Chapter 20

How she got through that night without sending him an imperious summons she never knew, unless it were that she found some measure of relief in a letter she wrote to him. If she could not see him, he was still her lover, her only intimate friend, and her confessor. She promised not to write again, but she demanded what help he could give her.

She sent the letter in the morning, and he replied at once:--

I know. Do you think it was necessary to tell me? Do you suppose my mind left you for a moment last night, and that I know and love you so little that I failed to imagine and understand in a single particular? If I were less of a man and more of a god, I should go to you and give you the help you need, but I am only strong enough to keep away from you. Not in thought, however,--if that is any help.

We shall meet in public and speak together. I have no desire to forget you nor that you should forget me. We neither of us shall forget, but we shall live and endure, as the strongest of us always do. You tell me that you are tormented by the thought that you have added to my trials. Remember that all other trials sink into insignificance beside this, and yet that this greatest that has come to me in a long life is glorified by the fact of its existence. And if it is almost a relief to know that I shall not see you alone again, it is a satisfaction and a joy to remember that I have kissed you. R.N.

VIII

For a few days Betty was almost happy again. She had come so close to the nucleus of love that it had warmed her veins and intoxicated her brain. Imagination for a brief moment had given place to reality, and if she felt wiser and older still than after her five months of meditation on the events of the summer, she felt less sober. One great desire of the past year had been fulfilled, and its memory sparkled in her brain, and her heart was lighter. It had been hours before she had ceased to feel the pressure of his arms.

She wondered how she could have been so weak as to think of marrying Burleigh in self-defence, and she punished him by an indifference of manner which approached frigidity; until one of the evening journals copied a bitter attack upon him from the leading newspaper of his State, when she relented and permitted him to console himself in her presence. And although, as the weeks passed and she saw Senator North from the gallery of the Senate only, or for a few impersonal moments in the crowd, and the elixir in her veins lost its strength, still she felt that life was sufferable once more. She had endeavoured to put Mrs. North from her mind, but more than once she caught herself wishing that some one would mention her name. Nobody did in those excited days, and Betty had no means of learning whether her sudden good health had been final or temporary. Sally Carter did not allude to her again. When she and Betty met, it was to wrangle on the Cuban question, for Miss Carter was all for war.

And then one day the newsboys shrieked in the streets that the _Maine_ had been blown up in Havana Harbor.

For a few days Congress held its peace, and the country showed a praiseworthy attempt to believe in the theory of accident or to wait for full proof of Spanish treachery. The _Maine_ was blown up on Tuesday, and on Thursday night at the Madisons' the subject almost was avoided; it was the most peaceful _salon_ Betty had held.

But it was merely the calm before the storm. The fever was still in the country's blood, which began to flow freely to the brain again as soon as the shock was over. The press could not let pass the most glorious opportunity in its history for head-lines; there were more mass meetings than even the press could grapple with, and all the latent oratorical ability in the country burst into flower. It seemed to Betty when she rose in the night and leaned out of her window that she could hear the roar of the great national storm.

And it rose and swelled and left the old landmarks behind it. The memory of the gales of the past year, with the intervals of doubt and rest, was insignificant beside this volume of fury pouring out of every State, to concentrate at last, fierce, unreasoning, and irresistible, about the White House and Capitol Hill. It was not long before the great quiet village on the Potomac seemed to epitomize the terrible mood of the country it represented, and the country had made up its mind long before the report of the Maine Court of Inquiry came in. The cry no longer was for the suffering Cuban, but for revenge. The Senate held down its "kickers" with an iron hand, but one or two of the inferior men managed to shout across the Chamber to their constituents. Senator North scarcely left his seat. Burleigh told Betty that he should not allude to the subject in the Senate until after the Court of Inquiry's report, but then, whatever the result, he should speak and ask for war. Betty argued with him by the hour, and although he discussed the matter from every side, it was evident that he did it merely for the pleasure of talking to her and that she could not shake his resolution for a moment. It was time for the United States to put an end to the barbarous state of affairs a few miles from her shores, and that was the end of it. He admitted the patriotism of Senator North's attitude, but contended that the United States would be more dishonoured if she disregarded this terrible appeal to her humanity. When Betty accused him of short-sightedness, he replied that a foretold result required a straight line of succession, and that when great events thickened the line of succession was anything but straight; therefore ultimates could not be foretold. He admitted that Senator North had proved himself possessed of the faculty of what Herbert Spencer calls representativeness more than once, but men as wise and calm in their judgment had been mistaken before. But he and others of his standing were preserving the dignity of the Senate, and that was something.

IX

"If you have this war," said Lady Mary Montgomery to Betty, who had come to receive with her on one of her Tuesdays, "it will be strictly constitutional if you look at it in the right way. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and as the people are practically a unit in their howl for war, they have a right to it, and the responsibility is on their shoulders, not on your few statesmen."

