Part 15

Mrs. Luttrell turned to face an accusing mentor in Richard Baskerville, who had heard a part of the “trying out” of Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner; but before he could speak he caught sight of Anne Clavering entering the wide doors. He had not thought to see her that day, feeling that what had passed between them in the brougham would keep her away from Mrs. Luttrell’s as a place where she would be certain to meet him; for Anne Clavering had all the delicate reserve which a man would wish in the woman he loves. Therefore, not expecting to see her, Baskerville had early in the day despatched to her a basket of violets and a brief note, in which he asked permission to speak at once to her father. He had received no reply, but expected one before he slept. Anne’s appearance, however, in Mrs. Luttrell’s drawing–room surprised him; she evidently sought him, and this she would not be likely to do unless she were in some emergency.

To Baskerville’s keen eye her face, glowing with an unusual color, her eyes, which were restlessly bright, betrayed some inward agitation. She was very beautifully dressed in velvet and furs, with more of magnificence than she usually permitted herself; and her white–gloved hand played nervously with a superb emerald pendant that hung around her neck by a jewelled chain. Baskerville was the first person who greeted her, and Mrs. Luttrell was the next.

“This is kind of you,” said the latter, all sweetness and affability. “It shows what a nice disposition you have, to come to me to–day, after the way my nephew made me kowtow to you yesterday. Richard, give Miss Clavering a cup of tea.”

Baskerville escorted Anne through the splendid suite of rooms, each speaking right and left and being stopped often to exchange a word with a friend or acquaintance. People smiled after the pair of them, as they do after a pair of suspected lovers. When they came to the high–arched lobby that led into the dining room, Baskerville opened a side door, partly concealed by a screen and a great group of palms, and showed Anne into a little breakfast room, which opened with glass doors on the garden. A hard–coal fire burned redly in the grate, and the dying sunset poured its last splendors through a huge square window. Baskerville shut the door, and Anne and he were as much alone as if they had the whole house to themselves.

“I have practised a gross fraud upon you about the tea,” said he, smiling; “but here is a chance for a few minutes alone with you—a chance I shall take whenever I can get it.” He would have taken her hand, but something in her face stopped him. She had protested and denied him the day before, when he told her of his love; but it had not stood materially in his way. Now, however, he saw in an instant there was something of great import that made a barrier between them.

“I wished very much to see you alone and soon; I came here to–day for that purpose,” she said. She spoke calmly, but Baskerville saw that it was with difficulty she restrained her agitation. “Yesterday,” she went on, “I told you what I feared about my father—“

“And I told you,” Baskerville interrupted, “that I would marry you if I could, no matter who or what your father is.”

“You were most generous. But you don’t know what I know about my father—I only found it out myself last night. I had an interview with him. There was something in a newspaper about his divorcing my mother.”

“If he does and you will marry me, I shall engage to treat your mother with the same respect and attention I should my own. Mrs. Clavering is one of the best of women, and I have the greatest regard for her.”

Anne raised to him a glorified, grateful face. The poor, despised mother for whom she had fought and was still fighting, the helpless, unfortunate woman who seemed to be in everybody’s way except in hers—the offer of kindness and consideration went to Anne Clavering’s heart. She wished to say something in the way of thanks to Baskerville, but instead she burst into a sudden passion of tears. Baskerville, with a lover’s ardor, would have comforted her upon his breast, but she kept him at a distance.

“No, no!” she pleaded, weeping, “hear me out—let me tell you all.” Baskerville, although at her side, did not perforce so much as touch her hand. Anne continued, strangely recovering her calmness as she proceeded: “I can’t repeat all my father said—I have neither the strength nor the time now; but he told me there was an—an invalidity about his marriage to my mother. She, poor soul, knew nothing of it, for—for our sakes, his children. But it was no marriage. And last night he told me plainly that if I persuaded my mother to resist the divorce, he can prove that she never was—that we are—” She stopped. Her tears had ceased to flow, her face was deathly pale; a heart–breaking composure had taken the place of her emotion.

