Part 8

“I haven’t done anything. You see, Mrs. Jimskinner belongs to that class who don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t have anything they happen to fancy. If they get married and don’t like it, they get a divorce and a new husband or a new wife as they get a new butler when they discharge the one they have. If they want a title, they go and buy one. If they want a crest, they simply take one. They can’t understand why they shouldn’t do anything or have anything they want. I declare, Mrs. Jimskinner was talking to me with the simplicity of a child, and she’s as bent on that private chaplain and that archbishop as if each was the latest style of automobile. I don’t wonder the London newspapers guy Americans, remembering what kind of Americans find their way into London society.”

“That reminds me—I met General Brandon two days ago, and his daughter Mrs. Darrell.”

“Yes, Elizabeth Darrell has come back, as poor as a church mouse, and dreadfully changed. I shall call to see her. She will find a very different Washington from the one she left ten years ago.”

“Miss Clavering,” announced the negro butler.

Anne Clavering, graceful and self–possessed, entered the room. She had not the sumptuous beauty of her sisters, nor remarkable beauty at all; yet, as Elizabeth Darrell had seen in that first accidental view of her, she was more than beautiful—she was interesting. She had no marks of race, but she had every mark of refinement. Her gown was simple, but exquisite, and she wore no jewels. Mrs. Luttrell received her amiably and even affectionately, and her quick eye noted that both Anne and Baskerville blushed at meeting.

“So you are not above coming out to an unfashionable dinner with an old fogy,” she said, taking Anne’s hand.

“I believe it is considered one of the greatest privileges of Washington to dine with you at one of your ‘unfashionable dinners,’” Anne replied, with her pleasant smile. This made Anne’s fortune with Mrs. Luttrell.

In a minute or two more Senator and Mrs. Thorndyke were announced, and they were promptly followed by Judge Woodford, a handsome antique gentleman, who had for forty years counted on being one day established as the head of Mrs. Luttrell’s fine house. The Thorndykes were not a young couple, although they had not been long married. Their love–affair had covered a long period of separation and estrangement, and at last when fate had relented and had brought them together in their maturity, it gave them by way of recompense a depth of peace, of confidence, of quiet happiness, and a height of thrilling joy at coming into their own inheritance of love, that made for them a heaven on earth. Thorndyke was a high–bred, scholarly man of the best type of New England, who hid under a cool exterior an ardent and devoted nature. Constance Thorndyke was exteriorly the scintillant, magnetic Southern woman, but inwardly she was as strong and as sustaining as Thorndyke himself. Neither of them had a grain of mawkish sentimentality, and they were always differing playfully when they really differed seriously; but they never differed in their love and admiration of what was good.

Baskerville took Anne out to dinner. He had several times had that good fortune, especially in Mrs. Thorndyke’s house, and so far as dinner companions went he and Anne were well acquainted. Anne had been deeply mortified at Baskerville’s ignoring her invitation to call, and the reason she at once suspected—his knowledge of her father’s character and his share in furnishing information to the senatorial committee which was investigating Senator Clavering. She did not for one moment suspect that Baskerville put compulsion on himself to keep away from her house. She was conscious of a keen pleasure in his society, and a part of the gratification she felt at being asked to one of Mrs. Luttrell’s intimate dinners was that Baskerville should know how Mrs. Luttrell esteemed her.

The dinner fulfilled all of Anne’s expectations. The Thorndykes were socially accomplished, and Judge Woodford had been a professional diner–out since the days when President Buchanan had made him a third secretary of legation at Paris. Anne Clavering found herself adopted into the small circle, so different in birth and rearing from her own, by the freemasonry of good sense and good manners—in which she, however, was the equal of anybody.

