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Senator North

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton · English · Gutenberg #6091 · 578,222 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Senator North

Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6091]
                Most recently updated: August 29, 2012

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SENATOR NORTH ***




Produced by Cedric Vonck, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










SENATOR NORTH

BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON




_"When, Mr. President, a man, however eminent in other pursuits and
whatever claims he may have to public confidence, becomes a member of
this body, he has much to learn and much to endure. Little does he know
of what he will have to encounter. He may be well read in public
affairs, but he is unaware of the difficulties which must attend and
embarrass every effort to render what he may know available and useful.
He may be upright in purpose and strong in the belief of his own
integrity, but he cannot even dream of the ordeal to which he cannot
fail to be exposed; of how much courage he must possess to resist the
temptations which must daily beset him; of that sensitive shrinking
from undeserved censure which he must learn to control; of the ever
recurring contest between a natural desire for public approbation and a
sense of public duty; of the load of injustice he must be content to
bear even from those who should be his friends; the imputations on his
motives; the sneers and sarcasms of ignorance and malice; all the
manifold injuries which partisan or private malignity, disappointed of
its object, may shower upon his unprotected head. All this, if he would
retain his integrity, he must learn to ear unmoved and walk steadily
onward in the path of public duty, sustained only by the reflection
that time may do him justice; or if not, that his individual hopes and
aspirations and even his name among men should be of little account to
him when weighed in the balance of a people of whose destiny he is a
constituted guardian and defender."_
        --WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN

_In memorial address before the Senate, 1866._ _Miss Betty Madison
embarks on the Political Sea. Her Discoveries, Surprises, and Triumphs._





SENATOR NORTH




I



"If we receive this Lady Mary Montgomery, we shall also have to receive
her dreadful husband."

"He is said to be quite charming."

"He is a Representative!"

"Of course they are all wild animals to you, but one or two have been
pointed out to me that looked quite like ordinary gentlemen--really."

"Possibly. But no person in official life has ever entered my house. I
do not feel inclined to break the rule merely because the wife of one
of the most objectionable class is an Englishwoman with a title. I
think it very inconsiderate of Lady Barnstaple to have given her a
letter to us."

"Lee, never having lived in Washington, doubtless fancies, like the
rest of the benighted world, that its officials are its aristocracy.
The Senate of the United States is regarded abroad as a sort of House
of Peers. One has to come and live in Washington to hear of the 'Old
Washingtonians,' the 'cave-dwellers,' as Sally calls us; I expected to
see a coat of blue mould on each of them when I returned."

"Really, Betty, I do not understand you this morning." Mrs. Madison
moved uneasily and took out her handkerchief. When her daughter's rich
Southern voice hardened itself to sarcasm, and her brilliant hazel eyes
expressed the brain in a state of cold analysis, Mrs. Madison braced
herself for a contest in which she inevitably must surrender with what
slow dignity she could command. Betty had called her Molly since she
was fourteen months old, and, sweet and gracious in small matters,
invariably pursued her own way when sufficiently roused by the strength
of a desire. Mrs. Madison, however, kept up the fiction of an authority
which she thought was due to herself and her ancestors. She continued
impatiently,--

"You have been standing before that fireplace for ten minutes with your
shoulders thrown back as if you were going to make a speech. It is not
a nice attitude for a girl at all, and I wish you would sit down. I
hope you don't think that because Sally Carter crosses her knees and
cultivates a brutal frankness of expression you must do the same now
that you have dropped all your friends of your own age and become
intimate with her. I suppose she is old enough to do as she chooses,
and she always was eccentric."

"She is only eight years older than I. You forget that I shall be
twenty-seven in three months."

"Well, that is no reason why you should stand before the fireplace like
a man. Do sit down."

"I'd rather stand here till I've said what is necessary--if you don't
mind. I am sorry to be obliged to say it, and I can assure you that I
have not made up my mind in a moment."

"What is it, for heaven's sake?"

Mrs. Madison drew a short breath and readjusted her cushions. In spite
of her wealth and exalted position she had known much trouble and
grief. Her first six children had died in their early youth. Her
husband, brilliant and charming, had possessed a set of affections too
restless and ardent to confine themselves within the domestic limits.
His wife had buried him with sorrow, but with a deep sigh of relief
that for the future she could mourn him without torment. He had
belonged to a collateral branch of a family of which her father had
been the heir; consequently the old Madison house in Washington was
hers, as well as a large fortune. Harold Madison had been free to spend
his own inheritance as he listed, and he had left but a fragment. Mrs.
Madison's nerves, never strong, had long since given way to trouble and
ill-health, and when her active strong-willed daughter entered her
twentieth year, she gladly permitted her to become the mistress of the
household and to think for both. Betty had been educated by private
tutors, then taken abroad for two years, to France, Germany, and Italy,
in order, as she subsequently observed, to make the foreign attache.
Feel more at ease when he proposed. Her winters thereafter until the
last two had been spent in Washington, where she had been a belle and
ranked as a beauty. In the fashionable set it was believed that every
attache, in the city had proposed to her, as well as a large proportion
of the old beaux and of the youths who pursue the business of Society.
Her summers she spent at her place in the Adirondacks, at Northern
watering-places, or in Europe; and the last two years had been passed,
with brief intervals of Paris and Vienna, in England, where she had
been presented with distinction and seen much of country life. She had
returned with her mother to Washington but a month ago, and since then
had spent most of her time in her room or on horseback, breaking all
her engagements after the first ten days. Mrs. Madison had awaited the
explanation with deep uneasiness. Did her daughter, despite the health
manifest in her splendid young figure, feel the first chill of some
mortal disease? She had not been her gay self for months, and although
her complexion was of that magnolia tint which never harbours colour,
it seemed to the anxious maternal eye, looking back to six young
graves, a shade whiter than it should. Or had she fallen in love with
an Englishman, and hesitated to speak, knowing her mother's love for
Washington and bare tolerance of the British Isles? She looked askance
at Betty, who stood tapping the front of her habit with her crop and
evidently waiting for her mother to express some interest. Mrs. Madison
closed her eyes. Betty therefore continued,--

"I see you are afraid I am going to marry an Oriental minister or
something. I hear that one is looking for an American with a million.
Well, I am going to do something you will think even worse. I am going
in for politics."

"You are going to do what?" Mrs. Madison's voice was nearly inaudible
between relief and horrified surprise, but her eyes flew open. "Do you
mean that you are going to vote?--or run for Congress?--but women don't
sit in Congress, do they?"

"Of course not. Do you know I think it quite shocking that we have
lived here in the very brain of the United States all our lives and
know less of politics than if we were Indians in Alaska? I was ashamed
of myself, I can assure you, when Lord Barnstaple asked me so many
questions the first time I visited Maundrell Abbey. He took for
granted, as I lived in Washington, I must be thoroughly well up in
politics, and I was obliged to tell him that although I had
occasionally been in the room with one or two Senators and Cabinet
Ministers, who happened to be in Society first and politics afterward,
I didn't know the others by name, had never put my foot in the White
House or the Capitol, and that no one I knew ever thought of talking
politics. He asked me what I had done with myself during all the
winters I had spent in Washington, and I told him that I had had the
usual girls'-good-time,--teas, theatre, Germans, dinners, luncheons,
calls, calls, calls! I was glad to add that I belonged to several
charities and had read a great deal; but that did not seem to interest
him. Well, I met a good many men like Lord Barnstaple, men who were in
public life. Some of them were dull enough, judged by the feminine
standard, but even they occasionally said something to remember, and
others were delightful. This is the whole point--I can't and won't go
back to what I left here two years ago. My day for platitudes and
pouring tea for men, who are contemptible enough to make Society their
profession, is over. I am going to know the real men of my country. It
is incredible that there are not men in that Senate as well worth
talking to as any I met in England. The other day I picked up a bound
copy of the Congressional Record in a book-shop. It was frantically
interesting."

"It must have been! But, my dear--of course I understand, darling, your
desire for a new intellectual occupation; you always were so
clever--but you can't, you really can't know these men. They are--they
are--politicians. We never have known politicians. They are dreadful
people, who have come from low origins and would probably call me
'marm.'"

"You are all wrong, Molly. I bought a copy of the Congressional
Directory a day or two ago, and have read the biography of every
Senator. Nine-tenths of them are educated men; if only a few attended
the big Universities, the rest went to the colleges of their State.
That is enough for an American of brains. And most of them are lawyers;
others served in the war, and several have distinguished records. They
cannot be boors, whether they have blue blood in them or not. I'm sick
of blue blood, anyway. Vienna was the deadliest place I ever visited.
What makes London interesting is its red streak of plebeianism;--well,
I repeat, I think it really dreadful that we should not know even by
name the men who make our laws, who are making history, who may be
called upon at any moment to decide our fate among nations. I feel a
silly little fool."

"I suppose you mean that I am one too. But it always has been my boast,
Betty, that I never have had a politician in my house. Your father knew
some, but he never brought them here; he knew the fastidious manner in
which I had been brought up; and although I am afraid he kept late
hours with a good many of them at Chamberlin's and other dreadful
places, he always spared me. I suppose this is heredity working out in
you."

"Possibly. But you will admit, will you not, that I am old enough to
choose my own life?"

"You always have done every single thing you wanted, so I don't see why
you talk like that. But if you are going to bring a lot of men to this
house who will spit on my carpets and use toothpicks, I beg you will
not ask me to receive with you." "Of course you will receive with me,
Molly dear--when I know anybody worth receiving. Unfortunately I am not
the wife of the President and cannot send out a royal summons. I am
hoping that Lady Mary Montgomery will help me. But my first step shall
be to pay a daily visit to the Senate Gallery."

"What!" Mrs. Madison's weary voice flew to its upper register. "I _do_
know something about politics--I remember now--the only women who go to
the Capitol are lobbyists--dreadful creatures who--who--do all sorts of
things. You can't go there; you'll be taken for one."

"We none of us are taken very long for what we are not. I shall take
Leontine with me, and those interested enough to notice me will soon
learn what I go for."

Mrs. Madison burst into tears. "You are your father all over again!
I've seen it developing for at least three years. At first you were
just a hard student, and then the loveliest young girl, only caring to
have a good time, and coquetting more bewitchingly than any girl I ever
saw. I don't see why you had to change."

"Time develops all of us, one way or another. I suppose you would like
me to be a charming girl flirting bewitchingly when I am forty-five. I
am finished with the meaningless things of life. I want to live now,
and I intend to."

"It will be wildly exciting--the Senate Gallery every day, and knowing
a lot of lank raw-boned Yankees with political beards."  "I am not
expecting to fall in love with any of them. I merely discovered some
time since that I had a brain, and they happen to be the impulse that
possesses it. You always have prided yourself that I am intellectual,
and so I am in the flabby 'well-read' fashion. I feel as if my brain
had been a mausoleum for skeletons and mummies; it felt alive for the
first time when I began to read the newspapers in England. I want no
more memoirs and letters and biographies, nor even of the history that
is shut up in calf-skin. I want the life of to-day. I want to feel in
the midst of current history. All these men here in Washington must be
alive to their finger-tips. Sally Carter admires Senator North and
Senator Maxwell immensely."

"What does she say about politicians in general?" Mrs. Madison looked
almost distraught. "Of course the Norths and the Maxwells come of good
New England families--I never did look down on the North as much as
some of us did; after all, nearly three hundred years are very
respectable indeed--and if these two men had not been in politics I
should have been delighted to receive them. I met Senator North
once--at Bar Harbor, while you were with the Carters at Homburg--and
thought him charming; and I had some most interesting chats with his
wife, who is much the same sort of invalid that I am. But when I
establish a standard I am consistent enough to want to keep to it. I
asked you what Sally Carter says of the others."

"Oh, she admits that there may be others as _convenable_ as Senator
North and Senator Maxwell, and that there is no doubt about there being
many bright men in the Senate; but she 'does not care to know any more
people.' Being a good cave-dweller, she is true to her traditions."

"People will say you are _passee,_" exclaimed Mrs. Madison, hopefully.
"They will be sure to."

Her daughter laughed, showing teeth as brilliant as her eyes. Then she
snatched off her riding-hat and shook down her mane of warm brown hair.
Her black brows and lashes, like her eyes and mouth, were vivid, but
her hair and complexion were soft, without lustre, but very warm. She
looked like a flower set on so strongly sapped a stem that her fullness
would outlast many women's decline. She had inherited the beauty of her
father's branch of the family. Mrs. Madison was very small and thin;
but she carried herself erectly and her delicately cut face was little
wrinkled. Her eyes were blue, and her hair, which was always carefully
rolled, was as white as sea foam. Betty would not permit her to wear
black, but dressed her in delicate colours, and she looked somewhat
like an animated miniature. She dabbed impatiently at her tears.

"Everybody will cut you--if you go into that dreadful political set."

"I am on the verge of cutting everybody myself, so it doesn't matter.
Positively--I shall not accept an invitation of the old sort this
winter. The sooner they drop me the better."

Mrs. Madison wept bitterly. "You will become a notorious woman," she
sobbed. "People will talk terribly about you. They will say--all sorts
of things I have heard come back to me--these politicians make love to
every pretty woman they meet. They are so tired of their old frumps
from Oshkosh and Kalamazoo." "They do not all come from Oshkosh and
Kalamazoo. There are six New England States whose three centuries you
have just admitted lift them into the mists of antiquity. There are
fourteen Southern States, and I need make no defence--"

"Their gentlemen don't go into politics any more."

"You have admitted that Senator North and Senator Maxwell are
gentlemen. There is no reason why there should not be many more."

"Count de Bellairs told me that there was a spittoon at every desk in
the Senate and that he counted eight toothpicks in one hour."

"Well, I'll reform them. That will be my holy mission. As for spittoons
and toothpicks, they are conspicuous in every hotel in the United
States. They should be on our coat-of-arms, and the Great American
Novel will be called 'The Great American Toothpick.' Statesmen have cut
their teeth on it, and it has been their solace in the great crises of
the nation's history. As for spittoons, they were invented for our own
Southern aristocrats who loved tobacco then as now. They decorate our
Capitol as a mere matter of form. I don't pretend to hope that ninety
representative Americans are Beau Brummels, but there must be a
respectable minority of gentlemen--whether self-made or not I don't
care. I am going to make a deliberate attempt to know that minority,
and shall call on Lady Mary Montgomery this afternoon as the first
step. So you are resigned, are you not, Molly dear?"

"No, I am not! But what can I do? I have spoiled you, and you would be
just the same if I hadn't. You are more like the men of the family than
the women--they always would have their own way. Are they all married?"
she added anxiously.

"Do you mean the ninety Senators and the three hundred and fifty-six
Representatives? I am sure I do not know. Don't let that worry you. It
is my mind that is on the _qui vive_, not my heart."

"You'll hear some old fool make a Websterian speech full of periods and
rhetoric, and you'll straight-way imagine yourself in love with him.
Your head will be your worst enemy when you do fall in love."

"Webster is the greatest master of style this country has produced. I
should hate a man who used either 'periods' or rhetoric. I am the
concentrated essence of modernism and have no use for 'oratory' or
'eloquence.' Some of the little speeches in the Record are masterpieces
of brevity and pure English, particularly Senator North's."

"You _are_ modern. If we had a Clay, I could understand you--I am too
exhausted to discuss the matter further; you _must_ drop it for the
present. What will Jack Emory say?"

"I have never given him the least right to say anything."

"I almost wish you were safely married to him. He has not made a great
success of his life, but he is your equal and his manners are perfect.
I shall live in constant fear now of your marrying a horror with a
twang and a toothpick."

"I promise you I won't do that--and that I never will marry Jack Emory."




II



Betty Madison had exercised a great deal of self-control in resisting
the natural impulse to cultivate a fad and grapple with a problem. Only
her keen sense of humour saved her. On the Sunday following her return,
while sauntering home after a long restless tramp about the city, she
passed a church which many coloured people were entering. Her newly
awakened curiosity in all things pertaining to the political life of
her country prompted her to follow them and sit through the service.
The clergyman was light in colour, and prayed and preached in simpler
and better English than she had heard in more pretentious pulpits, but
there was nothing noteworthy, in his remarks beyond a supplication to
the Almighty to deliver the negro from the oppression of the "Southern
tyrant," followed by an admonition to the negro to improve himself in
mind and character if he would hope to compete with the Whites; bitter
words and violence but weakened his cause.

This was sound commonsense, but the reverse of the sensational
entertainment Betty had half expected, and her eyes wandered from the
preacher to his congregation. There were all shades of Afro-American
colour and all degrees of prosperity represented. Coal-black women were
there, attired in deep and expensive mourning. "Yellow girls" wore
smart little tailor costumes. Three young girls, evidently of the lower
middle class of coloured society, for they were cheaply dressed, had
all the little airs and graces and mannerisms of the typical American
girl. In one corner a sleek mulatto with a Semitic profile sat in the
recognized attitude of the banker in church; filling his corner
comfortably and setting a worthy example to the less favoured of Mammon.

But Betty's attention suddenly was arrested and held by two men who sat
on the opposite side of the aisle, although not together, and
apparently were unrelated. There were no others quite like them in the
church, but the conviction slowly forced itself into her mind, magnetic
for new impressions, that there were many elsewhere. They were men who
were descending the fifties, tall, with straight gray hair. One was
very slender, and all but distinguished of carriage; the other was
heavier, and would have been imposing but for the listless droop of his
shoulders. The features of both were finely cut, and their complexions
far removed from the reproach of "yellow." They looked like sun-burned
gentlemen.

For nearly ten minutes Betty stared, fascinated, while her mind
grappled with the deep significance of all those two sad and patient
men expressed. They inherited the shell and the intellect, the
aspirations and the possibilities of the gay young planters whose
tragic folly had called into being a race of outcasts with all their
own capacity for shame and suffering.

Betty went home and for twenty-four hours fought with the desire to
champion the cause of the negro and make him her life-work. But not
only did she abominate women with missions; she looked at the subject
upon each of its many sides and asked a number of indirect questions of
her cousin, Jack Emory. Sincere reflection brought with it the
conclusion that her energies in behalf of the negro would be
superfluous. The careless planters were dead; she could not harangue
their dust. The Southerners of the present generation despised and
feared the coloured race in its enfranchised state too actively to have
more to do with it than they could help; if it was a legal offence for
Whites and Blacks to marry, there was an equally stringent social law
which protected the coloured girl from the lust of the white man.
Therefore, as she could not undo the harm already done, and as a
crusade in behalf of the next generation would be meaningless, not to
say indelicate, she dismissed the "problem" from her mind. But the
image of those two sad and stately reflections of the old school sank
indelibly into her memory, and rose to their part in one of the most
momentous decisions of her life.




III



The Montgomerys had come to Washington for the first time at the
beginning of the previous winter, while the Madisons were in England.
Lady Mary had left her note of introduction the day before Betty's
declaration of independence.

Betty was anxious to meet the young Englishwoman, not only because she
possessed the charmed key to political society, but her history as
related by certain gossips of authority commanded interest.

Randolph Montgomery, a young Californian millionaire, had followed his
mother's former ward, Lady Maundrell, to England, nursing an old and
hopeless passion. What passed between him and the beautiful young
countess the gossips did not attempt to state, but he left England two
days after the tragedy which shelved Cecil Maundrell into the House of
Lords, and returned to California accompanied by his mother and Lady
Barnstaple's friend, Lady Mary Montgomery. Bets were exchanged freely
as to the result of this bold move on the part of a girl too fastidious
to marry any of the English parvenus that addressed her, too poor to
marry in her own class. The wedding took place a few months later,
immediately after Mrs. Montgomery's death; an event which left Lady
Mary the guest in a foreign country of a young bachelor.

From all accounts, the marriage, although a wide deflection from the
highest canons of romance, was a successful one, and the Montgomerys
were living in splendid state in Washington. Lady Mary was approved by
even the "Old Washingtonians"--a thoughtful Californian of lineage had
given her a letter to Miss Carter, who in turn had given her a tea--and
as her husband was brilliant, accomplished, and of the best blood of
Louisiana, the little set, tenaciously clinging to its traditional
exclusiveness amidst the whirling ever-changing particles of the
political maelstrom, found no fault in him beyond his calling. And as
he was a man of tact and never mentioned politics in its presence, and
as his wife was not at home to the public on the first Tuesday of the
month, reserving that day for such of her friends as shunned political
petticoats, the young couple were taken straight into the bosom of that
inner set which the ordinary outsider might search for a very glimpse
of in vain.

