lee's, with a woman like Mrs. Lee at its head, and twenty thousand
a year for life. He smiled his only smile that evening when he thought
how rapidly she would rout every man Jack of his political following out
of her parlours, and how meekly they would submit to banishment into a
back-office with an oil-cloth carpet and two cane chairs.

He felt that Mrs. Lee was more necessary to him than the Presidency
itself; he could not go on without her; he needed human companionship;
some Christian comfort for his old age; some avenue of communication
with that social world, which made his present surroundings look cold
and foul; some touch of that refinement of mind and morals beside which
his own seemed coarse. He felt unutterably lonely. He wished Mrs.
Lee had asked him home to dinner; but Mrs. Lee had gone to bed with a
headache. He should not see her again for a week. Then his mind turned
back upon their morning at Mount Vernon, and bethinking himself of Mrs.
Sam Baker, he took a sheet of note-paper, and wrote a line to Wilson
Keen, Esq., at Georgetown, requesting him to call, if possible, the
next morning towards one o'clock at the Senator's rooms on a matter
of business. Wilson Keen was chief of the Secret Service Bureau in the
Treasury Department, and, as the depositary of all secrets, was often
called upon for assistance which he was very good-natured in furnishing
to senators, especially if they were likely to be Secretaries of the
Treasury.

This note despatched, Mr. Ratcliffe fell back into his reflective mood,
which led him apparently into still lower depths of discontent until,
with a muttered oath, he swore he could “stand no more of this,” and,
suddenly rising, he informed his visitors that he was sorry to leave
them, but he felt rather poorly and was going to bed; and to bed he
went, while his guests departed, each as his business or desires might
point him, some to drink whiskey and some to repose.

On Sunday morning Mr. Ratcliffe, as usual, went to church. He always
attended morning service--at the Methodist Episcopal Church--not wholly
on the ground of religious conviction, but because a large number of his
constituents were church-going people and he would not willingly shock
their principles so long as he needed their votes. In church, he kept
his eyes closely fixed upon the clergyman, and at the end of the sermon
he could say with truth that he had not heard a word of it, although the
respectable minister was gratified by the attention his discourse had
received from the Senator from Illinois, an attention all the more
praiseworthy because of the engrossing public cares which must at
that moment have distracted the Senator's mind. In this last idea,
the minister was right. Mr. Ratcliffe's mind was greatly distracted by
public cares, and one of his strongest reasons for going to church at
all was that he might get an hour or two of undisturbed reflection.
During the entire service he was absorbed in carrying on a series
of imaginary conversations with the new President. He brought up in
succession every form of proposition which the President might make to
him; every trap which could be laid for him; every sort of treatment he
might expect, so that he could not be taken by surprise, and his frank,
simple nature could never be at a loss. One object, however, long
escaped him. Supposing, what was more than probable, that the
President's opposition to Ratcliffe's declared friends made it
impossible to force any of them into office; it would then be necessary
to try some new man, not obnoxious to the President, as a candidate for
the Cabinet. Who should this be? Ratcliffe pondered long and deeply,
searching out a man who combined the most powerful interests, with the
fewest enmities. This subject was still uppermost at the moment when
service ended. Ratcliffe pondered over it as he walked back to his
rooms. Not until he reached his own door did he come to a conclusion:

Carson would do; Carson of Pennsylvania; the President had probably
never heard of him.

Mr. Wilson Keen was waiting the Senator's return, a heavy man with a
square face, and good-natured, active blue eyes; a man of few words and
those well-considered. The interview was brief. After apologising for
breaking in upon Sunday with business, Mr. Ratcliffe excused himself on
the ground that so little time was left before the close of the session.
A bill now before one of his Committees, on which a report must soon
be made, involved matters to which it was believed that the late Samuel
Baker, formerly a well-known lobby-agent in Washington, held the only
clue. He being dead, Mr. Ratcliffe wished to know whether he had left
any papers behind him, and in whose hands these papers were, or whether
any partner or associate of his was acquainted with his affairs.

Mr. Keen made a note of the request, merely remarking that he had been
very well acquainted with Baker, and also a little with his wife, who
was supposed to know his affairs as well as he knew them himself; and
who was still in Washington. He thought he could bring the information
in a day or two. As he then rose to go, Mr. Ratcliffe added that entire
secrecy was necessary, as the interests involved in obstructing the
search were considerable, and it was not well to wake them up. Mr. Keen
assented and went his way.

