Chapter 17

The colour rushed over her face, but she continued steadily: "There's something else I must tell you before I can sleep to-night. I've read his letter to you. I knew he'd written it, and down there while you were asleep I took it out of your pocket and read it. It was I who suggested going over to Virginia, for I was afraid some newspaper would get hold of it if we were married in Washington, where he was so well known. I didn't know there was such a law in Virginia. So, you see, the Lord was on his side a little. I don't bear his name. I'm as much of an outcast as the vengeance of a wronged man could wish--"

"I am sure he thought of you kindly at the last, and I never shall think of you in that--that other way. You must go to Europe and begin life over again."

Harriet rose and kissed Betty affectionately. "Good-night," she said. "You are just worn out, and I have kept you up. But I felt I wanted to tell you--and that no matter how ungrateful I sometimes appear I always love you; and I'd rather be you than any one in the world, because you're so unlike myself."

Betty went with her to the door. "Go to sleep," she said. "Don't lie awake and think."

"Oh, I will sleep," she said. "Don't worry about that."

XXV

Betty slept late on the following morning, but arose as soon as she awoke and dressed herself hurriedly. Senator North was an early visitor. Doubtless he was waiting for her on the veranda.

She ran downstairs, feeling that she could hum a tune. The morning was radiant, and for the last five days it had seemed to her that the atmosphere was as black as Harriet's veil. She wanted the fresh air and the sunshine, the lake and the forest again. She wanted to talk for long hours with the one man who she was sure could never do a weak or cowardly act. She wanted to feel that her heavy responsibilities were pushed out of sight, and that she could live her own life for a little.

She almost had reached the front door when a man sprang up the steps and through it, closing it behind him. It was John, the butler, and his face was white.

"What is it?" she managed to ask him. "What on earth has happened now?" "It's Miss Walker, Miss. They found her three hours ago--on the lake. The coroner's been here. They're bringing her in. I told them to take her in the side door. I hoped we'd get her to her room before you come down. I'll attend to everything, Miss."

Betty heard the slow tramp of feet on the side veranda. It was the most horrid sound she ever had heard, and she wondered if she should cease to hear it as long as she lived. She went into the living-room and covered her face with her hands. She had not cried for Jack Emory, but she cried passionately now. She felt utterly miserable, and crushed with a sense of failure; as if all the wretchedness and tragedy of the past fortnight were her own making. Two lives had almost been given into her keeping, and in spite of her daring and will the unseen forces had conquered. And then she wondered if the water had been very cold, and shivered and drew herself together. And it must have been horribly dark. Harriet was afraid of the dark, and always had burned a taper at night.

She heard Senator North come up the front steps and knock. As no one responded, he opened the door and came into the living-room.

"I have just heard that she has drowned herself," he said; and if there was a note of relief in his voice, Betty did not hear it. She ran to him and threw herself into his arms and clung to him.

"You said you would," she sobbed. "And I never shall be in greater grief than this. I feel as if it were my entire fault, as if I were a terrible failure, as if I had let two lives slip through my hands. Oh, poor poor Harriet! Why are some women ever born? What terrible purpose was she made to live twenty-four wretched years for? You wanted me to become serious. I feel as if I never could smile again."

He held her closely, and in that strong warm embrace she was comforted long before she would admit; but he soothed her as if she were a child, and he did not kiss her.

_Part III_

_The Political Sea Turns Red_

I

Betty Madison arrived in Washington two days before Christmas, with the sensation of having lived through several life-times since Lady Mary's car had left the Pennsylvania station on the fourteenth of March; she half expected to see several new public buildings, and she found herself wondering if her old friends were much changed.

People capable of the deepest and most enduring impressions often receive these impressions upon apparently shallow waters. They feel the blow, but it skims the surface at the moment, to choose its place and sink slowly, surely, into the thinking brain.

Betty's immediate attitude toward the tragic fact of Harriet's death was almost spectacular. She felt herself the central figure in a thrilling and awful drama, its horror stifling for a moment the hope that the man whose footsteps followed closely upon that tramping of heavy feet would fulfil his promise and take her in his arms. And when he did her sense of personal responsibility left her, as well as her clearer comprehension of what had happened to bring about this climax so long and so ardently desired.