Baskerville, however, had become slightly agitated. He comprehended instantly what she meant. She was not even the legitimate child of James Clavering. Small as the credit of his name might be, it was not hers. Baskerville, as a man of honorable lineage, had a natural shrinking from ignoble birth, but it did not blind him to the inherent honor in Anne Clavering nor turn his heart away from her. He recovered his coolness in a moment or two and was about to speak, when she forestalled him hurriedly.

“So, you see, you must forget all that happened yesterday. I thank you a thousand times for—for—what you once felt for me. If things were different—if I were—but, as you see, it is quite impossible now.”

“And do you suppose,” said Baskerville, after a pause, “that I would give you up—that I could give you up? I am afraid you don’t yet know what love is.”

Their conversation had gone on in tones so low that they might have been discussing the affairs of total strangers. Baskerville made no attempt to take her hand, to beguile her with endearments. It was a moment solemn for both of them, and Baskerville spoke with the calm appeal of a noble and steadfast love. It was not the sweet seduction of passion, but the earnest claim and covenant of love upon which he relied.

Anne remained with her eyes fixed on the floor. Baskerville said no more. He scorned to plead his right, and his silence wrought for him far more than any spoken words. His manner was one of questioning reproach, a reproach most dear to a loving and high–minded woman. The meaning of it came softly but inevitably upon Anne Clavering. It was no light sacrifice for a man of sensitive honor, of flawless repute, to link himself in any way with a woman dowered as Anne Clavering was dowered by her father’s evil–doing, but Baskerville reckoned it as nothing when weighed in the balance against his honorable love. At last the whole beauty of his conduct dawned full upon her; Baskerville knew the very instant when she grasped all that he meant. The color began to mount to her pale cheeks; she sighed deeply and raised her eyes, now softly radiant, to his face.

“You are very, very generous,” she said. “It is good to have known a man so generous, and it is sweeter than I can tell you to have been loved by such a man. But I can be generous, also. It is too great a sacrifice for you. I cannot accept it.”

To this Baskerville only replied: “Tell me but this—one word will settle it forever. Do you love me?”

Anne remained silent, but the silences of a woman who loves are more eloquent than words. The next minute she was fast in Baskerville’s arms, who would not let her go; and they had a foretaste of Paradise, such as only those know whose love is mingled with sacrifice, which is the ultimate height of the soul’s tenderness. But their time was of necessity short, and what Anne had told Baskerville required instant consideration. When Anne would have persisted in her refusal Baskerville would not listen, but turned to the matter of her interview with Clavering.

“This is a question which must be met at once, because I believe your father quite capable of carrying out his threat. And your mother must be the first one to be considered. What do you think she would wish?”

It was the first time in her life that Anne Clavering had ever heard any one say that her mother was to be considered at all. A great wave of gratitude surged up in her heart—the poor, helpless, ignorant, loving mother, who had no friend but her—and Baskerville. She looked at him with eyes shining and brimming and laid a timid, tender hand upon his shoulder.

“I ought not to accept your love—but—“

“You can’t prevent it,” replied Baskerville.

“Then, if gratitude—“

But when lovers talk of gratitude it means more kisses. The pale dusk of winter now filled the room, and there was no light except the red glow of the fire. Baskerville would have asked nothing better in life than an hour in that quiet, twilighted room, nor would Anne either; but, woman–like, Anne remembered that there were some other persons in the world besides themselves, and made as if to go, nor would she heed Baskerville’s pleadings to remain longer.

As they reached the door Baskerville said: “Think over what you wish me to do, and write me when you determine. Of course I must see your father immediately. And we must take my aunt into our confidence, for it is through her that we must meet.”

Poor Anne had not had much time for that sweet trifling which is the joy of lovers, but at the idea of Mrs. Luttrell being taken into any one’s confidence a faint smile came to her quivering lips. “The whole town will know all about it.”