All this was natural enough and entirely proper, at least so far as
appeared on the surface. Had Mr. Keen been so curious in other people's
affairs as to look for the particular legislative measure which lay at
the bottom of Mr.

Ratcliffe's inquiries, he might have searched among the papers of
Congress a very long time and found himself greatly puzzled at last. In
fact there was no measure of the kind. The whole story was a fiction.
Mr. Ratcliffe had scarcely thought of Baker since his death, until the
day before, when he had seen his widow on the Mount Vernon steamer and
had found her in relations with Carrington. Something in Carrington's
habitual attitude and manner towards himself had long struck him as
peculiar, and this connection with Mrs. Baker had suggested to the
Senator the idea that it might be well to have an eye on both. Mrs.
Baker was a silly woman, as he knew, and there were old transactions
between Ratcliffe and Baker of which she might be informed, but which
Ratcliffe had no wish to see brought within Mrs. Lee's ken. As for
the fiction invented to set Keen in motion, it was an innocent one.
It harmed nobody. Ratcliffe selected this particular method of inquiry
because it was the easiest, safest, and most effectual. If he were
always to wait until he could afford to tell the precise truth, business
would very soon be at a standstill, and his career at an end.

This little matter disposed of; the Senator from Illinois passed his
afternoon in calling upon some of his brother senators, and the first
of those whom he honoured with a visit was Mr. Krebs, of Pennsylvania.
There were many reasons which now made the co-operation of that
high-minded statesman essential to Mr. Ratcliffe. The strongest of them
was that the Pennsylvania delegation in Congress was well disciplined
and could be used with peculiar advantage for purposes of “pressure.”
 Ratcliffe's success in his contest with the new President depended
on the amount of “pressure” he could employ. To keep himself in the
background, and to fling over the head of the raw Chief Magistrate a web
of intertwined influences, any one of which alone would be useless, but
which taken together were not to be broken through; to revive the lost
art of the Roman retiarius, who from a safe distance threw his net over
his adversary, before attacking with the dagger; this was Ratcliffe's
intention and towards this he had been directing all his manipulation
for weeks past. How much bargaining and how many promises he found it
necessary to make, was known to himself alone. About this time Mrs. Lee
was a little surprised to find Mr. Gore speaking with entire confidence
of having Ratcliffe's support in his application for the Spanish
mission, for she had rather imagined that Gore was not a favourite with
Ratcliffe. She noticed too that Schneidekoupon had come back again and
spoke mysteriously of interviews with Ratcliffe; of attempts to unite
the interests of New York and Pennsylvania; and his countenance took on
a dark and dramatic expression as he proclaimed that no sacrifice of the
principle of protection should be tolerated. Schneidekoupon disappeared
as suddenly as he came, and from Sybil's innocent complaints of
his spirits and temper, Mrs. Lee jumped to the conclusion that Mr.
Ratcliffe, Mr. Clinton, and Mr.

Krebs had for the moment combined to sit heavily upon poor
Schneidekoupon, and to remove his disturbing influence from the scene,
at least until other men should get what they wanted. These were merely
the trifling incidents that fell within Mrs. Lee's observation. She felt
an atmosphere of bargain and intrigue, but she could only imagine how
far it extended. Even Carrington, when she spoke to him about it, only
laughed and shook his head:

“Those matters are private, my dear Mrs. Lee; you and I are not meant to
know such things.”

This Sunday afternoon Mr. Ratcliffe's object was to arrange the little
manoeuvre about Carson of Pennsylvania, which had disturbed him in
church.

His efforts were crowned with success. Krebs accepted Carson and
promised to bring him forward at ten minutes' notice, should the
emergency arise.

Ratcliffe was a great statesman. The smoothness of his manipulation was
marvellous. No other man in politics, indeed no other man who had ever
been in politics in this country, could--his admirers said--have brought
together so many hostile interests and made so fantastic a combination.
Some men went so far as to maintain that he would “rope in the President
himself before the old man had time to swap knives with him.” The beauty
of his work consisted in the skill with which he evaded questions of
principle. As he wisely said, the issue now involved was not one of
principle but of power.