How Lady Mary stood with the large and heterogeneous political set
Betty had no means of knowing, and she was curious to ascertain; she
could think of no position more trying for an Englishwoman of Mary
Gifford's class.

As she drove toward the house several hours after announcing her plan
of campaign to her mother, she found Massachusetts Avenue blocked with
carriages and recalled suddenly that Tuesday was "Representatives'
day." She gave a little laugh as she imagined Mrs. Madison's plaintive
distaste. And then she felt the tremor and flutter, the pleasurable
desire to run away, which had assailed her on the night of her first
ball. That was eight years ago, and she had not experienced a moment of
nervous trepidation since.

"Am I about to be re-born?" she thought. "Or merely rejuvenated? I
certainly do feel young again."

She looked about critically as she entered the house. Her own home,
which was older than the White House, was large and plain, with lofty
rooms severely trimmed in the colonial style. There were no portieres,
no modern devices of decoration. Everything was solid and comfortable,
worn, and of a long and honourable descent. The dining-room and large
square hall were striking because of the blackness of their oak walls,
the many family portraits, and certain old trophies of the chase, as
vague in their high dark corners as fading daguerreotypes.

So imbued was Betty with the idea that anything more elaborate was the
sign manifest of too recent fortune, that she had indulged in caustic
criticism of the modern palaces of certain New York friends. But
although the immediate impression of the Montgomery house was of soft
luxurious richness, and it was indubitably the home of wealthy people
determined to enjoy life, Miss Madison's dainty nose did not lift
itself.

"At all events, the money is not laid on with a trowel," she thought.
And then she became aware of a curious sensuous longing as she looked
again at the dim rich beauty about her, the smothered windows, the
suggested power of withdrawal from every vulgar or annoying contact
beyond those stately walls.

"I should like--I should like--" thought Betty, striving to put her
vague emotion into words, "to live in this sort of house when I marry."
And then her humour flashed up: it was a sense that sat at the heels of
every serious thought. "What a combination with the twang and the
toothpick! Can they really be my fate? Of course I might reform both,
and cut off his Uncle Sam beard while he slept."

She had taken the wrong direction and entered a room in which there was
not even a stray guest. A loud buzz of voices rose and fell at the end
of a long hall, and she slowly made her way to the drawing-room,
pausing once to watch a footman who was busily sorting visiting-cards
into separate packs at a table. She handed him her card, and he slipped
it into a pack marked "I Street."

The drawing-room was thronged with people, and as many of them
surrounded the hostess, while constant new-comers pressed forward to
shake a patient hand, Betty decided to stand apart for a few moments
and look at the crowd. She was in a new world, and as eager and curious
as if she had been shot from Earth to Mars.

Lady Mary was quite as handsome as her portraits: a cold blue and white
and ashen beauty whose carriage and manifest of race were in curious
contrast, Lee had told Betty, to a nervous manner and the loud voice of
one who conceived that social laws had been invented for the middle
class. But there was little vivacity in her manner to-day, and her
voice was not audible across the large room. She looked tired. It was
half-past five o'clock, and doubtless she had been on her feet since
three. But she was smiling graciously upon her visitors, and gave each
a warmth of welcome which betrayed the wife of the ambitious politician.

"Her mouth is not so selfish as in her photographs," observed the
astute Betty. "I suppose in the depths of her soul she hates this, but
she does it; and if she loves the man, she must think it well worth
while."

She turned her attention to the visitors. There were many women
superbly dressed, in taste as perfect as her own. She never had seen
any of them before, but they had the air of women of importance. The
majority looked frigid and bored, a few dignified and easy of manner.
The younger women of the same class were more animated, but no less
irreproachable in style.

There were others, middle-aged and young, with all the native style of
the second-class, and still others who were clad in coarse serges,
cashmeres, or cheap silks, shapelessly made with the heavy hand of many
burdens. These did not detain the hostess in conversation, but gathered
in groups, or walked about the room gazing at the many beautiful
pictures and ornaments. There were only three or four really
vulgar-looking women present, and they were clothed in conspicuous
raiment. One, and all but her waist was huge, wore a bodice of
transparent gauze; another, also of middle years, had crowned her hard
over-coloured face with a large gentian-blue hat turned up in front
with a brass buckle. Another was in pink silk and heavily powdered. But
although these women were offensively loud, they did not suggest any
lack of that virtue whose exact proportions so often elude the most
earnest seeker after truth.

Betty turned impulsively to an old woman clad in shabby black who stood
besides her gazing earnestly at the crowd. Her large bony face was
crossed by the lines and wrinkles of long years of care, and her eyes
were dim; but her mouth was smiling.

"Tell me," exclaimed Betty, "please--are all these people in politics?
I--I--am a stranger, and I should like to know who they are."

"Well, I can tell you pretty near everything you want to know, I
guess," replied the old lady. She had the drawl and twang and accent of
rural New England. "I guess you've come here, like myself, jest to see
the folks. A few here, like you and me, ar'n't in official life, but
the most are, I guess. Nearly all the Cabinet ladies are here to-day
and a good many Senators' wives and darters. That there lady in
heliotrope and fur is the wife of the Secretary of War, and the one in
green velvet and chinchilla is Mis' Senator Maxwell. That real stylish
handsome girl just behind is her darter, and I guess she has a good
many beaux. They're real elegant, ar'n't they? I guess we have good
cause to be proud of our ladies."

She paused that Betty might express her approval, and upon being
assured that Paris was responsible for many of the gowns present,
continued in her monotonous but kindly drawl,

"And some of them began life doin' their own work. The President ain't
no aristocrat, and most of his friends ain't neither; but I tell you
when their wives begin to entertain they do it jest as if they was born
to it. I presume if my husband--he was a physician--had gone into
politics and had luck, I'd have been jest like those ladies; but as he
didn't, I'm still doin' most of my own work and look it. But the Lord
knows what he's about, I guess. Senator Maxwell's a swell; they've
always been rich, the Maxwells, and he married a New York girl, so she
didn't have much to learn, I guess. Mis' Senator Shattuc--she's the one
in wine colour--was the darter of a big railroad man out West, so I
guess she had all the schoolin' and Yurrup she wanted. Now that real
pretty little woman jest speakin' to Lady Montgomery is Mis' Senator
Freeman. They do say as how she was the darter of a baker in Chicago
and used to run barefoot around the streets, but she looks as well as
any of 'em now and she dines at every Embassy in Washington. Her
dresses are always described in the _Post_: she wears pink and blue
mostly. You kin tell by her face that she's got a lot of determination
and that she'd git where she had a mind to. I guess she'd dine with
Queen Victoria if she had a mind to."

"I feel exactly as if I were at a pantomime," cried Betty, delightedly.
"Even you--" She caught herself up. "I mean I always thought the New
England playwrights invented all their characters. Who are these
plainly dressed women and--and--half-way ones?" "Oh, they're
Representatives' wives mostly," drawled the old lady, who looked
puzzled. "They take a day off and call on each other. One or two is
Senators' wives. Some of the Senators is rich, but some ar'n't. Mis'
Montgomery's jest as nice to them as to the swells, and she told me to
be sure and go into the next room and have a cup of tea. I don't care
much about tea excep' for lunch, and she don't have a collation--I
presume she can't; too many people'd come, and I guess she has about
enough. Now, those ladies that don't look exactly as if they was
ladies," indicating the large birds of tawdry plumage and striking
complexions, "they don't live here. Washington ladies don't dress like
that. I guess they're the wives of men out West that have made their
pile lately and come here to see the sights. First they look at all the
public buildin's, and I guess they about walk all over the Capitol, and
hear a speech or two in the Ladies' Gallery--from their Senators, if
they can--and after that they go about in Society a bit. You see,
Washington is a mighty nice place fur people who haven't much show at
home--those that live in small towns, fur instance. There is so many
public receptions they can go to--The White House, the Wednesdays of
the Cabinet ladies, the Thursdays of the Senator's wives, and six or
seven Representatives--mebbe more--who have real elegant houses; and
then there is several Legations that give public receptions. You can
always see in the _Post_ who's goin' to receive; and those women can go
home and talk fur the rest of their lives about the fine time they had
in Washington society. Amurricans heighst themselves whenever they git
a chance. I don't care to do that. My sister--she's a heap younger 'n I
am and awful spry--and I come down from the north of New Hampshire
every winter and keep a boardin'-house in Washington so that we can see
the world. We don't go home with ten dollars over railroad fare in our
pockets, but we don't mind, because the farm keeps us and we've had a
real good time. I often sit down up in New Hampshire and think of the
beautiful houses and dresses and pictures I've seen, and I can always
remember that I've shaken hands with the President and his wife and the
ladies of the Cabinet. They're just as nice as they can be."

Betty, whose sympathies were quick and keen, winked away a tear. "I'm
so glad you enjoy it so much," she exclaimed, "and that there is so
much for you here to enjoy. I never thought of it in that way. I'm
awfully interested in it all, myself, and I feel deeply indebted to
you."

"Well, you needn't mind that. My sister says I always talk when I can
git anybody to listen to me, and I guess I do. Where air you from? New
York, I guess."

"Oh, I am a Washingtonian. My name is Madison."

"So? I don't remember seeing it in the society columns."

"We are never mentioned in society columns," exclaimed Betty, with her
first thrill of pride since entering the new world. "But I seldom have
passed a winter out of Washington, although--I am sorry to say--I never
have met any of these people."

"You don't say. I ain't curious, but you don't look as if you had to
stay to home and do the work. But Amurrican girls are so smart they can
about look anything they have a mind to." "Oh--I am really sorry, but
everybody seems to be going, and I haven't spoken to Lady Mary yet. I'm
_so_ much obliged to you."

"Now, you needn't be, for you're a real nice young lady, and I've
enjoyed talkin' to you. Likely we'll meet again, but I'd be happy to
have you call. Here's my card. Our house is right near here--in the
real fashionable part; and we've several ladies livin' with us that you
might like to meet."

"Oh, thanks! thanks!" Betty put the card carefully into her case, shook
her new friend warmly by the hand, and went forward. Lady Mary's tired
white face had set into an almost mechanical smile, but as her eyes met
Betty's they illumined with sudden interest and her hard-worked muscles
relaxed.

"You are Betty Madison!" she exclaimed. And as the two girls shook
hands they conceived one of those sudden and violent friendships which
are so full of interest while they last.

"How awfully good of you to call so soon!" continued Lady Mary, after
Betty had expatiated upon her long-cherished desire for this meeting.
"I hoped you would, although Miss Carter rather frightened me with her
account of your mother's aversion to political people. But they have
all been so good to me--all your delightful set." She lowered her
voice, which had rung out for a moment in something of its old style,
albeit platitudes had worn upon its edges. "I _couldn't_ stand just
this--although I must add that many of the official women are charming
and have the most stunning manners; but many are the reverse, and
unfortunately I can't pick and choose. It seems that when one gets into
politics in this country that is the end of nine-tenths of one's
personal life; and Washington is certainly the headquarters of
democracy. Here every American really does feel that he is as good as
every other American; I wish to heaven he didn't."

"Washington is a democracy with a kernel of the most exclusive
aristocracy," said Betty, with a laugh. "Some one has said that it is
the drawing-room of the Republic. It is the hotel drawing-room with a
Holy of Holies opening upon the area. I'm sick of the Holy of Holies,
and I 've never enjoyed a half-hour so much as while I've been looking
on here--waiting for you to be disengaged."

"Oh, this is nothing. You must let me take you to a large evening
reception. That is really interesting, for you see so many famous
people. Can't you dine with me to-morrow? We've a big political dinner
on. About fifteen members of a Senate and a House Committee that are
deliberating a very important bill are coming. Senator North--he is
well worth meeting--is Chairman of the Senate Committee, and my
husband, although a new member, stands very high with the Chairman of
his Committee, most of whom are old members of the House. Senator Ward
also will be here. Do come, if you have nothing more important on hand.
I can easily get another member of the House Committee."

"Come! I'd break twenty engagements to come." Betty's eyes sparkled and
she lifted her head with a motion peculiar to her when reminded that
she was the favoured of the gods. "I suppose there is a good deal of
fag about this sort of life to you, but it has all the charm of the
undiscovered country for me."

"Oh, I am deeply interested," said Lady Mary. The two women were alone
now, and the hostess, released after three hours of stereotyped
amenities, surrendered herself to the charm of natural intercourse with
one of her own sort, and rang for tea. "I always liked politics, and I
feel quite sure that my husband will achieve his high ambitions. It
interests me greatly to help him."

"Of course he'll be President!" cried Betty, enthusiastic in the warmth
of her new friendship and its possibilities. She was surprised by a
tilt of the nose and an emphatic shake of the head.

"No, indeed!" exclaimed Lady Mary, "Presidents are politicians only. My
husband aspires higher than that. To be a Senator of the first rank
requires very different qualities."

"Ah! I shall quote that to Mol--my mother. She is not predisposed in
their favour."

"Of course there are Senators and Senators," said Lady Mary, hastily.
"You can't get ninety men of equal ability together, anywhere. There
are the six who are admittedly the first,--North, Maxwell, Ward, March,
Howard, and Eustis,--and about ten who are close behind them. Then
there is the venerable group to which Senator Maxwell also belongs; and
the younger men of forty-five or so who are not quite broken in yet,
and whose enthusiasm is apt to take the wrong direction; and the
fire-eaters, Populists usually; and the hard-working second-rate men,
many of them millionaires (Western, as a rule) who are accused of
having bought their legislatures to get in, but who do good work on
Committee, whether or not they came under the delusion that they had
bought an honour with nothing beneath it: a man who presumed on his
wealth in the Senate would fare as badly as a boy at Eton who presumed
on his title. Beyond all, are the nonentities that are in every body.
So, you see, it is worth while to aim for the first place and to keep
it."

"There are certainly all sorts to choose from! I'll never mistrust my
instincts again. I am glad I shall meet Senator North to-morrow. I
suppose he is a courtly person of the old school with a Websterian
intellect."

"I don't know anything about Webster; I can't read your history and
live in it, too; but certainly there is nothing of the old school about
Senator North. He is very modern and has a truly Republican--or shall I
say aristocratic?--simplicity--although no one could dress
better--combined with a cold manner to most men and a warm manner to
most women."

"Tell me all about him!" exclaimed Betty, sipping her tea. "I never was
so happy and excited in my life. I feel as if I was Theodosia Burr, or
Nelly Custis, or Dolly Madison come to life. And now I'm going to know
an American statesman before his coat has turned to calf-skin. Quick!
How old is he?"

"Just sixty, and looks much younger, as most of the Senators do. He is
a hard worker--he is Chairman of one Committee and a member of five
others; a brilliant debater, the most accomplished legislator in the
Senate, unyielding in his convictions, and absolutely independent. He
is not popular, as it has never occurred to him to conciliate anybody.
He is very kind and attentive to his invalid wife and proud of his
sons, and he adored a daughter who died four years ago. Rumor has it
that more than one charming woman has consoled him for domestic
afflictions and political trials, but I do not pay much attention to
rumours of that sort. How odd that I, an alien, should be instructing a
Washingtonian in politics and the personalities of her Senators; but I
quite understand. I do hope Mrs. Madison will not object to your coming
to-morrow night."

"I shall come. And go now. I feel a brute to have let you talk so much,
but I never have been so interested!"

The two women kissed and parted; and Lady Mary's dreams that night were
undisturbed by any vision of herself in the ranks of the Fates.




IV



Betty returned home much elated with the success of her visit. She
heard the voice of her cousin Jack Emory in the parlor and went at once
to her room to dress. The voice sounded solemn, and so did her
mother's; they doubtless were sitting in conference upon her. She
selected her evening gown with some care; her cousin was an old story,
but he was a very attractive man, and coquetry would hold its own in
her, become she never so intellectual.

Jack Emory had been her undeclared lover since his middle teens.
Somewhere in the same immature interval, just after her first return
from Europe, she had imagined herself passionately in love with him.
But she had a large fortune left her by her maternal grandfather,
besides a hundred thousand her father had died too soon to spend, and
Jack was the son of a Virginian who had been a Rebel to his death,
haughtily refusing to have his disabilities removed, and threatening to
shoot any negro in his employ who dared to go to the ballot box. He had
left his son but a few thousands out of his large inheritance, and
adjured him on his death bed to hold no office under the Federal
government and to shoot a Yankee rather than shake his hand. Jack
inherited his father's prejudices without his violent temper. He had a
contemptuous dislike for the North, a loathing for politics, and
adistaste for everybody outside his own diminishing class. Love for
Betty Madison had driven him West in the hope of retrieving his
fortunes, but he was essentially a gentleman and a scholar; the
hustling quality was not in him, and he returned South after two years
of unpleasant endeavour and started a small produce farm adjoining an
old house on the outskirts of Washington, left him by his mother. Here
he lived with his books, and made enough money to support himself
decently. He never had asked Betty to marry him, although he knew that
his aunt would champion his cause. During the period of Betty's maiden
passion his pride had caused her as much suffering as her youth and
buoyant nature would permit; but as the years slipped by she felt
inclined to personify that pride and burn a candle beneath it. Even
before her mind had awakened, the energy and strength of her character
had cured her of love for a man as supine as Jack Emory. He was
charming and well read, all that she could desire in a brother, but as
a husband he would be intolerable. As his love cooled she liked him
better still, particularly as his loyalty would not permit him to
acknowledge even to himself that he could change; but its passing left
him with fewer clouds on a rather melancholy spirit, a readier tongue,
and a complete recovery from the habits of sighing and of leaving the
house abruptly.

Betty's maid dressed her in a bright blue taffeta, softened with much
white lace, and she went slowly down to the hall, rustling her skirts
that Emory might hear and come out for a word before dinner if he
liked. It was a relief to be able to coquet with him without fearing
that he would go home and shoot himself; and it helped him to sustain
the pleasant fiction that he still was in love with her.

He came out at once and raised her hand to his lips, murmuring a
compliment as his grandfather might have done. He was only thirty-two,
but his face was sallow and lined from trouble and fever. Otherwise he
was very handsome, with his golden head and intellectual blue eyes, his
haughty profile and tall figure, listlessly carried as it was. In spite
of the fact that he took pride in dressing well, he always looked a
little old-fashioned. When with Betty, invariably as smart as Paris and
New York could make her, he almost appeared as if wearing his father's
old clothes. His Southern accent and intonation were nearly as broad as
a negro's. Betty had almost lost hers; she retained just enough to
enrich and individualize without a touch of provincialism. She belonged
to that small class of Americans whose ear-mark is the absence of all
Americanisms.

Mr. Emory looked perturbed.

"There is something I should like to say," he remarked hesitatingly.
"There is yet a quarter of an hour before dinner. I think this old hall
with its portraits of your grandmothers is a good place to say it in--"

"Molly has pressed you into service, I see. Let us have it out, by all
means. Please straighten your necktie before you begin. You cannot
possibly be impressive while it looks as if it were standing on one
leg."

"Please be serious, Betty dear. I am indeed most disturbed. It surely
cannot be that you meant what you told your mother this morning,--that
you intended to change the whole current of your life in such an
unprecedented manner."

"Great heavens! One would think I was about to go on the stage or enter
a convent."

"I would rather you did either than soil your mind with the politics of
this country. I say nothing about there being no statesmen;--there is
not an honest man in politics the length and breadth of the Union. The
country is a sink of corruption, as far as politics are concerned.
Every Congressman buys his seat or is put in as the agent of some
disgraceful trust or syndicate or railroad corporation."

Betty drew her eyelids together in a fashion that robbed her eyes of
their coquetry and fire and made them look unpleasantly judicial.

"Exactly how much do you know about American politics?" she asked
coldly. "I have known you all my life and I never heard you mention
them before--"

"I never have considered them a fit subject for you to listen to--"

"I have been in your library a great many times and I do not recall a
copy of the Congressional Record. You have said often that you despise
the newspapers and only read the telegrams; that the only paper you
read through is the London _Times_. So, I repeat, what do you know
about the American politics of to-day?"

