Part 7

As soon as she was alone Elizabeth put out the gas and, opening the window, looked out upon the night. It was a damp and chilly night, with a few vagrant stars in the sky and a sickly moon setting. The vast mass of foliage which makes Washington a great park still hung upon the trees, but was yellowing and decaying. There were not many lights in the houses round about, except in the Clavering mansion, for it was not yet the full season in Washington. But while Elizabeth was looking a carriage drove under the Clavering porte–cochère, an alert footman opened the huge street door and spread a carpet down the steps. In a moment the girl Elizabeth had seen in the boudoir came out in an evening costume, with a white silk mantle enveloping her. Elizabeth had a perfectly clear view of her as she passed down the steps under a great swinging lantern. She was not beautiful, but interesting, graceful, and with an air of perfect breeding. After her came one of the handsomest men Elizabeth had ever seen. He was well past middle age, but his figure was noble, his features without line or wrinkle, his complexion ruddy with health, and his close–cropped iron–gray hair abundant. Elizabeth divined that it was Clavering, and what was more, the instant her eyes rested upon him she knew that she had seen him before; that she had seen him at some crisis in her life and seen him so as never to have forgotten him. She drew back from the window when the shock of surprise struck her. She could not recall at what particular crisis her eyes and this man’s had met, except that it was long ago. She had not once during all those intervening years recalled him, but now his face was as instantly recognized by her as had been her own father’s. It was as if, sailing upon the ocean, she had passed a beacon light upon a headland, which she remembered perfectly having seen in a remote past, but of which nothing was known to her except the fact that she had once seen it and the sight of it was at a crucial point in her life. The girl had by no means the beauty of the man, but there was sufficient likeness to indicate that they were father and daughter.

Elizabeth watched them with singular interest as the carriage rolled off. She had never expected to feel an interest in anything again, and that which she felt in these strange people seemed ominous. For Elizabeth, being a woman, was superstitious, and where before had she seen the face and figure of that man?

_Chapter Eight_

Sara Luttrell, as General Brandon called her, was sitting in her fine, old–fashioned drawing–room, enjoying her invariable Saturday evening gossip with her nephew–in–law, Richard Baskerville, preparatory to her customary Saturday evening dinner. This Saturday dinner was as much of an institution with Mrs. Luttrell as her ermine cape and her black–velvet gown, which were annually renewed, or her free–spoken tongue, all of them being Medic and Persian in nature.

Nobody knew how many decades this Saturday evening dinner had been established, just as nobody knew Mrs. Luttrell’s age, except that it was somewhere between sixty and ninety. This dinner, which no more than six persons attended, took place at the unfashionable hour of seven. But seven had been the fashionable hour when Mrs. Luttrell began her Saturday dinners, and although she conceded much to the new fashions introduced by the smart set—more indeed than she ever admitted—and had advanced her formal dinner hour to half–past eight, yet she clung to seven for this Saturday evening institution. No other dinner invitation could lure Mrs. Luttrell from her own table on Saturday evenings, and it was one of the incidents of the warfare which had once raged between her and the then lady of the White House that Mrs. Luttrell should have been asked to dine at the White House on a Saturday evening. Mrs. Luttrell, however, came off triumphant. She could not have her own dinner that night, but in the very nick of time she heard of the death of a seventeenth cousin in Maryland. Mrs. Luttrell immediately asked to be excused from the White House on the ground of the death of a relative, and clapped herself, her coachman, and footman in mourning for a seventeenth cousin she had not seen in thirty years and had always cordially detested.

To be in ignorance of the sacredness of Mrs. Luttrell’s Saturday evenings was a crime of grave magnitude in her eyes, and to respect her rights on Saturday was to take a toboggan slide in her favor. It was the law that Richard Baskerville should dine with her on Saturday, and although that young gentleman maintained a perfect independence towards her in every other respect, in spite of the fact that she had made a will giving him every stiver of her fortune, he was careful to reserve his Saturday evenings for her.