The fate of that noble party to which they all belonged, and which had
a record that could never be forgotten, depended on their letting
principle alone. Their principle must be the want of principles. There
were indeed individuals who said in reply that Ratcliffe had made
promises which never could be carried out, and there were almost
superhuman elements of discord in the combination, but as Ratcliffe
shrewdly rejoined, he only wanted it to last a week, and he guessed his
promises would hold it up for that time.

Such was the situation when on Monday afternoon the President-elect
arrived in Washington, and the comedy began. The new President was,
almost as much as Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Pierce, an unknown
quantity in political mathematics. In the national convention of the
party, nine months before, after some dozens of fruitless ballots in
which Ratcliffe wanted but three votes of a majority, his opponents had
done what he was now doing; they had laid aside their principles and
set up for their candidate a plain Indiana farmer, whose political
experience was limited to stump-speaking in his native State, and to one
term as Governor. They had pitched upon him, not because they thought
him competent, but because they hoped by doing so to detach Indiana from
Ratcliffe's following, and they were so successful that within fifteen
minutes Ratcliffe's friends were routed, and the Presidency had fallen
upon this new political Buddha.

He had begun his career as a stone-cutter in a quarry, and was, not
unreasonably, proud of the fact. During the campaign this incident had,
of course, filled a large space in the public mind, or, more exactly,
in the public eye. “The Stone-cutter of the Wabash,” he was sometimes
called; at others “the Hoosier Quarryman,” but his favourite appellation
was “Old Granite,” although this last endearing name, owing to an
unfortunate similarity of sound, was seized upon by his opponents, and
distorted into “Old Granny.” He had been painted on many thousand yards
of cotton sheeting, either with a terrific sledge-hammer, smashing the
skulls (which figured as paving-stones) of his political opponents, or
splitting by gigantic blows a huge rock typical of the opposing party.
His opponents in their turn had paraded illuminations representing the
Quarryman in the garb of a State's-prison convict breaking the heads
of Ratcliffe and other well-known political leaders with a very feeble
hammer, or as “Old Granny” in pauper's rags, hopelessly repairing with
the same heads the impossible roads which typified the ill-conditioned
and miry ways of his party. But these violations of decency and good
sense were universally reproved by the virtuous; and it was remarked
with satisfaction that the purest and most highly cultivated newspaper
editors on his side, without excepting those of Boston itself; agreed
with one voice that the Stone-cutter was a noble type of man, perhaps
the very noblest that had appeared to adorn this country since the
incomparable Washington.

That he was honest, all admitted; that is to say, all who voted for him.

This is a general characteristic of all new presidents. He himself took
great pride in his home-spun honesty, which is a quality peculiar to
nature's noblemen. Owing nothing, as he conceived, to politicians,
but sympathising through every fibre of his unselfish nature with the
impulses and aspirations of the people, he affirmed it to be his first
duty to protect the people from those vultures, as he called them,
those wolves in sheep's clothing, those harpies, those hyenas, the
politicians; epithets which, as generally interpreted, meant Ratcliffe
and Ratcliffe's friends.

His cardinal principle in politics was hostility to Ratcliffe, yet he
was not vindictive. He came to Washington determined to be the Father of
his country; to gain a proud immortality and a re-election.

Upon this gentleman Ratcliffe had let loose all the forms of “pressure”
 which could be set in motion either in or out of Washington. From the
moment when he had left his humble cottage in Southern Indiana, he had
been captured by Ratcliffe's friends, and smothered in demonstrations
of affection. They had never allowed him to suggest the possibility
of ill-feeling. They had assumed as a matter of course that the most
cordial attachment existed between him and his party. On his arrival
in Washington they systematically cut him off from contact with any
influences but their own. This was not a very difficult thing to do, for
great as he was, he liked to be told of his greatness, and they made him
feel himself a colossus. Even the few personal friends in his company
were manipulated with the utmost care, and their weaknesses put to use
before they had been in Washington a single day.