"What I have told you."

"Where did you learn it? Do you ever go to the Senate or the House?"

"God forbid! But I am a man, and those things are in the atmosphere; a
man's brain accumulates naturally all widely diffused impressions. I've
been a great deal in the smoking-cars of railroad-trains, and spent two
years in a Western State where a man who had taken a fortune out of a
mine made no bones of buying a seat in the Senate from the Legislature,
nor the Legislature about selling it. It was the most abominable
transaction I ever came close to, and had as much to do with my leaving
the place as anything else."

"And you mean to say that you judge all the old States of the country
by a newly settled community of adventurers out West?"

"New York and Pennsylvania are notorious."

"There are bad boys in every school. What I want to know is--can you
assert on your knowledge that all the Southern and New England States
are corrupt and send only small politicians to Washington? This is a
more serious charge than Molly's assertion that they all use
toothpicks."

"I repeat that I do not believe there is an honest man in that Capitol."

"Do you know this? Have you investigated the life of every man in the
Senate and the House?" "What a good district attorney you would make!"

"You are talking a lot of copybook platitudes with which you have
allowed your mind to stagnate. But you must convince me, for if what
you say is true I shall have nothing to do with politics. Let us begin
with Senator North. How and when did he buy his seat, and what Trust
does he represent?"

"Oh, I never have heard anything against North. He is too big a gun in
Washington--"

"You will admit then that _he_ is not corrupt--"

"I don't doubt he has his own methods--"


"I don't care three cents about your suppositions. I want facts. How
about Senator Maxwell?"

"He has been in Congress since before I was born. One never hears him
discussed."

"And his Puritanical State has heaped every honour on him that it can
think of. Tell me the biography of Senator Ward--all that is too awful
to be printed in the Congressional Directory--"

"He is from one of those dreadful North-western States and bound to be
corrupt," cried Emory, triumphantly. He wished desperately that he had
waited and got up his case. He spoke from sincere conviction. "There
may be a rag of decency left in the older States, but the West is
positively fetid. I give you my word I am speaking the truth, Betty
dear, and in your own interest. If I have no more details to give you,
it is because I promised my father on his death-bed that I would have
nothing to do with politics, and I have kept my word to the extent of
reading as little about them as possible. But I can assure you that I
know as much about them as anybody not in the accursed business. It is
in the air--" "There are so many things in the air that they get mixed
up. Your whole argument is based on air. Now, _mon ami_, you turn to
to-morrow and study up the record of every man in that Senate, as well
as the legislative methods of his State. When you know all about it, I
shall be delighted to be instructed. But I don't want any more air. Now
come in to dinner, and if you allude to the subject before Molly, I'll
leave the table."

He bowed over her hand again with his old-fashioned courtesy. "When you
issue a command I am bound to obey," he said, "and although you have
set me an unpleasant, an obnoxious task, I certainly shall accomplish
that also to the best of my ability. You belong to this old house,
Betty, to this old set; I love to think of you as the last rose on the
old Southern tree, and you shall not be blighted if I can help it."

Betty tapped him lightly with her fan.

"I belong to the whole country, my dear boy; I am no old cabbage rose
on a half-dead bush, but the same vegetable under a new name,--the
American Beauty Rose. Do you see the parable? And I've a great many
thorns on my long stem. Remember that also."




V



Betty, in accordance with a time-honoured habit, was the last to arrive
at the dinner-party on the following evening. She had arranged her
heavy large-waved hair low on her neck, and the pale green velvet of
her gown lifted its dull mahogany hue and the deep Southern whiteness
of her skin. She did not take a beautiful picture, for her features had
the national irregularity, but she seldom entered a room that several
men did not turn and stare at her. She carried herself with the air of
one used to commanding the homage of men, her lovely colouring was
always enhanced by dress, and she radiated magnetism. It was such an
alive, warm, buoyant personality that men turned to her as naturally as
children do to the maternal woman; even when they did not love her they
liked to be near her, for she recalled some vague ideal. She knew her
power perfectly, and after one or two memorable lessons had put from
her the temptation to give it active exercise. It should be the
instrument of unqualified happiness when her hour came; meanwhile she
cultivated an impersonal attitude which baffled men unable to propose
and tempered the wind to those that could.

During the few moments in the drawing-room she could gather only a
collective impression of the men who stared at her to-night. There was
a general suggestion of weight, in the sculptor's sense, and repose
combined with alertness, and they stood very squarely on their feet.
Betty had only had time to single out one long beard dependent from a
visage otherwise shorn, and to observe further that some of the women
were charmingly dressed, while others wore light silk afternoon frocks,
when dinner was announced.

Her partner was evidently one of the younger Senators, one of those
juvenile enthusiasts of forty-five who beat their breasts for some
years upon the Senate's impassive front. He was extremely good-looking,
with a fair strong impatient face, trimmed with a moustache only, and a
well-built figure full of nervous energy. He had less repose than most
of the men about him, but he suggested the same solidity. He might fail
or go wrong, but not because there was any room in his mind for shams.
His name was Burleigh, but what his section was, Betty, as they
exchanged amenities and admired the lavish display of flowers, could
not determine; he had no accent whatever, and although his voice was
deep and sonorous, it had not the peculiar richness of the South. His
gray eyes smiled as they met hers, and his manners were charming; but
Betty, accustomed to grasp the salient points of character in a first
interview, fancied that he could be overbearing and truculent.

"Are they going to talk politics to-night?" she asked, when the
platitudes had run their course.

"I hope not. I've had enough of politics, all day."

"Oh, I hoped you would," said Betty, in a deeply disappointed tone.

He looked amused.

"Why?" he asked.

"Oh, I am so interested. That sounds very vague, but I am. When Lady
Mary told me she was dining members of the two Committees, I thought it
was to talk politics, and--and--settle it amicably or something." Betty
could look infantile when she chose, and was always ready to cover real
ignorance with an exaggerated assumption which inspired doubt.

"We have the excessive pleasure of discussing the bill in Senator
North's comfortable Committee room for several hours every few days,
and we usually are amiable. We are merely dining out to-night in each
other's good company. Still, I guess your desire will be more or less
gratified. Second nature is strong, and one or two will probably get
down to it about the middle of dinner."

"You are from New England," exclaimed Betty, triumphantly. "I have been
waiting for you to say 'I reckon' or 'I guess.'"

"I was born and educated in Maine, but I went west to practise law as
soon as I knew enough, and I am Senator from one of the Middle Western
States."

"Ah!" Betty gave him a swift side glance. He looked anything but
"corrupt," and that truculent note in his voice did not indicate
subservience to party bosses. She determined to write to Jack Emory in
the morning and command him to look up Senator Burleigh's record at
once.

"I suppose all the Senators here to-night are the--big ones?"

"Oh, no; North and Ward are the only two on this Committee belonging to
the very first rank. The other four here are in that group that is
pressing close upon their heels; and myself, who am a new member: I've
been here four years only. Would you mind telling me who you are? Of
course American women don't take much interest in politics, but--do you
know as little as you pretend?"

"I wish I knew more; but I've been abroad for the last two years, and
my mother prefers rattlesnakes to politics. Which is Senator North?"

"He is at the head of the table with Lady Mary, but that rosebush is in
the way; you cannot see him."

"And which is Senator Ward?" "Over there by Mrs. Shattuc,--the woman in
ivory-white and heliotrope."

Betty flashed him a glance of renewed interest. "You like women," she
exclaimed. "And you must be married, or have sisters."

"I like women and I am not married, nor have I any sisters. I
particularly like woman's dress. If you'll pardon me, that combination
of pale green and white lace and soft stuff is the most stunning thing
I've seen for a long while."

"Law, politics, and woman's dress! How hard you must have worked!"

"Our strong natural inclinations help us so much!" He gave her an
amused glance, and his manner was a trifle patronizing, as of a
prominent man used to the admiration of pretty girls. It was evident
that he knew nothing of her and her long line of conquests.

"Senator Ward looks half asleep," she remarked abruptly.

"He usually does until dinner is two-thirds over. He is Chairman of one
Committee and serving on two others; and all have important bills
before them at present. So he is tired."

"He doesn't look corrupt."

"Corrupt? Who? Ward? Who on earth ever said he was corrupt?"

"Well, I heard his State was."

"'Corruption' is the father of more platitudes than any word in the
American language. There are corrupt men in his State, no doubt, and
one of the Trusts with which we are ridden at present tried to buy its
Legislature and put their man in. But Ward won his fight without the
expenditure of a dollar beyond paying for the band and a few courtesies
of that sort. His State is proud of him both as a statesman and a
scholar, and he is likely to stay in the Senate until he drops in his
tracks."

"Then he comes here with the intention of remaining for life? I think
you should all do that."

"You are quite right. When a man achieves the honour of being elected
honestly to the United States Senate,--it is the highest honour in the
Republic,--he should feel that he is dedicating himself to the service
of the country, and should have so arranged his affairs that he can
stay there for life."

Betty's eyes kindled with approval. "Oh, I am glad," she said, "I am
glad."

"Glad of what, may I ask?"

"Oh--" And then she impulsively told him something of her history, of
her determination to take up politics as her ruling interest, and of
the opposition of her mother and cousin. Senator Burleigh listened with
deep attention, and if he was amused he was too gallant to betray the
fact, now that she had honoured him with her confidence.

"Well," he said, "that is very interesting, very. And you are quite
right. You'll do yourself good and us good. Mind you stand to your
guns. Would you mind telling me your name? Lady Mary never thinks a
mere name worth mentioning."

"Madison--Elizabeth Madison. I had almost forgotten the Elizabeth. I
have always been called Betty."

"Ah!" he said, "ah!" He turned and regarded her with a deeper interest.

"Have you heard of me?" she asked irresistibly. "Who has not?" he said
gallantly. "And although you are a great deal younger than I,--I am
forty-four,--my father, who was in Congress before me, was a great
friend of your father's. He wears a watch to this day that Mr. Madison
gave him. He always expressed regret that he never met your mother, but
she seemed to have an unconquerable aversion to politics."

"And they met at Chamberlin's!" exclaimed Betty, with a delighted
laugh. "It will be the last straw--my having gone into dinner with the
son of one of papa's hated boon companions. My mother is a lovely
intelligent woman," she added hastily, "but she is intensely Southern
and conservative. Her great pride is that she never changes a standard
once established."

"Oh, that's a very safe quality in a woman. But of course you have a
right to establish your own, and I am glad it points in our direction.
And anything you want to know I'll be glad to tell you. Can't I take
you up to the Senate to-morrow and put you in our private gallery?
There ought to be some good debating, for North is going to attack an
important bill that is on the calendar."

"I will go; but let me meet you there. I must ask you to call in due
form first, as my poor mother must not have too many shocks. Will you
come a week from Sunday?--I am going to New York for a few days."

"I will, indeed. If I were unselfish, I should let you listen for a few
minutes, for they are all talking politics; not bills, however, but the
possibility of war with Spain. I don't think I shall, though. Tell me
what you want to know and I will begin our lessons right here." "Why
should we go to war with Spain?"

"Oh dear! Oh dear! Where have you been? There is a small island off the
coast of Florida called Cuba. It has many natives, and they are
oppressed, tormented, tortured by Spain."

"I visited Cuba once. They are nothing but a lot of negroes and
frightfully dirty. Why should we go to war about them?"

"Only about one-third are negroes and there is a large brilliantly
educated and travelled upper class. And I see you need instruction in
more things than politics,--humanity, for instance. Forget that you are
a Southerner, divorce yourself from traditions, and try to imagine
several hundred thousand people--women and children,
principally--starving, hopeless, homeless, unspeakably wretched. Cannot
you feel for them?"

"Oh, yes! Yes!" Betty's quick sympathy sent the tears to her eyes, and
he looked at her with deepening admiration,--a fact the tears did not
prevent her from grasping. "And are we going to war in order to release
them?"

"Ah! I do not know. There is a war feeling growing in the country;
there is no doubt of that. But how high it will grow no one can tell.
The leading men in Congress are indifferent, and won't even listen to
recognizing the Cubans as belligerents. North will not discuss the
subject, and I doubt not is talking over the latest play with Lady Mary
at the present moment."

"And you? Do you want war?"

"I do!" His manner gave sudden rein to its inherent nervousness, and
his voice rang out for a moment as if he were angrily haranguing the
Senate. "Of course I want it. Every human instinct I have compels me to
want it, and I cannot understand the apathy and conservatism which
prevents our being at war at the present moment. We have posed as the
champions of liberty long enough; it is time we did something."


"Ah, this is the youthful enthusiasm of the Senate," thought Betty.
"And I have been accustomed to think of forty-five as quite elderly. I
feel a mere infant and shall not call myself an old maid till I'm
fifty." She smiled approvingly into the Senator's illuminated face, and
he plunged at once into details, including the entire history of
Spanish colonial misrule. The history was told in head-lines, so to
speak, but it was graphic and convincing. Betty nodded encouragingly
and asked an occasional intelligent question. She knew the history of
Spain as thoroughly as he did, but she would not have told him so for
the world. It is only the woman with a certain masculine fibre in her
brain who ever really understands men, and when these women have
coquetry also, they convince the sex born to admire that they are even
more feminine than their weaker sisters. When Senator Burleigh
finished, Betty thanked him so graciously and earnestly, with such
lively pleasure in her limpid hazel eyes, that he raised his glass
impulsively and touched it to hers.

"You must have a _salon_" he exclaimed. "We need one in Washington, and
it would do us incalculable good. Only you could accomplish it: you not
only have beauty and brains--and tact?--but you are so apart that you
can pick and choose without fear of giving offence. And you are not
_blas?_ of the subject like Congressmen's wives, nor has the wild rush
and wear and tear of official society chopped up your individuality
into a hundred little bits. It would be brutal to mention politics to a
woman in political life, and consequently we feel as if no one takes
any interest in us unless she has an axe to grind. But you are what we
all have been waiting for I feel sure of that! Let it be understood
that no mere politician, no man who bought his legislature or is under
suspicion in regard to any Trust, can enter your doors. Of course you
will have to study the whole question thoroughly; and mind, I am to be
your instructor-in-chief."

Betty laughed and thanked him, wondering how well he understood her. He
looked like a man who would waste no time on the study of woman's
subtleties: he knew what he wanted, and recognized the desired
qualities at once, but by a strong masculine instinct, not by analysis.

A few moments later the women went into the drawing-room, and the
conversation for the next half-hour was a languid babble of politics,
dress, New York, the lady of the White House, and the play. Betty
thought the women very nice, but less interesting than the men,
possibly because they were women. They certainly looked more
intelligent than the average one sat with during the trying half-hour
after dinner; but their conversation was fragmentary, and they oddly
suggested having left their personality at home and taken their shell
out to dinner. Betty also was interested to observe that their
composite expression was a curious mingling of fatigue, unselfishness,
and peremptoriness. "What does it mean?" she asked of Lady Mary, with
whom she stood apart for a moment.

"Oh, they are worked to death,--paying calls, entertaining, receiving
people on all sorts of business, and helping their husbands in various
ways. They have no time to be selfish,--rich or poor,--and they have
acquired the art of disposing of bores and detrimentals in short order.
Even their own sort they pass on much in the fashion of royalty. How do
you like Senator Burleigh?"

"I never learned so much in two hours in my life. My head feels like a
beehive."

"I never saw him quite so devoted."

"I thought you were occupied with Senator North."

"I was, but my eyes and ears understand each other. He wants to meet
you after dinner. He knows all about you."

"He has been pointed out to me, but in those days when I was only
interested in possible partners for the German. I do not recall him."

"That is he, the second one."

The men were entering the drawing-room. Betty was relieved that the
political beard was not on Senator North. He wore only a very short
moustache on his ugly powerful face.

He stood for a few moments talking to his host, and Betty, to whom the
political beard was immediately presented, gave him an occasional
glance of exploration while her companion was assuring her, with
neither a twang nor an accent, that he had long looked forward to the
pleasure of meeting the famous Miss Betty Madison. Senator Shattuc was
in his late fifties, but it was evident that the cares of Congress had
not smothered his appreciation of a pretty woman. He had a strong face
and an infantile complexion, and his beard sparkled with care. Senator
Ward, who was presented a few moments later, told her that he had
envied Burleigh throughout the long dinner. Betty decided that the
senatorial manner certainly was agreeable.

The two men fell into conversation with one another, and Betty turned
her attention to Senator North. He was standing alone for the moment,
glancing about the room. His attitude was one of absolute repose; he
did not look as if he ever had hurried or wasted his energies or lost
his self-control in his life. His face was impenetrable; his eyes,
black and piercing, were wholly without that limpidity which reveals
depths and changes of expression; his mouth was somewhat contemptuous,
and betrayed neither tenderness nor humour. If possible, he stood even
more squarely on his feet than the other men. He had the powerful
thick-set figure which invariably harbours strong passions.

"I don't know whether I like him or not," thought Betty. "I think I
don't--but perhaps I do. He might be made of New England rock, and he
looks as if the earth could swallow him before he'd yield an inch. But
I can feel his magnetism over here. Why have all these men so much
magnetism? Is that, too, senatorial?"

Senator North caught her eye at the moment, and turned at once to Lady
Mary. A moment later he had been presented to Betty and they stood
alone.

"I once mended your hoop for you, when you were a little girl, just in
front of your house; but I am afraid you have forgotten it." "Oh,--I
think I do remember it. Yes--I do." She evoked the incident out of the
mists of childish memories. "Was it you? I am afraid I was looking
harder at the hoop than at its mender. But--I recall--I thought how
kind you were."

And then he inquired for her mother, and spoke pleasantly of his own
and his wife's acquaintance with Mrs. Madison at Bar Harbor. Betty
wondered afterward why she had thought his face repellent. His eyes
defied investigation, but his mouth relaxed into a smile that was very
kind, and his voice had almost a caress in it. But at the moment she
was too eager to hear him express himself to receive a strong personal
impression, and while she was casting about in her mind for a leader,
she was obliged to give him her hand.

"Good-night," she said with a little pout, "I am so sorry."

"So am I," he said, smiling, and shaking her hand. "Good-night. I shall
look forward to meeting you again soon."

"Miss Madison, may I see you to your carriage?" asked Senator Burleigh.
"I have tried to get near you ever since dinner," he said
discontentedly, as they walked down the hall, "and now you are going.
But you will come to the Senate to-morrow? Come right up to the door of
the Senators' Gallery at precisely three o'clock and I will meet you
there."

A few moments later, Betty paused on her way to her own room and opened
her mother's door softly.

"Molly," she whispered.

"Well?" asked a severe voice.

"I went in to dinner with the son of one of papa's old Chamberlin
companions, and he was simply charming. So were all the others, and I
never met a man who could shake hands as well as Senator North. I had a
heavenly time."

Mrs. Madison groaned and turned her face to the wall.

"And there wasn't a toothpick, and I didn't hear a twang."

"Kindly allow me to go to sleep."




VI



As soon as Betty awoke the next morning, she turned her mind to the
events of the night before. Unlike most occasions eagerly anticipated,
it had contained no disappointment; she had, indeed, been pleasurably
surprised, for despite her strong common-sense the dark picture of
corruption and objectionable toilet accessories had made its impression
upon her. She foresaw much amusement in witnessing the unwilling
surrender of her mother to even Senator Shattuc, him of the political
beard. As for Senator Burleigh, she would yield to his magnetism and
power of compelling interest in himself, while pronouncing his manners
too abrupt and his personality too "Western." And if he admired
intelligently the old lace which she always wore at her throat and
wrists and on her pretty head, she would confess that there might be
exceptions even to political rules.