The old lady and the young man sat opposite each other before a glowing wood fire in the great drawing–room. Mrs. Luttrell was a small, high–bred, handsome woman, with snow–white hair, perfect teeth, a charming smile, a reckless tongue, and a fixed determination to have her own way twenty–four hours out of the day and three hundred and sixty–five days in the year, with an additional day thrown in at leap–year. Time had left a few external marks upon her, but in essentials she was the same woman General Brandon had danced with forty–five years before. She was in love with the same man, who even then was in his early grave,—Richard Luttrell, the husband of her youth. He had been dead unnumbered years, and only one person on earth—his nephew, Richard Baskerville—suspected that Mrs. Luttrell cherished her husband’s memory with a smouldering and silent passion,—the only thing she was ever known to be silent about in her life.

Mrs. Luttrell sat bolt upright, after the ancient fashion, in her carved ebony chair, while Richard Baskerville lounged at his ease on the other side of the marble mantel. He was a well–made man of thirty–five, without any particular merit in the way of beauty; but so clear of eye, so clean cut of feature, so expressive of a man’s intelligence and a man’s courage, that people forgot to ask whether he was handsome or not. Mrs. Luttrell always maintained that he was very handsome, but found few to agree with her. Her belief came, however, from his resemblance to the miniature of her husband which she kept in her capacious pocket—for she still insisted on pockets in her gowns, and this miniature never left her by day or night.

Mrs. Luttrell’s drawing–room was the admiration and the despair of people who knew something about drawing–rooms. It might have been taken bodily from the Second French Embassy, of which Mrs. Luttrell had seen a good deal, for she had known the third Napoleon well at some indefinite period in her history. The room was large and square and high–pitched, and wholly innocent of bay–windows, cosey corners, and such architectural fallals. The ceiling was heavily ornamented with plaster in the Italian style, and the cornice was superb. Over the fireplace was a great white marble mantel with a huge mirror above it, and in one corner of the room a grand piano something under a hundred years old looked like a belle in hoopskirts. There was a wealth of old rosewood furniture, pictures, candelabra, girandoles, Dresden ornaments, and other beautiful old things which would have made a collector turn green with envy.

Mrs. Luttrell was vain about her drawing–room, and with reason. She proudly claimed that there was not a single technical antique in it, and frequently declared she could tell the age of any family by a glance at their drawing–room. The newer the family the more antique the furniture, and when a family was absolutely new their house was furnished with antiques, and nothing but antiques, from top to bottom.

Mrs. Luttrell was gossiping hard as she sat before her drawing–room fire, shading her eyes from the leaping blaze with an old–fashioned lace fan and waiting for her guests to arrive. When Mrs. Luttrell gossiped, she was happy. One of the compensations to her for the new dispensations in Washington society was that it gave her plenty to gossip about. Ever since the advent in Washington society of pickles, dry–goods, patent medicines, shoes, whiskey, and all the other brands of honest trade, she had been engaged in a hand–to–hand fight to maintain her prestige as a leading hostess of Washington, against the swarms of newcomers, whose vast fortunes made Mrs. Luttrell’s hitherto ample income seem like genteel poverty. The rest of the “Cave–dwellers,” as the original society of Washington is now called, had never made any fight at all. They regarded the new influx with haughty disdain in the first instance, laughed at their gaucheries, and spoke of them pityingly as, “Poor Mrs. So–and–so,” “Those queer persons from nobody knows where.” The first accurate knowledge, however, that came to them of the “smart set,” as the new people are called, was when the Cave–dwellers were seized by the backs of their necks and were thrown over the ramparts of society, leaving the smart set in possession of the citadel.