But she had not seen Senator North since the day following the funeral. Mrs. Madison had announced with emphasis that she had had as much as she could stand and would not remain another day in the Adirondacks; she wanted Narragansett and the light and agreeable society of many Southern friends who did not have frequent tragedies in their families. Betty telegraphed for rooms at one of the large hotels at the Pier, and thereafter had the satisfaction of seeing her mother gossip contentedly for hours with other ladies of lineage and ante-bellum reminiscences, or sit with even deeper contentment for intermediate hours upon the veranda of the Casino. When she herself was bored beyond endurance, she crossed the bay and lunched or dined in Newport, where she had many friends; and she spent much time on horseback. When the season was over, they paid a round of visits to country houses, and finished with the few weeks in New York necessary for the replenishment of Miss Madison's wardrobe. She had hoped to reach Washington for the opening of Congress, but her mother had been ill, prolonging the last visit a fortnight, and gowns must be consulted upon, fitted and altered did the world itself stand still. And this was the one period of mental rest that Betty had experienced since her parting from Senator North.

She had been much with people during these five months, seeking and finding little solitude, and few had found any change in her beyond a deeper shade of indifference and more infrequent flashes of humour. She permitted men to amuse her if she did not amuse them, to all out-door sports she was faithful, and she read the new books and talked intelligently of the fashions. When the conversation swung with the precision of a pendulum from clothes and love to war with Spain, her mind leapt at once to action, and she argued every advocate of war into a state of fury. She had responded heavily to the President's appeal in behalf of the reconcentrados, but her mind was no longer divided. The failure of the belligerency resolutions to reach the attention of the House during the Extra Session of Congress had rekindled the war fever in the country; and the constant chatter about the suffering Cuban and the duty of the United States, the black iniquity of the Speaker and the timidity of the President, were wearying to the more evenly balanced members of the community. "You say that we need a war," said Betty contemptuously one day, "that it will shake us up and do us good. If we had fallen as low as that, no war could lift us, certainly not the act of bullying a small country, of rushing into a war with the absolute certainty of success. But we need no war. American manhood is where it always has been and always will be until we reach that pitch of universal luxury and sloth and vice which extinguished Rome. Those commercial and financial pursuits should make a man less a man is the very acme of absurdity. If our men were drawn into a righteous war to-morrow or a hundred years hence, they would fight to the glory of their country and their own honour. But if they swagger out to whip a decrepit and wheezy old man, when the excitement is over they will wish that the whole episode could be buried in oblivion. And I would be willing to wager anything you like that if this war does come off, so false is its sentiment that it will not inspire one great patriotic poem, nor even one of merit, and that the only thing you will accomplish will be to drag Cuba from the relaxing clutches of one tyrant and fling her to a horde of politicians and greedy capitalists."

But, except when politics possessed it, her brain seldom ceased, no matter how crowded her environment, from pondering on the events of the summer, and pondering, it sobered and grew older. She had engaged in a conflict with the Unseen Forces of life and been conquered. She had been obliged to stand by and see these forces work their will upon a helpless being, who carried in solution the vices of civilizations and men persisting to their logical climax, almost demanding aloud the sacrifice of the victim to death that this portion of themselves might be buried with her. Despite her intelligence, nothing else could have given her so clear a realization of the eternal persistence of all acts, of the sequential symmetrical links they forge in the great chain of Circumstance. It was this that made her hope more eager that the United States would be guided by its statesmen and not by hysteria, and it was this that made her think deeply and constantly upon her future relation with Senator North.

The danger was as great as ever. Her brain had sobered, but her heart had not. Separation and the absence of all communication--they had agreed not to correspond--had strengthened and intensified a love that had been half quiescent so long as its superficial wants were gratified. Troubled times were coming when he would need her, would seek her whenever he could, and yet when their meetings must be short and unsatisfactory. When hours are no longer possible, minutes become precious, and the more precious the more dangerous. If she were older, if tragedy and thought had sobered and matured her character, if she were deprived of the protection of the lighter moods of her mind, would not the danger be greater still? The childish remnant upon which she had instinctively relied had gone out of her, she had a deeper and grimmer knowledge of what life would be without the man who had conquered her through her highest ideals and most imperious needs; and of what it would be with him.

She had no intention of making a problem out of the matter, constantly as her mind dwelt upon the future. Senator North had told her once that problems fled when the time for action began. She supposed that one of two things would happen after her return to Washington: great events would absorb his mind and leave him with neither the desire nor the time for more than an occasional friendly hour with her; or after a conscientious attempt to take up their relationship on the old lines and give each other the companionship both needed, all intercourse would abruptly cease.

