Chapter 18

"Our minds are much alike," he said, staring down at her and dropping his voice for a moment. "You may have done it for me, but you are as sincere as I am. I have stimulated your mind, that is all. How much you can do here in Washington--among the men who legislate--I cannot say. A woman who takes a high and definite stand is always an influence for good; but the women who influence men's votes are not of your type. They are women who sacrifice anything to gain their ends, or those who have educated themselves to play upon the vanity and other petty qualities of men; every peg in their brain is hung with a political trick. The only men who attract you are too strong to vote under the influence of any woman, even if they loved her. If Shattuc were not as obstinate as a mule," he added more lightly, "I should ask you to convert him to the principles of sound currency. That is another ugly cloud ahead: there is going to be an attempt made to pass through both Houses a concurrent resolution advocating the free and unlimited coinage of silver and to pay the public debt with it. As far as our honour goes, the passing of such a resolution would affect us as deeply as if it were to become a law. We should stand before the world as willing and ready to violate the national honour, ignore our pledges and recklessly impair our credit. I don't think the resolution will pass the House, the Republican majority is too strong there, but I am afraid it will pass the Senate; although we are in the majority, a good many Republicans are Western men and Silverites. A certain number on both sides of the Chamber are voting merely to please their constituents, feeling reasonably sure that the resolution will fail in the House. They appear to care little for the honour of the Senate; they certainly have not the backbone to defy their constituents if they do care for it. To the outside world the Senate is a unit; every resolution that passes it might come out of one gigantic skull at peace with itself. This one will be passed by a small majority who have not imagination enough to read the works of future historians, nor even to grasp public opinion as unexpressed by their constituents.

"There is one fact that the second-rate politician never grasps," he said, walking impatiently up and down; Betty had never seen him so restless. "That is, that the true American respects convictions; no matter how many fads he may conceive nor how loud he may clamour for their indulgence, when his mind begins to balance methodically again, he respects the man who told him he was wrong and imperilled his own re-election rather than vote against his convictions. Many a Senator has lost re-election through yielding to pressure, for elections do not always occur at the height of a popular agitation; and when men have had time to cool off and think, they despise and distrust the waverer. If you will read the biographies in the Congressional Directory, you will see that with a very few exceptions the New Englanders are the only men who come back here--to both Houses--term after term. They practically are here for life; and the reason is that they belong to the same hard-headed, clear-thinking, unyielding, and puritanically upright race as the men who elect them to office. They have their faults, but they represent the iron backbone of this country, and in spite of fads and aberrations, and gales in general on the political sea, they will remain the prevailing influence. If I speak seldom in the Senate, I certainly make a good many speeches to you. But I want you to understand all I can teach you and to do what you can."

"Yes," she said, rising abruptly, "I want an object in life, a vital interest. I need it! A year ago I took up politics out of curiosity and ennui; to-day they represent a safeguard as well as a necessity. I cannot write books nor paint pictures; charities bore me and I never shall marry. My heart must go to the wall, and my brain is very active. The more one studies and observes politics the more absorbing they become. But that is only a part of it. I want to be of some use to the country, to accomplish something for the public good; and it will be a form of happiness to think that I am working with you--for I certainly agree with you in all things, whatever the cause. When the time comes that we meet in public only, I can have that much happiness at least; and I always shall know where I can help you--"

"The mere fact that you are alive is help enough--and torment enough. I shall go now. We have gotten through this first meeting better than I had hoped."

They both laughed a little as they shook hands, for politics had cleared the air.

IV

He came in again on Sunday, but Burleigh and other men were there; and as the Senate had adjourned until the fifth, there was no excuse for him to call at the late hour when she was sure to be alone; so he dropped in twice to luncheon, and they went for a long walk in Rock Creek Park afterward. On one of these occasions Sally Carter joined them; and on the other, although but for the occasional passer-by they were alone for two hours in the wild beauty of rocky gorges and winter woods, they talked of war and Spain. He left her at the door.

On Thursday night she was to have her dinner, and in spite of her stormy inner life she felt a pleasurable nervousness as the hour approached; for on its results depended the colour of her future. With love or without it she had to live on, and if she could see the way to serve her country, to preserve some of its higher ideals as well as to win a distinguished position, she had no doubt that in time she should find resignation.

All her invitations but one had been accepted: the British Ambassador was attending a diplomatic dinner, but would come in later. Betty was not altogether regretful, for the question of precedence, with all her personages, was sufficiently complicated. The Speaker ranked the Senators, but there were eight Senators to be disposed of with tact; they might overlook a mistake, but their wives or daughters would not.