Not that Ratcliffe had anything to do with all this underhand
and grovelling intrigue. Mr. Ratcliffe was a man of dignity and
self-respect, who left details to his subordinates. He waited calmly
until the President, recovered from the fatigues of his journey, should
begin to feel the effect of a Washington atmosphere. Then on Wednesday
morning, Mr. Ratcliffe left his rooms an hour earlier than usual on his
way to the Senate, and called at the President's Hotel: he was ushered
into a large apartment in which the new Chief Magistrate was holding
court, although at sight of Ratcliffe, the other visitors edged away
or took their hats and left the room. The President proved to be a
hard-featured man of sixty, with a hooked nose and thin, straight,
iron-gray hair. His voice was rougher than his features and he received
Ratcliffe awkwardly. He had suffered since his departure from Indiana.
Out there it had seemed a mere flea-bite, as he expressed it, to brush
Ratcliffe aside, but in Washington the thing was somehow different.

Even his own Indiana friends looked grave when he talked of it, and
shook their heads. They advised him to be cautious and gain time; to
lead Ratcliffe on, and if possible to throw on him the responsibility of
a quarrel. He was, therefore, like a brown bear undergoing the process
of taming; very ill-tempered, very rough, and at the same time very much
bewildered and a little frightened. Ratcliffe sat ten minutes with him,
and obtained information in regard to pains which the President had
suffered during the previous night, in consequence, as he believed, of
an over-indulgence in fresh lobster, a luxury in which he had found a
diversion from the cares of state. So soon as this matter was explained
and condoled upon, Ratcliffe rose and took leave.

Every device known to politicians was now in full play against the
Hoosier Quarryman. State delegations with contradictory requests were
poured in upon him, among which that of Massachusetts presented as
its only prayer the appointment of Mr. Gore to the Spanish mission.
Difficulties were invented to embarrass and worry him. False leads were
suggested, and false information carefully mingled with true. A wild
dance was kept up under his eyes from daylight to midnight, until his
brain reeled with the effort to follow it. Means were also found to
convert one of his personal, confidential friends, who had come with him
from Indiana and who had more brains or less principle than the others;
from him every word of the President was brought directly to Ratcliffe's
ear.

Early on Friday morning, Mr. Thomas Lord, a rival of the late Samuel
Baker, and heir to his triumphs, appeared in Ratcliffe's rooms while the
Senator was consuming his lonely egg and chop. Mr. Lord had been chosen
to take general charge of the presidential party and to direct all
matters connected with Ratcliffe's interests. Some people might consider
this the work of a spy; he looked on it as a public duty. He reported
that “Old Granny” had at last shown signs of weakness. Late the previous
evening when, according to his custom, he was smoking his pipe in
company with his kitchen-cabinet of followers, he had again fallen upon
the subject of Ratcliffe, and with a volley of oaths had sworn that he
would show him his place yet, and that he meant to offer him a seat in
the Cabinet that would make him “sicker than a stuck hog.” From this
remark and some explanatory hints that followed, it seemed that the
Quarryman had abandoned his scheme of putting Ratcliffe to immediate
political death, and had now undertaken to invite him into a Cabinet
which was to be specially constructed to thwart and humiliate him.

The President, it appeared, warmly applauded the remark of one
counsellor, that Ratcliffe was safer in the Cabinet than in the Senate,
and that it would be easy to kick him out when the time came.

Ratcliffe smiled grimly as Mr. Lord, with much clever mimicry, described
the President's peculiarities of language and manner, but he said
nothing and waited for the event. The same evening came a note from the
President's private secretary requesting his attendance, if possible,
to-morrow, Saturday morning, at ten o'clock. The note was curt and cool.
Ratcliffe merely sent back word that he would come, and felt a little
regret that the President should not know enough etiquette to understand
that this verbal answer was intended as a hint to improve his manners.
He did come accordingly, and found the President looking blacker
than before. This time there was no avoiding of tender subjects. The
President meant to show Ratcliffe by the decision of his course, that
he was master of the situation. He broke at once into the middle of
the matter: “I sent for you,” said he, “to consult with you about my
Cabinet. Here is a list of the gentlemen I intend to invite into it. You
will see that I have got you down for the Treasury. Will you look at the
list and say what you think of it?”

Ratcliffe took the paper, but laid it at once on the table without
looking at it. “I can have no objection,” said he, “to any Cabinet you
may appoint, provided I am not included in it. My wish is to remain
where I am. There I can serve your administration better than in the
Cabinet.”