II

"I am going to have my _salon,_ or at all events the beginning of it, at once," said Betty to Sally Carter on the afternoon of her arrival, "and I want you to help me."

"I am ready for any change," said Miss Carter. Her appearance was unaltered, and she had spoken of Emory's death without emotion. Whether she had put the past behind her with the philosophy of her nature, or whether his marriage with a woman for whose breed she had a bitter and fastidious contempt had killed her love before his death, Betty could only guess. She made no attempt to learn the truth. Sally's inner life was her own; that her outer was unchanged was enough for her friends.

"I am going to give a dinner to thirty people on the sixth of January. Here is the list. You will see that every man is in official life. There are eight Senators, five members of the House, the British Ambassador, and the Librarian of Congress. Some of them know my desire for a _salon_ and are ready to help me. I shall talk about it quite freely. In these days you must come out plainly and say what you want. If you wait to be too subtle, the world runs by you. I am determined to have a _salon,_ and a famous one at that. This is an ambitious list, but half-way methods don't appeal to me."

"Nobody ever accused you of an affinity for the second best, my dear; but you may thank your three stars of luck for providing you with the fortune and position to achieve your ambitions: beauty and brains alone wouldn't do it. Senator North," she continued from the list in her hand: "Mrs. North is wonderfully improved, by the way; has not been so well in twenty years. Senator Burleigh: he is out flat-footed against free silver since the failure of the bi-metallic envoys, and his State is furious. Senator Shattuc is for it, so they probably don't speak. Senator Ward might be induced to fall in love with Lady Mary and turn his eloquence on the Senate in behalf of a marriage between Uncle Sam and Britannia. There is no knowing what your _salon_ may accomplish, and that would be a sight for the gods. Senator Maxwell will inveigh in twelve languages against recognizing the belligerency of the Cubans. Senator French will supply the distinguished literary element. Senator March represents the conservative Democrat who is too good for the present depraved condition of his State. If you want to immortalize yourself, invent a political broom. Senator Eustis: he thinks the only fault with the Senate is that it is too good-natured and does not say No often enough. Who are the Representatives? The only Speaker, the immortal Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means--don't place me near him, for I've just paid a hideous bill at the Custom House and I'd scratch his eyes out. Mr. Montgomery: he and Lady Mary are getting almost devoted. Trust a clever woman to pinch the memory of any other woman to death. The redoubtable Mr. Legrand, also of Maine, upon whom the shafts of an embittered minority seem to fall so harmlessly; and Mr. Armstrong--who is he? I thought I knew as much about politics as you, by this time, but I don't recall his name."

"I met him at Narragansett, and had several talks with him. He is a Bryanite, but very gentlemanly, and his convictions were so strong and so unquestionably genuine that he interested me. I want the best of all parties. We can't sit up and agree with each other."

"Don't let that worry you, darling. Mr. North has been contradicting everybody in the Senate for twenty years. Your devoted Burleigh quarrels with everybody but yourself. Mr. Maxwell snubs everybody who presumes to disagree with him, and French is so superior that I long for some naughty little boys to give him a coat of pink paint. Your _salon_ will probably fight like cats. If the war cloud gets any bigger, your mother will go to bed early on _salon_ nights and send for a policeman. I look forward to it with an almost painful joy. I want to go in to dinner with Mr. March, by the way. He is the noblest-looking man in Congress--looks like what the statues of the founders of the Republic would look like if they were decently done. I'll paint the menu cards for you, and I'll wear a new gown I've just paid ninety-three dollars duty on--I certainly shall tear out the eyes of 'the honourable gentleman from Maine.'"

III

When Sally had gone, after an hour of consultation on the various phases of the dinner, Betty sat for some moments striving to call up something from the depths of her brain, something that had smitten it disagreeably as it fell, but sunk too quickly, under a torrent of words, to be analyzed at the moment. It had made an extremely unpleasant impression;--painful perhaps would be a better word.

In the course of ten minutes she found the sentence which had made the impression: "Mrs. North is wonderfully improved, by the way; has not been so well in twenty years."