"That is a real gem of feminine logic, but not only is one wise man of more account than ten thousand fools, but a unit is a unit and has no comparative state. The serious men from one end of the country to the other are doing all they can to quell the excitement; so are the few decent newspapers that we possess. But they are dealing with a mob; an excited mob is always mad, and in this case the keepers are not numerous enough for the lunatics. But no one will question that the intelligent keepers are right and the mob wrong. The average intelligence is always shallow, and in electric climates very excitable. We are dealing to-day no less with a huge mob, even if it is not massed and marching, than were the few sane men of the French Revolution. An exciting idea is like a venomous microbe; it bites into the brain, and if circumstances do not occur to expel it, it produces a form of mania. That is the only way I can account for Burleigh's attitude; he is one of the few exceptions. There are thousands of men in the United States whose brains could stand any strain, but there are hundreds of thousands who were born to swell a mob. As for 'government by the people,' that phrase should be translated to-day into 'tyranny of the people.' England under a constitutional monarchy is far freer than we are."

"Well, I am suppressed and will say no more. I suppose I shall have a mob to-day. If anything, people are paying more calls than ever, for they can't stay indoors for twenty-five minutes with no one to talk to. It is getting monotonous. I wish that the President and the Senate would begin to play, but they look as impassive as the statues in the parks."

The rooms filled quickly. By five o'clock the usual crowd was there, and if it had its dowdy battalion as ever, there was no evidence that the more fortunate had lost their interest in dress, despite the warlike state of their nerves. Not that all were for war, by any means. Many were clinging to a forlorn hope, but they could talk of nothing else.

Betty had just listened to the twenty-eighth theory of the cause of the Maine's destruction when she turned in response to a familiar drawl.

"Why, howdy, Miss Madison, I'm real glad to run across you at last."

Betty was so taken aback that she mechanically surrendered her hand to the limp pressure of her former housekeeper. But she was not long recovering herself.

"Miss Trumbull, is it not? I was not aware that you were an acquaintance of Lady Mary Montgomery's."

"Well, I can't say as I know her real intimate yet, but I guess I shall in time, as we're both wives of Congressmen."

"Ah? You are married?" Betty experienced a fleeting desire to see the man who had been captivated by Miss Trumbull.

"Ye--as. I went out West to visit my sister after I left you and was married before I knew it--to Mr. George Washington Mudd. He's real nice, and smart--My! I expect to be in the White House before I die."

"It is among the possibilities, of course. I hope you are happy, and that meanwhile he is able to take care of you comfortably." Mrs. Mudd glistened with black silk and jet, but the cut of her gown was of the Middle West.

"Well, I guess! He's a lawyer and can make two hundred dollars a month any day. Of course I can't set up a house in Washington, but I live at the Ellsmere, and three or four of us Congressional ladies receive together and share carriages. I'll be happy to have you call--the first and third Tuesdays; but we always put it in the Post."

"I have little time for calling. I am very busy in many ways."

"Well, I'm sorry. You don't look as well as you did up in the mountains; you look real tired, come to examine you. But your dresses are always so swell one sees those first. I always did think you had just the prettiest dresses I ever saw."

Betty did not turn her back upon the woman; it was a relief to talk on any subject that stood aloof from war. Mrs. Mudd rambled on.

"I suppose you're engaged to Senator Burleigh by this time? He's our Senator, you know, but I don't know as he's likely to be, long. We want silver, and I guess we've got to have it."

"I suppose you take quite an interest in politics now," said Betty, looking at the woman's large self-satisfied face. So far, matrimony had not been a chastening influence. Mrs. Mudd looked more conceited than ever.

"Well, I guess I always knew as much about them as anybody; and now I'm in politics, I guess the President couldn't give me many points. If he don't declare war soon, I'll go up to the White House and tell him what I think of him."

"Suppose you make a speech from the House Gallery. It is Congress that declares war, not the President."

Mrs. Mudd's face turned the dull red which Betty well remembered. "I guess I know what I'm talking' about. It's the President--"

But Betty's back was upon her, and Betty was listening to the agitated comments of one of the year's debutantes upon the destruction of the Maine.

"Was night ever so welcome before?" thought Betty, as she settled herself between the four posts of her great-aunt's bed, a few hours later. "Here, at least, not an echo of war can penetrate, and if I think of other things that scald my pillow, it is almost a relief."

X

On the following evening she went with the Montgomerys to the Army and Navy reception at the White House. Lady Mary had but to express a wish for a card to any function in Washington; and her popularity had much to do with her love for her adopted country.

It was the first time Betty ever had entered the historic mansion, and as she waited for twenty minutes in the crush of people on the front porch, she reflected that probably it was the last.