“Then you refuse?” growled the President.

“By no means. I only decline to offer any advice or even to hear the
names of my proposed colleagues until it is decided that my services
are necessary. If they are, I shall accept without caring with whom I
serve.”

The President glared at him with an uneasy look. What was to be done
next?

He wanted time to think, but Ratcliffe was there and must be disposed
of. He involuntarily became more civil: “Mr. Ratcliffe, your refusal
would knock everything on the head. I thought that matter was all fixed.
What more can I do?”

But Ratcliffe had no mind to let the President out of his clutches so
easily, and a long conversation followed, during which he forced his
antagonist into the position of urging him to take the Treasury in order
to prevent some undefined but portentous mischief in the Senate. All
that could be agreed upon was that Ratcliffe should give a positive
answer within two days, and on that agreement he took his leave.

As he passed through the corridor, a number of gentlemen were waiting
for interviews with the President, and among them was the whole
Pennsylvania delegation, “ready for biz,” as Mr. Tom Lord remarked, with
a wink.

Ratcliffe drew Krebs aside and they exchanged a few words as he passed
out.

Ten minutes afterwards the delegation was admitted, and some of its
members were a little surprised to hear their spokesman, Senator Krebs,
press with extreme earnestness and in their names, the appointment of
Josiah B. Carson to a place in the Cabinet, when they had been given to
understand that they came to recommend Jared Caldwell as postmaster
of Philadelphia. But Pennsylvania is a great and virtuous State, whose
representatives have entire confidence in their chief. Not one of them
so much as winked.

The dance of democracy round the President now began again with wilder
energy. Ratcliffe launched his last bolts. His two-days' delay was a
mere cover for bringing new influences to bear. He needed no delay. He
wanted no time for reflection. The President had undertaken to put
him on the horns of a dilemma; either to force him into a hostile and
treacherous Cabinet, or to throw on him the blame of a refusal and
a quarrel. He meant to embrace one of the horns and to impale the
President on it, and he felt perfect confidence in his own success. He
meant to accept the Treasury and he was ready to back himself with a
heavy wager to get the government entirely into his own hands within six
weeks. His contempt for the Hoosier Stone-cutter was unbounded, and his
confidence in himself more absolute than ever.

Busy as he was, the Senator made his appearance the next evening at Mrs.

Lee's, and finding her alone with Sybil, who was occupied with her
own little devices, Ratcliffe told Madeleine the story of his week's
experience.

He did not dwell on his exploits. On the contrary he quite ignored those
elaborate arrangements which had taken from the President his power of
volition. His picture presented himself; solitary and unprotected, in
the character of that honest beast who was invited to dine with the lion
and saw that all the footmarks of his predecessors led into the lion's
cave, and none away from it. He described in humorous detail his
interviews with the Indiana lion, and the particulars of the surfeit of
lobster as given in the President's dialect; he even repeated to her the
story told him by Mr. Tom Lord, without omitting oaths or gestures; he
told her how matters stood at the moment, and how the President had laid
a trap for him which he could not escape; he must either enter a
Cabinet constructed on purpose to thwart him and with the certainty of
ignominious dismissal at the first opportunity, or he must refuse an
offer of friendship which would throw on him the blame of a quarrel, and
enable the President to charge all future difficulties to the account
of Ratcliffe's “insatiable ambition.” “And now, Mrs. Lee,” he continued,
with increasing seriousness of tone; “I want your advice; what shall I
do?”

Even this half revelation of the meanness which distorted politics; this
one-sided view of human nature in its naked deformity playing pranks
with the interests of forty million people, disgusted and depressed
Madeleine's mind. Ratclife spared her nothing except the exposure of
his own moral sores. He carefully called her attention to every leprous
taint upon his neighbours' persons, to every rag in their foul clothing,
to every slimy and fetid pool that lay beside their path. It was his way
of bringing his own qualities into relief. He meant that she should go
hand in hand with him through the brimstone lake, and the more repulsive
it seemed to her, the more overwhelming would his superiority become. He
meant to destroy those doubts of his character which Carrington was so
carefully fostering, to rouse her sympathy, to stimulate her feminine
sense of self-sacrifice.

When he asked this question she looked up at him with an expression of
indignant pride, as she spoke:

“I say again, Mr. Ratcliffe, what I said once before. Do whatever is
most for the public good.”