She had spared no pains to honour her guests. She still scorned the plutocratic multiplication of flowers until they seemed to rattle like the dollars they stood for, but the table looked very beautiful, and the silver and china and crystal had endured through several generations. Some of it had been used in the White House in the days when it was an honour to have a President in one's family. Her father's wine-cellar had been celebrated, and she had employed connoisseurs in its replenishment ever since the duties of entertaining had devolved upon her. She also had her own _chef,_ and knew with what satisfaction he filled the culinary brain-cells of the patient diner out in Washington. All the lower house was softly lit with candles; except her boudoir, which was dark and locked.

She wore a gown of apple-green satin which looked simple and was not. Mrs. Madison was like an exquisite miniature, in satin of a pinkish gray hue, trimmed with much Alencon, a collar of diamonds, and a pink spray in her soft white hair. Her blue eyes were very bright, and there was a pink colour in her cheeks, but she looked better than she felt. She was, indeed, hot and cold by turns, and she held herself with a majesty of mien which only a tiny woman can accomplish.

Sally Carter was the first to arrive, and looked remarkably well in her black velvet of Custom House indignities. The Montgomerys followed, and Lady Mary wore the azure and white in which she appeared harmless and undiplomatic. No one was more than ten minutes late, and at eight o'clock the party was seated about the great round table in the dining-room.

Senator North sat on Betty's right, Senator Ward on her left. Next to that astute diplomatist was the lady in azure and white, whom he admired profoundly and understood thoroughly. She never knew the latter half of his attitude, however. He was a gallant American, and delighted to indulge a pretty woman in her fads and ambitions. Mrs. Madison achieved resignation between the Speaker of the House and Senator Maxwell, and Sally Carter was paired with Senator March.

Betty had meditated several hours over the placing of her guests, and had invited as many pretty and charming women as the matrimonial entanglements of her statesmen would permit. Fortunately it was early in the year, and a number of wives had tarried behind their husbands. The family portraits on the dark old walls had not looked down upon so brilliant a gathering for half a century, and Betty's eyes sparkled and she lifted her head, her nostrils dilating. The light in her inner life burned low, and her brain was luminous with the excitement of the hour. And as he was beside her, there really was no cause for repining.

At once the talk was all of war. Washington, like the rest of the country, did not rise to its highest pitch of excitement until after the destruction of the _Maine_, but no other subject could hold its interest for long. In ordinary conditions politics are barely mentioned when the most political city in the world is in evening dress, but war is a microbe.

"I am for it," announced Lady Mary, "if only to give you a chance to find out whom your friends are."

"There is nothing in the history of human nature or of nations to disprove that our friends of to-day may be our enemies of to-morrow," observed Senator North.

"I believe you hate England."

"On the contrary, I am probably the best friend she has in the Senate. My mission is to forestall the hate which leads so many ardent but ill-mated couples into the divorce courts."

"Well, you will see," said Lady Mary, mysteriously.

"I do not doubt it," said Senator North, smiling. "And we shall be grateful. If the circumstances ever are reversed, we shall do as much for her."

"How much?"

"That will depend upon the quality of statesmanship in both Houses."

"I wish you would explain what you mean by that." Lady Mary's wide voice was too well trained to sharpen. Her cold blue eyes wore the dreamy expression of their most active moments.

"I wish I knew whether the statesmen of the future were to be Populists or Republicans."

"Well, whatever you mean you have no sentiment."

"I have no sentimentalism."

Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders and turned to Senator Ward. She knew better than to talk politics to him before dinner was two thirds over, but she bent her pretty head to him, and gave him her distinguished attentions while he re-invigorated his weary brain. He smiled encouragingly.

"The statesmen of the future will be Populists, Senator," announced Betty's last recruit, a man with a keen sharply cut face and a slightly nasal though not displeasing voice. He was forty and looked thirty.

"The Populist will have called himself so many things by that time that 'statesman' will do as well as any other," growled the Speaker. "'The Statesmen's Party' would sound well, and would be worthy of the noble pretensions of your leader."

"Well, they are noble," said Armstrong tartly, but glad of the opportunity to talk back to the personage who treated him in the House as a Czar treats a minion. "We are the only party that is ready to cling to the Constitution as if it were the rock of ages."

"Well, you've clung so hard you've turned it upside down, and the new inventions and patent improvements you've stuccoed it with will do for the 'Statesmen's Party,' but not for the United States--Madam?"

Mrs. Madison had touched his arm timidly, and asked him if he liked terrapin. Her colour was deeper, but she exerted herself to keep the attention of this huge personality whom a poor worm might be tempted to assassinate.

