Part 18

Within the library sat Clavering in his accustomed chair. In his hand he held a type–written document of many pages, which had cost him many thousands of dollars to have purloined and copied from another one which was locked up in the safe of the secretary of the Senate. Every page of this document proclaimed in some form or other his guilt, and at the bottom was written in the handwriting of a man he knew well, and who had stolen and copied the report for him:—

“Resolution of expulsion will be introduced immediately after reading of report, and will pass by three–fourths majority.”

And the hired thief had not played fair with him. He had discovered that at least three newspapers had bought the stolen report, and at that very moment he knew the great presses in the newspaper offices were clanging with the story of his disgrace to be printed on the morrow.

Then there was a bunch of telegrams from his state capital. If the Senate did not vote to expel, the legislature would request him to resign; so there was no vindication there. To this, then, had his public career come! Clavering was not honest himself, nor did he believe in honesty in others; but he believed it possible that he might have been more secret in his evil–doing. He had thought that with money, brains, and courage he could brazen anything out. But behold! he could not. He was fairly caught and exposed. Those stray words of Baskerville’s, uttered some months before, recurred to him, “There is no real substitute for honesty.”

He had heard the news on his way home that afternoon, from an out–of–town expedition. It had unnerved him for a little while; it was that which made him get out of the automobile so heavily when Elizabeth, unseen, was watching him. He had gone through the evening, however, bravely and even cynically. Many senators had been asked to the great function, but scarcely half a dozen had appeared; and all of them were inconsiderable men, dragged there by their womenkind. In the course of some hours of reflection—for Clavering could think in a crowd—a part of his indomitable courage and resource had returned. He had no fear of the criminal prosecution which would certainly follow. William M. Tweed had been caught, but Tweed was a mere vulgar villain and did not know when he was beaten. Clavering rapidly made up his mind that he could afford to restore eight or even ten millions of dollars to the rightful owners, and that would satisfy them; they wouldn’t be likely to spend any part of it in trying to punish him.

As for any part the state and federal government might take he was not particularly concerned. The party had done enough to clear its skirts by expelling him from the Senate, and if he satisfied all the claims against him, nobody would have any object in entering upon a long, expensive, and doubtful trial. But after paying out even ten millions of dollars he would have twice as much left, which nobody and no government could get, though it was as dishonestly made as the rest. With that much money and Elizabeth Darrell—for Elizabeth entered into all his calculations—life would still be worth living.

When the mob of gayly dressed people were gone, when the laughter and the dancing and the music and the champagne and the feasting were over, and Clavering sat in his library alone under the brilliant chandelier, he grew positively cheerful. He was not really fond of public life, and although he would have liked to get out of it more gracefully, he was not really sorry to go. He had found himself bound in a thousand conventions since he had been in Washington. He had been hampered by his family: by his wife because she was old and stupid and ignorant, by Élise and Lydia because they were so bad, by Anne and Reginald because they were so honest. It would be rather good to be free once more—free in the great, wide, untamed West, free in the vast, populous, surging cities of Europe. He would have Elizabeth with him; he did not much care for any one else’s society. She had never heard him admit his guilt, and he could easily persuade her that he was the victim of untoward circumstances.

While he was thinking these things, he heard a commotion overhead. Presently the whole house was roused, and servants were running back and forth. Elizabeth Darrell, still watching at her window, saw the sudden and alarming awakening of the silent house. Mrs. Clavering had been taken violently ill. Before sunrise the poor lady was no longer in any one’s way. A few hours of stupor, a little awakening at the last, a clinging to Anne and Reginald and telling them to be good, and Mrs. Clavering’s gentle spirit was free and in peace.

When the undertaker was hanging the streamers of black upon the door–bell, the morning newspaper was laid on the steps. On the first page, with great head–lines, was the announcement that Senator Clavering had been found guilty of the charges against him and that expulsion from the Senate was certain to follow. The newspaper omitted to state how the information was obtained.

_Chapter Seventeen_

The morning of Ash Wednesday dawned cold and damp and cheerless. Baskerville had heard a rumor at the club the night before that there had been a leak between the committee–room, the office of the secretary of the Senate, and the room of the investigating committee; that the big iron safe had been entered and a stolen copy of the report of the committee had been made and would be published in the morning. So he had the morning newspaper brought to him. On the first page, with a huge display head, together with the recommendation of expulsion against Senator Clavering, the report was printed in full.

Baskerville immediately wrote a note to Anne Clavering, asking that their engagement might be announced and also suggesting an immediate marriage. Within an hour came back an answer from Anne. In a few agitated lines she told him of her mother’s death. She did not ask Baskerville to come to her; but he, seeing that it was no time for small conventions, replied at once, saying that he would be at her house at twelve o’clock, and begged that she would see him.

