Chapter 9

"I thought I was running from a nightmare when I left the house," she concluded, smiling at him as if to demonstrate that it had left no shadow in her brain; "but now we both feel better. She wants a gown of many colours, and this morning she roused the house at five o'clock singing camp-meeting hymns. But I think she is quick and observant, and will soon cease to be in any danger of betraying herself. But she is a great responsibility, and I really felt old this morning."

Senator North laughed. "I hope she won't give you any real trouble. If she does, I shall feel more than half responsible. But otherwise she will be an interesting study for you. She is nearly all white; how much of racial lying, and slothfulness, barbarism, and general incapacity that black vein of hers contains will give you food for thought, for she certainly will reveal herself in the course of a year."

"You must admit that a nature like that is a great responsibility."

"Yes, but she alone can work through all the contradictions to the light, and she will do it naturally, under pressure of new experiences, within and without. Don't suggest even the word 'problem' to her, and don't look upon her as one, yourself. You have put her in the right conditions. Leave her alone and Time will do the rest. His work is indubious; never forget that. Are you going to marry Burleigh?" he added abruptly.

She answered vehemently, "No! No!" "I thought not. I know you very little, so far, but I was willing to deny the report."

"I often wonder why I don't fall in love with him. He really has every quality I admire. But much as I like him I should not mind if I knew I never should see him again. I have thought a good deal about it and I should like to understand it."

She looked at him coaxingly, and he smiled, for he understood women very well; but he gave her the explanation she desired.

"The reason is simple enough. The admired qualities, even when they are the component parts of a personality of one who more or less resembles a cherished ideal, never yet inspired love. Love is the result of two responsive sparks coming within each other's range of action. Their owners may be in certain ways unfitted for one another, but the responsive sparks, rising Nature only knows out of what combination of elements, fly straight, and Reason sulks. To put it in another way: Love is merely the intuitive faculty recognizing in another being the power to give its own lord happiness. It is a faculty that is very active in some people," he added with a laugh, "and when it is overworked it often goes wrong, like any other machinery. That is the reason why men who have loved many women make a mistake in marrying; the intuitive faculty is both dulled and coarsened by that time. They are still susceptible to charm, and that is about all."

"Have you loved many women?" asked Betty, without preamble.

He stood up and turned his back to the fire. Betty noted again how squarely he planted himself on his feet. "A few," he said bluntly. "Not many. I have not overworked my intuitive faculty, if that is what you mean. I was not thinking of myself when I spoke."

He stared down at her for a few moments, during which it seemed to Betty that the air vibrated between them. Her breath began to shorten, and she dropped her eyes, lest their depths reveal the spark which was active enough in her.

"Will you play for me?" he asked. "I lost a little girl a few years ago who played well, although she was only sixteen. I have disliked the piano ever since, but I should like to hear you play."

She played to him for an hour, with tenderness, passion, and brilliancy. A gift had been cultivated by the best masters and hours of patient study.

When he thanked her and rose to go and she put her hand in his, her face expressed all the bright earnestness of genuine friendship; there was not a sparkle of coquetry in her eyes.

"Will you come in often on your way home when you are tired and would like to forget bills and things, and let me play to you? I won't talk--you must get so tired of voices!--and the practice will do me good."

"Of course I will come. The pleasantest thing in life is a charming woman's face at the close of a busy day. Good-bye."

When he had gone, Betty got into the depths of a chair and covered her eyes with her hand. For the first time she knew out of her own experience that love means a greater want than the satisfaction of the eye and mind. She would have given anything but her inherited ideals of right and wrong if he had come back and taken her in his arms and kissed her; and she loved him with adoration that he did not, that in all probability he never would, that although he had the great passions which stimulate all great brains, the inflexible honour which his State had rewarded and never questioned for thirty-five years must make short work of struggles with the ordinary temptations of man.

As soon as a man awakens a woman's passions she begins to idealize him and there is no limit to the virtues he will be made to carry. But let a man be endowed by Nature with every noble and elevated attribute she has in her power to bestow, if he lacks sensuality a woman will see him in the clear cold light of reason. Betty Madison, having something of the intuitive faculty, in addition to that knowledge of man which any girl of twenty-seven who has had much love offered her must possess, made fewer mistakes even in the thick of a throbbing brain than most women make; the great danger she did not foresee until time had accustomed her somewhat to the wonder of being able to love at last, and Reason had resumed her place in a singularly clear and logical mind.