But somewhat to Betty's surprise it was not of Senator Burleigh that
she thought most, although she had talked with him for two hours and
pronounced him charming. She had talked with Senator North for exactly
six minutes, but she saw his face more distinctly than Burleigh's and
retained his voice in her ear. He had not paid her a compliment, but
his manner had expressed that she interested him and that he thought
her worth meeting. For the first time in her life Betty felt flattered
by the admiration of a man; and she had held her own with more than one
of distinction on the other side. Even royalty had not fluttered her,
but she conceived an eager desire to make this man think well of her.
It irritated her to remember that she could have made no mental
impression on him whatever. She became uncheerful, and reflected that
the subtle flattery in his manner was probably a mere habit; Lady Mary
had intimated that he liked women and had loved several. Well, she
cared nothing about that; he was thirty years older than herself and
married; but she admired him and wished for his good opinion and to
hear him talk. Doubtless they soon would meet again, and if they were
left in conversation for a decent length of time she would ask him to
call. She cast about in her mind for a subterfuge which would justify a
note, but she could think of none, and was too worldly-wise to evoke a
smile from the depths of a man's conceit.

Her mother refused to bid her good-by when, accompanied by her maid,
she started for the Capitol at twenty minutes to three. A few moments
later she found herself admiring for the first time the big stately
building on the hill at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. She always had
thought Washington a beautiful city, with its wide quiet avenues set
thick with trees, its graceful parks, each with a statue of some man
gratefully remembered by the Republic, but she had given little heed to
its public buildings and their significance. As she approached the
great white Capitol, she experienced a sudden thrill of that historical
sense which, after its awakening, dominates so actively the large
intelligence. The Capitol symbolized the greatness of the young nation;
all the famous American statesmen after the first group had moved and
made their reputations within its walls. All laws affecting the nation
came out of it, and the Judges of the Supreme Court sat there. And of
its kind there was none other in the civilized world, had been but one
other since the world began.

The historic building shed an added lustre upon Senator Burleigh; but
it was of Senator North that she thought most as she half rose in the
Victoria and scanned the long sweep. The cleverest of women cannot
class with anything like precision the man who has stamped himself into
her imagination. Betty knew that there were six men in the Senate who
ranked as equals; their quiet epoch gave them little chance to discover
latent genius other than for constructive legislation; nevertheless she
arbitrarily conceived the Capitol to-day as the great setting for one
man only; and the building and the man became one in her imagination
henceforth. The truth was that Betty, being greatly endowed for loving
and finding that all men fell short of her high standard, was forced to
seek companionship in an ideal. She had had several loves in history,
but had come to the conclusion some years since that dead men were
unsatisfactory. Since then she had fancied mightily one or two public
men on the other side, whom she had never met; but in time they had
bored or disappointed her. But here was a conspicuous figure in her own
country, appealing to her through the powerful medium of patriotic
pride; a man so much alive that he might at any moment hold the
destinies of the United States in his hands, and who, owing to his
years and impenetrable dignity, was not to be considered from the
ordinary view-point of woman. She would coquet with Senator Burleigh;
it was on the cards that she would love him, for he was brilliant,
ambitious, and honourable; but Senator North was exalted to the vacant
pedestal reserved for ideals, and Betty settled herself comfortably to
his worship; not guessing that he would be under her memory's dust-heap
in ten days if Senator Burleigh captured her heart.

The coachman was directed by a policeman to the covered portico of the
Senate wing. Betty had a bare glimpse of corridors apparently
interminable, before another policeman put her into the elevator and
told her to get off when the boy said "Gallery."

Senator Burleigh was waiting for her, and she thought him even manlier
and more imposing in his gray tweed than in evening dress. He shook her
hand heartily, and assured her in his abrupt dictatorial way that it
gave him the greatest pleasure to meet her again.

"I'm sorry I haven't time to take you all over the building," he said,
"but I have two Committee meetings this afternoon. You must come down
some morning."

His manner was very businesslike, and he seemed a trifle absent as he
paused a moment and called her attention to the daub illustrating the
Electoral Commission; but this, Betty assumed, was the senatorial
manner by day. In a moment he led her to one of the doors in the wall
that encloses the Senate Gallery.

"You see this lady," he said peremptorily to the doorkeeper, who rose
hastily from his chair. "She is always to be admitted to this gallery.
Take a good look at her."

"Yes, sir; member of your family, I presume?"

"You can assume that she is my sister. Only see that you admit her."

"The rules are very strict in regard to this gallery," he added, as he
closed the door behind them. "It is only for the families of the
Senators, but you will like it better than the reserved gallery. Send
for me if there should be trouble at any time about admittance."

"I usually get where I wish! I sha'n't trouble you."

"Don't you ever think twice about troubling me," he said. "Let us go
down to the front row."

The galleries surrounding the great Chamber were almost dark under the
flat roof, but the space below was full of light. It looked very
sumptuous with its ninety desks and easy-chairs, and a big fire beyond
an open door; and very legislative with its president elevated above
the Senators and the row of clerks beneath him. There were perhaps
thirty Senators in the room, and they were talking in groups or
couples, reading newspapers, or writing letters. One Senator was making
a speech.

"I don't think they are very polite," said Betty. "Why don't they
listen? He seems to be in earnest and speaks very nicely." "Oh, he is
talking to his constituents, not to the Senate--although he would be
quite pleased if it would listen to him. He does not amount to much. We
listen to each other when it is worth while; but this is a Club, Miss
Madison, the most delightful Club in the United States. Just beyond are
the cloakrooms, where we can lounge before the fire and smoke, or lie
down and go to sleep. The hard work is in the Committee rooms, and it
is hard enough to justify all the pleasure we can get out of the other
side of the life. Now, I'll tell you who these are and something about
them."

He pointed out one after the other in his quick businesslike way,
rattling off biographical details; but Betty, feeling that she was
getting but a mass of impressions with many heads, interrupted him.

"I don't see Senator North," she said. "I thought he was going to
speak."

"He will, later. He is in his Committee room now, but he'll go down as
soon as a page takes him word that the clerk is about to read the bill
whose Committee amendments he is sure to object to. Now I must go. I
shall give myself the pleasure of calling a week from Sunday. You must
come often, and always come here. And let me give you two pieces of
advice: never bow to any Senator from up here, and never go to the
Marble Room and send in a card. Then you can come every day without
attracting attention. Good-bye."

Betty thanked him, and he departed. For the next hour she found the
proceedings very dull. The unregarded Senator finished his speech and
retired behind a newspaper. Other members clapped their hands, and the
pages scampered down the gangways and carried back documents to the
clerk below the Vice-President's chair, while their senders made a few
remarks meaningless to Betty. Two or three delivered brief speeches
which were equally unintelligible to one not acquainted with current
legislation. During one of them a man of imposing appearance entered
and was apparently congratulated by almost every one in the room, the
Senators leaving their seats and coming to the middle aisle, where he
stood, to shake him by the hand. Betty felt sorry for Leontine, who was
on the verge of tears, but determined to remain until Senator North
appeared if she did not leave until it should be time to dress for
dinner.

He entered finally and went straight to his desk. He looked
preoccupied, and began writing at once. In a few moments the clerk
commenced to read from a document, and Senator North laid aside his pen
and listened attentively. So did several other Senators. It was a very
long document, and Betty, who could not understand one word in ten as
delivered by the clerk's rumbling monotonous voice, was desperately
bored, and was glad her Senators had the solace of the cloak-rooms.
Several did in fact retire to them, but when the clerk sat down and
Senator North rose, they returned; and Betty felt a personal pride in
the fact that they were about to listen to the Senator whom herself had
elected to honour.

She had to lean forward and strain her ears to hear him. It was evident
that he did not recognize the existence of the gallery, for he did not
raise his voice from beginning to end; and yet it was of that strong
rich quality that might have carried far. But it neither "rang out like
a clarion," nor "thundered imprecation." Neither did he utter an
impassioned phrase nor waste a word, but he denounced the bill as a
party measure, exposed its weak points, riddled it with sarcasm, and
piled up damaging evidence of partisan zeal. "This is an honourable
body," he concluded, "and few measures go out of it that are open to
serious criticism by the self-constituted guardians of legislative
virtue, but if this bill goes through the Senate we shall invite from
the thinking people of the country the same sort of criticism which we
now receive from the ignorant. If the high standard of this body is to
be maintained, it must be by sound and conservative legislation, not by
grovelling to future legislatures."

Having administered this final slap, he sat down and began writing
again, apparently paying no attention to the Chairman of the bill, who
defended his measure with eloquence and vigour. It was a good speech,
but it contained more words than the one that had provoked it and fewer
points. Senator North replied briefly that the only chance for the bill
was for its father to refrain from calling attention to its weak
points, then went into the Republican cloak-room, presumably to smoke a
cigar. Betty, whose head ached, went home.




VII



That evening, as Betty was rummaging through a cupboard in the library
looking for a seal, she came upon a box of Cuban cigars. They could
have been her father's only and of his special importation: he had
smoked the choicest tobacco that Havana had been able to furnish.

She knew that many men would prize that box of cigars, carefully packed
in lead and ripened by time, and she suddenly determined to send it to
Senator North. She felt that it would be an acute pleasure to give him
something, and as for the cigars they were too good for any one else.
She took the box to her room and wrapped it up carefully and badly; but
when she came to the note which must accompany it, she paused before
the difficulties which mechanically presented themselves. Senator North
might naturally feel surprise to receive a present from a young woman
with whom he had talked exactly six minutes. If she wrote playfully,
offering a small tribute at the shrine of statesmanship, he might
wonder if she worked slippers for handsome young clergymen and burned
candles before the photograph of a popular tenor. She might send them
anonymously, but that would not give her the least satisfaction.
Finally, she reluctantly decided to wait until she met him again and
could lead the conversation up to cigars. "Perhaps he will see me in
the gallery to-morrow," she thought.

But although he sat in his comfortable revolving-chair for two hours
the next afternoon, he never lifted his eyes to the gallery. She heard
several brief and excellent speeches, but went home dissatisfied. On
the day after her return from New York, whither she went to perform the
duty of bridesmaid; she had a similar experience, twice varied. Senator
Burleigh made a short speech in a voice that was truly magnificent, and
following up Senator North's attack on the bill unpopular on the
Republican side of the Chamber. He was answered by "Blunderbuss"
Pepper, the new Senator who had turned every aristocrat out of office
in his aristocratic Southern State and filled the vacancies with men of
his own humble origin. He was a burly untidy-looking man, and
frequently as uncouth in speech, a demagogue and excitable. But the
Senate, now that three years in that body had toned him down, conceded
his ability and took his abuse with the utmost good-nature. Betty
recalled his biography as sketched by Senator Burleigh, and noted that
almost every Senator wheeled about with an expression of lively
interest, as his reiterated "Mr. President, Mr. President," secured him
the floor. They were not disappointed, nor was Betty. In a few moments
he was roaring like a mad bull and hurling invective upon the entire
Republican Party, which "would deprive the South of legitimate
representation if it could." He was witty and scored many points,
provoking more than one laugh from both sides of the Chamber; and when
he finished with a parting yell of imprecation, his audience returned
to their correspondence and conversation with an indulgent smile. Betty
wondered what he had been like before the Senate had "toned him down."

That night she addressed the cigars to Jack Emory and sent them off at
once. "I do believe I came very close to making a fool of myself," she
thought. "What on earth made me want to give those cigars to Senator
North?--to give him anything? What a little ninny he would have thought
me!" She puzzled long over this deflection from her usual imperious
course with men, but concluding that women having so many silly twists
in their brains, it was useless to try to understand them all,
dismissed the matter from her mind.




VIII



"How many politicians are coming this afternoon?" asked Mrs. Madison,
at the Sunday midday dinner. Her voice indicated that all protest had
not gone out of her.


"Senator Burleigh and Mr. Montgomery--and Lady Mary. Not a formidable
array."

"They are exactly two too many. I have written and asked Sally Carter
to come over and chaperon you in case I do not feel equal to the ordeal
at the last moment. I am surprised that she takes your course so
quietly, but on the whole am relieved; you need some one respectable to
keep you in countenance."

"This house reeks with respectability; no one would ever notice the
absence of a chaperon. Sally is not only quiescent, but sympathetic.
She knows that I have got to the end of teas and charities, and she
believes in people choosing their own lives. She says she would join a
travelling circus if her proclivities happened to point that way."

Mrs. Madison shuddered. "I do not pretend to understand the present
generation, and the more I hear of it the less I wish to. As for Sally
I love her, but I should detest her if I didn't, for she is the worst
form of snob: she is so rich and so well born that she thinks she can
dress like a servant-girl and affect the manners of a barmaid." "Molly!
So you were haunting 'pubs' when I supposed you were yawning at home? I
hope you did not tell the barmaids your real name."

"Well, I suppose I should not criticise people that I know nothing
about," said Mrs. Madison, colouring and serious. She changed the
subject hastily. "Jack, I hope you will stay this afternoon. It would
be the greatest comfort to have you in the house."

"I will stay, certainly," said Emory. He had taken his Sunday dinner at
the old house in I Street for almost a quarter of a century. To-day he
had been unusually silent, and had contracted his brows nervously every
time Betty looked at him. She understood perfectly, and amused herself
by turning round upon him several times with abrupt significance.
However, she spared him until they had taken Mrs. Madison to the parlor
and gone to the library, where he might smoke his after-dinner cigar.
He sat down in front of a window, and the sunlight poured over him,
glistening his handsome head and illuminating his skin. Betty supposed
that some women might fall quite desperately in love with him; and in
addition to his beauty he was a noble and high-minded gentleman, whose
narrowness was due to the secluded life he chose to lead.

"Now!" she exclaimed, "come out with it! You've had eleven days, and
one can learn a good deal in that time."

He bit sharply at the end of his cigar, but answered without hesitation.

"It is almost impossible to learn anything in Washington to the
detriment of the Senate. There seems to be a sort of _esprit de corps_
in the entire city. They look politely horrified if you suggest that a
Senator of the United States, honouring Washington with the society of
his wives and daughters, is anything that he should not be. I was
obliged to go to New York and Boston to get the information I wanted,
and even now it is far from complete. I don't believe it is possible to
arrive at anything like accurate knowledge on the subject."

"Well, what did you get? Washington is a well-ordered community with a
high moral tone--it is said to have fewer scandals than any city in the
country--and there is no sordid commercial atmosphere to lower it. It
is the great city of leisure in everything but legislation and paying
calls; so it seems to me that it would be the last place to fondle in
its bosom ninety distinguished scoundrels. But go on. What did you
learn in Boston and New York?"

"That a little of everything is represented in the Senate,--that is
about what it amounts to. There are unquestionably men there who bought
their seats from legislatures, and there are men who are agents for
trusts, syndicates, and railroad corporations, as well as three party
bosses--"

"Ninety Senators leave a large margin for a number of loose fish. What
I want to know is, how do the big men stand--North, Maxwell, Ward,
March--and fifteen or twenty others, all the men who are the Chairmen
of the big Committees? The New England men seem to have charge of
everything of importance in the House and of a good deal in the Senate."

"Some of the Southern and North-western and most of the New England
States seem to have honest enough legislatures," said Emory,
unwillingly. "But that leaves plenty of others. Only a few of the
Western States are above suspicion, and as for New York, Pennsylvania,
and Delaware, they would not waste time defending themselves; and as no
Senators are better than the people that elect them--"

"Oh, yes, they are sometimes--look at the Senator from Delaware. I too
have been asking questions for eleven days. It all comes to this: there
are millionaireism and corrupting influences in the Senate, but that
element is in the minority, and the greater number of leading, or able
Senators are above suspicion. And they seem to have things pretty much
all their own way. They could not if the majority in the Senate were
scoundrels. No corrupt body was ever led by its irreproachable
exceptions--"

"In another ten years there will be no exceptions. All that are making
a desperate stand for honesty to-day will be overwhelmed by the
unprincipled element--"

"Or have forced it to reform. The good in human nature predominates; we
are a healthy infant, and do not know the meaning of the word
'decadent;' and we are extraordinarily clever. Senator Burleigh says
that you can always bank on the American people going right in the end.
They may not bother for a long time, but when they do wake up they make
things hum."

"Senator Burleigh evidently has all the easy-going optimism of this
country. But, Betty, I am no more reconciled than I was before to your
having anything to do with these people. Politics have a bad name,
whatever the truth of the matter. I think myself our sensational press
is largely to blame--" "There is nothing so interesting as the pursuit
of truth," said Betty, lightly. "Reconcile yourself to the sight of me
in pursuit of it--"

"Ah, here you are!" exclaimed a staccato voice. Sally Carter entered
the room, kissed Betty, shook hands heartily with Emory, and threw
herself into a chair. Her fortune equalled Betty's, but it was her
pleasure to wear frocks so old and so dowdy that her friends wondered
where they had come from originally. She had been a handsome girl, and
her blue eyes were still full of fire, her fair hair abundant, but her
face was sallow and lined from many attacks of malarial fever. Her
manner was breezy and full of energy, and she was not only popular but
a very important person indeed. She lived alone with her father in the
old house in K Street and entertained rarely, but she had strawberry
leaves on her coronet, and it was currently reported that when she
arrived in England, clad in a rusty black serge and battered
turban,--which she certainly slept in at intervals during the day,--she
was met in state by the entire ducal family--including a prolific
connection--whose ancestor had founded the great house of Carter in the
British colonies of North America. What their private opinion was of
this representative of the American dukedom was never quite clear to
the Washington mind, but to know Sally Carter in her own city meant
complete social recognition, and not to know her an indifferent success.

"Senator North tells me that he met you the other day and would like to
meet you again," she said to Betty, who lifted her head with attention.
"I dropped in on my way here for a little call on Mrs. North, poor
dear! There's a real invalid for you--something the matter with her
spine--is liable to paralysis any minute. It must be so cheerful to sit
round and anticipate that. Why on earth do women let their nerves run
away with them, in the first place? Nerves in this country are a
mixture of climate, selfishness, and stupidity. I could be as nervous
as a witch, but I won't. I walk miles every day and don't think about
myself. Well! I told Mr. North all about the bold course of the young
lady weary of frivolities, and he seemed much interested, paid you some
compliment or other, I've forgotten what. He said he would look out for
you in the Senate gallery and go up and speak to you--"

Emory rose with an exclamation of disgust. "I hope you told him to do
nothing of the kind."

"On the contrary, I told him not to forget, for as Betty would sail her
little yacht on the political sea, I wanted her to be recognized by the
men-of-war, not by the trading-ships and pirates."

Emory threw away his cigar. "I think I will go in and see my aunt," he
said. "All this is most distasteful to me."

He left the room, followed by Betty's mocking laugh. But Miss Carter
said with a sigh,--

"He can't expect us all to live up to his ideals. It is better not to
have any, like my practical self. But I'm afraid he sits out there in
his damp old library and dreams of a world in which all the men are Sir
Galahads and all the women Madame Rolands. He is an ideal himself, if
he only knew it; I've always been half in love with him. Well, Betty,
how do you like your new toy? After all, what is even a Senate but a
toy for a pretty woman? That is really your attitude, only you don't
know it. Life is serious only for women with babies and bills. As for
charities, they were specially invented to give old maids like myself
an occupation in life. What--what--should I have done without charities
when Society palled?"

"Why did you never marry, Sally?" asked Betty, abruptly. The question
never had occurred to her before, but as she asked it her eyes
involuntarily moved to the empty chair before the window.

"What on earth should I do with a husband?" asked Miss Carter, lightly.
"I only love men when they are in bronze in the public parks. Poor dear
old General Lathom proposed to me four times, and the only time I felt
like accepting him was when I saw his statue unveiled. I couldn't put a
man on a pedestal to save my life, but when my grateful country does it
I'm all humble adoration. Could you idealize a live thing in striped
trousers and a frock coat?"

"Woolen is hopeless," said Betty, with an attempt at playfulness. "We
must do the best we can with the inner man."

"How on earth do you know what a man is like on the inside? Idealize is
the right word, though. Women make a god out of what they cannot
understand in a man. If he has a bad temper, they think of him as a
'dominant personality.' If he is unfaithful to his wife, he is romantic
in the eyes of a woman who has given no man a chance to be unfaithful
to her. If he comes to your dinner with an attack of dyspepsia, you
compare him sentimentally with the brutes that eat. _You_ haven't
married yet, I notice, and you are on the corner of twenty-seven."

"American men don't give you a chance to idealize them," said Betty,
plaintively. "They tell you all about themselves at once. And although
Englishmen have more mystery and provoke your curiosity, they don't
understand women and don't want to; the women can do the adapting. I
never could stand that; and as I can't endure foreigners I'm afraid I
shall die an old maid. That's the reason I've gone into politics--"

The butler announced that Senator Burleigh was in the parlor.