“And what is most for the public good?”

Madeleine half opened her mouth to reply, then hesitated, and stared
silently into the fire before her. What was indeed most for the public
good?

Where did the public good enter at all into this maze of personal
intrigue, this wilderness of stunted natures where no straight road
was to be found, but only the tortuous and aimless tracks of beasts and
things that crawl?

Where was she to look for a principle to guide, an ideal to set up and
to point at?

Ratcliffe resumed his appeal, and his manner was more serious than ever.

“I am hard pressed, Mrs. Lee. My enemies encompass me about. They mean
to ruin me. I honestly wish to do my duty. You once said that personal
considerations should have no weight. Very well! throw them away! And
now tell me what I should do.”

For the first time, Mrs. Lee began to feel his power. He was simple,
straightforward, earnest. His words moved her. How should she imagine
that he was playing upon her sensitive nature precisely as he played
upon the President's coarse one, and that this heavy western politician
had the instincts of a wild Indian in their sharpness and quickness of
perception; that he divined her character and read it as he read the
faces and tones of thousands from day to day? She was uneasy under his
eye. She began a sentence, hesitated in the middle, and broke down. She
lost her command of thought, and sat dumb-founded. He had to draw her
out of the confusion he had himself made.

“I see your meaning in your face. You say that I should accept the duty
and disregard the consequences.”

“I don't know,” said Madeleine, hesitatingly; “Yes, I think that would
be my feeling.”

“And when I fall a sacrifice to that man's envy and intrigue, what will
you think then, Mrs. Lee? Will you not join the rest of the world and
say that I overreached myself; and walked into this trap with my eyes
open, and for my own objects? Do you think I shall ever be thought
better of; for getting caught here? I don't parade high moral views like
our friend French. I won't cant about virtue. But I do claim that in
my public life I have tried to do right. Will you do me the justice to
think so?”

Madeleine still struggled to prevent herself from being drawn into
indefinite promises of sympathy with this man. She would keep him at
arm's length whatever her sympathies might be. She would not pledge
herself to espouse his cause. She turned upon him with an effort, and
said that her thoughts, now or at any time, were folly and nonsense, and
that the consciousness of right-doing was the only reward any public man
had a right to expect.

“And yet you are a hard critic, Mrs. Lee. If your thoughts are what
you say, your words are not. You judge with the judgment of abstract
principles, and you wield the bolts of divine justice. You look on and
condemn, but you refuse to acquit. When I come to you on the verge of
what is likely to be the fatal plunge of my life, and ask you only for
some clue to the moral principle that ought to guide me, you look on and
say that virtue is its own reward. And you do not even say where virtue
lies.”

“I confess my sins,” said Madeleine, meekly and despondently; “life is
more complicated than I thought.”

“I shall be guided by your advice,” said Ratcliffe; “I shall walk into
that den of wild beasts, since you think I ought. But I shall hold you
to your responsibility. You cannot refuse to see me through dangers you
have helped to bring me into.”

“No, no!” cried Madeleine, earnestly; “no responsibility. You ask more
than I can give.”

Ratcliffe looked at her a moment with a troubled and careworn face. His
eyes seemed deep sunk in their dark circles, and his voice was pathetic
in its intensity. “Duty is duty, for you as well as for me. I have a
right to the help of all pure minds. You have no right to refuse it. How
can you reject your own responsibility and hold me to mine?”

Almost as he spoke, he rose and took his departure, leaving her no time
to do more than murmur again her ineffectual protest. After he was gone,
Mrs.

Lee sat long, with her eyes fixed on the fire, reflecting upon what he
had said. Her mind was bewildered by the new suggestions which Ratcliffe
had thrown out. What woman of thirty, with aspirations for the infinite,
could resist an attack like this? What woman with a soul could see
before her the most powerful public man of her time, appealing--with
a face furrowed by anxieties, and a voice vibrating with only
half-suppressed affection--to her for counsel and sympathy, without
yielding some response? and what woman could have helped bowing her head
to that rebuke of her over-confident judgment, coming as it did from one
who in the same breath appealed to that judgment as final? Ratcliffe,
too, had a curious instinct for human weaknesses. No magnetic needle
was ever truer than his finger when he touched the vulnerable spot in
an opponent's mind. Mrs. Lee was not to be reached by an appeal to
religious sentiment, to ambition, or to affection.