XIX

When Betty awoke next morning, she made up her mind that she would not suffer so long as she could see him. Beyond the present she absolutely refused to look. She had found more on the political sea than she had gone in search of, but if she could have foreseen this tumult that would have overwhelmed a weaker woman, she would not have clung to the shore. For although the ultimate of love was forbidden her, she had come into her kingdom, and was immeasurably happier than the millions of women whose love had run its course and turned cold, or been cast back at them. After all, there were so few people who were really happy, why should she complain because her love could not come to rice and old shoes, instead of being a beautiful secret thing, the more perfect, perhaps, because Commonplace, that ogre whose girth increases from year to year, and who sits remorseless in the dwellings of the united, could not breathe upon it?

Harriet had returned without a cold, and the next morning Emory came in and took her to the Congressional Library, where they had luncheon. He also engaged her masters, and before the week was over she had settled down to steady work.

"She has a wonderful mind, I am positive of that," he said to Betty. "She has made so much out of so few advantages. I shall take the greatest interest in watching a mind like that unfold. What relation is she to us, anyway? I can't make out, for the life of me. There was Cousin Amelia--"

"For heaven's sake, don't ask me to write up the genealogical tree. Didn't I refuse to join the Colonial Dames because it meant raking over the bones of all my ancestors--whom may the Saints rest! Most Southern relationships amount to no relationship at all, and Harriet's is too insignificant to mention."

"Well, I must say it is angelic in you to take her in and shower blessings on her in this way--" "Her father had a great claim on us, but that is a family secret, even from you. Mind you take her tomorrow to see the 'Declaration of Independence' and the portrait of Hamilton."

The days passed very quickly to the end of the session. It was the short term; Congress would adjourn on the fourth of March. Although the great official receptions were over, dinners and luncheons crowded each other as closely as before, for Washington pays little attention to Lent beyond releasing its weary hostesses from weekly reception days, and their callers from an absurd and antiquated custom. Betty went frequently to the gallery on Capitol Hill, and although she sometimes was bored by "business," she seldom heard a dull speech, for the intellectual average of the Senate is very high, and its aptitude and the variety of its information unexcelled. Harriet accompanied her two or three times, but her mind turned naturally to the past and concerned itself little with the present. She found the history of the Roman Empire vastly more entertaining than debates on the Arbitration Treaty.

Betty had recently met a Mrs. Fonda, a handsome widow in the vague thirties, who had that fascination of manner and that brilliant talent for politics which went to make up Miss Madison's ideal of the women with whom tired statesmen spent their leisure hours. She was the daughter of a former distinguished member of the House and the widow of a naval officer, and her life may be said to have been passed in Washington with intervals of Europe. Although the Old Washingtonians knew her not, her position in the kaleidoscope of official society was always brilliant. She professed to have no party politics, but to be profoundly interested in all great questions affecting the nation. During the early winter she had visited Cuba and had announced upon her return that no other subject would command her attention until the United States had exterminated Spanish rule in that unhappy island. She occupied one of the smaller houses in Massachusetts Avenue, and her dining-room seated only ten people with comfort. Betty had heard that as many as nine of her country's chosen men had sat about that board at the same time and decided upon matters of state; and she envied her deeply. As Mrs. Fonda lived with no less than two elderly aunts who wore caps, and was a devout member of St. John's Church, Mrs. Madison, with a sigh, concluded that there was no reason why Betty should not go to her house.

"I suppose she is no worse than the rest," she added. "I prefer people with husbands, but the more you see of this new life the sooner you may get tired of it."

Mrs. Fonda paid Betty marked attention whenever they happened to meet, and upon the last occasion had offered playfully to tell her "all she knew" about politics. "They are engrossing," she added with a sigh, "so engrossing that they have taken the best of my years. A woman should be married and happy, I think, but I have become quite depersonalized. And I really think I have done a little good. You will marry, of course; you are young and so beautiful; but let politics be your second great interest. You will, indeed, never give them up if you let them absorb you for one year, and I am more glad than I can say that you already have gone so far." She then invited Betty to a dinner she was giving, and even made an appointment for an hour's "talk" beforehand; but this appointment Betty was unable to keep, as her mother fell ill for a day or two, and Mrs. Fonda's hour occurred while Mrs. Madison desired to have her hand held.

Betty went to the dinner, however, and expected brilliant and unusual things. Mrs. Fonda, who was tall and dark and distinguished looking, and too wise in her unprotected position to annul the attentions of Time with those artifices which are rather a pity but quite condonable in the married woman, was handsomely dressed in black net embroidered with gold, and received with an aunt on either side of her. Her manner was very fine, and, without any relaxation of the dignity which was an integer of her personality, she made each comer feel the guest of the evening. To Betty she was almost affectionate, and surrounded her with the aunts, who looked at her with such kindly and cordial, albeit sadly patient eyes, that Betty almost loved them.