"What of his inner man?" asked Sally.

"I never have given it two thoughts. But his outer is all that could be
desired."

"He would look well in bronze. I understand that his State thinks a lot
of him: as you know, I read the _Post_ and _Star_ through every day to
papa. I _have_ to know something of politics."

They found Senator Burleigh talking to Mrs. Madison, apparently
oblivious of her frigid attempt at tolerance and of Emory's sullen
silence. Sally Carter's eyes flashed with amusement, and she shook the
Senator warmly by the hand.

"Such a very great pleasure!" she announced in her staccato tones. "Now
the only time I really allow myself pride is when I meet the statesmen
of my country. I am sure that is the way you feel, dear Cousin
Molly--is it not? We are such oysters, the few of us who always have
lived here, that a whiff from the political world puts new life into
us."

Emory left the room. Burleigh looked surprised but gratified, and
assured her that it was the greatest possible pleasure as well as an
honour to meet Miss Carter. He appeared to have left his businesslike
manner on Capitol Hill, and he was even less abrupt than on the night
of the dinner. Only his exuberant vitality seemed out of place in that
dark old room, and it was an effort for him to keep his sonorous voice
in check.

"Mrs. Madison says she takes no interest in politics," he added, "and
fears to be a wet blanket on the conversation. I have been assuring her
that on one day of the week politics are non-existent so far as I am
concerned."

Mrs. Madison, who had been staring at Sally Carter, replied with an
evident attempt to be agreeable, "Of course I always find it
interesting to hear people talk about what they understand best."
"Politics are what I should like to understand least. Since I have come
to the Senate I have endeavoured to forget all I ever knew about them.
I rely upon my friends to keep me in office while I am making a
desperate attempt to become a fair-minded legislator."

He spoke lightly. Betty could not determine whether he was posing or
telling the simple truth to people who would be glad to take him at his
word. There was a twinkle of amusement in his eye; but he looked too
impatient for even the milder sort of hypocrisy.

Mrs. Madison thawed visibly. "You younger men should try to restore the
old ideals," she said.

"Ah, madam," he replied, "if you only knew what the censors said about
the old ideals when they were alive! If Time will be as kind to us, we
can swallow our own dose with a reasonable amount of philosophy. John
Quincy Adams arraigned the politics of his day in the bitterest phrases
he could create; but to-day we are asked to remember the glorious past
and hide our heads."

The Montgomery's entered the room. Randolph, who was as tall as Senator
Burleigh and very slender, looked so distinguished that Mrs. Madison
immediately decided to remember only that his family was as old as her
own. He had lost none of the repose he had found during his three
years' residence in Europe, but the effort to keep it in the House had
made his handsome face thin and touched his mouth with cynicism. His
hair was still black, and there were no lines about his cool gray eyes.

"Blessed day of rest!" exclaimed his wife. "I got up just one hour ago.
Do you know, Miss Madison, I paid twenty-six calls on Thursday,
eighteen on Friday and twelve on Saturday? Never marry into political
life."

Senator Burleigh, who had been talking to Miss Carter, turned round
quickly. "Some women are so manifestly made for it," he said, "that it
would be folly for them to attempt to escape their fate."




IX



A month passed. Betty received with Lady Mary on Tuesdays, and under
that popular young matron's wing called on a number of women prominent
in the official life of the dying Administration, whom she received on
Fridays. They were very polite, and returned her calls promptly; but
they did not always remember her name, and her personality and position
impressed but a few of these women, overwhelmed with social duties,
visiting constituents, and people-with-letters. Most of them paid from
fifteen to twenty calls on six days out of seven, and had filled their
engagement books for the season during its first fortnight. Betty was
chagrined at first, then amused. Moreover, her incomplete success
raised the political world somewhat in Mrs. Madison's estimation; she
had expected that her house would be besieged by these temporary
beings, eager for a sniff at Old Washington air. Betty realized that
she must be content to go slowly this winter, and begin to entertain as
soon as the next season opened. Lady Mary took her to four large
receptions, and she was invited to two or three dinners of a
semi-official character; for several women not only fancied her, but
appreciated the fact that the official were not the highest social
honours in the land, and were glad to further her plans.

Senator Burleigh called several times. One day he arrived with a large
package of books: Bryce's "American Commonwealth," a volume containing
the Constitution and Washington's Farewell Address, and several of the
"American Statesmen" monographs.

"Read all these," he said dictatorially. ("He certainly takes me very
seriously," thought Betty. "Doubtless he'll stand me in a corner with
my face to the wall if I don't get my lessons properly.") "I want you
to acquire the national sense. I don't believe a woman in this country
knows the meaning of the phrase. Study and think over the characters of
the men who created this country: Washington and Hamilton,
particularly. You'll know what I mean when you've read these little
volumes; and then I'll bring you some thirty volumes containing the
letters and despatches and communications to Congress of these two
greatest of all Americans. I don't know which I admire most. Hamilton
was the most creative genius of his century, but the very fact that he
was a genius of the highest order makes him hopeless as a standard. But
all men in public life who desire to attain the highest and most
unassailable position analyze the character of Washington and ponder
over it deeply. There never was a man so free from taint, there never
was such complete mental poise, there never was such cold, rarified,
unerring judgment. The man seems to us--who live in a turbulent day
when the effort to be and to remain high-minded makes the brain
ache--to have been nothing less than inspired. And his political wisdom
is as sound for to-day as for when he uttered it; although, for the
life of me, I cannot help disregarding his admonition to keep hands out
of foreign pie, this time. I want the country to go to the rescue of
Cuba, and I'll turn over every stone I can to that end."

Betty had listened to him with much interest. "Would Washington have
gone?" she asked. "Would he advise it now, supposing he could?"

"No, I don't believe he would. Washington had a brain of ice, and his
ideal of American prosperity was frozen within it. He would fear some
possible harm or loss to this country, and the other could be left to
the care of an all-merciful Providence. I love my country with as sound
a patriotism as a man may, and I revere the memory of Washington, but I
have not a brain of ice, and I think a country, like a man, should
think of others besides itself. And the United States has got to that
point where almost nothing could hurt it. A few months' patriotic
enthusiasm, for that matter, would do it no end of good. If you care to
listen, I'll read the Farewell Address to you."

He read it in his sonorous rolling voice, that must have done as much
to make him a popular idol in his State as his more distinguished gifts
for public life. Betty decided that the more senatorial he was the
better she liked him. She knew that he was a favourite with men, and
had a vague idea that men, when in the exclusive society of their own
sex, always told witty anecdotes, but she could not imagine herself
making small talk with Senator Burleigh. Her day for small talk,
however, she fervently hoped was over.

She had seen Senator North again but once. Lady Mary Montgomery gave a
great evening reception, as magnificent an affair of the sort as Betty
was likely to see in Washington. It was given in honour of a
distinguished Englishman, who, rumour whispered, had come over in the
interests of the General Arbitration Treaty between the United States
and Great Britain, now at the mercy of the Committee on Foreign
Relations. There was another impression, equally alive in Washington
that Lady Mary aspired to be the historic link between the two
countries. Certain it was that the Secretary of State, the British
Ambassador, and the Committee on Foreign Relations dined and called
constantly at her house. The Distinguished Guest had called on her
every day since his arrival.

Betty knew what others divined; for the friends were inseparable, and
Mary Montgomery was very frank with her few intimates. "Of course I
want the treaty to go through," she had said to Betty, only the day
before her reception; "and I am quite wild to know what the Committee
are doing with it. But of course they will say nothing. Senator Ward
kisses my hand and talks Shakespeare and Socrates to me, and when I use
all my eloquence in behalf of a closer relationship between the two
greatest nations on earth--for I want an alliance to follow this
treaty--he says: _'Ma belle dame sans merci,_ the American language
shall yet be spoken in the British Isles; I promise you that.' He is
one of the few Americans I cannot understand. He has eyes so heavy that
he never looks quite awake, and he is as quick as an Italian's blade in
retort. He has a large and scholarly intellect, and it is almost
impossible to make him serious. You never see him in his chair on the
floor of the Senate, although he sometimes drifts across the room with
a cigar in the hollow of his hand, and he is admittedly one of its
leading spirits, and the idol of a Western State--of all things!
Senator North is the reverse of transparent, but sometimes he goes to
the point in a manner which leaves nothing to be desired. He is not on
the Committee of Foreign Relations, so I asked him point blank the
other day if he thought the treaty would go through and if he did not
mean to vote for it. He is usually as polite as all men who are
successful in politics and like women, but he gave a short and brutal
laugh. 'Lady Mary,' he said, 'when some of my colleagues were
cultivating their muscles on the tail of your lion in the winter of
1895, I told them what I thought of them in language which only
senatorial courtesy held within bounds. If the Committee on Foreign
Relations--for whose members I have the highest respect: they are
picked men--should do anything so foolish and so unpatriotic as to
report back that treaty in a form to arouse the enthusiasm of the
British press, I fear I should disregard senatorial courtesy. But the
United States Senate does not happen to be composed of idiots, and the
President may amuse himself writing treaties, but he does not make
them.'

"Then I asked him if he had no sentiment, if he did not think the
spirit of the thing fine: the union of the great English-speaking
races; and he replied that he saw no necessity for anything of the
sort: we did very well on our separate sides of the water; and as for
sentiment, we were like certain people,--much better friends while
coquetting than when married. He added that the divorce would be so
extremely painful. I asked him what was to prevent another lover's
quarrel, if there were no ring and no blessing, and he replied: 'Ah
that is another question. To keep out of useless wars with the old
country and to tie our hands fast to her quarrels are two things, and
the one we will do and the other we won't do.'

"That is all he would say, but fortunately there is a less conservative
element in the Senate than his, although I believe they all become
saturated with that Constitution in time. I can see it growing in
Senator Burleigh."

All elements had come to her reception to-night. Ambassadors and Envoys
Extraordinary were there in the full splendour of their uniforms. So
were Generals and Admirals; and the women of the Eastern Legations had
come in their native costumes. The portly ladies of the Cabinet were as
resplendent as their position demanded, and the aristocracy of the
Senate and the women of fashion were equally fine. Other women were
there, wives of men important but poor, who walked unabashed in
high-neck home-made frocks; and their pretty daughters, were as simple
as themselves. One wore a cheese-cloth frock, and another a blue
merino. The dames of the Plutocracy were there, blazing with converted
capital,--Westerners for the most part, with hogsheads of money, who
had come to the City of Open Doors to spend it. It was seldom they were
in the same room with the Old Washingtonians, and when they were they
sighed; then reminded themselves of recent dinners to people whose
names were half the stock in trade of the daily press. Sally Carter,
who regarded them through her lorgnette with much the same impersonal
interest as she would accord to actors on the boards, wore a gown of
azure satin trimmed with lace whose like was not to be found in the
markets of the world. Her hair was elaborately dressed, and her thin
neck sufficiently covered by a curious old collar of pearls set with
tiny miniatures. Careless as she was by day, it often suited her to be
very smart indeed by night. She looked brilliant; and Jack Emory, who
had been commanded by Betty to accept Lady Mary's invitation, did not
leave her side. And she snubbed her more worldly-minded followers and
devoted herself to his amusement.

All the men wore evening clothes. It seemed to be an unwritten law that
the politician should have his dress-suit did his wife wear serge for
ever. Consequently they presented a more uniformly fine appearance than
their women, and most of them held themselves with a certain look of
power. Their faces were almost invariably keen and strong. Few of the
younger members of the House were here to-night, only those who had
been in it so many years that they were high in political importance.
Among them the big round form and smooth round head of their present
and perhaps most famous Speaker were conspicuous: the United States was
moving swiftly to the parting of the ways, and there are times when a
Speaker is a greater man than a President.

What few authors Washington boasts were there, as well as Judges of the
Supreme Court, scholars, architects, scientists, and journalists. And
they moved amid great splendour. Lady Mary had thrown open her
ball-room, and the walls looked like a lattice-work of American Beauty
roses and thorns. Great bunches of the same expensive ornament swung
from the ceiling, and the piano was covered with a quilt of them deftly
woven together. The pale green drawing-room was as lavishly decorated
with pink and white orchids and lilies of the valley. Lady Mary felt
that she could vie in extravagance with the most ambitious in her
husband's ambitious land.

Betty was entertaining four Senators, the Distinguished Guest, and the
Speaker of the House when she caught a glimpse of Senator North. She
immediately became a trifle absent, and permitted Senator Shattuc, who
liked to tell anecdotes of famous politicians, to take charge of the
conversation. While he was thinking her the one woman in Washington
charming enough to establish a _salon_, she was congratulating herself
that she should meet Senator North again when she looked her best. She
wore a wonderful new gown of mignonette green and ivory white, and many
pearls in her warm hair and on her beautiful neck. She looked both
regal and girlish, an effect she well knew how to produce. Her head was
thrown back and her eyes were sparkling with triumph as they met
Senator North's. He moved toward her at once.

"I should be stupid to inquire after your health," he said as he shook
her hand. "You are positively radiant. I shall ask instead if you still
find time to come up and see us occasionally, and if we improve on
acquaintance?"

"I go very often indeed, but I have seen you only three times."

"I have been North for a week, and in my Committee Room a good deal
since my return."

Betty was determined not to let slip this opportunity. She resented the
platitudes that are kept in stock by even the greatest minds, and
wished that he would hold out a peremptory arm and lead her to some
quiet corner and talk to her for an hour. But he evidently had a just
man's appreciation of the rights of others, for he betrayed no
intention to do anything of the kind. His eyes dwelt on her with frank
admiration, but Washington is the national headquarters of pretty
women, and he doubtless contented himself with a passing glimpse of
many. And this time Betty felt the full force of the man's magnetism.
She would have liked to put up a detaining hand and hold him there for
the rest of the evening. Even were there no chance for conversation,
she would have liked to be close beside him. She forgot, that he was an
ideal on a pedestal and shot him a challenging glance. "I have hoped
that you would come up to the gallery and call on me," she said
pointedly.

He moved a step closer, then drew back. His face did not change.

"I certainly shall when I am so fortunate as to see you up there," he
said. "But the fourth of March is not far off, and the pressure
accumulates. I am obliged to be in my Committee Room, as well as in
other Committee Rooms, for the better part of every day. But if I can
do anything for you, if there is any one you would care to meet, do not
fail to let me know. Send word to my room, and if possible I will go to
you."


Betty looked at him helplessly. She wanted to ask him to call at her
house on Sunday, but felt a sudden diffidence. After all, why should he
care to call on her? He had more important things to think of; and
doubtless he spent his few leisure hours with some woman far more
brilliant than herself. Her head came down a trifle and she turned it
away. He stood there a moment longer, then said,--

"Good-night," and, after a few seconds' hesitation, and with
unmistakable emphasis: "Remember that it would give me the greatest
possible pleasure to do anything for you I could." Immediately after,
he left the room.

When she was alone an hour later, she anathematized herself for a fool.
Diffidence had no permanent part in her mental constitution. She was
sure that if she could talk with him for thirty consecutive minutes she
could interest him and attach him to her train. Her pride, she felt,
was now involved. She should estimate herself a failure unless she
compelled Senator North to forget the more experienced women of the
political world and spend his leisure hours with her. She had been a
brilliant success in other spheres, she would not fail in this.

But two more weeks passed and she did not see him. He came neither to
the floor of the Senate within her experience of it, nor to the
gallery. Nor did he appear to care for Society. Few of the Senators
did, for that matter. They did not mind dining out, as they had to dine
somewhere, and an agreeable and possibly handsome partner would give
zest to any meal; but they were dragged to receptions and escaped as
soon as they could.




X



Betty rose suddenly from the breakfast-table and went into the library,
carrying a half-read letter. She had felt her face flush and her hand
tremble, and escaped from the servants into a room where she could
think alone for hours, if she wished.

The letter ran as follows:--

THE PARSONAGE, ST. ANDREW, VIRGINIA. To MISS ELIZABETH MADISON:

DEAR MADAM,--I have a communication of a somewhat trying nature to
make, and believe me; I would not make it were not my end very near.
Your father, dear madam, the late Harold Carter Madison, left an
illegitimate daughter by a woman whom he loved for many years, an
octaroon named Cassandra Lee. Before his death he gave poor Cassie a
certain sum of money, and made her promise to leave Washington and
never return. She came here and devoted the few remaining years of her
life to the care of her child. I and my wife were the only persons who
knew her story, and when she was dying we willingly promised to take
the little one. For the last ten years Harriet has lived here in the
parsonage and has been the only child I have ever known,--a dearly
beloved child. She has been carefully educated and is a lady in every
sense of the word. I had until the last two years a little school, and
she was my chief assistant. But the public school proved more
attractive--and doubtless is more thorough--and this passed from me.
Last year my wife died. Now I am going, and very rapidly. I have only
just learned the nature of my illness, and I may be dead before you
receive this letter. I write to beg you to receive your sister. There
is no argument I can use, dear lady, which your own conscience will not
dictate. You will not be ashamed of her. She shows not a trace of the
taint in her blood. The money your father gave Cassie has gone long
since, but Harriet asks no alms of you, only that you will help her to
go somewhere far from those who know that she is not as white as she
looks, and to give her a chance to earn her living. She is well fitted
to be a governess or companion, and no doubt you could easily place
her. But she is lonely and frightened and miserable. Be merciful and
receive her into your home for a time.

"I dare not write this to your mother. She has no cause to feel warmly
to Harriet. But you are young, and wealthy in your own right. Her
future rests with you. Here in this village she can do absolutely
nothing, and after I am buried she will not have enough to keep her for
a month. Answer to her--she bears my name."

I am, dear lady,
               Your humble and obd't servant,
               ABRAHAM WALKER.

P. S. Harriet is twenty-three. She has letters in her possession which
prove her parentage.

Betty's first impulse was to take the next train for St. Andrew. Her
heart went out to the lonely girl, deprived of her only protector,
wretched under the triple load of poverty, friendlessness, and the
curse of race. She remembered vividly those two men in the church whose
bearing expressed more forcibly than any words the canker that had
blighted their manhood. And this girl bore no visible mark of the wrong
that had been done her, and only needed the opportunity to be happy and
respected. Could duty be more plain? And was she a chosen instrument to
right one at least of the great wrongs perpetrated by the brilliant,
warm-hearted, reckless men of her race?

But in a moment she shuddered and dropped the letter, a wave of horror
and disgust rising within her. This girl was her half-sister, and was,
light or dark, a negress. Betty had seen too much of the world in her
twenty-seven years to weep at the discovery of her father's weakness,
or to shrink from a woman so unhappy as to be born out of wedlock; but
she was Southern to her finger-tips: the blacks were a despised, an
unspeakably inferior race, and they had been slaves for hundreds of
years to the white man. To be sure, she loved the old family servants,
and rarely said a harsh word to them, and it was a matter of
indifference to her that they had been freed, as she had plenty of
money to pay their wages. But that the negro should vote had always
seemed to her incredible and monstrous, and she laughed to herself when
she met on the streets the smartly dressed coloured folk out for a
walk. They seemed farcically unreal, travesties on the people to whom a
discriminating Almighty had given the world. To her the entire race
were first slaves, then servants, entitled to all kindness so long as
they kept their place, but to be stepped on the moment they presumed.
She recoiled in growing disgust from this girl with the hidden drop of
black in her body.

But her reasoning faculty was accustomed to work independently of her
brain's inherited impressions. She stamped her foot and anathematized
herself for a narrow-minded creature whose will was weaker than her
prejudices. The girl was blameless, helpless. She might have a mind as
good as her own, be as well fitted to enjoy the higher pleasures of
life. And she might have a beauty and a temperament which would be her
ruin did her natural protectors tell her that she was a pariah, an
outcast, that they could have none of her. Betty conjured her up, a
charming and pathetic vision; but in vain. The repulsion was physical,
inherited from generations of proud and intolerant women, and she could
not control it.

