ON the first of December, Mrs. Lee took the train for Washington, and
before five o'clock that evening she was entering her newly hired
house on Lafayette Square. She shrugged her shoulders with a mingled
expression of contempt and grief at the curious barbarism of the
curtains and the wall-papers, and her next two days were occupied with
a life-and-death struggle to get the mastery over her surroundings. In
this awful contest the interior of the doomed house suffered as though
a demon were in it; not a chair, not a mirror, not a carpet, was left
untouched, and in the midst of the worst confusion the new mistress sat,
calm as the statue of Andrew Jackson in the square under her eyes, and
issued her orders with as much decision as that hero had ever shown.
Towards the close of the second day, victory crowned her forehead. A
new era, a nobler conception of duty and existence, had dawned upon
that benighted and heathen residence. The wealth of Syria and Persia was
poured out upon the melancholy Wilton carpets; embroidered comets and
woven gold from Japan and Teheran depended from and covered over every
sad stuff-curtain; a strange medley of sketches, paintings, fans,
embroideries, and porcelain was hung, nailed, pinned, or stuck against
the wall; finally the domestic altarpiece, the mystical Corot landscape,
was hoisted to its place over the parlour fire, and then all was over.
The setting sun streamed softly in at the windows, and peace reigned in
that redeemed house and in the heart of its mistress.
“I think it will do now, Sybil,” said she, surveying the scene.
“It must,” replied Sybil. “You haven't a plate or a fan or coloured
scarf left. You must send out and buy some of these old negro-women's
bandannas if you are going to cover anything else. What is the use? Do
you suppose any human being in Washington will like it? They will think
you demented.”
“There is such a thing as self-respect,” replied her sister, calmly.
Sybil--Miss Sybil Ross--was Madeleine Lee's sister. The keenest
psychologist could not have detected a single feature quality which they
had in common, and for that reason they were devoted friends. Madeleine
was thirty, Sybil twenty-four. Madeleine was indescribable; Sybil was
transparent. Madeleine was of medium height with a graceful figure,
a well-set head, and enough golden-brown hair to frame a face full of
varying expression. Her eyes were never for two consecutive hours of the
same shade, but were more often blue than grey. People who envied her
smile said that she cultivated a sense of humour in order to show her
teeth. Perhaps they were right; but there was no doubt that her habit
of talking with gesticulation would never have grown upon her unless
she had known that her hands were not only beautiful but expressive.
She dressed as skilfully as New York women do, but in growing older
she began to show symptoms of dangerous unconventionality. She had been
heard to express a low opinion of her countrywomen who blindly fell down
before the golden calf of Mr. Worth, and she had even fought a battle
of great severity, while it lasted, with one of her best-dressed
friends who had been invited--and had gone--to Mr. Worth's afternoon
tea-parties. The secret was that Mrs. Lee had artistic tendencies, and
unless they were checked in time, there was no knowing what might be
the consequence. But as yet they had done no harm; indeed, they rather
helped to give her that sort of atmosphere which belongs only to certain
women; as indescribable as the afterglow; as impalpable as an Indian
summer mist; and non-existent except to people who feel rather than
reason. Sybil had none of it. The imagination gave up all attempts
to soar where she came. A more straightforward, downright, gay,
sympathetic, shallow, warm-hearted, sternly practical young woman has
rarely touched this planet. Her mind had room for neither grave-stones
nor guide-books; she could not have lived in the past or the future if
she had spent her days in churches and her nights in tombs. “She was
not clever, like Madeleine, thank Heaven.” Madeleine was not an orthodox
member of the church; sermons bored her, and clergymen never failed to
irritate every nerve in her excitable system. Sybil was a simple and
devout worshipper at the ritualistic altar; she bent humbly before the
Paulist fathers. When she went to a ball she always had the best partner
in the room, and took it as a matter of course; but then, she always
prayed for one; somehow it strengthened her faith. Her sister took care
never to laugh at her on this score, or to shock her religious opinions.
“Time enough,” said she, “for her to forget religion when religion
fails her.” As for regular attendance at church, Madeleine was able to
reconcile their habits without trouble. She herself had not entered a
church for years; she said it gave her unchristian feelings; but Sybil
had a voice of excellent quality, well trained and cultivated:
Madeleine insisted that she should sing in the choir, and by this
little manoeuvre, the divergence of their paths was made less evident.
Madeleine did not sing, and therefore could not go to church with Sybil.
This outrageous fallacy seemed perfectly to answer its purpose, and
Sybil accepted it, in good faith, as a fair working principle which
explained itself.