“No, I can frighten my aunt, and she shan’t tell until we are ready.”

Anne’s cheeks were flaming, and she said, as all women do who have to face inspection directly after a love scene, “If I could but get away without being seen.”

“It is easy enough; this glass door opens.”

Baskerville led her through the glass door into the garden and around to the front of the house, where in the throng of arriving and departing visitors not even the lynx–eyed Jeems Yellowplush who opened the brougham door suspected that Miss Clavering had not walked straight from Mrs. Luttrell’s drawing–room.

Anne lay back in the carriage, lost in a dream of love and gratitude. All her life long she had fought alone and single–handed for the poor, oppressed mother. She knew perfectly well all her mother’s ignorance, her awkward manners, but Anne knew also the patience, the goodness, the forgiving and unselfish nature which lay under that unpromising exterior. Not one point of Baskerville’s conduct was lost on Anne Clavering, and if love and gratitude could repay him, she meant that he should be repaid. And in the coming catastrophes she would have Baskerville’s strong arm and masculine good sense to depend upon.

She had read the newspapers attentively, and she believed that her father and his associates would be found guilty of all that was alleged against them; and she knew that the divorce was a fixed thing, not to be altered by anybody. That of itself might be expected, in the ordinary course, to exile the family from Washington, but Anne doubted it. Élise and Lydia would not have delicacy enough to go away if they wished to remain, and their fondness for the smaller fry of the diplomatic corps was quite strong enough to keep them in Washington when it would be better for them to live elsewhere. Reginald, in spite of his weakness and narrowness, had a sense of dignity that would make him keep out of the public eye.

For herself, Anne had determined, before her interview with Baskerville, that a quiet home in the little Iowa town where her mother was born and bred would be the place for her mother and herself; and she had thought with calm resignation of the change in her life from the gayety and brilliance of Washington to the quiet seclusion of a country town. It would not be all loss, however, for her path in Washington had not been entirely roses. Washington is a place of great and varied interests, where one may live any sort of life desired; and it is not easy to adapt those who have lived there to any other spot in America. But now these words of Richard Baskerville’s, his manly, compelling love, had changed all that for her. She felt it to be her destiny—her happy destiny—to live with him in Washington. His name and high repute would protect her. She would not ask of him to have her mother always with her, although a more submissive and unobtrusive creature never lived than Mrs. Clavering. It would be enough if she could pass a part of the year with Anne, while Reginald took care of her the other part, and both of them would vie with each other in doing their duty. Her heart swelled whenever she thought of the consideration Baskerville had shown toward Mrs. Clavering; it would make the poor woman happy to know it, for this woman, used to the bread of humiliation, keenly felt the smallest attention paid her. And then Anne fell into a sweet dream of delight, and was happy in spite of herself. She came down from heaven only when the carriage stopped in front of the great stone house of Senator Clavering.

* * * * *

At the same hour Mrs. Luttrell sat before the fire in the great empty drawing–room, from which the guests had just departed. Mrs. Luttrell was burning with curiosity to know what had become of Baskerville and Anne Clavering when they disappeared so mysteriously—for Baskerville had not returned, either. The fact is, while Anne was lost in a soft ecstasy, Baskerville, smoking furiously at a big black cigar, was walking aimlessly about the streets, his heart beating high. He looked at his watch. It was seven o’clock, and it occurred to him that it was time to go back to Mrs. Luttrell and make provision for future meetings with Anne Clavering and, possibly, their marriage from Mrs. Luttrell’s house, if circumstances should follow as he expected.

When he walked in, Mrs. Luttrell’s greeting was, “Where’s Anne Clavering?”

“Safe at home, I trust,” replied Baskerville, throwing the end of his cigar into the fire.

“And what became of you, pray, when you two went prancing off, and never came back?”

“I took Miss Clavering into the morning–room.”

“You did, eh?”

“I did.”