She longed desperately for a confidant and adviser. Her mother she
could not speak to until she had made up her mind. Emory and Sally
Carter would tell her to give the creature an allowance and think no
more about her; and the matter went deeper than that. The girl had
heart and an educated mind; her demands were subtle and complex.
Senator Burleigh? He would laugh impatiently at her prejudices, and
tell her that she ought to go out and live in the free fresh air of the
West. They probably would quarrel irremediably. Mary Montgomery would
only stare. Betty could hear her exclaim: "But why? What? And you say
she is quite white? I do not think that negroes are as nice as white
people, of course; but I cannot understand your really tragic aversion."

There was only one person to whom it would be a luxury to talk, Senator
North. She knew that he would not only understand but sympathize with
her, and she was sure he would give her wise counsel. She regretted
bitterly that she had not been able to make a friend of him, as she had
of several of his colleagues. She would have sent for him without
hesitation.

She glanced at the clock; it pointed to ten minutes past ten. He was
doubtless at that moment in his Committee Room looking over his
correspondence. She knew that Senators received letters at the rate of
a hundred a day, and were early risers in consequence. If only she
dared to go to him, if only he were not so desperately busy. But he had
intimated that he had leisure moments, had taken the trouble to say
that it would give him pleasure to serve her. Why should he not? What
if he were a Senator? Was she not a Woman? Why should she of all women
hesitate to demand a half-hour's time of any man? She needed advice,
must have it: a decision should be reached in the next twenty-four
hours. Not for a second did she admit that she was building up an
excuse for the long-desired interview with Senator North. She was a
woman confronted with a solemn problem. Her coupe was at the door; she
had planned a morning's shopping. She ran upstairs and dressed herself
for the street, wondering what order she would give the footman. She
changed her mind hurriedly twenty times, but was careful to select the
most becoming street-frock she possessed, a gentian blue cloth trimmed
with sable. There were three hats to match it, and she tried on each,
to the surprise of her maid, who usually found her easy to please. She
finally decided upon a small toque which was made to set well back from
her face into the heavy waves of her hair. She was too wise to wear a
veil, for her complexion was flawless, her forehead low and full, and
her hair arranged loosely about it; she wore no fringe.

As the footman closed the door of the coupe and she said curtly, "The
Capitol," she knew that her mind had made itself up in the moment that
it had conceived the possibility of a call upon Senator North.

That point settled, she was calm until she reached the familiar
entrance to the Senate wing, and rehearsed the coming interview.

But her cheeks were hot and her knees were trembling as she left the
elevator and hurried down the corridor to the Committee Room which
Burleigh, when showing her over the building one morning, had pointed
out as Senator North's. She never had felt so nervous. She wondered if
women felt this sudden terror of the outraged proprieties when
hastening to a tryst of which the world must know nothing. And she was
overwhelmed with the vivid consciousness that she was actually about to
demand the time and attention of one of the busiest and most eminent
men in the country. If it had not been for a stubborn and long-tried
will, she would have turned and run.

A mulatto was sitting before the door. When she asked, with a
successful attempt at composure, for Senator North, he demanded her
card. She happened to have one in her purse, and he went into the room
and closed the door, leaving her to be stared at by the strolling
sight-seers.

The mulatto reopened the door and invited her to enter a large room
with a long table, a bookcase, and a number of leather chairs. Before
he had led her far, Senator North appeared within the doorway of an
inner room.

"I am glad to see you," he said. "I know that you are in trouble or you
would not have done me this honour. It is an honour, and as I told you
before I shall feel it a privilege to serve you in any way. Sit here,
by the fire."

Betty felt so grateful for his effort to put her at her ease, so
delighted that he was all her imagination had pictured, and had not
snubbed her in what she conceived to be the superior senatorial manner,
that she flung herself into the easy-chair and burst into tears.

Senator North knew women as well as a man can. He let the storm pass,
poked the already glowing fire, and lowered two of the window-shades.

"I feel so stupid," said Betty, calming herself abruptly. "I have no
right to take up your time, and I shall say what I have to say and go."

"I have practically nothing to do for the next hour. Please consider it
yours."

Betty stole a glance at him. He was leaning back in his chair regarding
her intently. It was impossible to say whether his eyes had softened or
not, but he looked kind and interested.

"I never have told you that your father was a great friend of mine," he
said. "You really have a claim on me." In spite of the fact that the
Congressional Directory gave him sixty years, he looked anything but
fatherly. Although there never was the slightest affectation of youth
in his dress or manner, he suggested threescore years as little. So
strong was his individuality that Betty could not imagine him having
been at any time other than he was now. He was Senator North, that was
the rounded fact; years had nothing to do with him.

"Well, I'm glad you knew papa; it will help you to understand. I--But
perhaps you had better read this."

She took the clergyman's letter from her muff, and Senator North put on
a pair of steel-rimmed eyeglasses and read it. When he had finished he
put the eyeglasses in his pocket, folded the letter, and handed it to
her. He had read the contents with equal deliberation. It seemed
impossible that he would act otherwise in any circumstance.

"Well?" he said, looking keenly at her. "What are you going to do about
it?"

"I am ashamed to tell you how I have felt. But we Southerners feel so
strongly on--on--that subject--it is difficult to explain!"

"We Northerners know exactly how you feel," he said dryly. "We should
be singularly obtuse if we did not. However, do not for a moment
imagine that I am unsympathetic. We all have our prejudices, and the
strongest one is a part of us. And for the matter of that, the average
American is no more anxious to marry a woman with negro blood in her
than the Southerner is, and looks down upon the Black from almost as
lofty a height. Only our prejudice is passive, for he is not the
constant source of annoyance and anxiety with us that he is with you."

"Then you understand how repulsive it is to me to have a sister who is
white by accident only, and how torn I am between pity for her and a
physical antipathy that I cannot overcome?"

"I understand perfectly."

"That is why I have come to you--to ask you what I _must_ do. This is
the first time I have been confronted by a real problem; my life has
been so smooth and my trials so petty. It is too great a problem for me
to solve by myself, and I could not think of anybody's advice but yours
that--that I would take," she finished, with her first flash of humour.

"I fully expect you to take the advice I am going to give you. Your
duty is plain; you must do all you can for this girl. But by no means
receive her into your house until you have made her acquaintance. Take
the ten o'clock B. & O. to-morrow morning and go to St. Andrew; it is
about four hours' journey and on the line of the railroad. Spend
several hours with the girl, and, if she is worth the trouble, bring
her back with you and do all you can for her: it would be cruel and
heartless to refuse her consolation if she is all this old man
describes--and you are not cruel and heartless. And if this drop of
black blood is abhorrent to you, think what it must be to her. It is
enough to torment a high-strung woman into insanity or suicide. On the
other hand, if she is common, or looks as if she had a violent temper,
or is conceited and self-sufficient like so many of that hybrid race,
settle an income on her and send her to Europe: in placing her above
temptation you will have done your duty."

"But that is the whole point--to be sure that _you_ do the right thing."

"I almost hope she will be impossible, so that I can wipe her off the
slate at once. Otherwise it will be a terrible problem."

"It is no problem at all. There is no problem in plain duty. Problems
exist principally in works of fiction and in the minds of unoccupied
women. If you meet each development of every question in the most
natural and reasonable manner,--presupposing that you possess that
highest attribute of civilization, common-sense,--no question will ever
resolve itself into a problem. And difficulties usually disappear as
the range of vision contracts. If your house takes fire, you save what
you can, not what you have elaborately planned to save in case of fire.
Train your common-sense and let the windy analysis pertaining to
problems alone."

"But how can I ever get over the horror of the thing, Mr. North?"

"You will forget all about it when she has been your daily companion
for a few weeks. If she lacked a nose, you would as soon cease to
remember it. If this girl is worth liking, you will like her, and soon
cease to feel tragic. Leave that to her!"

"I know that you are right, and of course I shall take your advice. I
did not come here to trouble you for nothing. But if I liked her at
first and not afterward--"

"Pack her off to Europe. Europe will console an American woman for
every ill in life. If you take the right attitude in the beginning, it
all rests with her after that. You will have but one duty further. If
she wishes to marry, you must tell the man the truth, if she will not.
Don't hesitate on that point a moment. Her children are liable to be
coal-black. That African blood seems to have a curse on it, and the
curse is usually visited on the unoffending."

"I will, I will," said Betty. She rose, and he rose also and took her
hand in both of his. She felt an almost irresistible desire to put her
head on his shoulder, for she was tired and depressed.

"Your attitude in the matter is the important thing to me," he said.
"That is why I have spoken so emphatically. You are a child yet, in
spite of your twenty-seven years and your admirable intelligence. This
is practically your first trial, the first time you have been called
upon to make a decision which, either way, is bound to have a strong
effect on your character, and to affect still greater decisions you may
be called upon to make in the future. You have only one defect; you are
not quite serious enough--yet."

"I feel very serious just now," said Betty, with a sigh; and in truth
she did, and her new-found sister was not the only thing that perplexed
her.

"One of these days you will be a singularly perfect woman," he added,
and then he dropped her hand and walked to the door. As he was about to
open it, she touched his arm timidly.

"Will you come and see me on Sunday?" she asked. "I shall have been
through a good deal between now and then, and I shall want--I shall
want to talk to you."

"I will come," he said.

"Not before half-past four. My mother will be asleep then, and my
cousin, Jack Emory, have gone home--there will be so many things I
shall want to talk to you about."

"I shall be there at half-past four," he said. "Good-bye. Good-bye."




XI



Betty went home to her room and cried steadily for an hour. She would
not analyze the complex source of her emotions, but addressed a bitter
reproach to her father's shade; and she reassured herself by frankly
admitting that it would give her pleasure to win the approval of
Senator North.

She bathed her eyes and went to her mother's room. The sooner that
ordeal was over, she reflected, the better. Mrs. Madison was reading an
amusing novel and looked up with a smile, then pushed the book aside.

"Have you been crying, darling?" she asked. "What can be the matter?"

Betty told her story without preamble. Her mother's nerves could stand
a shock, but not three minutes of uncertainty. Mrs. Madison listened
with more equanimity than Betty anticipated.

"I suppose I may consider myself fortunate that I have not had one of
his brats thrust on me before," she remarked philosophically. "What are
we to do about this creature?"

"There is only one human thing to do. It is not her fault, and she is
very wretched at present. And now that I know the truth I suppose I am
as responsible as my father would be if he were alive. I shall go to
see her to-morrow, and if she is presentable and seems good I shall
bring her to Washington. Of course I shall not bring her here without
your permission--it is your house. Let me read you his letter."

"Do you feel very strongly on the subject?" Mrs. Madison asked when
Betty had finished.

"Oh, I do! I do! I will promise not to bring her to Washington at all
if she is impossible, but if she is all I feel sure she must be, let me
bring her here for a few weeks, until we have decided what to do for
her. I know it is a great deal to ask--her presence cannot fail to be
hateful to you--"

"My dear, I have outlived any feeling of that sort, and I have not put
everything on your shoulders all these years to thwart you now, when
you feel so deeply. Moreover, an old memory came to me while you were
reading that letter. When I was a little girl, about eight or ten, I
spent an entire summer with Aunt Mary Eager at her home in Virginia.
She had a house full, and there were five other little girls beside
myself. A brook ran across the foot of the plantation, and we were very
fond of playing there. Directly across was the hut of a freed slave who
had a little girl about our own age. The child was a beautiful
octaroon. I can see her plainly, with her honey-coloured skin, her
immense black eyes, her long straight black hair, and her stiff little
white frock tucked to the waist. Her mother took the greatest pride in
her, and was always changing her clothes.

"Every day she used to come to the edge of her side of the brook and
watch us. We never noticed her, for although we often played with the
little black piccaninnies, the yellow child of a freed slave was
another matter. One day--I think she had watched us for about a
week--she came half-way across the bridge. We stared at each other, but
took no notice of her. The next day she walked straight across and up
to us, and asked us very nicely if she might play with us. We turned
upon her six scarlet scandalized faces, and what we said, in what
brutal child language, I do not care to repeat. The child stared at us
for a moment as if she were looking into the Inferno itself, and I
expect she was, poor little soul! Then she gave a cry, and tore across
the bridge and up the 'pike as hard as she could run. As long as we
could see her she was running, and as I never saw her again--we avoided
the brook after that--it seemed to me for years as if she must be
running still. And for years those flying feet haunted me, and I used
to long as I grew older to do penance in some way. I befriended many a
poor yellow girl, hoping she might be that child. Then life grew too
sad for me to remember the sins of my childhood. But I like the idea of
making penance at this late day and receiving this girl for a few weeks
into my house: it will be a penance, for I do not fancy sitting at the
table with a woman with negro blood in her veins, I can assure you. But
I shall do it. I believe if I did not I should be haunted again by
those little flying feet. There is no chance of this being her
daughter, for she would have been too old to attract your father's
fancy. But that is not the point. I make one condition. No one must
know the truth, not even Sally or Jack. She must pass for a distant
relative, left suddenly destitute." "She would probably be the last to
wish the truth known. But you have taken a weight off my mind, Molly
dear, and I am deeply grateful to you."




XII



The next day Betty left the train a few minutes after two o'clock and
walked up the winding street of a small village to the parsonage. She
passed a number of cottages picturesquely dilapidated, a store in which
a half-dozen men were smoking, and about thirty lounging negroes. On
rising ground was a large house, but the village looked forlorn,
neglected, almost lifeless.

The men in the store came out and stared at her; so did the women from
the cottages. And the negroes stood still. Doubtless they thought her a
wealthy vision; the day was cold, and she wore a brown cloth dress and
a sable jacket and toque.

"What a life for an intelligent woman!" she thought, glancing about her
with deep distaste. "It would be enough to induce melancholia without
the 'taint.'"

She had made a desperate effort in the last twenty-four hours to
overcome her repugnance, but had only succeeded in making sure that she
could conceal it. She had recalled her interview with Senator North
again and again. His indubitable interest gave her courage, and a
desire to use the best that was in her. And she had turned her mind
more often still to those men in the church and the sentiments they had
inspired. The shutters of the parsonage were closed, there was crape on
the door. Betty turned the knob and entered. A number of people were in
a room on the right of the hall. At the head of the room, barely
out-lined in the heavy shadows, was a coffin on its trestle.

The house smelt musty and damp. Betty pushed back the door and let in
the bright winter sunlight. Some one rose from the group beside the
coffin and came slowly forward. Betty waited, clinching her hands in
her muff, her breath coming shorter. The dark figure in the dark room
looked like the shadow of death itself. But it was not superstition
that made Betty brace herself. In a moment the figure had stepped into
the sunlight beside her.

Betty had imagined the girl handsome; she was not prepared for splendid
beauty. Harriet Walker was far above the ordinary height of woman, and
very slender and graceful. Her hair and eyes were black, her skin
smooth and white, her features aquiline. Hauteur should have been her
natural expression, but her eyes were dreamy and melancholy, her mouth
discontented. Betty, in that first rapid survey, detected but two flaws
in her beauty: her chin was weak and her hands were coarse.

"You are Miss Madison," she said, with the monotonous inflection of
grief. "Thank you for coming."

"I am your half-sister," said Betty, putting out her hand. And then the
desire to use the best that was in her overcame the repugnance that
made her very knees shake, and she put her arms about the girl and
kissed her.

"You are mighty kind," said the other. "Will you come into my room?"
Betty followed her into a small room, simpler than any in her own
servants' quarter. But it was neat, and there was an attempt at
smartness in the bright calico curtains and bedspread. The furniture
looked home-made, and there was no carpet on the floor.

"Poor girl! poor girl!" exclaimed Betty, impulsively. "Have you ever
been happy--here?"

"Well, I don't reckon I've been very happy, ever; but I've given some
happiness and I've been loved and sheltered. That is something to be
thankful for in this world."

"I am going to take you away," said Betty, abruptly. "Mr. Walker wrote
me that you'd be willing to come."

"Oh, yes, I'll go, I reckon. I told him I would. I want to hold up my
head. Here I never have, for everybody knows. The white men all round
here insulted me until they got tired of trying to make me notice them.
One of the young men up on the plantation fell in love with me, and
they sent him away and he was drowned at sea. He never knew that I had
the black in my blood, and he had asked me to marry him. They did not
tell him the truth, for they feared he would then wish to make me his
mistress."

She spoke without passion, with a deep and settled melancholy, as if
her intelligence had forbidden her to combat the inevitable. Betty
burst into tears.

"Don't cry," said the other. "I never do--any more. I used to. And if
you'll kindly take me away, I know I'll feel as if I were born over. If
there is anything in this world to enjoy, be right sure I shall enjoy
it. I'm young yet, and I reckon nobody was made to be sad for ever."

"You shall be happy," exclaimed Betty. "I will see to that. I pledge
myself to it. I will make you forget--everything."

Harriet shook her head. "Not everything. Somewhere in my body, hidden
away, but there, is a black vein, the blood of slaves. I might get to
be happy with lots of books and kind people and no one to despise me
for what I can't help, but every night I'd remember _that_, and then I
reckon I'd feel mighty bad."

"You think so now," said Betty, soothingly, and longing for consolation
herself. "But when you are surrounded by friends who love you for what
you are, by all that goes to make life comfortable and--and--gay; it
seems terribly soon to speak of it, but I shall take you to all the
theatres and buy you beautiful clothes, and I shall settle on you what
your father left me: it is only right you should have it and feel
independent. You will travel and see all the beautiful things in
Europe. Oh, I know that in time you will forget. When you are away from
all that reminds, you cannot fail to forget."

Harriet, who had followed Betty's words with an eager lifting of her
heavy eyelids and almost a smile on her mouth, brought her lips
together as Betty ceased speaking, and held out her hand.

"Do you see nothing?" she asked.

Betty took the hand in hers. "What do you mean?" she demanded. "All
that--the roughness--will wear off. It will be gone in a month."

"There is something there that will never wear off. Look right hard at
the finger-nails."

Betty lifted the hand to her face, vaguely recalling observations of
her mother when discussing suspicious looking brunettes seen in the
North. There was a faint bluish stain at the base of the nails; and she
remembered. It was the outward and indelible print of the hidden vein
within. The nails are the last stronghold of negro blood. She dropped
the hand with an uncontrollable shudder and covered her face with her
muff.

"I feel so horribly sorry for you," she said hastily. "It seemed to me
for the moment as if your trouble were my own."

If the girl understood, she made no sign; hers had been a life of
self-control, and she had been despised from her birth.

"Tell me what you wish me to do now," said Betty, lifting her head.
"When can you leave here? Do you wish me to stay with you? Is it
impossible for you to go to-day?"

"I cannot leave him until he is buried. And you couldn't stay here.
This is Tuesday. I'll go Thursday."

Betty thrust a roll of bills into a drawer. "They are yours by right,"
she said hurriedly. "Go first to Richmond and get a handsome black
frock; you will be sure to find what you want ready made, and it will
be better--on account of the servants--for you to look well when you
arrive. Spend it all. There is plenty more. Buy all sorts of nice
things. I will go now. There is a train soon. Telegraph when you start
for Washington and I will meet you. Good by, and please be sure that I
shall make you happy."

Harriet walked out to the gate, and Betty saw that there were fine
lines on her brow and about her mouth. But she was very beautiful,
sombre and blighted as she was. She clung to Betty for a moment at
parting, then went rapidly into the house.

When Betty reached the street, she restrained an impulse to run, but
she walked faster than she had ever walked in her life, persuading
herself that she feared to miss her train. She waited three quarters of
an hour for it, and there were four dreary hours more before she saw
the dome of the Capitol. She arrived at home with a splitting headache
and an animal craving to lock herself in her room and get into bed. For
the time being no mortal interested her, she was exhausted and
emotionless. She described the interview briefly to her mother, then
sought the solitude she craved. And as she was young and healthy, she
soon fell asleep.




XIII



When she awoke next morning she arose and dressed herself at once: in
bed the will loses its control over thought, and she wished to think as
little as possible. But her mind reverted to the day before, in spite
of her will, and she laughed suddenly and went to her desk and wrote on
a slip of paper,--

"Every woman writes with one eye on the page and one eye on some man,
except the Countess Hahn-Hahn, who has only one eye."--HEINE.

"Some day when I know him better I will give him this," she thought,
and put the slip into a drawer by itself.