Elizabeth Darrell was the first person outside of Clavering’s family who knew that he was a free man. There had been no time to get a doctor for Mrs. Clavering, although several had been called. When they arrived, all was over. Elizabeth had seen the sudden shutting of the windows; she knew, almost to a moment, when Mrs. Clavering died.

At seven o’clock in the morning Serena, with the morbid anxiety to communicate tragic news which is the characteristic of the African, came up to Elizabeth’s room full of what she had gleaned from the neighboring servants. Elizabeth listened and felt a sense of guilt enveloping her. Then, when General Brandon was dressed, he came up to her door to discuss the startling news, and his was the first card left for the Clavering family. On it the good soul had written:—

“With heartfelt sympathy in the overwhelming sorrow which has befallen Senator Clavering and his family.”

Elizabeth remained indoors all that day. She drew her window curtains together, so that she could not see the house which might have been hers, where had lived the dead woman of whom she had considered the spoliation.

At twelve o’clock Baskerville came, and was promptly admitted into the Clavering house. There had been no time to remove the festal decorations. The Moorish hall was odorous with flowers; the mantels and even the hand–rail of the staircase were banked with them. Masses of tall palms made a mysterious green light through the whole of the great suite of rooms. The ceilings were draped with greenery, and orchids and roses hung from them. The huge ball–room was just as the dancers had left it, and everywhere were flowers, palms, and burnt–out candles on girandoles and candelabra. The servants, in gorgeous liveries, sat about, more asleep than awake; and over all was that solemn silence which accompanies the presence of that first and greatest of democrats, Death.

Baskerville was shown into a little morning–room on the second floor, which had belonged to the poor dead woman. It was very simply furnished and in many ways suggested Mrs. Clavering. Baskerville, remembering her untoward fate in being thrust into a position for which she was unfitted, and her genuine goodness and gentleness, felt a real regret at her death. Being a generous man, he had taken pleasure in the intention of being kind to Mrs. Clavering; he knew that it would add extremely to Anne’s happiness. But, like much other designed good, it was too late. He remembered with satisfaction the little courtesies he had been able to show Mrs. Clavering and Anne’s gratitude for them; and then, before he knew it, Anne, in her black gown, pale and heavy–eyed, was sobbing in his arms.

She soon became composed, and told him calmly of the last days. She dwelt with a kind of solemn joy upon her last conversation with her mother about Baskerville, and the message she had sent him. “My mother had not been any too well treated in this life,” added Anne, the smouldering resentment in her heart showing in her eyes, “and you are almost the only man of your class who ever seemed to recognize her beautiful qualities—for my mother had beautiful qualities.”

“I know it,” replied Baskerville, with perfect sincerity, “and I tried to show my appreciation of them.”

It was plain to Baskerville, after spending some time with Anne, that she knew nothing of the news concerning her father with which all Washington was ringing. Baskerville felt that it would never do for her to hear it by idle gossip or by chance. So, after a while, he told her—told her with all the gentleness, all the tenderness, at his command, softening it so far as he could.

Anne listened, tearless and dry–eyed. She followed him fairly well, and asked at last, “Do you mean that—that my father will be expelled from the Senate, and then—there will be no more trouble?”

“Dearest, I wish I could say so. But there will be a great deal more of trouble, I am afraid—enough to make it necessary that you and I should be married as soon as possible.”

“And you would marry the daughter of a man so disgraced, who may end his days in a prison?”

“Yes—since it is you.”

He then inquired her plans for the present. Mrs. Clavering’s body was to be taken for burial to her old home in Iowa. Baskerville asked, or rather demanded, that within a month Anne should be prepared to become his wife. “And haven’t you some relations out in Iowa from whose house we can be married?” he said.

“Yes,” replied Anne, “I have aunts and cousins there. I warn you they are very plain people, but they are very respectable. I don’t think there is a person in my mother’s family of whom I have any reason to be ashamed, although they are, as I tell you, plain people.”

“That is of no consequence whatever. I shall wait until after your mother’s funeral before writing your father and having our engagement announced, and within a month I shall come to Iowa to marry you.”

And Anne, seeing this sweet refuge open to her, took heart of grace and comfort.

Clavering himself, sitting in his darkened library, was in no way awed by death having invaded his house. He had been brought face to face with it too often to be afraid of it; he was a genuine, throughgoing disbeliever in everything except money and power, and he regarded the end of life as being an interesting but unimportant event.