Madeleine was sober in her tastes. She wasted no money. She made no
display.
She walked rather than drove, and wore neither diamonds nor brocades.
But the general impression she made was nevertheless one of luxury. On
the other hand, her sister had her dresses from Paris, and wore them
and her ornaments according to all the formulas; she was good-naturedly
correct, and bent her round white shoulders to whatever burden the
Parisian autocrat chose to put upon them. Madeleine never interfered,
and always paid the bills.
Before they had been ten days in Washington, they fell gently into their
place and were carried along without an effort on the stream of social
life.
Society was kind; there was no reason for its being otherwise. Mrs. Lee
and her sister had no enemies, held no offices, and did their best to
make themselves popular. Sybil had not passed summers at Newport and
winters in New York in vain; and neither her face nor her figure, her
voice nor her dancing, needed apology. Politics were not her strong
point. She was induced to go once to the Capitol and to sit ten minutes
in the gallery of the Senate. No one ever knew what her impressions
were; with feminine tact she managed not to betray herself But, in
truth, her notion of legislative bodies was vague, floating between her
experience at church and at the opera, so that the idea of a performance
of some kind was never out of her head. To her mind the Senate was a
place where people went to recite speeches, and she naively assumed that
the speeches were useful and had a purpose, but as they did not interest
her she never went again. This is a very common conception of Congress;
many Congressmen share it.
Her sister was more patient and bolder. She went to the Capitol nearly
every day for at least two weeks. At the end of that time her interest
began to flag, and she thought it better to read the debates every
morning in the Congressional Record. Finding this a laborious and not
always an instructive task, she began to skip the dull parts; and in
the absence of any exciting question, she at last resigned herself
to skipping the whole. Nevertheless she still had energy to visit the
Senate gallery occasionally when she was told that a splendid orator
was about to speak on a question of deep interest to his country.
She listened with a little disposition to admire, if she could; and,
whenever she could, she did admire. She said nothing, but she listened
sharply. She wanted to learn how the machinery of government worked,
and what was the quality of the men who controlled it. One by one, she
passed them through her crucibles, and tested them by acids and by fire.
A few survived her tests and came out alive, though more or less
disfigured, where she had found impurities. Of the whole number, only
one retained under this process enough character to interest her.
In these early visits to Congress, Mrs. Lee sometimes had the company
of John Carrington, a Washington lawyer about forty years old, who, by
virtue of being a Virginian and a distant connection of her husband,
called himself a cousin, and took a tone of semi-intimacy, which Mrs.
Lee accepted because Carrington was a man whom she liked, and because
he was one whom life had treated hardly. He was of that unfortunate
generation in the south which began existence with civil war, and he was
perhaps the more unfortunate because, like most educated Virginians of
the old Washington school, he had seen from the first that, whatever
issue the war took, Virginia and he must be ruined. At twenty-two he had
gone into the rebel army as a private and carried his musket modestly
through a campaign or two, after which he slowly rose to the rank of
senior captain in his regiment, and closed his services on the staff of
a major-general, always doing scrupulously enough what he conceived to
be his duty, and never doing it with enthusiasm. When the rebel armies
surrendered, he rode away to his family plantation--not a difficult
thing to do, for it was only a few miles from Appomatox--and at once
began to study law; then, leaving his mother and sisters to do what
they could with the worn-out plantation, he began the practice of law
in Washington, hoping thus to support himself and them. He had succeeded
after a fashion, and for the first time the future seemed not absolutely
dark. Mrs. Lee's house was an oasis to him, and he found himself, to
his surprise, almost gay in her company. The gaiety was of a very quiet
kind, and Sybil, while friendly with him, averred that he was certainly
dull; but this dulness had a fascination for Madeleine, who, having
tasted many more kinds of the wine of life than Sybil, had learned to
value certain delicacies of age and flavour that were lost upon younger
and coarser palates. He talked rather slowly and almost with effort, but
he had something of the dignity--others call it stiffness--of the
old Virginia school, and twenty years of constant responsibility
and deferred hope had added a touch of care that bordered closely on
sadness. His great attraction was that he never talked or seemed to
think of himself. Mrs. Lee trusted in him by instinct. “He is a type!”
said she; “he is my idea of George Washington at thirty.”
One morning in December, Carrington entered Mrs. Lee's parlour towards
noon, and asked if she cared to visit the Capitol.
“You will have a chance of hearing to-day what may be the last great
speech of our greatest statesman,” said he; “you should come.”