Any such appeal would have fallen flat on her ears and destroyed its own
hopes. But she was a woman to the very last drop of her blood. She
could not be induced to love Ratcliffe, but she might be deluded into
sacrificing herself for him. She atoned for want of devotion to God, by
devotion to man.

She had a woman's natural tendency towards asceticism, self-extinction,
self-abnegation. All through life she had made painful efforts to
understand and follow out her duty. Ratcliffe knew her weak point when
he attacked her from this side. Like all great orators and advocates, he
was an actor; the more effective because of a certain dignified air that
forbade familiarity.

He had appealed to her sympathy, her sense of right and of duty, to her
courage, her loyalty, her whole higher nature; and while he made this
appeal he felt more than half convinced that he was all he pretended to
be, and that he really had a right to her devotion. What wonder that she
in her turn was more than half inclined to admit that right. She knew
him now better than Carrington or Jacobi knew him. Surely a man who
spoke as he spoke, had noble instincts and lofty aims? Was not his
career a thousand times more important than hers? If he, in his
isolation and his cares, needed her assistance, had she an excuse for
refusing it? What was there in her aimless and useless life which made
it so precious that she could not afford to fling it into the gutter, if
need be, on the bare chance of enriching some fuller existence?



Chapter VIII

OF all titles ever assumed by prince or potentate, the proudest is that
of the Roman pontiffs: “Servus servorum Dei”--“Servant of the servants
of God.”

In former days it was not admitted that the devil's servants could by
right have any share in government. They were to be shut out, punished,
exiled, maimed, and burned. The devil has no servants now; only the
people have servants. There may be some mistake about a doctrine which
makes the wicked, when a majority, the mouthpiece of God against the
virtuous, but the hopes of mankind are staked on it; and if the weak
in faith sometimes quail when they see humanity floating in a shoreless
ocean, on this plank, which experience and religion long since condemned
as rotten, mistake or not, men have thus far floated better by its aid,
than the popes ever did with their prettier principle; so that it will
be a long time yet before society repents.

Whether the new President and his chief rival, Mr. Silas P. Ratcliffe,
were or were not servants of the servants of God, is not material
here. Servants they were to some one. No doubt many of those who call
themselves servants of the people are no better than wolves in sheep's
clothing, or asses in lions' skins. One may see scores of them any day
in the Capitol when Congress is in session, making noisy demonstrations,
or more usefully doing nothing. A wiser generation will employ them in
manual labour; as it is, they serve only themselves. But there are
two officers, at least, whose service is real--the President and his
Secretary of the Treasury. The Hoosier Quarryman had not been a week
in Washington before he was heartily home-sick for Indiana. No
maid-of-all-work in a cheap boarding-house was ever more harassed.
Everyone conspired against him. His enemies gave him no peace. All
Washington was laughing at his blunders, and ribald sheets, published
on a Sunday, took delight in printing the new Chief Magistrate's sayings
and doings, chronicled with outrageous humour, and placed by malicious
hands where the President could not but see them. He was sensitive to
ridicule, and it mortified him to the heart to find that remarks and
acts, which to him seemed sensible enough, should be capable of such
perversion. Then he was overwhelmed with public business. It came upon
him in a deluge, and he now, in his despair, no longer tried to control
it. He let it pass over him like a wave. His mind was muddied by the
innumerable visitors to whom he had to listen. But his greatest anxiety
was the Inaugural Address which, distracted as he was, he could not
finish, although in another week it must be delivered. He was nervous
about his Cabinet; it seemed to him that he could do nothing until he
had disposed of Ratcliffe.

Already, thanks to the President's friends, Ratcliffe had become
indispensable; still an enemy, of course, but one whose hands must be
tied; a sort of Sampson, to be kept in bonds until the time came for
putting him out of the way, but in the meanwhile, to be utilized. This
point being settled, the President had in imagination begun to lean upon
him; for the last few days he had postponed everything till next week,
“when I get my Cabinet arranged;” which meant, when he got Ratcliffe's
assistance; and he fell into a panic whenever he thought of the chance
that Ratcliffe might refuse.