His wife’s death was most opportune for him; it made it certain that Elizabeth Darrell would marry him. He had fully realized that stubborn prejudice on Elizabeth’s part against divorce, and although he had not seriously doubted his ability to overcome it, yet it had been stubborn. Now all was smoothed away. He would act with perfect propriety, under the circumstances; he surmised enough about the women of Elizabeth’s class to understand that a breach of decorum would shock her far more than a breach of morals. There would be no outward breach of decorum. He would wait until after the funeral before writing her; but it would be useless, hypocritical, and even dangerous to postpone writing longer.

With these thoughts in his mind he sat through the day, receiving and answering telegrams, scanning the newspapers, and digesting his own disgrace as exposed in print. Even that had come at a fortunate time for him—if there is a fortunate time to be branded a thief, a liar, and a perjurer, a suborner of perjury, a corrupter of courts, a purchaser of legislatures. Elizabeth would feel sorry for him; she wouldn’t understand the thing at all. He would insist on being married in the autumn, and Elizabeth would no doubt be glad to be married as far away from Washington as possible. Perhaps she might agree to meet him in London and be married there. He would go over in the summer, take the finest house to be had for money, and transport all the superb equipment of his Washington establishment to London. He also remembered with satisfaction that he had now nothing to fear on the score of divorce from that soft–spoken, wooden–headed, fire–eating old impracticable, General Brandon, with his fatal tendency to settle with the pistol questions concerning “the ladies of his family.”

In these reflections and considerations James Clavering passed the first day of his widowerhood. On the third day after Mrs. Clavering’s death the great house was shut up and silent. The Claverings left it, never to return to it. It stood vacant, a monument of man’s vicissitudes.

The day after Mrs. Clavering’s burial took place, in the little Iowa town where her family lived, a line appeared in the society column of a leading Washington newspaper, announcing the engagement of Anne Clavering and Richard Baskerville. Coming as it did on the heels of the tragic events in the Clavering family and Baskerville’s share in a part of these events, the announcement was startling though far from unexpected. Mrs. Luttrell took upon herself the office of personally acquainting her friends with the engagement and declaring her entire satisfaction with it. Being by nature an offensive partisan, much given to pernicious activity in causes which engaged her heart, Mrs. Luttrell soon developed into a champion of the whole Clavering family. She discovered many admirable qualities in Clavering himself, and changed her tune completely concerning Élise and Lydia, whom she now spoke of as “a couple of giddy chits, quite harmless, and only a little wild.” These two young women had speedily made up their minds to fly to Europe, and arranged to do so as soon as Anne was married, which was to be within the month.

The catastrophes of the Clavering family made a profound impression on Washington. Their meteoric career was a sort of epitome of all the possibilities of the sudden acquisition of wealth and power. Whatever might be said of them, they were at least not cowards—not even Reginald Clavering was a coward. They were boldly bad, or boldly good. Anne Clavering had won for herself a place in the esteem of society which was of great value. Not one disrespectful or unkind word was spoken of her when the day of reckoning for the Claverings came.

The Senate allowed James Clavering two weeks to recover from his grief at his wife’s death before annihilating him as a senator. Clavering improved the time not only by arranging for his second marriage, but by forestalling, when he had no fighting ground, the criminal indictments which might be expected to be found against him. He paid out secretly in satisfaction money, and reconveyed in bonds, nearly three millions of dollars. There were several millions more to be fought over, but that was a matter of time; and he would still have a great fortune remaining, if every suit went against him.

It would very much have simplified his property arrangements had Elizabeth Darrell consented to marry him within a few weeks of his widowerhood. But this Clavering knew was not to be thought of. A week after his wife’s death he wrote to Elizabeth. He quietly assumed that all arrangements had been made for their marriage, as soon as he should have got his divorce. In his letter he reminded Elizabeth there could now be no question or scruple in regard to her marrying him. He told her he would be in Washington at the end of the week, when the proceedings in the Senate would take place, and that he should expect to see her. He asked her to write and let him know where they should meet.

Elizabeth realized that she had gone too far to refuse Clavering a meeting, nor, in fact, did she desire to avoid him. Her feelings toward him had become more and more chaotic; they did not remain the same for an hour together. She felt that a powerful blow had been dealt her objection to marrying him in the removal of the divorce question; she doubted in her heart whether she ever could have been brought to the point of marrying him had his wife not died.

And then there had been another interview with McBean. He had told Elizabeth he was about to leave Washington to be absent a month, as he was combining pleasure with business on his visit to America, but that on his return, if the necklace were not forthcoming, he should begin legal proceedings immediately. Mr. McBean was fully persuaded, while he was talking to Elizabeth, that the necklace was around her neck, under her high gown, or in her pocket, or in a secret drawer of her writing–desk—in any one of those strange places where women keep their valuables. Elizabeth, in truth, did not know whether the necklace was in America, Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia.