Mrs. Luttrell shone at her own table, and the restraint she put upon her own tongue revealed her to be, when she chose, a person of perfect tact. And, indeed, her most courageous speeches were matters of calculation, and were in themselves a species of tact. When entertaining guests in her own house, however, she showed only the amiable side of her nature; and she was always amiable to Richard Baskerville, the one human being in the world whom she really loved and feared. Anne was extremely amused at the attitude of Baskerville to Mrs. Luttrell, shown by such things as calling her by her first name and hectoring her affectionately,—all of which Mrs. Luttrell took meekly, only prophesying that if he ever married, he would make an intolerable husband.

Anne Clavering noted that among these people of old and fixed positions there was a great deal of chaff, while among the new people there was always great formality. The manners of the one set were simple, and of the latter elaborate. She also saw, being of a quick eye, that there were many differences in little things between the old and the new. The new had a different and complex fork for every course, but Mrs. Luttrell had, except some very old–fashioned oyster forks, the same handsome, plain old forks which had been in use in her family since silver forks were first adopted. There was no opportunity, if she had wished, to emulate a brand–new Washington hostess, who mentioned to a distinguished guest that he was eating his fish with the wrong fork. And Mrs. Luttrell had the temerity to have on the table her splendid old decanters, in which was served the very last old port in Washington, “laid down by papa in ’59.”

When the dinner was over they closed around the drawing–room fire and talked cosily, as people can seldom talk in the hurrying, rushing twentieth century; and then Mrs. Thorndyke, at Mrs. Luttrell’s request, went to the grand piano and sang sweetly some songs as old–fashioned as the piano. Anne remembered with a blush the professional singers who were considered essential to the Clavering house after one of the large, magnificent, and uncomfortable dinners which were a burden and an anxiety to all of the Clavering family.

When the carriages were announced, everybody was surprised at the lateness of the hour. Anne went up to Mrs. Luttrell and thanked her sincerely and prettily for one of the pleasantest evenings she had ever spent in Washington. Mrs. Luttrell, who declared herself totally indifferent to blame or praise from one of the new people, was hugely flattered by this expression from a Clavering.

Baskerville, having antique manners, put Anne in her carriage, and contrived to express in this small action a part of the admiration and homage he felt for her. Anne, driving home in the November night, experienced a strong and sudden revulsion of feeling from the quiet enjoyment of the evening. Bitterness overwhelmed her. “How much happier and better off are those people than I and all my kind!” she thought. “They have no struggles to make, no slights to swallow or avenge, no social mortifications, nothing to hide, to fear, to be ashamed of, while I—“ She buried her face in her hands as she leaned back in the carriage, and wept at the cruel thought that Baskerville would not come to her house because he did not think her father a decent man.

As she entered her own street she caught sight of Count Rosalka, a young attaché, helping Élise Denman out of a cab at the corner. Élise ran along the street and under the porte–cochère as Anne got out of the carriage and walked up the steps. Élise’s eyes were dancing, her mouth smiling; she looked like a bacchante.

“Remember,” she said, catching Anne by the arm, “I’ve been out to dinner, too.”

The door was opened, not by one of the gorgeous footmen, but by Lydia, handsomer, younger, and wickeder–looking than Élise. “Good for you, Lyd,” whispered Élise; “I’ll do as well by you sometime.” The footman then appeared, and grinned openly when Lydia remarked that as she was passing through the hall she recognized Miss Clavering’s ring and opened the door.

Anne went upstairs, her heart sick within her. As she passed her mother’s door she stopped, and a tremulous voice within called her. She entered and sat awhile on her mother’s elaborate, lace–trimmed bed. Mrs. Clavering, a homely and elderly woman, looked not less homely and elderly because of her surroundings. But not all the splendor of her lace and satin bed could eclipse the genuine goodness, the meekness, the gentleness, in her plain, patient face. She listened eagerly to Anne’s description of the dinner, which was cheerful enough, albeit her heart misgave her cruelly about Élise and Lydia.

When she had finished speaking Mrs. Clavering said, patting Anne’s head with a kind of furtive affection, “I think you know real nice, well–behaved people, my dear, and I wish the other girls”—“gurls” she called them—“were like you.”