“A splendid sample of our native raw material, sir?” asked she,
fresh from a reading of Dickens, and his famous picture of American
statesmanship.
“Precisely so,” said Carrington; “the Prairie Giant of Peonia, the
Favourite Son of Illinois; the man who came within three votes of
getting the party nomination for the Presidency last spring, and was
only defeated because ten small intriguers are sharper than one big one.
The Honourable Silas P. Ratcliffe, Senator from Illinois; he will be run
for the Presidency yet.”
“What does the P. stand for?” asked Sybil.
“I don't remember ever to have heard his middle name,” said Carrington.
“Perhaps it is Peonia or Prairie; I can't say.”
“He is the man whose appearance struck me so much when we were in the
Senate last week, is he not? A great, ponderous man, over six feet
high, very senatorial and dignified, with a large head and rather good
features?” inquired Mrs. Lee.
“The same,” replied Carrington. “By all means hear him speak. He is
the stumbling-block of the new President, who is to be allowed no peace
unless he makes terms with Ratcliffe; and so every one thinks that the
Prairie Giant of Peonia will have the choice of the State or Treasury
Department. If he takes either it will be the Treasury, for he is a
desperate political manager, and will want the patronage for the next
national convention.”
Mrs. Lee was delighted to hear the debate, and Carrington was delighted
to sit through it by her side, and to exchange running comments with her
on the speeches and the speakers.
“Have you ever met the Senator?” asked she.
“I have acted several times as counsel before his committees. He is an
excellent chairman, always attentive and generally civil.”
“Where was he born?”
“The family is a New England one, and I believe respectable. He came, I
think, from some place in the Connecticut Valley, but whether Vermont,
New Hampshire, or Massachusetts, I don't know.”
“Is he an educated man?”
“He got a kind of classical education at one of the country colleges
there. I suspect he has as much education as is good for him. But he
went West very soon after leaving college, and being then young and
fresh from that hot-bed of abolition, he threw himself into the
anti-slavery movement in Illinois, and after a long struggle he rose
with the wave. He would not do the same thing now.”
“Why not?”
“He is older, more experienced, and not so wise. Besides, he has no
longer the time to wait. Can you see his eyes from here? I call them
Yankee eyes.”
“Don't abuse the Yankees,” said Mrs. Lee; “I am half Yankee myself.”
“Is that abuse? Do you mean to deny that they have eyes?”
“I concede that there may be eyes among them; but Virginians are not
fair judges of their expression.”
“Cold eyes,” he continued; “steel grey, rather small, not unpleasant in
good-humour, diabolic in a passion, but worst when a little suspicious;
then they watch you as though you were a young rattle-snake, to be
killed when convenient.”
“Does he not look you in the face?”
“Yes; but not as though he liked you. His eyes only seem to ask the
possible uses you might be put to. Ah, the vice-president has given him
the floor; now we shall have it. Hard voice, is it not? like his eyes.
Hard manner, like his voice. Hard all through.”
“What a pity he is so dreadfully senatorial!” said Mrs. Lee; “otherwise
I rather admire him.”
“Now he is settling down to his work,” continued Carrington. “See how he
dodges all the sharp issues. What a thing it is to be a Yankee! What a
genius the fellow has for leading a party! Do you see how well it is all
done? The new President flattered and conciliated, the party united and
given a strong lead. And now we shall see how the President will deal
with him. Ten to one on Ratcliffe. Come, there is that stupid ass from
Missouri getting up. Let us go.”
As they passed down the steps and out into the Avenue, Mrs. Lee turned
to Carrington as though she had been reflecting deeply and had at length
reached a decision.
“Mr. Carrington,” said she, “I want to know Senator Ratcliffe.”
“You will meet him to-morrow evening,” replied Carrington, “at your
senatorial dinner.”
The Senator from New York, the Honourable Schuyler Clinton, was an old
admirer of Mrs. Lee, and his wife was a cousin of hers, more or less
distant. They had lost no time in honouring the letter of credit she
thus had upon them, and invited her and her sister to a solemn dinner,
as imposing as political dignity could make it. Mr. Carrington, as a
connection of hers, was one of the party, and almost the only one among
the twenty persons at table who had neither an office, nor a title, nor
a constituency.