Senator Burleigh's voice rose above the chatter. "Who would be a Western Senator?" he said plaintively. "My colleague and I received a document today, signed by two thousand of our constituents, the entire population of an obscure but determined town, in which we were ordered to acknowledge the belligerency of the Cubans at once or expect to be tarred and feathered upon our return. The climate of my State is excellent for consumption, but bad for nerves. Doubtless most of these men come of good New England stock, whose relatives 'back East' would never think of doing such a thing; but the intoxicating climate they have been inhaling for half a generation, to say nothing of the raw conditions, makes them want to fight creation."

Senator Maxwell, who had more of the restlessness of youth than the repose of age, threw back his silver head and gave his little irritated laugh. "That is it," he said. "It is the lust of blood that possesses the United States. They don't know it. They call it sympathy; but their blood is aching for a fight, so that they can read the exciting horrors of it in the newspapers. You might as well reason with mad dogs."

"I shall not attempt to reason with my kennel," said Burleigh. "In the present congested state of the mails this particular memorial has gone astray."

"The trials of a Senator!" cried Sally Carter. "Petitions and lobbyists, election clouds, fractious and dishonest legislatures, unprincipled bosses and the country gone mad!"

"I can give you a list as long as my arm," said Senator March, grimly; "and you may believe it or not, but it is all I can do to walk in my Committee-room and I haven't a chair to sit on. I live under a snow-storm of petitions, memorials, and resolutions. I expect to see them come flying through the window, and I dream of nothing else."

Betty had taken part in the general conversation until the last few moments, but as it concentrated on the subject of Cuban autonomy and her guests ceased to appeal to her, she fell into conversation with Senator North, who she knew would be willing to dispense with politics for a few moments.

"You have no idea how I miss Jack Emory," she said. "He half lived with us, you know, and I am always expecting to meet him in the hall. When I was writing my invitations I caught myself beginning a note, 'Dear Jack.' It is uncanny."

"It is the only revenge the dead have; and doubtless it is this vivid after life of theirs in memory that is at the root of the belief in ghosts. You say that you are going to open your _salon_ every year with a dinner to the original members. It will be interesting to watch the two faces in some of the seats--if you attempt to fill the vacant chairs."

Betty pressed her handkerchief against her lips, for she knew they had turned white. She was but twenty-eight, and if her _salon_ was the success it promised to be she would sit at the head of this table for twenty-eight years to come, and then have compassed fewer years than the man beside her. She had refused resolutely to permit her thought to dwell on the tragic difference in their ages, a difference that had no meaning now, but would symbolize death and desolation hereafter; but her mind had moments of abrupt insight that no Will could conquer, and not long since she had gasped and covered her face with her hands.

"That was brutal of me," he said hurriedly. "Your dinner is the brilliant success that it deserves to be, and you should be permitted to be entirely happy. There is not a bored face, and if they are all jabbering about the everlasting subject, so much the better for you. It gives your _salon_ its political character at once; you would have had a hard time getting them to begin on bimetallism and the census--perish the thought! Ward is now making Lady Mary think that she is a greater diplomatist than himself. Maxwell and the Speaker are wrangling across your mother, who looks alarmed; Burleigh is flirting desperately with Miss Alice Maxwell, who is purring upon his senatorial vanity; your Populist is breaking out into the turgid rhetoric of Mr. Bryan; French has persuaded that charming English girl that he is the most literary man in America, and Miss Carter is condoling with March about an ungrateful State. So be happy, my darling, be happy."

His voice had dropped suddenly. She made an involuntary movement toward him.

"I am," she said below her breath. "I am." She added in a moment, "Will you always come to my Thursday evenings, no matter what happens?"

"Always."

He had turned slightly, and one hand was on his knee. She slipped hers into it recklessly; they were safe in the crowd, and her hand ached for his. It ached from the grasp it received, for he was a man whose self-control was absolute or non-existent. But she clung to him as long as she dared, and when she withdrew her hand she sought for distraction in her company.

It looked as gay and happy as if war had been invented to animate conversation and make a bored people feel dramatic. Death was close upon the heels of two of the distinguished men present; but even though the eyes of the soul be raised everlastingly to the world above, they are blind to the portal. The busy member who had incurred Miss Carter's disapproval and the brilliant Librarian of Congress were among the liveliest at the feast.

It was Senator Ward at one end of the table and Burleigh at the other, who finally started the topic of Miss Madison's intended _salon_, not only that those unacquainted with her ambition might be enlightened, but that the great intention should receive a concrete form without further delay. A half-hour later, when the women left the table, Betty had the satisfaction of knowing that whatever the final result of her venture, her stand was as fully recognized as if she had written a book and found a publisher and critics to advertise her.