At that moment Baskerville and Senator Thorndyke were sitting in Baskerville’s library, discussing a bottle of prime old whiskey and looking at some books from a late auction. Mrs. Thorndyke had driven home, and Senator Thorndyke, preferring to walk, was spending an hour meanwhile in masculine talk unrestrained by the presence of the ladies. The two men were intimate, an intimacy which had originated when Baskerville was a college senior and Thorndyke was on the committee of their Greek–letter society. There was a strong sympathy between them, although Thorndyke was a New Englander of New Englanders and Baskerville a Marylander of Marylanders. Both were lawyers of the old–time, legal–politico sort, both of them scholarly men, both of them independent of popular favor; and both of them, while preaching the purest democracy, were natural aristocrats. They belonged to opposite political parties, but that rather added zest to their friendship. The library in Baskerville’s home, across the garden from Mrs. Luttrell’s, was in the second story and extended the full width of the house. It was essentially a bachelor’s working library, plain, comfortable, well warmed and lighted, and with an engaging touch of shabbiness. A big leather–covered table was in the middle of the room, and under the green light from a student lamp were displayed the books, the whiskey, the water, and the glasses. Baskerville’s mind was not, however, on the books he was showing, but on Anne Clavering, and incidentally on Senator Clavering.

“How do you account for Miss Clavering being the daughter of Senator Clavering?” he asked Thorndyke, as they pulled at their cigars.

“Those things can’t be accounted for, although one sees such strange dissimilarities in families, everywhere and all the time. Miss Clavering is, no doubt, a case of atavism. Somewhere, two or three generations back, there was a strain of refinement and worth in her family, and she inherits from it. But I see something in her of Clavering’s good qualities—because he has some good qualities—courage, for example.”

“Courage—I should think so. Why, the way that man has fought the courts shows the most amazing courage. He is a born litigant, and it is extraordinary how he has managed to use the law to crush his opponents and has escaped being crushed himself. And in trying to follow his turnings and windings in this K. F. R. swindle it is astounding to see how he has contested every step of an illegal transaction until he has got everybody muddled—lawyers, State and Federal courts, and the whole kit of them. As fast as one injunction was vacated he would sue out another. He seems to have brought a separate and distinct lawsuit for every right in every species of property he ever possessed at any time—of all sorts: lands, mines, railways, and corporations. He has pocketed untold millions and has invoked the law to protect him when ninety–nine men out of the hundred would have been fugitives from justice. He is the most difficult scoundrel to catch I ever met—but we will catch him yet.”

“I think you are hot on his trail in the K. F. R. matter,” answered Thorndyke. “I believe myself that when the great exposé is made before the investigating committee it will recommend his expulsion from the Senate, and three–fourths of the senators will support the committee. The legislature is safe, so the party won’t lose a seat; and in any event I don’t believe we can afford to hold on to a man like Clavering after the country knows about him—especially with a presidential campaign coming on within the year. I think, with all his talents, he would not be fitted for public life if he were as honest as he is dishonest. He has no idea, after all his litigation, of sound legal principles, and he is fully persuaded that any man, any court, any legislature, may be bought; and a more dangerous fallacy doesn’t exist for a public man than that. He has never submitted to party discipline and has played politics with every party that has ever made a showing in his state. For all his money, he has never been a contributor to party funds; so I think, making due allowances for the weakness of human nature, that a horrible example will be made of Clavering, and we shall thereby deprive you of an effective party cry in the campaign. You are really doing us a service by your course, because without your unravelling the legal tangle I doubt if anything could have been made out of the K. F. R. frauds. I have no sympathy to waste on Clavering or any of his family that I know of, except Miss Clavering. It will go hard with her.”