Mrs. Luttrell, however, was not so easily disposed of as the rest. She saw that the Chinese policy of ignoring the enemy and representing a total rout as a brilliant victory would never do; so she set about holding her own with intelligence as well as courage. She called upon the new people, invited to her house those she liked, and Baskerville, who was the only living person who dared to contradict her, declared that Mrs. Luttrell never was known to decline an invitation to dine with any form of honest trade, no matter how newly emancipated. Her strongest weapon was, however, the capacity she had always possessed of bringing men about her. She was one of those men’s women whom age cannot wither nor custom stale. Her esprit, her knowledge of how to make men comfortable in mind and body when in her house, her insidious flattery, which usually took the form of delicate raillery, had charmed successive generations of men. Her kingdom had been long established, and she knew how to reign.

In her early widowhood she had been much pestered with offers of marriage, but it had not taken many years to convince her world that she would die Sara Luttrell. Every cause except the right one was given for this, for of all women Mrs. Luttrell was the last one to be suspected of a sentiment so profound as the lifelong mourning for a lost love. But it was perhaps just this touch of passionate regret, this fidelity to an ideal, which constituted half her charm to men. At an age when most are content to sink into grandmotherhood, Mrs. Luttrell was surrounded by men of all ages in a manner to make a débutante envious. Other hostesses might have to rack their brains for dinner men; Mrs. Luttrell was always embarrassed with riches in this respect. An afternoon visit at her house meant finding a dozen desirable men whom hospitable hostesses languished for in vain. Even a tea, that function dreaded of women because it means two women to one man, became in Mrs. Luttrell’s splendid, old–fashioned drawing–room a company in which the masculine element exactly balanced the feminine. She could have made the fortune of a débutante, and hence ambitious mothers sought her favor. Mrs. Luttrell, however, never had made a débutante’s fortune and never intended to, holding that the power to grant a favor is more respected than the favor itself.

Then, too, it was well known that Richard Baskerville, one of the most desirable and agreeable men in Washington, was always to be found at her house, and was certain to inherit her fortune; and he had the ability, the wit, and the grace to be an attraction in himself. The old lady would have liked it well if Baskerville had consented to live in a suite of the big, unused rooms in the house, but this he would not do. He agreed as a compromise, however, to buy a small house back of Mrs. Luttrell’s, and by using an entrance in her large, old–fashioned garden, it was almost as if he were in the same house.

Mrs. Luttrell followed the new customs and fashions so far as she thought judicious, and no farther. She knew the power of old customs and fashions when properly used. She held to her big landau, with her long–tailed black horses and her portly negro coachman and footman, because it gave her opportunities to intimidate the newly rich while apparently apologizing for her antique equipage.

“My carriage and horses and servants haven’t varied much for forty years, and I can’t change now. It’s all very well for you people who are accustomed to sudden changes to have your smart broughams and victorias, and your pink–and–white English coachmen and footmen, but it would look perfectly ridiculous in Sara Luttrell, don’t you see?” This to some aspiring newcomers whose equipage had been in a steady process of evolution from the time that a Dayton wagon was a luxury until now every season saw a complete revolution in their stables. Or, “I know my ermine cape looks as if it was made in Queen Elizabeth’s time, but I can’t afford to throw it away; and, Lord bless you, what does it matter whether one is in the fashion or not?” This to a lady who knew that her whole social existence depended upon her being in fashion.

It was insolent, of course, but Mrs. Luttrell meant to be insolent, and was so successfully, smiling meanwhile her youthful smile, showing her perfect teeth and certain of an answering smile from the men who were always at her elbow. Her whole world then thought she defied and laughed at the smart set; but Richard Baskerville saw, and had the assurance to tell her, that she secretly liked them very much and even sought their countenance by unique means.

“Well,” said Mrs. Luttrell, settling herself and adjusting the immortal ermine cape around her lace–covered shoulders, “I have a surprise in store for you to–night. Who do you think is to dine here?”

“Myself number one, Senator and Mrs. Thorndyke, and Judge Woodford. I believe you are in love with that man, Sara Luttrell.” This calling her by her first name Mrs. Luttrell reckoned a charming piece of impudence on Richard Baskerville’s part, and in saying it his smile was so pleasant, his voice so agreeable, his manner so arch, that he conveyed extreme flattery by it. It made her the same age as himself.