Senator Clinton received Mrs. Lee and her sister with tender enthusiasm,
for they were attractive specimens of his constituents. He pressed their
hands and evidently restrained himself only by an effort from embracing
them, for the Senator had a marked regard for pretty women, and had made
love to every girl with any pretensions to beauty that had appeared
in the State of New York for fully half a century. At the same time
he whispered an apology in her ear; he regretted so much that he was
obliged to forego the pleasure of taking her to dinner; Washington was
the only city in America where this could have happened, but it was a
fact that ladies here were very great stickiers for etiquette; on the
other hand he had the sad consolation that she would be the gainer,
for he had allotted to her Lord Skye, the British Minister, “a most
agreeable man and not married, as I have the misfortune to be;” and on
the other side “I have ventured to place Senator Ratcliffe, of Illinois,
whose admirable speech I saw you listening to with such rapt attention
yesterday. I thought you might like to know him. Did I do right?”
Madeleine assured him that he had divined her inmost wishes, and he
turned with even more warmth of affection to her sister: “As for you, my
dear--dear Sybil, what can I do to make your dinner agreeable? If I give
your sister a coronet, I am only sorry not to have a diadem for you. But
I have done everything in my power. The first Secretary of the Russian
Legation, Count Popoff, will take you in; a charming young man, my dear
Sybil; and on your other side I have placed the Assistant Secretary of
State, whom you know.”
And so, after the due delay, the party settled themselves at the
dinner-table, and Mrs. Lee found Senator Ratcliffe's grey eyes resting
on her face for a moment as they sat down.
Lord Skye was very agreeable, and, at almost any other moment of her
life, Mrs. Lee would have liked nothing better than to talk with him
from the beginning to the end of her dinner. Tall, slender, bald-headed,
awkward, and stammering with his elaborate British stammer whenever it
suited his convenience to do so; a sharp observer who had wit which he
commonly concealed; a humourist who was satisfied to laugh silently at
his own humour; a diplomatist who used the mask of frankness with great
effect; Lord Skye was one of the most popular men in Washington. Every
one knew that he was a ruthless critic of American manners, but he had
the art to combine ridicule with good-humour, and he was all the more
popular accordingly. He was an outspoken admirer of American women
in everything except their voices, and he did not even shrink from
occasionally quizzing a little the national peculiarities of his own
countrywomen; a sure piece of flattery to their American cousins. He
would gladly have devoted himself to Mrs. Lee, but decent civility
required that he should pay some attention to his hostess, and he was
too good a diplomatist not to be attentive to a hostess who was the wife
of a Senator, and that Senator the chairman of the committee of foreign
relations.
The moment his head was turned, Mrs. Lee dashed at her Peonia Giant, who
was then consuming his fish, and wishing he understood why the British
Minister had worn no gloves, while he himself had sacrificed his
convictions by wearing the largest and whitest pair of French kids that
could be bought for money on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a little
touch of mortification in the idea that he was not quite at home among
fashionable people, and at this instant he felt that true happiness was
only to be found among the simple and honest sons and daughters of toil.
A certain secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in
the breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democratic; for
democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by the
people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger that
the British Minister may not understand this political principle as he
should. Lord Skye had run the risk of making two blunders; of offending
the Senator from New York by neglecting his wife, and the Senator from
Illinois by engrossing the attention of Mrs. Lee. A young Englishman
would have done both, but Lord Skye had studied the American
constitution. The wife of the Senator from New York now thought him most
agreeable, and at the same moment the Senator from Illinois awoke to the
conviction that after all, even in frivolous and fashionable circles,
true dignity is in no danger of neglect; an American Senator
represents a sovereign state; the great state of Illinois is as big
as England--with the convenient omission of Wales, Scotland, Ireland,
Canada, India, Australia, and a few other continents and islands; and in
short, it was perfectly clear that Lord Skye was not formidable to him,
even in light society; had not Mrs. Lee herself as good as said that no
position equalled that of an American Senator?
In ten minutes Mrs. Lee had this devoted statesman at her feet. She had
not studied the Senate without a purpose. She had read with unerring
instinct one general characteristic of all Senators, a boundless
and guileless thirst for flattery, engendered by daily draughts from
political friends or dependents, then becoming a necessity like a dram,
and swallowed with a heavy smile of ineffable content. A single glance
at Mr. Ratcliffe's face showed Madeleine that she need not be afraid
of flattering too grossly; her own self-respect, not his, was the only
restraint upon her use of this feminine bait.
She opened upon him with an apparent simplicity and gravity, a quiet
repose of manner, and an evident consciousness of her own strength,
which meant that she was most dangerous.