“And what happened in the morning–room?”

“I decline to state, except that Miss Clavering and I are to be married—perhaps in this house. Senator Clavering, you know, and I are at feud, and the coming revelations about him make it very likely that he won’t have a house here very long”—Baskerville had in mind Clavering’s divorce—“and our meetings, Miss Clavering’s and mine, are to take place under your roof, with yourself to play gooseberry. Even if you are due at the biggest dinner going at the house of the smartest of the smart and the newest of the new, you shall stay here, if we have to chain you up.”

“Upon my word!”

“And you are not to open your mouth to a living being about what I am telling you, until I give you permission. I know your idea of a secret, Sara Luttrell—it means something that is worth telling. But if you let one ray of light leak out, I shall never speak to you again, and shall tell your age all over Washington.”

Mrs. Luttrell looked at Baskerville with admiring eyes. “That’s the way your uncle used to talk to me. No one else in the world ever did it, except you and him.”

“Now, will you obey me?”

“You are an impudent rogue. Yes, I will obey you.”

“Then go to your desk this minute and write Miss Clavering a note offering the hospitality of your roof and your services as chaperon whenever she requires it; and mind you make it a very affectionate note.”

Baskerville led Mrs. Luttrell to her desk, where she wrote her note. “Will this do?” she asked, and read to him:—

“DEAR ANNE CLAVERING: My nephew, Richard Baskerville, tells me you and he are to be married, and as he is at feud with your father he can’t go to your house. Therefore you must come to mine. I need not say that my services as chaperon are at your disposal. I think you know that I am a sincere person, and when I tell you that I think Richard Baskerville would do well to marry you even if you hadn’t a rag to your back, you may be sure I think so. And you will do well to marry him. He is like another Richard who died long ago—the husband of my youth.

“Affectionately yours, “SARA LUTTRELL.”

“That will do,” replied Baskerville, and taking Mrs. Luttrell’s small, white hand in his he kissed it, kissed it so with the air and look and manner of the man dead fifty years and more that Mrs. Luttrell’s bright old eyes filled with sudden tears—she, the woman who was supposed to have been born and to have lived without a heart.

_Chapter Fifteen_

Anne Clavering was engaged to dine out, as usual during the season, the evening of the afternoon when happiness had come to her in Mrs. Luttrell’s morning–room. She was so agitated, so overcome with the tempests of emotion through which she had passed in the last twenty–four hours, that she longed to excuse herself from the dinner and to have a few hours of calming solitude in her own room. But she was too innately polite and considerate to slight and inconvenience her hostess, and so resolutely prepared to fulfil her engagement. She could not resist spending in her mother’s room the half hour which intervened from the time she returned home until she should go to her room for a short rest and the making of her evening toilet.

Mrs. Clavering was not usually keen of apprehension, but Anne scarcely thought she could conceal from her mother’s affectionate and solicitous eyes all the feelings with which she palpitated. Mrs. Clavering loved the excuse of a trifling indisposition that she might keep her room and be free from the necessity of seeing visitors and of being seen by the army of insubordinate foreign servants in the Clavering household. She was full of questions about Anne’s afternoon at Mrs. Luttrell’s, and the first question she asked was whether that nice young man, Mr. Baskerville, was there. At that Anne blushed so suddenly and vividly that it could not escape Mrs. Clavering.

“Why, Anne,” she said, “I believe Mr. Baskerville must have been paying you some compliments! Anyhow, he’s the nicest and politest man I’ve seen in Washington, and I hope when you marry, you’ll marry a man just like him. And I do hope, my dear, you won’t be an old maid. Old maids don’t run in my family.”