He was pacing his room impatiently on Monday morning, an hour before
the time fixed for Ratcliffe's visit. His feelings still fluctuated
violently, and if he recognized the necessity of using Ratcliffe, he
was not the less determined to tie Ratcliffe's hands. He must be made
to come into a Cabinet where every other voice would be against him. He
must be prevented from having any patronage to dispose of. He must be
induced to accept these conditions at the start. How present this to him
in such a way as not to repel him at once? All this was needless, if
the President had only known it, but he thought himself a profound
statesman, and that his hand was guiding the destinies of America to his
own re-election. When at length, on the stroke of ten o'clock, Ratcliffe
entered the room, the President turned to him with nervous eagerness,
and almost before offering his hand, said that he hoped Mr. Ratcliffe
had come prepared to begin work at once. The Senator replied that,
if such was the President's decided wish, he would offer no further
opposition. Then the President drew himself up in the attitude of an
American Cato, and delivered a prepared address, in which he said that
he had chosen the members of his Cabinet with a careful regard to the
public interests; that Mr. Ratcliffe was essential to the combination;
that he expected no disagreement on principles, for there was but one
principle which he should consider fundamental, namely, that there
should be no removals from office except for cause; and that under these
circumstances he counted upon Mr. Ratcliffe's assistance as a matter of
patriotic duty.

To all this Ratcliffe assented without a word of objection, and the
President, more convinced than ever of his own masterly statesmanship,
breathed more freely than for a week past. Within ten minutes they
were actively at work together, clearing away the mass of accumulated
business.

The relief of the Quarryman surprised himself. Ratcliffe lifted the
weight of affairs from his shoulders with hardly an effort. He knew
everybody and everything. He took most of the President's visitors at
once into his own hands and dismissed them with great rapidity. He knew
what they wanted; he knew what recommendations were strong and what were
weak; who was to be treated with deference and who was to be sent
away abruptly; where a blunt refusal was safe, and where a pledge was
allowable. The President even trusted him with the unfinished manuscript
of the Inaugural Address, which Ratcliffe returned to him the next
day with such notes and suggestions as left nothing to be done beyond
copying them out in a fair hand. With all this, he proved himself a very
agreeable companion. He talked well and enlivened the work; he was not a
hard taskmaster, and when he saw that the President was tired, he boldly
asserted that there was no more business that could not as well wait
a day, and so took the weary Stone-cutter out to drive for a couple of
hours, and let him go peacefully to sleep in the carriage. They dined
together and Ratcliffe took care to send for Tom Lord to amuse them, for
Tom was a wit and a humourist, and kept the President in a laugh. Mr.
Lord ordered the dinner and chose the wines. He could be coarse enough
to suit even the President's palate, and Ratcliffe was not behindhand.
When the new Secretary went away at ten o'clock that night, his chief;
who was in high good humour with his dinner, his champagne, and his
conversation, swore with some unnecessary granite oaths, that Ratcliffe
was “a clever fellow anyhow,” and he was glad “that job was fixed.”

The truth was that Ratcliffe had now precisely ten days before the new
Cabinet could be set in motion, and in these ten days he must establish
his authority over the President so firmly that nothing could shake it.
He was diligent in good works. Very soon the court began to feel his
hand. If a business letter or a written memorial came in, the President
found it easy to endorse: “Referred to the Secretary of the Treasury.”
 If a visitor wanted anything for himself or another, the invariable
reply came to be: “Just mention it to Mr. Ratcliffe;” or, “I guess
Ratcliffe will see to that.”

Before long he even made jokes in a Catonian manner; jokes that were not
peculiarly witty, but somewhat gruff and boorish, yet significant of a
resigned and self-contented mind. One morning he ordered Ratcliffe to
take an iron-clad ship of war and attack the Sioux in Montana, seeing
that he was in charge of the army and navy and Indians at once, and
Jack of all trades; and again he told a naval officer who wanted a
court-martial that he had better get Ratcliffe to sit on him for he was
a whole court-martial by himself. That Ratcliffe held his chief in no
less contempt than before, was probable but not certain, for he kept
silence on the subject before the world, and looked solemn whenever the
President was mentioned.

Before three days were over, the President, with a little more than
his usual abruptness, suddenly asked him what he knew about this

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