Baskerville’s tanned complexion grew a little pale, and he sat silent for some moments; so silent that Thorndyke began to suspect Mrs. Thorndyke’s idea was the right one after all—Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering. Thorndyke had laughed at it as a woman’s fancy, saying to her that a woman couldn’t see a man pick up a girl’s handkerchief without constructing a matrimonial project on the basis of it; but Constance Thorndyke had stoutly maintained her opinion that Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering. His attitude now certainly indicated a very strong interest in her, especially when he said, after a considerable pause:—

“If I had known Miss Clavering before this K. F. R. matter was started, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone into it. There is something very painful, you must know, Thorndyke, in dealing a blow at a woman—and a woman like Miss Clavering. By heaven, for all the luxury she lives in and all the respect and admiration she commands, there is not a woman in Washington whom I pity more!”

Thorndyke had been turning over the leaves of a beautiful Apuleius, which was one of the treasures Baskerville was exhibiting to him. He opened the volume at the fifth metamorphosis and read out of it a single phrase which made Baskerville’s face gain color:“‘The bold, blind boy of evil ways.’ There’s nothing in all those old Greek literary fellows which excels this in humor, although what there is humorous in modern love I can’t see. It’s the most tragic thing in life, and if it is genuine, it draws blood every time.”

Thorndyke had reason to say this. He had spent the eighteen best years of his life solitary and ill at ease because of a woman’s love and another woman’s spite, and not all the happiness of married life could ever make either him or Constance Thorndyke forget their starved hearts in those eighteen years of estrangement and separation. But as normal men deal with sentimentalities in a direct and simple manner, he added, after a minute: “Miss Clavering ought to marry. If she could be cut loose from Clavering himself and those two handsome and outrageous sisters of hers, it would be an unmixed blessing. But with all Miss Clavering’s merit and charms, that family of hers will always be a handicap with a man of the sort she would be likely to marry.”

“Not if he really loved her, Thorndyke.” Senator Thorndyke smoked on in silence. “And,” continued Baskerville, “her mother is a most worthy woman, if uneducated; and although Reginald Clavering is a great fool, I believe he is a thoroughly upright man and even a gentleman. So you see it is not wholly a family of degenerates.”

Thorndyke, seeing which way the tide was setting, remarked with perfect sincerity, “Miss Clavering is worthy of any man; and I say so not only on my own judgment, but on my wife’s.”

“Sanest, soundest woman in Washington—except Miss Clavering herself,” was Baskerville’s reply to this.

When Senator Thorndyke reached home an hour afterwards, he roused his wife to tell her that he believed that Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering after all.

“And has been ever since he knew her; but men are so dense, he didn’t know it himself—much less did you know it until it became as obvious as the Washington Monument,” was Mrs. Thorndyke’s wifely reply.

_Chapter Nine_

The next day was a bright November Sunday, and after an early luncheon Baskerville started out for a walk into the country. Anne Clavering was much in his mind, and he was beginning to debate with himself in this wise: if Senator Clavering had no delicacy about inviting him to call, why should he be too delicate–minded to go? Which proves that Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering, or he would have said that for him to go to a man’s house under the circumstances in which he would enter Senator Clavering’s was an outrageous breach of propriety.

When he got well out of the town, he met the scanty congregation of a small Episcopal chapel in the suburbs. Among those strolling homeward he speedily recognized General Brandon and Elizabeth Darrell—and with them Reginald Clavering. This only son of Senator Clavering’s was no more like him than Anne was, and, indeed, very much resembled Anne, except that he had neither her grace nor her intelligence. He had a good and affectionate heart, and in a foolish, blundering way was both an honest man and a gentleman. His life, however, was given over to small and futile things, and even his piety, which was genuine, embodied a childish worship of ecclesiastical trifles. He was the mainstay, chief financial backer, and clerical man–of–all–work in the little chapel, while his sisters, Élise and Lydia, fought with the Brentwood–Baldwins at St. John’s, and Anne, after going to an early morning service at the nearest church, devoted the rest of her Sunday to her mother.