The dining-room accommodated twelve tonight, and two were not the aunts. Betty wondered if they were picking up crumbs in the pantry. She suspected that Mrs. Fonda was more worldly than she would admit, and that ambition and love of admiration had somewhat to do with her patriotism.

There were four members of the Senate present, two wives of members who had been unable to come, and three eminent Representatives. It was seldom that Mrs. Fonda's invitations were declined, for no man went to her house with the miserable conviction that he was about to eat his twenty-seventh dinner by the same cook. Mrs. Fonda had picked up a woman in Belgium who was a genius.

Betty went in with Senator Burleigh, and they examined the menu together.

"By Jove," he said, "it's even more gorgeous than usual. And did you ever see so many flowers outside of a conservatory?"

The room was a bower of violets and lilies of the valley. The mantelpiece was obliterated, the table looked like a garden, and great bunches of the flowers swung from the ceiling. As what could be seen of the room was green and gold, the effect was very beautiful. The lights were pink, and in this room Mrs. Fonda defied Time and looked so wholly attractive that it was not difficult to fancy her the cause of another war, albeit not its Helen.

But much to Betty's disappointment the conversation, which was always general when that radiant hostess presided, soon wandered from the suffering Cuban and fixed itself interminably about a certain measure which had been agitating Congress for the last four years. It was a measure which demanded an immense appropriation, and so far Senator North had kept it from passing the upper chamber; it was generally understood that it would fare still worse at the hands of the Speaker, did it ever reach the House. These two intractable gentlemen had evidently not been bidden to the feast; but three of the Senators, Betty suddenly observed, were members of the Select Committee for the measure under discussion.

Five courses had come and gone, and still the conversation raged along a tiresome bill that happened to be Betty's pet abomination, the only subject discussed in the Senate that bored her. Mrs. Fonda, in the brightest, most impersonal way, defended the unpopular measure, pointing out the immense advantage the country at large must derive from the success of the bill, and, while appealing to the statesmen gathered at her board to set her right when she made mistakes,--she couldn't be expected to keep up with every bill while her head was full of Cuba,--assailed the weak points in those statesmen's arguments.

"I'm bored to death," muttered Betty, finally. "I wish I hadn't come. You won't talk to me and I can't eat any more."

Burleigh turned to her at once. "I've merely been watching her game," he whispered. "Now, I'm nearly sure."

"What?" asked Betty, interested at once.

"She has given a dinner a week this winter, and there is a rumour that she is spending the money of the syndicate interested in this much desired appropriation. Heretofore, when I have been here, at least, although she has always graciously permitted the subject to come up and has delivered herself of a few trenchant and memorable remarks, this is the first time she has deliberately made it run through an entire dinner; every attempt to turn the conversation has been a sham. She's in the ring for votes, there's no further doubt in my mind on that subject; and she's getting desperate, as it is so near the end of the session."

"Then she is a lobbyist," said Betty, in a tone of deep disgust, and pushing away her plate.

"'Sh! She is too clever to have got herself called that. She has very successfully made the world believe that the great game alone interests her; there never has been a more subtle woman in Washington. During the last two years there has been one of those vague rumours going about that she has lost heavily through certain investments; but one hasn't much time for gossip in Washington, and it is only lately that this other rumour has been in the wind. How long she has been doing this sort of thing, of course no one knows."

"But do you mean to say these other men don't see through her?"

"More than one does, no doubt. If he is against the bill he will be amused, as I am, and probably decline her invitations in the future. If he is for it--and there is a good deal to be said in favour of the bill, only we cannot afford the appropriation at present--he will make her think, as a reward for her excellent dinner, that she has secured his vote. Others may be influenced by having it thrashed out in these luxurious surroundings, so different from the chill simplicity of legislative halls. Those that she may be able to get in love with her, of course will believe nothing that is said of her, and when she travels from the Committees to the more or less indifferent members of both chambers, and gets to work on the nonentities whose convictions can always be readjusted by a clever and pretty woman,--and whose vote is as good as North's or Ward's,--you see just how much she can accomplish."

"And if I have my _salon_, shall I come under suspicion of being a high-class lobbyist?"

"There is not the slightest danger if you are careful to have only first-rate men, and avoid the temptation to make a pet of any bill. Besides, as I have told you, your position peculiarly fits you for having a _salon_. No one could question your motive in the beginning, and your tact would protect you always. Don't give up the idea, for its success would mean not only the best political society in the country, but a famous _salon_ would tend to draw art and literature to Washington. And you are just the one woman who could make it famous; and we'd all help you. North would be sure to, his ambition for Washington is so great. He won't put his foot in this house. I never heard him discuss her, but I am convinced that he has seen through her for a long while."