“No, my dear boy, you are mistaken in that particular; but I have a surprise in store for you.”

A pause.

“Why don’t you ask me who it is?”

“Because you’ll tell me in two minutes, if I just let you alone. You never could keep anything to yourself.”

“It is—Anne Clavering.”

Richard Baskerville sat up quickly. Surprise and pleasure shone in his face. “Why, Sara, I didn’t think you could do anything as decent as that.”

“I don’t know why. I’ve always liked the girl. And I believe you are about half in love with her.”

“You are such a suspicious old woman! But considering the share I am taking on the part of the original mortgages in those K.F.R. land grants, which may land Senator Clavering in state’s prison, I feel some delicacy in paying any attention to his daughter.”

“Naturally, I should think. But you were deep in the land–grant lawsuits before you ever met Anne Clavering.”

“Yes, that’s true. She once asked me to call but I never felt I could do so under the circumstances, though Clavering himself, who is a pachyderm so far as the ordinary feelings of mankind go, is as chummy as you please with me whenever we meet. And he actually invited me to visit his house! Miss Clavering probably knows nothing of the specific reason that keeps me away, but Clavering does, you may be sure. I have met Miss Clavering everywhere, and every time I see her I am lost in wonder as to how she came to be Senator Clavering’s daughter or the sister of Mrs. Denman and that youngest daughter, Lydia.”

“A couple of painted Jezebels, that are enough to drag any family to perdition. The old woman, I hear, murders the king’s English and eats with her knife, but is a good soul. And if it wasn’t for the determined stand Anne Clavering has taken for her mother, I don’t imagine there is much doubt that Senator Clavering would have divorced her long ago. But Anne stands up for her mother and makes them all treat her properly, and is assisted by the brother,—a poor rag of a man, but perfectly respectable,—Reginald Clavering. Did you ever notice how common people run to high–flown names? None of our plain Johns and Georges and Marys and Susans and Jameses for them—they get their names, I think, out of Ouida’s novels.”

Richard Baskerville rose and stood in front of the fire. Mrs. Luttrell could not complain of any want of interest on his part in the subject under discussion. “Miss Clavering, as I told you, invited me to call on her, when I first met her. However, I had scruples about going to the house of a man I was fighting as I am fighting Senator Clavering. So I never went, and she never repeated the invitation. She is a very proud woman.”

“Very. And she is the only one of her class I have ever seen who was really a scientific fighter.”

“How pitiable it is, though, for a girl to have to fight her way through society.”

“Yes—but Anne Clavering does it, and does it gallantly. Nobody can be impertinent to her with impunity. Do you know, the first thing that made me like her was the way that she hit back when I gave her a gentle correction.”

“I am delighted to hear it, and I hope she whipped you well.”

“Not exactly—but she stood up before me long enough to make me respect her and ask her to come to one of my little Saturday dinners.”

“Mrs. Thorndyke is always asking her to dinner, and I know of no woman more discerning than Mrs. Thorndyke.”

“Yes, Constance Thorndyke knows a great deal. But you see her husband is in the Senate and so she has to have some sorts of people at her house that I don’t have. However, I know she is really a friend of Anne Clavering, and it is perfectly plain that although Miss Clavering is a _nouveau riche_ herself, she hasn’t any overwhelming respect for her own ‘order,’ as Ouida would say. She is ten times more flattered to be entertained by people like the Thorndykes and myself than by the richest pork–packing or dry–goods family in Washington.”

“Certainly she is, as a woman of sense would be.”

“As for that divorcée, Élise Denman, and that younger girl, Lydia, they are the two greatest scamps, as they are the two handsomest women, in this town. They are not deficient in their own peculiar sort of sense and courage, and they have whipped the Brentwood–Baldwins handsomely about that pew in St. John’s Church. The religion of these brand–new people is the most diverting thing about them, next to their morals!”

“They also are the sons of God!” replied Baskerville, quoting.