Baskerville stopped and spoke with great cordiality to the party. He had known Elizabeth Darrell well in her girlhood, and there was a remote, seventeenth–cousin, Maryland–Virginia connection between the Baskervilles and the Brandons. His first glance at her in her mourning costume showed him that she had suffered much, and her beauty was partially eclipsed. She had gained interest, however, as the case often is, by learning the hard lessons of life, and Baskerville saw that she might regain all and more of her good looks with returning flesh and color, and a loss of the wearied and forlorn expression in her still glorious dark eyes. He asked permission to call upon her, and Elizabeth assented with outward grace and cheerfulness; but, in truth, it mattered little to her then whether she ever saw any one again, except her father, and—humiliating thought!—Pelham, once more. For, deeply incensed as she was with Pelham, the thought of ever again meeting him was profoundly agitating to her. She inquired of Baskerville about Mrs. Luttrell, and sent her a kind message; then they parted and went upon their several ways.

Half an hour afterwards, when Elizabeth Darrell was nearing her own door, Senator Clavering—who, sitting at his library window, caught sight of her graceful black figure as she stopped with her father and talked a few minutes with Reginald Clavering—started to his feet, his keen, handsome eyes fixed upon her with admiring approval. He remembered her perfectly well, that beautiful girl he had seen on the icy night ten years ago when he had watched the gay people flocking to the Charity Ball, and the little trinket he had unconsciously crushed under his foot. He had wondered a dozen times since he had been in Washington, and had often asked, what had become of General Brandon’s beautiful daughter, and was told that she had married a British Army man and had disappeared in the wilderness. He had never seen General Brandon from that hour, although they lived opposite, General Brandon’s hours being very different from Senator Clavering’s and their habits being as dissimilar as could possibly be imagined.

Clavering was a connoisseur in feminine beauty, and all forms of it appealed to him. He thought Elizabeth twice as beautiful as he had done in that passing glimpse of her, ten years before, in the bloom of her girlhood. Strange to say, the languid, interesting, and somewhat tragic type which Elizabeth Darrell now represented was the most attractive to him—perhaps because it is the rarest. “By Jove, what a woman! I must know her,” was his inward comment. He watched Elizabeth intently, her fragile figure, her peculiar grace of movement, the note of distinction in her whole person and air; and then and there he determined to resurrect his acquaintance with General Brandon, whose relationship to her was obvious, and whom Clavering had no more forgotten than General Brandon had forgotten him.

Presently Reginald Clavering entered the house, and the first sound that met his ears was something between a wail and a shout which came from the upper region. Reginald winced at the sound. His mother still held to her original Baptist faith—about the only thing pertaining to her early life which she had not meekly given up. She was at that moment enjoying the spiritual ministrations of a Baptist minister who came sometimes on Sundays to pray with her and sing camp–meeting hymns—to the intense diversion of the smart English footman and gay French maids, of whom Mrs. Clavering was in deadly fear. And to make it worse for Reginald, Anne Clavering, instead of setting her face against this unchurchmanlike proceeding, actually aided and abetted her mother in her plebeian sort of religion, and joined her clear note to the Rev. Mr. Smithers’ bellowing and Mrs. Clavering’s husky contralto. The whole thing offended Reginald Clavering’s æsthetic sense; but it was a proof that he had much that was good in him that he bore these proceedings silently, as became a gentleman, a Christian, and an Anglican, and made no complaint to any one except Anne.

As he passed the open library door, Senator Clavering called out to him in that rich and melodious voice which the stenographers in the Senate gallery declared the most agreeable and easily followed voice of any member of the Senate: “Hello! What is the name of that infernally pretty woman whom you were escorting just now?”

“Mrs. Darrell, the widowed daughter of General Brandon. General Brandon is one of the vestrymen at St. Gabriel’s Chapel,” replied Reginald, stiffly.

“Yes, fine old fellow. I knew him more than thirty years ago when he was a captain of infantry out on the plains and I was a sutler, as it was called then. Handsome old chap still, and his daughter is like him. You show good taste, my boy. I thought you’d find something more entertaining than religion out at that chapel.”