Then Baskerville, in spite of the crisis in his own affairs, had not neglected Elizabeth. He had managed to see McBean, and had discovered that the solicitor was perfectly justified in all he had done, from the legal point of view. When Baskerville came to inquire how far Major Pelham was responsible for what was done, he was met by an icy reticence on the part of Mr. McBean, who replied that Baskerville was asking unprofessional questions, and in embarrassment Baskerville desisted. It became clear, however, and Baskerville so wrote to Elizabeth, that her concealment of the pawning of the necklace, and her inability to pay back the money she had raised on it, were very serious matters, and she should at once lay the matter before her father.

Elizabeth, however, had not been able to bring herself to that. She thought of all sorts of wild alternatives, such as asking Clavering to lend her the money; but her soul recoiled from that. She even considered writing another letter to Hugh Pelham; but at that, too, her heart cried aloud in protest. She did not know where Pelham was, but surmised that he was still in West Africa. A letter addressed to the War Office would reach him—but when?

The more she thought of this, the simplest of alternatives and the one urged by Baskerville, the more impossible it seemed. She had loved Pelham well—loved him with all her soul, her mind, her heart; and that, too, when she was a married woman, loving another than her husband, without the slightest stain of any sort upon her mind, her soul, her heart. She doubted if she would have been half so dutiful a wife, but for Pelham’s love for her and her love for him. It seemed to her that his respect was as necessary to her as her self–respect. Their unfortunate attachment had been in the highest sense elevating. It had not required the soft consolation, the assurances, of weaker passions; but, lofty and austere, it was as strong and as silent as death, it seemed to be everlasting. And could a thing seem to be for ten years of storm and stress and not be?

As Heinrich Heine says, it seemed to Elizabeth as if there were no longer a great God in heaven since he had made his creatures so deceitful. What agony was Elizabeth Darrell’s? To have failed in her duty as a wife would have been the surest way to lower herself in Pelham’s eyes.

Clavering had reckoned upon Elizabeth’s neither knowing nor appreciating the effect of the revelations about him; in this, however, he was mistaken. She had read the newspapers diligently and understood his affairs far better than Clavering dreamed. The case had made a tremendous sensation. The tragic circumstances of the catastrophe, the probable action of the Senate which was known in advance, the far–reaching scandals which would result from the making public of the findings, all combined to give the country a profound shock—a shock so profound that it was known it would seriously jeopardize for the party in power the states in which Clavering and his gang had operated.

Among public men in Washington the feeling was intense. The senators who from a combination of honesty and policy had advocated going to the bottom of the scandals and punishing everybody found guilty, were in the position of doctors who have successfully performed a hazardous operation, but are uncertain whether the patient will survive or not. There was no doubt that many criminal prosecutions would follow, but there was a general belief that Clavering was too able and resourceful a man, and had too much money, to be actually punished for the crimes he had undoubtedly committed. His real punishment was his expulsion from the Senate.

Elizabeth Darrell knew all these things, and turned them over in her mind until she was half distracted. Another thing, small to a man but large to a woman, tormented her. She must meet Clavering—but where? Not in her father’s house; that could only be done secretly, and she could not stoop to deceive her father. The only way she could think of was in the little park, far at the other end of the town, where their first momentous meeting had taken place. So, feeling the humiliation of what she was doing, Elizabeth replied to Clavering’s letter, and named a day—the day before the one set for the final proceedings in the Senate—when she would see him; and she named six o’clock in the afternoon, in the little out–of–the–way park.

It was March then of a forward spring. The day had been one of those sudden warm and balmy days which come upon Washington at the most unlikely seasons. Already the grass was green and the miles upon miles of shade trees were full of sap and the buds were near to bursting. Six o’clock was not quite dusk, but it was as late as Elizabeth dared to make her appointment. Her heart was heavy as she walked along the quiet, unfamiliar streets toward the park—as heavy as on that day, only a few months before, when she had returned to Washington after her widowhood. Then she had been oppressed with the thought that life was over for her, nothing interesting would ever again happen to her. And what had not happened to her!

When Elizabeth reached the park she found Clavering awaiting her. He could not but note the grace of her walk and the beauty of her figure as she approached him. She was one of those women who become more interesting, if less handsome, under the stress of feeling. Her dark eyes were appealing, and she sank rather than sat upon the park bench to which Clavering escorted her.

“You seem to have taken my troubles to heart,” he said with the air and manner of an accepted lover.

Elizabeth made no reply. She had not been able to discover, in the chaos of her emotions, how far Clavering’s troubles really touched her.