The load of care had lifted itself and gone. She had done the right
thing, the momentous question was settled for the present, and Betty
Madison had merely to shake her shoulders and enjoy life again. She
threw open the window and let in the sun. There had been a rain-storm
in the night and then a severe frost. The ice glistened on the naked
trees, encasing and jewelling them. A park near by looked as if the
crystal age of the world had come. The bronze equestrian statue within
that little wood of radiant trees alone defied the ice-storm, as if the
dignity of the death it represented rebuked the lavish hand of Nature.

Betty felt happy and elated, and blew a kiss to the beauty about her.
She always had had a large fund of the purely animal joy in being
alive, but to-day she was fully conscious that the tremulous quality of
her gladness was due to the knowledge that she should see Senator North
within five more days and the light of approval in his eyes. Exactly
what her feeling for him was she made no attempt to define. She did not
care. It was enough that the prospect of seeing him made her happier
than she ever had felt before. That might go on indefinitely and she
would ask for nothing more. Her recent contact with the
serious-practical side of life--as distinct from the
serious-intellectual which she had cultivated more than once--had
terrified her; she wanted the pleasant, thrilling, unformulated part.
For the first time one of her ideals had come forth from the mists of
fancy and filled her vision as a man; and he was become the strongest
influence in her life. As yet he was unaware of this honour, and she
doubtless occupied a very small corner of his thought; but he was
interested at last, and he was coming to see her. And then he would
come again and again, and she would always feel this same glad quiver
in her soul. She felt no regret that she could not marry him; the
question of marriage but brushed her mind and was dismissed in haste.
That was a serious subject, glum indeed, and dark. She was glad that
circumstance limited her imagination to the happy present. She felt
sixteen, and as if the world were but as old. Love and the intellect
have little in common. They can jog along side by side and not exchange
a comment.

"Come down and take a walk," cried a staccato voice. Sally Carter was
standing on the sidewalk, her head thrown back. Betty nodded, put on
her things and ran downstairs. Miss Carter was wrapped in an old cape,
and her turban was on one side, but she looked rosier than usual.

"I've been half-way out to Chevy Chase," she said, "and I was just
thinking of paying poor old General Lathom a visit. He does look so
well in bronze, poor old dear, and all that ice round him will make him
seem like an ogre in fairy-land. He wasn't a bit of an ogre, he was
downright afraid of me."

"I suppose a man really feels as great a fool as he looks when he is
proposing to a woman he is not sure of. I wonder why they ever do.
After I gave up coquetting, came to the conclusion that it wasn't
honest, they proposed just the same."

"Some women unconsciously establish a habit of being proposed to. I've
had very few proposals, and I know several really beautiful women who
have had practically none. As I said, it's a habit, and you can't
account for it."

"I went yesterday to Virginia to call on a relative who has just lost
her last adopted parent," said Betty, abruptly, "and she looked so
forlorn that I asked her to visit us for a while. I hope you'll like
her."

"Ah? She must be some relation of mine, too. You and I are third
cousins."

"Don't ask me to straighten it out. The ramifications of Southern
kinships are beyond me. She is a beauty--very dark and tragic."

"That is kind of you--to run the risk of Senator Burleigh going off at
a tangent," said Miss Carter, sharply. "By the way, you cannot deny
that you have given him encouragement; you have neither eyes nor ears
for any one else when he is round."

"He is usually the most interesting person 'round;' and I have a
concentrative mind. But I never intend to marry, and Senator Burleigh
has never even looked as if he wanted to propose. By the way, Molly has
actually asked him to come to the Adirondacks for a few days. Can't you
and your father come for a month or two? Jack has promised to stay with
us the whole summer, and we'll be quite a family party."

"Yes, I will," said Miss Carter, promptly. "I haven't been in the
Adirondacks for six years and I should love it."

"Harriet Walker--that's our new cousin--will be with us too, most
likely. She looks delicate, and I shall try to persuade her that she
needs the pines."

"Ah! Look out for the Senator--in the dark pine forests on the
mountain."

"I don't know why you should be so concerned for me. I usually have
kept an admirer as long as I wanted him."

"Oh, no offence, dear. The dark and tragic lady merely filled my eye at
the moment. By the way, Mrs. North thinks of going to the Lake Hotel
this summer. Isn't that close by your place?"

"It is just across the lake. There is your old General. He does look
like an ogre, and he's got a patch of green mould on his nose. You
ought to take better care of him."

"He looks so much better than he did in life that I have no fault to
find. The doctor has told Mrs. North that the pine forests may do her
all the good in the world, prolong her life, and Mr. North has written
to see if he can get an entire wing for her. I hope he can go too, but
he always seems to have so much to do at home in summer. I do like him.
He's the only man I know who, I feel positive, never could make a fool
of himself."

"I am half starved. Come home and have your breakfast with me."

"I should like to. Senator North--"

"There is Mr. Burleigh on horseback--with Mr. Montgomery. He _will_
look well in bronze--but they only put Generals on horseback, don't
they? There--he sees me. I am going to ask them to come in to
breakfast."

"I believe you like him better than you think, my dear. Your eyes shine
like two suns, and I never saw you look so happy."


"The morning is so beautiful and I am so glad that I am alive. I know
exactly how much I like Mr. Burleigh."




XIV



"Do all Southerners make such delicious coffee?" asked Senator
Burleigh, as the four sat about the attractive table in the
breakfast-room.

"The Southerners are the only cooks in the United States," announced
Miss Carter. "The real difference between the South and the North is
that one enjoys itself getting dyspepsia and the other does not."

"There are just six kinds of hot bread on this table," said Burleigh,
meditatively.

"And no pie and no doughnuts. Mr. Montgomery, you are really a
Southerner--ar'n't you glad to get back to darky cooks?"

"I was until we began on this tariff bill, and now there is not an
object you can mention, edible or otherwise, that I don't loathe."

"The details of such a bill must be maddening," said Betty,
sympathetically, "but, after all, it is an honour to be on the Ways and
Means Committee. There is compensation in everything."

"I don't know. When a man lobbyist tries to find out your weak spot and
play on it, you can kick him out of the house, but when they set a
woman at you, all you can do is to bow and say: 'My dear madam, it is
with the greatest regret I am obliged to inform you that I have sat up
every night until three o'clock studying this subject, and that I have
made up my mind.' Whereupon she talks straight ahead and hints at
trouble with certain constituents next year who want free coal and an
exorbitant duty on Zante currants, raisins, wine, and wool. The whole
army of lobbyists have camped on my doorstep ever since we began to
draw up this bill. How they find time to camp on any one's else would
make an interesting study in ubiquity."

"I am afraid some of your ideals have been shattered, and I am afraid
you are shattering some of Miss Madison's," said Burleigh, smiling into
Betty's disgusted face.

"I hate the dirty work of politics," said Montgomery, gloomily. "Of
course it doesn't demoralize you so long as you keep your own hands
clean, but it is sickening to suspect that you are sitting cheek by
jowl in the Committee Room with a man whose pocket is stuffed with some
Trust Company's shares."

"I used to hate it, but I don't see any remedy until we have an
educated generation of high-class politicians, and I think that
millennium is not far off. As matters stand, there is bound to be a
certain percentage of scoundrels and of men too weak to resist a bribe
in a great and shifting body like the House. Any scoundrel feels that
he can slink among the rest unseen. The old members who have been
returned term after term since they began to grow stubby beards on
their cast-iron chins are an argument against rotation; they have had a
chance to acquire the confidence of the public, they are experienced
legislators, and they are incorruptible."

Betty drew a long sigh of relief. "You have cleared up the atmosphere a
little," she said. "I thought I was going to learn that the House, at
least, was one hideous mass of corruption, praying for burial."

"That is what they think of us outside," said Montgomery. "We might as
well all be gangrene, for we get the credit of it."

"I don't like your similes," said Miss Carter; "I haven't finished my
breakfast. Mr. Burleigh, you've put on your senatorial manner and I
like you better without it. I thought you were going to say, 'Don't
interrupt, please,' or 'Would you kindly be quiet until I finish?' at
least twice."

"I beg pardon humbly. I am flattered to know that you have thought it
worth while to listen to any remarks I may have been forced to make in
the Senate."

"I have been twice to the gallery with Betty, and both times you were
talking like a steam-engine and warning people off the track."

It was so apt a description of Burleigh's style when on his feet that
even he laughed.

"I don't like to be interrupted or contradicted," he said, "I frankly
admit it."

"Better not marry an American girl."

"Some Englishwomen have wills of their own," remarked Mr. Montgomery.

"Some men are tyrants in public life and slaves at home--to a beautiful
woman," remarked Senator Burleigh.

"Some men are so clever," said Miss Carter. "Give me another waffle,
please."




XV



Betty went to the Senate Gallery that afternoon for the first time in
several days. It was hard work to keep up with the calling frenzy of
Washington and cultivate one's intellect at the same time. There was no
one in the private gallery but an old man with a hayseed beard and
horny hands. He sat on the first chair in the front row, but rose
politely to let Betty pass; and she took off her veil and jacket and
gloves and settled herself for a comfortable afternoon. She felt almost
as much at home in this family section of the Senate Gallery as in her
own room with a copy of the Congressional Record in her hand. Sometimes
save for herself it would be empty, when every other gallery, but the
Diplomats', of that fine amphitheatre would be nearly full. It was
crowded, however, when it was unofficially known that a favourite
Senator would speak, or an important bill on the calendar provoke a
debate. Leontine no longer accompanied her mistress; she had threatened
to leave unless exempted from political duty.

To-day a distinguished Senator on the other side of the Chamber was
attacking with caustic emphasis a Republican measure. He was the only
man in the Senate with a real Uncle Sam beard. Senator Shattuc's waved
like a golden fan from his powerful jaw; but the Democratic appendage
opposite was long and narrow, and whisked over the Senator's shoulder
like the tail of a comet, when he became heated in controversy. It was
flying about at a great rate to-day, and Betty was watching it with
much interest, when a proud voice remarked in her ear,--

"That's my Senator, marm. He's powerful eloquent, ain't he?"

Betty nodded. "He's quite a leader."

"I allow he is. He's been leadin' in our State fur twenty years. I
allus wanted to hear him speak in Congress, and when I called on him
last Monday--when I come to Washington--he told me to come up here
to-day and hear him, and he would set me in the Senators' Gallery. And
he did."

His voice became a distant humming in Betty's ears. Senator North had
entered and taken his seat. He apparently settled himself to listen to
the speech, and he looked as calm and unhurried as usual.

"That's North," whispered the old man. "There wuz a lady in here a
spell since who pinted a lot of 'em out to me. He looks a little too
hard and stern to suit me. I like the kind that slaps you on the back
and says 'Howdy.' Now Senator North, he never would: I know plenty that
knows him. He's aristocratic; and I don't like his politics, neither. I
allus suspicion that politicians ain't all right when they're
aristocratic."

"He does not happen to be a politician."

"Hey?"

"Don't you want to listen to your Senator? He is very eloquent."

"He's been speakin' fur an hour steady," said the visitor to
Washington, philosophically. "I kinder thought I'd like to talk to you
a spell. Hev you seen the new library?" "Oh, yes; I live here."

"Do ye? Well, you're lucky. For this city's so grand it's jest a
pleasure to walk around. And that Library's the most beautiful buildin'
I ever saw in all my seventy-two years. I've been twice a day to look
at it, and it makes me feel proud to be an Amurrican. If Paradise is
any more beautiful than that there buildin', I do want to go there."

Betty smiled with the swift sympathy she always felt for genuine
simplicity, and the old man's pride in his country's latest achievement
was certainly touching. She refrained from telling him that she thought
the red and yellow ceilings hideous, and delighted him with the
assurance that it was the finest modern building in the world.

"What's happened to ye?" he asked sharply, a moment later. "You've
straightened up and thrown back your head as if ye owned the hull
Senate."

Senator North had wheeled about slowly and glanced up at the private
gallery. Then he had risen abruptly and gone into the cloak-room.

"Perhaps I do," said Betty.

She spoke thickly. It seemed incredible that he was coming up to the
gallery at last. She had another humble moment and felt it to be a
great honour. But she smiled so brilliantly at the old man that he
grinned with delight.

"I presume you're the darter of one of these here Senators," he said;
"one of the rich ones. You look as if ye hed it all your own way in
life, and seein' as you're young and pretty, meanin' no offence, I'm
glad you hev. Is your pa one of the leadin' six?"

"My father is dead." She heard the door open and turned her head
quickly. It was Senator Shattuc who had entered. He walked rapidly down
the aisle, took a seat in the second row of chairs, and gave her a
hearty grip of the hand.

"How are you?" he asked. "I was glad to see you were up here. You
always look so pleased with the world that it does me good to get a
glimpse of you."

Betty liked Senator Shattuc, and held him in high esteem, but at that
moment she would willingly have set fire to his political beard. She
was used to self-control, however, and she chatted pleasantly with him
for ten minutes, while her heart seemed to descend to a lower rib, and
her brain reiterated that eternal question of woman which must
reverberate in the very ears of Time himself.

He came at last, and Senator Shattuc amiably got up and let him pass
in, then took the chair behind the old man and asked him a few
good-natured questions before turning to Betty again.

"I started to come some time ago," said Senator North, "but I was
detained in one of the corridors. It is hard to escape being
buttonholed. This time it was by a young woman from my State who wants
a position in the Pension Office. If it had been a man I should have
ordered him about his business, but of course one of your charming sex
in distress is another matter. However, I got rid of her, and here I
am."

"I knew you were coming. I should have waited for you." Now that he was
there she subdued her exuberance of spirit; but she permitted her voice
to soften and her eyes to express something more than hospitality. He
was looking directly into them, and his hard powerful face was bright
with pleasure.

"It suddenly occurred to me that you might be up here," he said; "and I
lost no time finding out." He lowered his voice. "Did you go? Has it
turned out all right?"

"Yes, I went! I'll tell you all about it on Sunday. I never had such a
painful experience."

"Well, I'm glad you had it. You would have felt a great deal worse if
you had shirked it. However--Yes?"

Senator Shattuc was asking him if he thought the Democratic Senator was
in his usual form.

"No," he said, "I don't. What is he wasting his wind for, anyway? We'll
pass the bill, and he's all right with his constituents. They know
there's no more rabid watch-dog of the Treasury in America."

"I suspect it does him good to bark at us," said Senator Shattuc.

The old man looked uneasy. "Ain't that a great speech?" he asked.

The two Senators laughed. "Well, it's better than some," said Shattuc.
"And few can make a better when he's got a subject worthy of him," he
added kindly.

"That's perlite, seein' as you're a Republican. I allow as I'll go.
Good-day, marm. I'll never forgit as how you told me you'd bin all over
Yurrup and that there ain't no modern buildin' so fine as our new
Library. Good-day to ye, sirs."

Senator Shattuc shook him warmly by the hand. Senator North nodded, and
Betty gave him a smile which she meant to be cordial but was a trifle
absent. She wished that Senator Shattuc would follow him, but he sat
down again at once. He, too, felt at home in that gallery, and it had
never occurred to him that one Senator might be more welcome there than
another. Senator North's face hardened, and Betty, fearing that he
would go, said hurriedly,--

"Ar'n't you ever going to speak again? I have heard you only once."

"I rarely make set speeches, although I not infrequently engage in
debate--when some measure comes up that needs airing."

"You ought to speak oftener, North," said Senator Shattuc. "You always
wake us up."

"You have no business to go to sleep. If I talked when I had nothing to
say, you'd soon cease to be waked up. Our friend over there has put
three of our esteemed colleagues to sleep. He'll clear the galleries in
a moment and interfere with Norris's record.--I suppose you have never
seen that memorable sight," he said to Betty: "an entire gallery
audience get up and walk out when a certain Senator takes the floor?"

"How very rude!"

"The great American public loves a show, and when the show is not to
its taste it has no hesitation in making its displeasure known."

"Why do you despise the great American public? You never raise your
voice so that any one in the second row up here can hear you."

"I have no love for the gallery. Nor do I talk to constituents. When it
is necessary to talk to my colleagues, I do so, and it matters little
to me whether the reporters and the public hear me or not. When my
constituents are particularly anxious to know what stand I have taken
on a certain question, I have the speech printed and send it to them;
but as a rule they take my course for granted and let me alone."

"But tell me, Mr. North," said Betty, squaring about and putting her
questions so pointedly that he, perforce, must answer them, "would you
really not like to make a speech down there that would thrill the
nation, as the speeches of Clay and Webster used to?  And you could
make a speech like that. _Why_ don't you?"

"My dear Miss Madison, if I attempted to thrill the American people by
lofty emotions and an impassioned appeal to their higher selves, I
should only bring down a storm of ridicule from seven-eighths of the
American press. I could survive that, for I should not read it, but my
effort would be thrown away. The people to whom it was directed would
feel ashamed of what thrill was left in it after it had reached them
through the only possible medium. This is the age--in this country--of
hard practical sense without any frills, or thrills. It is true that
there is a certain amount of sham oratory surviving in the Senate, but
the very fact that it is sham protects it from the press. The real
thing would irritate and alarm the spirits of mediocrity and
sensationalism which dominate the press to-day. A sensational speech,
one in which a man makes a fool of himself, it delights in, and it
encourages him by half a column of head-lines. A speech by a great man,
granted that we had one, carried away by lofty patriotism and striving
to raise his country, if only for a moment, to his own pure altitude,
would make the press feel uneasy and resentful, and it would neutralize
every word he uttered by the surest of all acids, ridicule. An American
statesman of to-day must be content to legislate quietly, to use his
intellect and his patriotism in the Committee Room, and to keep a sharp
eye on the bills brought forward by other Committees. As for speeches,
those look best in the Record which make no appeal to the gallery.
There, you cannot say I have not made you a speech!" "Well, make me
another, and tell me why you even consider the power of the press. I
mean, how you bring yourself even to think about it. You have defied
public opinion more than once. You have stood up and told your own
State that it was wrong and that you would not legislate as it
demanded. I am sure you would defy the whole country, if you felt like
it."

"Ah, that is another matter. The hard-headed American respects honest
convictions, especially when they are maintained in defiance of
self-interest. I never shall lose my State by an unwavering policy,
however much I may irritate it for the moment. I could a heterogeneous
Western State, of course, but not a New England one. We are a
conservative, strong-willed race, and we despise the waverer. We are
hard because it always has been a hard struggle for survival with us.
Therefore we know what we want, and we have no desire to change when we
get it. There goes the bell for Executive Session. You and I must go
our different ways."




XVI



"Do you dislike her?" asked Betty anxiously of her mother on the night
of Harriet's arrival. "I do not, and yet I feel that I never can love
her--could not even if it were not for _that_."

"It is that. You never will love her. I cannot say that she has made
any impression on me whatever, so far. She seems positively congealed.
I suppose she is frightened and worn out, poor thing! She may improve
when she is rested and happier."

And the next day, as Betty drove her about the city and showed her the
classic public buildings, the parks, white and glittering under a light
fall of snow, the wide avenues in which no one seemed to hurry, and the
stately private dwellings, Harriet's eyes were wide open with pleasure,
and she sat up straight and alert.

"And I am really to live in this wonderful city?" she exclaimed. "How
long will it be before I shall have seen all the beautiful things
inside those buildings? Do you mean that I can go through all of them?
Why, I never even dreamed that I'd really see the world one day. All I
prayed for was books, more books. And now I'm living in a house with a
right smart library, and you will let me read them all. I don't know
which makes me feel most happy."

"I will ask my cousin, Mr. Emory, to take you to all the galleries, and
you must go to the White House and shake hands with the President."

"Oh, I should like to!" she exclaimed. "I should like to! I should
indeed feel proud." She flushed suddenly and turned away her head.
Betty called her attention hastily to a shop window: they had turned
into F Street. She was determined that the obnoxious subject should
never be mentioned between them if she could help it.

"I'll take you to New York and show you the shops there," she
continued. "New York was invented that woman might appreciate her
superiority over man."

"I'd love a yellow satin dress trimmed with red and blue beads," said
Harriet, thoughtfully.

Betty shuddered. For the moment F Street seemed flaunting with old
Aunty Dinah's bandannas. She replied hurriedly,--

"You will have all sorts of new ideas by the time you go out of
mourning. I suppose you will wear black for a year."