The words seemed to hang themselves up in a row in her mind; they turned scarlet and rattled loudly. Betty made no attempt to veil her mental vision; she stared hard at the words and at the impression they had produced. Mrs. North was out of danger, and the fact was a bitter disappointment to her. In spite of the resolute expulsion of the very shadow of Mrs. North from her thought, her sub-consciousness had conceived and brought forth and nurtured hope. What had made her content to drift, what had made her look with an almost philosophical eye on the future, was the unadmitted certainty that in the natural course of events a woman with a shattered constitution must go her way and leave her husband free. Had he thought of this? He must have, she concluded. She was beginning to look facts squarely in the face; it was an old habit with him, older than herself. There never was a more practical brain.

For the first time in her life she almost hated herself. She had done and felt many things which she sincerely regretted, but this seemed incomparably the worst. And despite her protest, her bitter self-contempt, the sting of disappointment remained; she could not extract it.

She went out and walked several miles, as she always did when nervous and troubled. She came to the conclusion that she was glad to have heard this news to-day. She and Senator North were to meet in the evening for the first time in five months. She had looked forward to this meeting with such a mingling of delight and terror that several times she had been on the point of sending him word not to come. But the impression Sally's information had made had hardened her. She was so disappointed in herself, so humiliated to find that a mortal may fancy himself treading the upper altitudes, only to discover that the baser forces in the brain are working independently of the will, that she felt in anything but a melting mood. She knew that this mood would pass; she had watched the workings of the brain, its abrupt transitions and its reactions, too long to hope that she suddenly had acquired great and enduring strength. The future had not expelled one jot of its dangers, perhaps had supplemented them, but for the hour she not only was safe from herself, but the necessity to turn him from her door had receded one step.

She had intended to receive him in the large and formal environment of the parlor, but in her present mood the boudoir was safe, and she was glad not to disappoint him; she knew that he loved the room. And if her brain had sobered, her femininity would endure unaltered for ever. She wore a charming new gown of white crepe de chine flowing over a blue petticoat, and a twist of blue in her hair. She had written to him from New York when to call, and he had sent a large box of lilies of the valley to greet her. She had arranged them in a bowl, and wore only a spray at her throat. Women with beautiful figures seldom care for the erratic lines and curves of the floral decoration. She heard him coming down the corridor and caught her breath, but that was all. She did not tremble nor change colour.

When he came in, he took both her hands and looked at her steadily for a moment. They made no attempt at formal greeting, and there was no need of subterfuge of any sort between them. No two mortals ever understood each other better.

"I see the change in you," he said. "I expected it. You have given me a great deal, and your last survival of childhood was not the least. The serious element has developed itself, and you look the embodiment of an Ideal." He dropped her hands and walked to the end of the room. When he returned and threw himself into a chair, she knew that his face had changed, then been ordered under control.

"What shall I talk to you about?" he asked with an almost nervous laugh. "Politics? Comparatively little happened in the Senate before the holidays. The President's message was of peculiar interest to me, inasmuch as it indicated that he is approaching Spain in the right way and will succeed in both relieving the Cubans and averting war if the fire-eaters will let him alone. The Cubans probably will not listen to the offer of autonomy, for it comes several years too late and their confidence in Spain has gone forever; but I am hoping that while this country is waiting to see the result, it will come to its senses. The pressure upon us has been intolerable. Both Houses have been flooded with petitions and memorials by the thousands: from Legislatures, Chambers of Commerce, Societies, Churches, from associations of every sort, and from perhaps a million citizens. The Capitol looks like a paper factory. If autonomy fails soon enough, or if some new chapter of horrors can be concocted by the Yellow Press, or if the unforeseen happens, war will come. The average Congressman and even Senator does not resist the determined pressure of his constituents, and to do them justice they have talked themselves into believing that they are as excited as the idle minds at home who are feeling dramatic and calling it sympathy. And the average mind hates to be on the unpopular side.

"Forgive me if I am bitter," he said, standing up suddenly and looking down on her with a smile, "but a good many of us are, just now. We can't help it. A great and just war would be met unflinchingly and with all pride; but the prospect of this hysterical row between a bull pup and a senile terrier fills us with impatience and disgust. The President must feel that he is expiating all the sins of the human race. The only man in the United States to be envied, so far, is the Speaker of the House; it is almost a satisfaction to think that he looks like the monument he is; and for the time being his importance overshadows the President's. If the President can hold on, however, he will negotiate Spain out of this hemisphere in less than a year."

"I knew you were worried about it," she said softly. "I felt that so keenly that I never lost an opportunity to war against the war. I made enemies right and left, and acquired a reputation for heartlessness."