“Don’t believe that for a moment! Most of ’em are sons and daughters of Satan and nobody else. If ever the Episcopal Church—the Anglican Church, they call it—comes out squarely against divorce, I don’t know where it will land the smart set or what they will do for a religion. They will have to become esoteric Buddhists or something of the sort. At present a pew in a fashionable church is the very first round on the social ladder. I have gone to St. John’s all my life, and my father was one of the original pew–holders; but I declare, if I could find a well–warmed Episcopal church in southeast Washington or Anacostia even, I’d go to it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would. I don’t know how the dispute with the Brentwood–Baldwins came about, but there was a pew near the President’s which both the Claverings and the Brentwood–Baldwins wanted, and those two pagan daughters of Senator Clavering got it. You ought to have seen the Brentwood–Baldwin girl and those other two girls pass each other last Sunday morning coming out of church; they exchanged looks which were equivalent to a slap in the face.”

“And you wouldn’t have missed seeing it for worlds.”

“Why, it’s true I like to see a fight.”

“For pure love of fighting I never saw your equal, Sara Luttrell.”

“I come by it honestly. I am of as good fighting stock as you are, Richard Baskerville. But the Clavering–Brentwood–Baldwin row is not the only religious war in this town. You know Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner—I know her husband was originally Jim Skinner before he went to glory.”

“Now who told you that?”

“Oh, nobody; I just felt it in my bones. Well, Mrs. Skinner has a new and original fad—that woman is clever! She has seen the automobile fad, and the fancy–ball fad, and the monkey–dinner fad, and the dining–on–board–the–Emperor’s–yacht fad, and the exclusive–school fad, and the exclusive–theatrical–performance fad, and the marrying–of–a–daughter–to–a–belted–earl–like–a–thief–in–the–night fad. She has done horse shows and yacht races and dinners to the Ambassador, and now she has outfooted New York and Newport, and left Chicago at the post. She has a private chapel, and she’s going to have a private chaplain!”

“Oh, Lord, you dreamed it!”

“No, I didn’t, Richard, my dear. You see, the Jim Skinners”—Mrs. Luttrell pronounced it as if it were “jimskinners”—“were originally honest Methodists; but these people shed their religion along with their old clothes and plated forks. And now Mrs. Jimskinner has become Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner and an ardent Episcopalian, and so has Gladys Jimskinner, and Gwendolyn Jimskinner, and Lionel Jimskinner, and Harold Jimskinner, and I believe that woman has set her heart on having what she calls an Anglican archbishop in these United States.”

“If she has, I know it was you who put the microbe in her head.”

It was a chance shot, but it hit the white. “I think I did, Richard,” meekly replied Mrs. Luttrell. “Mrs. Jimskinner—I mean Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner—was urging me to join the Order of St. Monica; that’s an order in which widows pledge themselves not to get married again. I told her there wasn’t the least reason for me to join, for, although I’ve never told my age to any living person, I hardly consider myself on the matrimonial list any longer. And then Mrs. Van Cortlandt Skinner told me of the various beautiful brand–new orders in the Church, and said she thought of getting an order founded for one of her boys; the other would have to marry and perpetuate the family. And I suggested a contemplative order with a nice name, like the Order of St. Werewolf.”

“Oh, Sara!”

“Yes, I did. I told her St. Werewolf was much respected in the Middle Ages; one heard a good deal of him; and she swallowed the wolf and the saint at one gulp. She said she rather liked the notion and might build a beautiful monastery on her estate on the Hudson, and whichever one of her boys she decided to indulge in a life of celibacy she would have made the first superior. And then I said—now, Richard, don’t be rude—I said how much simpler all these delightful things would be if we only had an archbishop like the Archbishop of Canterbury; and Mrs. Van Cortlandt Skinner said that she had often longed for an archbishop and had always thought that the development of the Church in America required one; and then I caught Senator Thorndyke’s eye—we were coming out of church—and I ran away.”

“You wicked old woman! What will you do next!”