The next day Betty left a card on Mrs. Fonda and struck her from her list; but she carefully secluded her discovery from Mrs. Madison.

XX

Senator North, until the last six days of the session, came twice a week to see her. She played for him, and they talked on many subjects, in which they discovered a common interest, usually avoiding politics, of which he might reasonably be supposed to have enough on Capitol Hill. He told her a good deal about himself, of his early determination to go into public life, the interest that several distinguished men in his State had taken in him, and of the influence they had had on his mind.

"They were almost demi-gods to my youthful enthusiasm," he said, "and doubtless I exaggerated their virtues, estimable as is the record they have left. But the ideals this conception of them set up in my mind I have clung to as closely as I could, and whatever the trials of public life--I will tell you more about them some day--the rewards are great enough if no one can question your sense of public duty, if no accusation of private interest or ignoble motive has ever been able to stand on its feet after the usual nine days' babble."

"Would you sacrifice yourself absolutely to your country?" asked Betty, who kept him to the subject of himself as long as she could.

He laughed. "That is not a fair question to ask any man, for an affirmative makes a prig of him and a negative a mere politician. I will therefore generalize freely and tell you that a man who believes himself to be a statesman considers the nation first, as a matter of course. Howard, for instance, nearly killed himself at the end of last session over a measure which was of great national importance. He should have been in his bed, and he worked day and night. But although it was touch and go with him afterward, it was no more than he should have done, for almost everything depends on the Chairman of a Committee; and as Howard is a man of enormous personal influence and knows more about the subject than any man in Congress, he dared not resign in favour of any one. And yet he is accused of being hand-in-glove with one of the greatest moneyed interests in the country."

"Is he?" asked Betty, pointedly.

"Those are accusations that it is almost impossible to prove. Howard is a rich man, and his wealth is derived from the principal industry of his State, which is unquestionably monopolized by a Trust. It would be his duty to look after it in Congress in any case, as it is his State's great source of wealth; so it is hard to tell. It does not interfere with his being one of the ablest legislators and hardest workers in the Senate--and over matters from which he can derive no possible gain. But the suspicion will lower his position in the history of the Senate."

"Does any one know the truth about the Senate? Even Bryce says it is impossible to get at it, the country is so prone to exaggeration; but estimates that one-fifth of the Senate is corrupt."

"No one knows. The whole point is this: the Senate is the worst place in the world for a weak man, and there are weak men in it. A Senatorship is the highest honour to-day in the gift of the Republic; therefore ambitious men strive for it. A man no sooner achieves this ambition than he finds himself beset by many temptations. He is tormented by lobbyists who will never let him alone until he has proved himself to be a man of incorruptible character and iron will; and that takes time. He also finds that the Senate is a sort of aristocracy, the more so as many of its members are rich men and live well. If he never wanted money before, he wants it then, and if he does not, his wife and daughters do. Then, if he is weak, he finds his way into the pocket of some Trust Company or Railroad Corporation, and his desire for re-election--to retain his brilliant position--multiplies his shackles; for if he proves himself useful, the Trust will buy his Legislature--if it happens to be venal--and keep him in his place. But these instances I know must be rare, for I know the personal character of every man in the Senate. One Senator who is nearing the end of his first term told me the other day that he should not return, for his experience in the Senate had given him such a keen desire to be a rich man that he should go into Wall Street and try to make a fortune. He is honest, but his patriotism is a poor affair. But if the Senate makes a weak man weaker, it makes a strong man stronger, owing to the very temptations he must resist from the day he enters, the compromises he is forced to make, and the danger to his convictions from the subtler brains of older men. And the Senate is full of strong men. But they don't make picturesque 'copy' for the enterprising press; the weak and the corrupt do, and so much space is given them, as well as so much attention by the comic weeklies,--which are regarded as a sort of current history,--that the average man, who does not do his own thinking, accepts the minority as the type."

He talked to her sometimes about his family life. His wife had been a beautiful and accomplished girl, the daughter of a Governor of his State, and he had married her when he was twenty-four. She had been a great help to him, both at home and in Washington, during those years when he needed help. She had not broken down until after the birth of his daughter, but that was twenty years ago, and she had been an invalid ever since. He spoke of this long period of imperfect happiness in a matter-of-fact way, and Betty assumed that by this time he was used to it. He alluded to his wife once as "a very dear old friend," but Betty guessed that she was nearly obliterated from his life. Of his sons he expected great things, but the larger measure of his affections had been given to his daughter, or it seemed so, now that he had lost her.

During the last week of the Session she saw him from the Senate Gallery only, but she consoled herself by admiring the cool deliberation with which he worked his bills through, with Populists thundering on either side of him.

XXI