But when she was in the great East Room, which was hung with flags and glittered with uniforms, and was filled with the strains of martial music, she thrilled again with the historical sense, and almost wished there was a prospect of a war which would compel her to patriotic excitement.

They remained in the East Room for some time before going to shake hands with the President, that the long queue of people patiently crawling to the Blue Room might have time to wear itself down to a point. As Betty stood there eagerly watching the scene, and talking to first one and then another of the Army men who came up to speak to her, she became deeply impressed with the fact that this was the calmest function she had attended in Washington during the winter. There was no excitement on the faces of these men in uniform, and they said little and hardly mentioned the subject of war. They looked stern and thoughtful; and Betty felt proud of them, and wished they were doing themselves honour in a better cause.

She went down the long central corridor after a time, past the crowd wedged before the central door, gaping at the receiving party, to a room where she and the Montgomerys joined the diminished queue extending from a side entrance to the Blue Room. She was not surprised to see Mrs. Mudd in front of her, for although the Representative's wife should have received a card for another evening, she was quite capable of forcing her way in without one; as doubtless a good many others had done to-night. She wore her black silk gown and her bonnet, and although most of the women present were in brilliant evening dress, Mrs. Mudd had several to keep her in countenance. She glanced wearily over her shoulder during the slow progress of the queue, and caught sight of Betty. Her place was precious, but she left it at once and came down the line.

"I'll go in along with you," she said. "George couldn't come and I've felt kinder lonesome ever sense I got here. And we've been three quarters of an hour getting this far. It's terrible tiresome, but as I've found you I guess I can stand the rest of it."

Betty detected the flicker of malice in her former housekeeper's voice. They were on equal ground for once, and Miss Madison and Mrs. Mudd would shake hands with their President within consecutive moments. She smiled with some cynicism, but was too good-natured to snub the native ambition where it could do no harm.

"I saw Senator North to-day," observed Mrs. Mudd, "and he looked crosser 'n two sticks. He's mad because they'll have war in spite of him. I call him right down unpatriotic, and so do lots of others."

"That disturbs him a great deal. He is much more concerned about the country making a fool of itself."

"This country's all right, and we couldn't go wrong if we tried. Them that sets themselves up to be so terrible superior are just bad Americans, that's the long and the short of it, and they'll find it out at the next elections. If Senator North should take a trip out West just now, they'd tar and feather him, and I'd like to be there to see it done. They can't say what they think of his setting on patriotic Senators loud enough. And as for the President--"

"Well, don't criticise the President while you are under his roof. It is bad manners. Here we are. Will you go in first?"

"Well, I don't see why I shouldn't. I'll hurry on so they can see your dress; it's just too lovely for anything."

Betty wore a white embroidered chiffon over green; she shook out the train, which had been over her arm ever since she entered the house. Her name was announced in a loud tone, and she entered the pretty flowery Blue Room with its charmingly dressed receiving party standing before a large group of favoured and critical friends, and facing the inquisitive eyes in the central doorway. The President grasped her hand and said, "How do you do, Miss Madison?" in so pleased and so cordial a tone that Betty for a fleeting moment wondered where she could have met him before. Then she smiled, made a comprehensive bow to his wife and the women of the Cabinet, and passed on. Mrs. Mudd, who had shaken hands relentlessly with every weary member of the receiving party, reached the door of exit after her and clutched her by the arm.

"Say!" she exclaimed with excitement, although her drawl was but half conquered. "Where _do_ you s'pose I could have met the President before? I know by the way he said 'Mrs. Mudd,' he remembered me, but I just can't think, to save my life. My! ain't he fascinating?"

Betty had laughed aloud. "I am sorry to hurt your vanity," she replied, "but the President is said to have the best manners of any man who has occupied the White House within living memory."

"What d'you mean?" cried Mrs. Mudd, sharply. "D' you mean he didn't know me? I just know he did, so there! And he can pack his clothes in my trunk as soon as he likes."

"Good heaven!" "Oh, that's slang. I forgot you were so terrible superior. But you've got good cause to know I'm virtuous. Lands sakes! I guess nobody ever said I warn't."

"I don't fancy anybody ever did."

They were in the East Room again, with the stars and stripes, the moving glitter of gold, the loud hum mingled with the distant strains of martial music.

"It's really inspiring," said Lady Mary. "I wish I could write a war poem."

"I hope there is nothing coming to inspire war doggerel; the prospect of a new crop of war stories and war plays is too painful. We were all brought up on the Civil War and are resigned to its literature. But life is too short to get used to a new variety."

"Betty dear, ennui has embittered you, and I must confess that I am a trifle weary of the war before it has begun, myself. Randolph, I think I prefer you should vote for peace."

"I'm afraid we'll have no peace till we've had war first," said Mr. Montgomery, grimly.