V

Betty went to the Senate Gallery on the following day at the request of Armstrong, and heard an exposition of the Populist religion by the benevolent-looking bore from Nebraska. He was followed by an arraignment of the "gold standard Administration" and the Republican Party, from the leading advocate of bimetallism with-or-without-the-concurrence-of-Europe. The utterances of both gentlemen were delivered with the repose and dignity peculiar to their body, and Patriotism and the Constitution would appear to be their watchword and fetish. Burleigh came up to the gallery as the Silver Senator sat down, and smiled wearily at Betty's puzzled comments.

"Of course they sound well," he replied. "In the first place there is always much to be said on both sides of any question, and a clever speaker can make his side dwarf the other. And of course no party could exist five minutes unless it had some good in it. There are several admirable principles in the Populist creed; there are enough windy theories to upset the Constitution of which they prate; and, by the way, the more wrong-headed a would-be statesman is the more hysterically does he plead for the Constitution. As to the other Senator--I sympathize as deeply with the farmer as any man, and I hoped against hope for the success of the bimetallic envoys; but the farmer is of considerably less importance than the national honour; and if a man is not statesman enough to take the national view when he comes to the Senate, he had better stay at home and become a party boss."

"Are you in trouble at home? I saw that you made a speech just before you left."

"They are furious, and elections are imminent; but I never have believed that it paid in the end to be a politician, and I propose to hold to that view. If I am not re-elected this time, I will venture to say that I shall be six years later--"

"Oh, I should be sorry! I should be sorry! Your heart is in the Senate. How could you settle down contentedly to practise law in a Western city for six years?"

"I certainly should have very little to offer a woman," he said bitterly. His frank handsome face had lost the expression of gayety which had sat so gracefully upon the determination of its contours; he looked harassed and a trifle cynical. "There is only one thing I hate more than leaving the United States Senate--and God knows I love it and its traditions: what that is I feel I now have no right--"

"Oh, yes, you have; for if I loved you I would live at the North Pole with you, and I hate cold weather. I don't want you to put me in that sort of position, both for the sake of your own pride and for our friendship."

"That is like you, and I shall take you at your word. Perhaps you can imagine what it cost me to come out and declare myself in a State howling for Silver, when I knew that to leave Washington meant losing my chance with you. For if I am not re-elected I must go out there and stay. I could afford to live here, of course--I hope you know that I have plenty of money--but my political future is there. Even if you made it a condition, I should not pull up stakes, for a man who despised himself for abandoning his ambitions and his power for usefulness could not be happy with any woman."

"I should not make such a condition. As I said, I willingly would go West with you if I loved you."

"Would to God you did! What I meant was that in going I lose my chance."

Betty looked at him and shook her head slowly.

"Yes!" he said. "Yes! Yes! I believe, I know that I could win you with time. And now that the future looks dark I want you more than ever."

"Ah, I wish I could love you," she exclaimed fervently. "I have enough of feminine insight to know that a woman is really happy only when she is making a man happy, and that she is almost ready to bless the troubles which give her the opportunity to console him."

She was looking straight down at Senator North as she spoke. Her voice was impassioned as she finished, and she forgot the man at her side. But he never had suspected that she loved another man. His face flushed and he lowered his head eagerly.

"Betty!" he said, "Betty! Come to me and I swear to make you happy. You don't know what love is. You need to be taught. Any man can make a woman of feeling love him if he loves her enough and she has no antipathy to him. And there is no reason under heaven why we should not be happy together."

There was only one. Betty was convinced of that; and for the moment the dull ache in her heart prompted her to wish that she never had seen the man down there listening impassively to remarks on the Immigration bill. She wanted to be happy, she was made to be happy, and it was easy to imagine the most exacting woman deeply attached to Robert Burleigh. What was love that it defied the Will? Why could not she shake up her brain as one shakes up a misused sofa-cushion and beat it into proper shape? What was love that persisted in spite of the Will and the judgment, that came whence no mortal could discover, but an abnormal condition of the brain, a convolution that no human treatment could reach? But she only shook her head at Burleigh, although she knew that it would be wisdom to give him her hand in full view of the stragglers in the gallery.

"I must go now," she said. "I have calls to pay. Come and dine with us to-night. If there is even a chance of our losing you, my mother and I must have all of you that we can, meanwhile."

VI

"It is just a year ago to-day, Betty, that you nearly killed me by announcing your determination to go into politics--or whatever you choose to call it. I put down the date. A great deal has happened since then--poor dear Jack! And I often think of that unfortunate creature, too. But you and I are here in this same room, and I wonder if you are glad or sorry that you entered upon this eccentric course."

"I have no regrets," said Betty, smiling. "And I don't think you have. You like every man that comes here, and while they are talking to you forget that you ever had an ache. As for me--no, I have no regrets, not one. I am glad."