“I heard your speech yesterday, Mr. Ratcliffe. I am glad to have a
chance of telling you how much I was impressed by it. It seemed to me
masterly. Do you not find that it has had a great effect?”
“I thank you, madam. I hope it will help to unite the party, but as yet
we have had no time to measure its results. That will require several
days more.” The Senator spoke in his senatorial manner, elaborate,
condescending, and a little on his guard.
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Lee, turning towards him as though he were a
valued friend, and looking deep into his eyes, “Do you know that every
one told me I should be shocked by the falling off in political ability
at Washington? I did not believe them, and since hearing your speech I
am sure they are mistaken. Do you yourself think there is less ability
in Congress than there used to be?”
“Well, madam, it is difficult to answer that question. Government is not
so easy now as it was formerly. There are different customs. There are
many men of fair abilities in public life; many more than there used to
be; and there is sharper criticism and more of it.”
“Was I right in thinking that you have a strong resemblance to Daniel
Webster in your way of speaking? You come from the same neighbourhood,
do you not?”
Mrs. Lee here hit on Ratcliffe's weak point; the outline of his head
had, in fact, a certain resemblance to that of Webster, and he prided
himself upon it, and on a distant relationship to the Expounder of the
Constitution; he began to think that Mrs. Lee was a very intelligent
person. His modest admission of the resemblance gave her the opportunity
to talk of Webster's oratory, and the conversation soon spread to a
discussion of the merits of Clay and Calhoun. The Senator found that his
neighbour--a fashionable New York woman, exquisitely dressed, and with
a voice and manner seductively soft and gentle--had read the speeches of
Webster and Calhoun. She did not think it necessary to tell him that she
had persuaded the honest Carrington to bring her the volumes and to mark
such passages as were worth her reading; but she took care to lead the
conversation, and she criticised with some skill and more humour the
weak points in Websterian oratory, saying with a little laugh and a
glance into his delighted eyes:
“My judgment may not be worth much, Mr. Senator, but it does seem to me
that our fathers thought too much of themselves, and till you teach
me better I shall continue to think that the passage in your speech
of yesterday which began with, 'Our strength lies in this twisted and
tangled mass of isolated principles, the hair of the half-sleeping giant
of Party,' is both for language and imagery quite equal to anything of
Webster's.”
The Senator from Illinois rose to this gaudy fly like a huge,
two-hundred-pound salmon; his white waistcoat gave out a mild silver
reflection as he slowly came to the surface and gorged the hook. He made
not even a plunge, not one perceptible effort to tear out the barbed
weapon, but, floating gently to her feet, allowed himself to be landed
as though it were a pleasure. Only miserable casuists will ask whether
this was fair play on Madeleine's part; whether flattery so gross
cost her conscience no twinge, and whether any woman can without
self-abasement be guilty of such shameless falsehood. She, however,
scorned the idea of falsehood. She would have defended herself by saying
that she had not so much praised Ratcliffe as depreciated Webster,
and that she was honest in her opinion of the old-fashioned American
oratory. But she could not deny that she had wilfully allowed the
Senator to draw conclusions very different from any she actually held.
She could not deny that she had intended to flatter him to the extent
necessary for her purpose, and that she was pleased at her success.
Before they rose from table the Senator had quite unbent himself; he
was talking naturally, shrewdly, and with some humour; he had told her
Illinois stories; spoken with extraordinary freedom about his political
situation; and expressed the wish to call upon Mrs. Lee, if he could
ever hope to find her at home.
“I am always at home on Sunday evenings,” said she.
To her eyes he was the high-priest of American politics; he was charged
with the meaning of the mysteries, the clue to political hieroglyphics.
Through him she hoped to sound the depths of statesmanship and to
bring up from its oozy bed that pearl of which she was in search; the
mysterious gem which must lie hidden somewhere in politics. She wanted
to understand this man; to turn him inside out; to experiment on him and
use him as young physiologists use frogs and kittens. If there was good
or bad in him, she meant to find its meaning.
And he was a western widower of fifty; his quarters in Washington were
in gaunt boarding-house rooms, furnished only with public documents and
enlivened by western politicians and office-seekers. In the summer he
retired to a solitary, white framehouse with green blinds, surrounded
by a few feet of uncared-for grass and a white fence; its interior more
dreary still, with iron stoves, oil-cloth carpets, cold white walls, and
one large engraving of Abraham Lincoln in the parlour; all in Peonia,
Illinois! What equality was there between these two combatants? what
hope for him? what risk for her? And yet Madeleine Lee had fully her
match in Mr. Silas P. Ratcliffe.