"That makes me think. While I'm in black I can't see your fine friends.
I'd like to study. Could I afford a teacher?"

"You can have a dozen. I've told you that I intend to turn over to you
the money father left me. Mr. Emory will attend to it. You will have
about five hundred dollars a month to do what you like with."

The girl gasped, then shook her head. "I can't realize that sum," she
said. "But I know it's riches, and I wish--I wish _he_ were alive."

"If he were you would not have it, for I should not know of you. You
will enjoy having a French teacher and a Professor of Belles Lettres.
Have you any talent for music?"

"I can play the banjo--"

"I mean for the piano."

"I never saw one till yesterday, so I can't say. But I reckon I could
play anything."

Her Southern brogue was hardly more marked than Jack Emory's, but she
mispronounced many of her words and dropped the final letters of
others: she said "hyah" for "here" and "do'" for "door," and once she
had said "done died." Betty determined to give special instructions to
the Professor.

Senator Burleigh and Emory dined at the house that evening, and
although Harriet was shy, and blushed when either of the men spoke to
her the deep and tragic novelty of their respectful admiration finally
set her somewhat at her ease, and she talked under her breath to Emory
of the pleasurable impression Washington had made on her rural mind.
After dinner she went with him to the library, where he showed her his
favourite books, and advised her to read them.

"Will you have a cigarette?" he asked. "Betty accuses me of being
old-fashioned, but I am modern enough to think that a woman and a
cigarette make a charming combination: she looks so companionable."

"I've smoked a pipe," said Harriet, doubtfully; "but I've never tried a
cigarette. I reckon I could, though."

He handed her a cigarette, and she smoked with the natural grace which
pervaded all her movements. She sank back in the deep chair she had
chosen, and puffed out the smoke indolently.

"I am so happy," she said. "I reckoned down there that the world was
beautiful somewhere, but I never expected to see it. And it is, it is.
Poor old uncle used to say that nothing amounted to much when you got
it, but he didn't know, he didn't know. This room is so big, and the
light is so soft, and this chair is so lazy, and the fire is so warm--"
She looked at Emory with the first impulse of coquetry she had ever
experienced; and her eyes were magnificent.

"Are you, too, happy?" she asked softly.

He stood up suddenly and gave a little nervous laugh, darting an
embarrasing glance over his shoulder.

"I feel uncommonly better than usual," he admitted.




XVII



Betty awoke the next morning with the impression that she was somewhere
on the border of a negro camp-meeting. She had passed more than one
when driving in the country, and been impressed with the religious
frenzy for which the human voice seemed the best possible medium. As
she achieved full consciousness, she understood that it was not a
chorus of voices that filled her ear, but one,--rich, sonorous,
impassioned. It was singing one of the popular Methodist hymns with a
fervour which not even its typical African drawl and wail could temper.
It was some moments before Betty realized that the singer was Harriet
Walker, and then she sprang out of bed and flung on her wrapper.

"Great heaven!" she thought. "How shall we ever be able to keep her
secret? A bandanna gown and a voice like a cornfield darky's! I suppose
all the servants are listening in the hall."

They were,--even the upper servants, who were English,--but they
scuttled away as their mistress appeared. She crossed the hall to
Harriet's room, rapped loudly, and entered. Her new sister, still in
her nightgown, was enjoying the deep motion of a rocking-chair,
hymn-book in hand. She brought her song to a halt as Betty appeared,
but it was some seconds before the inspired expression in her eyes gave
place to human greeting. Her face happened to be in shadow, and for the
moment Betty saw her black. Her finely cut features were indistinct,
and the ignorant fanaticism of a not remote grandmother looked from her
eyes. "Harriet!" exclaimed Betty. "I don't want to be unkind, but you
must not do that again. If you want to keep your secret, never sing a
hymn again as long as you live."

"Ah!" Harriet gave a gasp, then a half-sob. "Ah! But I love to sing
them, honey. I have sung them every Sunday all my life, and _he_ loved
them. He said I could sing with anybody, he wouldn't except angels. I
'most felt he was listening."

"You have a magnificent voice, and you must have it cultivated. But
never sing another hymn."

"When I go to church I know I'll just shout--without knowing what I'm
doing."

"Then don't go to church," said Betty, desperately.

"I must! I must! What'll the Lode say to me? Oh, my po' old uncle!"

She was weeping like a passionate child. Betty sat down beside her and
took her hand.

"Come," she said, "listen to me. The first time I saw you the deepest
impression I received of you was one of fine self-control. Doubtless
you wept and stormed a good deal before you acquired it--at all the
different stages of what was both renunciation and acquisition. The
last few days have unsettled you a little because you have found
yourself in a new world, minus all your old responsibilities and
trials, and the experience has made you feel younger, robbed you of
some of your hold on yourself. But that habit of self-control is in
your brain,--it is the last to leave us,--and all you have to do is to
sit down and think hard and adjust yourself. It is even more important
that you make no mistakes now than it was before. Fate seldom gives any
one two chances to begin life over again. Think hard and keep a tight
rein on yourself."

Betty had more than negro hymns in her mind, but she did not care to be
explicit. The generalities of the subject were disagreeable enough.

Harriet had ceased her sobbing and was listening intently. She dried
her eyes as Betty finished speaking.

"You are right, honey," she said. "And I reckon you haven't spoken any
too soon, for I was likely to get my head turned. I'll go to church and
I _won't_ sing. First I'll tie a string round my neck to remember, and
after that it'll be easy. I'm afraid I'm just naturally lazy, and if I
didn't watch myself I'd soon forget all the hard lessons I've learned
and get to be like some fat ornary old nigger who's got an easy job."

Betty shuddered. "The white race is not devoid of laziness. If you want
a reason for yours, just remember that the Southern sun has prevented
many a man from becoming great. Keep your mind as far away from the
other thing as possible."

"Oh, I think I'll forget it. I felt that way yesterday. But perhaps I'd
better not," she added anxiously, as her glance fell on the hymn-book.
"No cross, no crown."

"You will find crosses enough as you go through life," said Betty,
dryly. She rose to go, and Harriet rose also and drew herself up to her
full height. For the moment she looked again the tragic figure of the
first day of their acquaintance.

"You must have seen by this time how ignorant I am," she said
mournfully. "Poor old uncle gave me all the schooling he had himself,
but I knew even then it wasn't what they have nowadays. And I've had so
few books to read. Once I found a five-dollar bill, and as he wouldn't
take it--the most I could do--I tramped all the way to the nearest town
and back, twenty miles, and bought a big basket full of cheap reprints
of English standard novels. Those and the few old Latin books and the
Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress are about all I've ever read. I felt
like writing you that when I read his letter, and also telling you that
I was afraid you wouldn't find me a lady in your sense of the word--"

"You are my sister," interrupted Betty; "of course you are a lady.
Dismiss any other idea from your mind. And in a year you will know so
much that I shall be afraid of you. I have neglected my books for
several years."

"You are mighty good, and I'll humbly take all the advice you'll give
me."

Betty went back to her room and sought the warm nest she had left. "She
makes me feel old," she thought. "Am I to be responsible for the
development of her character? I can't send her off to Europe yet.
There's nothing to do but keep her for at least a year, until she knows
something of the world and feels at home in it. Meanwhile I suppose I
must be her guide and philosopher! I believe that my acquaintance with
Senator North has made me feel like a child. He is so much wiser in a
minute than I could be in a lifetime; and as I have made him the pivot
on which the world revolves, no wonder I feel small by contrast.

"But after all, I am twenty-seven, and what is more, I have seen a good
deal of men," she added abruptly. And in a moment she admitted that she
had allowed her heart, full of the youth of unrealities and dreams, to
act independently of her more mature intelligence.

"And that is the reason I have been so happy," she mused. "There is a
facer for the intelligence. As long as I have exercised it I have never
felt as if I were walking on air and song."

But still her imagination did not wander beyond today's meeting and
many like it. He was married, and, independent as she was, she had
received that sound training in the conventions from which the mind
never wholly recovers. She registered a vow then and there that she
would become his friend of friends, the woman to whom he came for all
his pleasant hours, in time his confidante. She would devote her
thought to the making of herself into the companion he most needed and
desired; and she would conceal her love lest he conceive it his duty to
avoid her. She wondered if she had betrayed herself, and concluded that
she had not. Even he could not guess how much of her admiration
emanated from frankness and how much from coquetry. She would be
careful in the future.

"That point settled," she thought, curling down deeper into her bed and
preparing for a nap, "I'll anticipate his coming and think about him
with all the youthful exuberance I please."




XVIII



Betty had invited Senator Burleigh to dinner on Saturday, that he might
feel free to call elsewhere on Sunday. At four o'clock, when Mrs.
Madison had retired for her nap, she commanded Jack Emory to take
Harriet for a long walk and a long ride on the cable cars, and to stop
for Sally Carter. No one else was likely to call, and she retired to
her boudoir, a three-cornered room in an angle between the parlor and
library, to await Senator North.

The boudoir was a room that any man might look forward to after a hard
day on Capitol Hill. Its easychairs were very soft and deep, its rugs
were rosy and delicate, and the walls and windows and doors were hung
with one of those old French silk stuffs with a design of royal
conventionality and uniformly old rose in colour. All of Betty's own
books were there, her piano, several handsome pieces of carved oak, and
a unique collection of ivory. Betty had banished the former girlish
simplicity of this room a few days after her introduction to the
Montgomery house. She had imagined herself greeting Senator North in it
many times, and had received no other man within its now sacred walls.

She wore a white cloth gown today and a blue ribbon in her hair. There
was also a touch of blue at the neck, to make her throat look the
whiter. Otherwise, the long closely fitting gown was without ornament
as far down as the hem, which was lightly embroidered in white. She
looked tall and lithe, but her figure was round, and did not sway like
a reed that a strong wind would beat to the ground, as Harriet's did.
Although that possible descendant of African kings possessed the black
splendour of eyes and hair and a marble regularity of feature, Betty
was the more beautiful woman of the two; for her colour filled and
warmed the eye, she seemed typical of womanhood in its highest
development, and she was a chosen receptacle of enchantment. Moreover,
she was more modern and original, and as healthy as had been the
fashion for the past generation, Harriet looked like an old Roman coin
come to life, with a blight on her soul and little blood in her thin
body. It was not in Betty's nature to fear any woman, much less to
experience petty jealousy, but it was not without satisfaction she
reflected that she and Harriet would hardly attract the same sort of
man. Jack was doing his duty nobly, and he liked vivacious women who
amused him, poor soul! As for Senator Burleigh, he had said politely
that she was handsome but looked delicate, and then unquestionably
dismissed her from his mind. He and Betty had talked politics on the
previous evening until Mrs. Madison had slipped off to bed an hour
earlier than usual.

Betty dismissed them all from her mind and glanced at the clock. It was
half-past four. She thrust the poker between the glowing logs, and the
flames leaped and sent a quivering glow through the charming room.
Betty leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, almost holding her
breath that she might hear the advancing step of the butler the sooner.
In what seemed to her exactly thirty minutes she looked at the clock
again. It was twenty-five minutes to five. She nestled down, assuring
herself that nobody could be expected to come on the moment, but this
time she did not close her eyes; she watched the clock.

And the joy imperceptibly died out of her; the hands travelled
inexorably round to ten minutes to five; she remembered that she had
not seen Senator North since Wednesday, and that in four days a busy
legislator might easily forget the existence of every woman he knew,
except perhaps of the woman he loved. Within her seemed to rise a tide
of bitter memories, the memories of all those women who had sat and
waited through dreary hours for man's uncertain coming. She shivered
and drew close to the fire and covered her face with her hands. Her
heart ached for the helpless misery of her sex.

But she sprang suddenly to her feet. The butler was coming down the
hall. A moment later he had ushered in Senator North, and Betty forgot
the misery of the world, forgot it so completely that there was no
violent reaction; she was merely what she had been at half-past four,
full of pleasurable excitement held down and watched over by the
instinct of caution.

"I must apologize humbly for being late," he said, "but on Sunday I
always sit with my wife until she falls asleep, and to-day she was
nearly an hour later than usual. What a room to come into out of a
biting wind! Thank heaven I was able to get here."

Betty thought of the sister and cousin she had turned out into the
cruel afternoon, and then looked at Senator North deep in the chair
where she had so often imagined him, and forgot their existence. This
was her hour--her first, at least--and visions of pneumonia and
possible consumption should not mar it. She sat opposite him in a
straight dark high-backed chair, and she was quite aware that she made
a delightful picture.

"Well?" he asked. "What of your visit and its consequences?"

Betty told the story; and her description of the dilapidated parsonage
at the head of the miserable village, the group of silent women about
the coffin in the dark room, and her interview with her melancholy
relative was as dramatic as she had felt at the time.

"I thought I was running from a nightmare when I left the house," she
concluded, smiling at him as if to demonstrate that it had left no
shadow in her brain; "but now we both feel better. She wants a gown of
many colours, and this morning she roused the house at five o'clock
singing camp-meeting hymns. But I think she is quick and observant, and
will soon cease to be in any danger of betraying herself. But she is a
great responsibility, and I really felt old this morning."

Senator North laughed. "I hope she won't give you any real trouble. If
she does, I shall feel more than half responsible. But otherwise she
will be an interesting study for you. She is nearly all white; how much
of racial lying, and slothfulness, barbarism, and general incapacity
that black vein of hers contains will give you food for thought, for
she certainly will reveal herself in the course of a year."

"You must admit that a nature like that is a great responsibility."

"Yes, but she alone can work through all the contradictions to the
light, and she will do it naturally, under pressure of new experiences,
within and without. Don't suggest even the word 'problem' to her, and
don't look upon her as one, yourself. You have put her in the right
conditions. Leave her alone and Time will do the rest. His work is
indubious; never forget that. Are you going to marry Burleigh?" he
added abruptly.

She answered vehemently, "No! No!" "I thought not. I know you very
little, so far, but I was willing to deny the report."

"I often wonder why I don't fall in love with him. He really has every
quality I admire. But much as I like him I should not mind if I knew I
never should see him again. I have thought a good deal about it and I
should like to understand it."

She looked at him coaxingly, and he smiled, for he understood women
very well; but he gave her the explanation she desired.

"The reason is simple enough. The admired qualities, even when they are
the component parts of a personality of one who more or less resembles
a cherished ideal, never yet inspired love. Love is the result of two
responsive sparks coming within each other's range of action. Their
owners may be in certain ways unfitted for one another, but the
responsive sparks, rising Nature only knows out of what combination of
elements, fly straight, and Reason sulks. To put it in another way:
Love is merely the intuitive faculty recognizing in another being the
power to give its own lord happiness. It is a faculty that is very
active in some people," he added with a laugh, "and when it is
overworked it often goes wrong, like any other machinery. That is the
reason why men who have loved many women make a mistake in marrying;
the intuitive faculty is both dulled and coarsened by that time. They
are still susceptible to charm, and that is about all."

"Have you loved many women?" asked Betty, without preamble.

He stood up and turned his back to the fire. Betty noted again how
squarely he planted himself on his feet. "A few," he said bluntly. "Not
many. I have not overworked my intuitive faculty, if that is what you
mean. I was not thinking of myself when I spoke."

He stared down at her for a few moments, during which it seemed to
Betty that the air vibrated between them. Her breath began to shorten,
and she dropped her eyes, lest their depths reveal the spark which was
active enough in her.

"Will you play for me?" he asked. "I lost a little girl a few years ago
who played well, although she was only sixteen. I have disliked the
piano ever since, but I should like to hear you play."

She played to him for an hour, with tenderness, passion, and
brilliancy. A gift had been cultivated by the best masters and hours of
patient study.

When he thanked her and rose to go and she put her hand in his, her
face expressed all the bright earnestness of genuine friendship; there
was not a sparkle of coquetry in her eyes.

"Will you come in often on your way home when you are tired and would
like to forget bills and things, and let me play to you? I won't
talk--you  must get so tired of voices!--and the practice will do me
good."

"Of course I will come. The pleasantest thing in life is a charming
woman's face at the close of a busy day. Good-bye."

When he had gone, Betty got into the depths of a chair and covered her
eyes with her hand. For the first time she knew out of her own
experience that love means a greater want than the satisfaction of the
eye and mind. She would have given anything but her inherited ideals of
right and wrong if he had come back and taken her in his arms and
kissed her; and she loved him with adoration that he did not, that in
all probability he never would, that although he had the great passions
which stimulate all great brains, the inflexible honour which his State
had rewarded and never questioned for thirty-five years must make short
work of struggles with the ordinary temptations of man.

As soon as a man awakens a woman's passions she begins to idealize him
and there is no limit to the virtues he will be made to carry. But let
a man be endowed by Nature with every noble and elevated attribute she
has in her power to bestow, if he lacks sensuality a woman will see him
in the clear cold light of reason. Betty Madison, having something of
the intuitive faculty, in addition to that knowledge of man which any
girl of twenty-seven who has had much love offered her must possess,
made fewer mistakes even in the thick of a throbbing brain than most
women make; the great danger she did not foresee until time had
accustomed her somewhat to the wonder of being able to love at last,
and Reason had resumed her place in a singularly clear and logical mind.




XIX



When Betty awoke next morning, she made up her mind that she would not
suffer so long as she could see him. Beyond the present she absolutely
refused to look. She had found more on the political sea than she had
gone in search of, but if she could have foreseen this tumult that
would have overwhelmed a weaker woman, she would not have clung to the
shore. For although the ultimate of love was forbidden her, she had
come into her kingdom, and was immeasurably happier than the millions
of women whose love had run its course and turned cold, or been cast
back at them. After all, there were so few people who were really
happy, why should she complain because her love could not come to rice
and old shoes, instead of being a beautiful secret thing, the more
perfect, perhaps, because Commonplace, that ogre whose girth increases
from year to year, and who sits remorseless in the dwellings of the
united, could not breathe upon it?

Harriet had returned without a cold, and the next morning Emory came in
and took her to the Congressional Library, where they had luncheon. He
also engaged her masters, and before the week was over she had settled
down to steady work.

"She has a wonderful mind, I am positive of that," he said to Betty.
"She has made so much out of so few advantages. I shall take the
greatest interest in watching a mind like that unfold. What relation is
she to us, anyway? I can't make out, for the life of me. There was
Cousin Amelia--"

"For heaven's sake, don't ask me to write up the genealogical tree.
Didn't I refuse to join the Colonial Dames because it meant raking over
the bones of all my ancestors--whom may the Saints rest! Most Southern
relationships amount to no relationship at all, and Harriet's is too
insignificant to mention."

"Well, I must say it is angelic in you to take her in and shower
blessings on her in this way--" "Her father had a great claim on us,
but that is a family secret, even from you. Mind you take her tomorrow
to see the 'Declaration of Independence' and the portrait of Hamilton."

The days passed very quickly to the end of the session. It was the
short term; Congress would adjourn on the fourth of March. Although the
great official receptions were over, dinners and luncheons crowded each
other as closely as before, for Washington pays little attention to
Lent beyond releasing its weary hostesses from weekly reception days,
and their callers from an absurd and antiquated custom. Betty went
frequently to the gallery on Capitol Hill, and although she sometimes
was bored by "business," she seldom heard a dull speech, for the
intellectual average of the Senate is very high, and its aptitude and
the variety of its information unexcelled. Harriet accompanied her two
or three times, but her mind turned naturally to the past and concerned
itself little with the present. She found the history of the Roman
Empire vastly more entertaining than debates on the Arbitration Treaty.

Betty had recently met a Mrs. Fonda, a handsome widow in the vague
thirties, who had that fascination of manner and that brilliant talent
for politics which went to make up Miss Madison's ideal of the women
with whom tired statesmen spent their leisure hours. She was the
daughter of a former distinguished member of the House and the widow of
a naval officer, and her life may be said to have been passed in
Washington with intervals of Europe. Although the Old Washingtonians
knew her not, her position in the kaleidoscope of official society was
always brilliant. She professed to have no party politics, but to be
profoundly interested in all great questions affecting the nation.
During the early winter she had visited Cuba and had announced upon her
return that no other subject would command her attention until the
United States had exterminated Spanish rule in t

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