This was Mrs. Clavering’s guileless method of suggestive matchmaking. Anne, with a burning face, kissed her and went to her room for a little while alone in the dark with her rapture—and afterward purgatory, in being dressed to go out. She had already begun to debate whether it would be well to tell her secret to her mother at once. The poor lady was really not well, and any thought of impending change for her best beloved might well distress her. But her simple words convinced Anne that Mrs. Clavering would not be made unhappy by the news that Richard Baskerville and Anne loved each other. Rather would it rejoice her, and as there had been no time to talk seriously about the date of the marriage she need not be disturbed at the thought of an immediate separation from Anne.

All this Anne thought out while her hair was being dressed and her dainty slippers put on her feet and her Paris gown adjusted by her maid. In that little interval of solitude before, when she lay in her bed in the soft darkness, she had thought of nothing but Richard Baskerville and the touch of his lips upon hers. But with her maid’s knock at the door the outer world had entered, with all its urgent claims and insistence. But through all her perplexities still sounded the sweet refrain, “He loves me.” She thought as she fastened the string of pearls around her white neck, “The last time I wore these pearls I was not happy, and now—“

And so, on her way to the dinner and through–out it and back home again, the thought of Richard Baskerville never left her; the sound of his voice in her ears, the touch of his lips upon hers, and above all the nobility of his loving her purely for herself—rare fortune for the daughter of a man so rich, even if not so wicked, as James Clavering. Anne tasted of joy for the first time, and drank deep of it. She was glad to be alone with her love and her happiness, to become acquainted with it, to fondle it, to hold it close to her heart. She was very quiet and subdued at the dinner, and by a sort of mistaken telepathy among the others present it was understood that Miss Clavering felt deeply the situation in which Senator Clavering was placed. But Anne Clavering was the happiest woman in Washington that night. Even the impending disgrace of her father, of which she was well assured, was softened and illumined by the lofty and self–sacrificing love bestowed upon her by Richard Baskerville.

When she came home, after eleven o’clock, she stopped as she always did at her mother’s door. Mrs. Clavering calling her softly, Anne went into the room. With her mother’s hand in hers she told the story of her love and happiness. If she had ever doubted whether it would be well to tell Mrs. Clavering, that doubt was dispelled. The poor lady wept, it is true, being tender–hearted and given to tears like the normal woman, but her tears were those of happiness.

“I’ve been a–wishin’ and a–hopin’ for it ever since I saw him that Sunday,” said the poor soul. “I want you to have a good husband, Anne, the sort of husband my father was to my mother; never a cross word between ’em before us children, Ma always havin’ the dinner on time and the old leather arm–chair ready for Pa—we didn’t have but one easy–chair in the house in them days. And Pa always sayin’ Ma was better lookin’ than any one of her daughters, and kissin’ her before us all on their weddin’ anniversary, and givin’ her a little present, if it wasn’t no more than a neck ribbon; for they was always poor; but they loved each other and lived as married folks ought to live together.”

“If Richard and I can live like that I shouldn’t mind being poor myself, dear mother, because I remember well enough when we were poor, and when you used to sew for us, and do all the rough work, and indulged us far too much; and I was happier then than I have been since—until now,” Anne replied softly.

Mrs. Clavering sighed. “All the others, except you, seem to have forgot all about it.” This was the nearest Mrs. Clavering ever came to a complaint or a reproach.

And then Anne, with loving pride, told her of Baskerville’s kind words about her, of his voluntary offers of respect and attention. Mrs. Clavering, sitting up in bed, put her large, toil–worn hands to her face and wept a little.

“Did he say that, my dear, about your poor, ignorant mother? I tell you, Anne, there are some gentlemen in this world, men who feel sorry for a woman like me and treat ’em kind and right, like Mr. Baskerville does. Now, you tell him for me—because I’d never have the courage to tell him myself—that I thank him a thousand times, and he’ll never be made to regret his kindness to me; and tell him anythin’ else that would be proper to say, and especially that I ain’t goin’ to bother him. But I tell you, Anne, I’m very happy this night. I wouldn’t have gone without knowin’ this for anythin’—not for anythin’.”

Then the mother and daughter, woman–like, wept in each other’s arms, and were happy and comforted.