"Oh, we're goin' to have war," drawled Mrs. Mudd. "Just don't you worry about that. Now don't blush," she said in Betty's ear. "Senator North's makin' straight for you. I suspicion you like him better 'n Burleigh--"

Betty had turned upon her at last, and the woman tittered nervously and fell back in the crowd.

Senator North and Miss Madison shook hands with that absence of emotion which is one of the conditions of a crowded environment, and Lady Mary suggested they should all go to the conservatory, where it was cooler.

Betty told Senator North of the impression the Army and Navy men had made on her, and he laughed.

"Of course they are not excited and say little," he said. "They will do the acting and leave the talking to the private citizens. The only argument in favour of the war and the large standing army which might be its consequence is that several hundred thousand more men would have disciplined brains inside their skulls."

"That dreadful housekeeper I had in the Adirondacks is here, married to a Representative named George Washington Mudd."

"I never heard of him, but I am sorry she has come here to remind you of what I should like to have you forget for a time. I do believe a specimen of every queer fish in the country comes to this pond."

They passed one of the bands, and conversation was impossible until they entered the great conservatory with its wide cool walks among the green. It was not crowded, and although there was no seclusion in it at any time, its lights were few and it had a sequestered atmosphere.

Betty and Senator North involuntarily drew closer together.

"In a way I am happy now," she said. "It is something to be with you and close to you. I will not think of how much this may lack until I am alone again and there is no limit to my wants."

"I feel the reverse of depressed," he said, smiling. "Are you quite well? You look a little tired."

"I am tired with much thinking; but that is inevitable. One cannot love hopelessly and look one's best. I always despised the heroines of romance who went into a decline, but Nature demands some tribute in spite of the strongest will."

He held her arm more closely, but he set his lips and did not answer. She spoke again after a moment.

"Since that night I have not been nearly so unhappy, however. I even feel gay sometimes, and my sense of humour has come back. It would be quite dreadful to go through life without that, but I thought I had lost it."

He had turned his eyes and was regarding her intently; but much as she loved them she felt as helpless as ever before their depths. They could pierce and burn, but they never were limpid for a moment.

"You do not misunderstand that?" she asked hurriedly. "It does not mean that I love you less, but more, if anything. And I am not resigned! Only, I feel as if in some way I had received a little help, as if--I cannot express it."

"I understand you perfectly. We are a little closer than we were, and life is not quite so grey."

"That is it. And I would supplement your bare statement of the fact, if I dared."

"If you do, I certainly shall kiss you right here in the crowd," he said, and they smiled into each other's eyes. There was little need of explanations between them.

"That would form a brief diversion for Washington. And as for Mrs. Mudd--By the way, I hope I am not going off. You are the second person who has told me that I am not looking well."

"You are improved as far as I am concerned. And if you ever faded, happiness would restore you at once. If happiness never came, perhaps you would not care--would you?"

She shrugged her beautiful shoulders and smiled quizzically.

"I don't know. _Je suis femme_. I think I might always find some measure of consolation in the mirror if it behaved properly."

"Your sincerity is one of your charms. So walk and eat and live in the world, and think as little as you can."

"This conservatory is fearfully draughty," remarked Lady Mary, close to Betty's shoulder. "I don't want to stay all night, do you?"

"I am ready," said Betty; but she sighed, for she had been almost happy for the hour.

XI

If the reception at the White House had been calm, Betty's _salon_ on the following evening was not. On Tuesday the House, after duly relieving its feelings by an hour and a half of war talk, flaming with every variety of patriotism, passed the bill appropriating $50,000,000 for the national defence. On Wednesday the bill passed the Senate without a word beyond the "ayes" of its members. On the morrow the War Department would begin the mobilization of the army; and although the _Maine_ Court of Inquiry had not completed its labours, the New York World, in the interest of curious humanity, had instituted a submarine inquiry of its own and given the result to the country. Even Senator North regarded war as almost inevitable, although the controvertible proof of explosion from without only involved the Spanish by inference.

The women who were privileged to attend the now famous _salon_ wore their freshest and most becoming gowns, and most of the Senators would have been glad to have frivoled away the evening in compliments, so refreshing was the sight of an attractive face after a long and anxious day. But the eyes of the women sparkled with patriotic fire only. One burst into tears and others threatened hysterics, but got through the evening comfortably. Mrs. Madison sat on a sofa and fanned herself nervously; Senator Maxwell and Senator North at her request kept close to her side.

"They were not so excited during the Civil War," she exclaimed, as a shrill voice smote her ear. "I suppose we have developed more nerves or something."

"The mind was possessed by the Grim Fact during the Civil War," said Senator Maxwell. "This is a second-rate thing that appeals to the nerves and not to the soul."