OF all titles ever assumed by prince or potentate, the proudest is that
of the Roman pontiffs: “Servus servorum Dei”--“Servant of the servants
of God.”
In former days it was not admitted that the devil's servants could by
right have any share in government. They were to be shut out, punished,
exiled, maimed, and burned. The devil has no servants now; only the
people have servants. There may be some mistake about a doctrine which
makes the wicked, when a majority, the mouthpiece of God against the
virtuous, but the hopes of mankind are staked on it; and if the weak
in faith sometimes quail when they see humanity floating in a shoreless
ocean, on this plank, which experience and religion long since condemned
as rotten, mistake or not, men have thus far floated better by its aid,
than the popes ever did with their prettier principle; so that it will
be a long time yet before society repents.
Whether the new President and his chief rival, Mr. Silas P. Ratcliffe,
were or were not servants of the servants of God, is not material
here. Servants they were to some one. No doubt many of those who call
themselves servants of the people are no better than wolves in sheep's
clothing, or asses in lions' skins. One may see scores of them any day
in the Capitol when Congress is in session, making noisy demonstrations,
or more usefully doing nothing. A wiser generation will employ them in
manual labour; as it is, they serve only themselves. But there are
two officers, at least, whose service is real--the President and his
Secretary of the Treasury. The Hoosier Quarryman had not been a week
in Washington before he was heartily home-sick for Indiana. No
maid-of-all-work in a cheap boarding-house was ever more harassed.
Everyone conspired against him. His enemies gave him no peace. All
Washington was laughing at his blunders, and ribald sheets, published
on a Sunday, took delight in printing the new Chief Magistrate's sayings
and doings, chronicled with outrageous humour, and placed by malicious
hands where the President could not but see them. He was sensitive to
ridicule, and it mortified him to the heart to find that remarks and
acts, which to him seemed sensible enough, should be capable of such
perversion. Then he was overwhelmed with public business. It came upon
him in a deluge, and he now, in his despair, no longer tried to control
it. He let it pass over him like a wave. His mind was muddied by the
innumerable visitors to whom he had to listen. But his greatest anxiety
was the Inaugural Address which, distracted as he was, he could not
finish, although in another week it must be delivered. He was nervous
about his Cabinet; it seemed to him that he could do nothing until he
had disposed of Ratcliffe.
Already, thanks to the President's friends, Ratcliffe had become
indispensable; still an enemy, of course, but one whose hands must be
tied; a sort of Sampson, to be kept in bonds until the time came for
putting him out of the way, but in the meanwhile, to be utilized. This
point being settled, the President had in imagination begun to lean upon
him; for the last few days he had postponed everything till next week,
“when I get my Cabinet arranged;” which meant, when he got Ratcliffe's
assistance; and he fell into a panic whenever he thought of the chance
that Ratcliffe might refuse.
He was pacing his room impatiently on Monday morning, an hour before
the time fixed for Ratcliffe's visit. His feelings still fluctuated
violently, and if he recognized the necessity of using Ratcliffe, he
was not the less determined to tie Ratcliffe's hands. He must be made
to come into a Cabinet where every other voice would be against him. He
must be prevented from having any patronage to dispose of. He must be
induced to accept these conditions at the start. How present this to him
in such a way as not to repel him at once? All this was needless, if
the President had only known it, but he thought himself a profound
statesman, and that his hand was guiding the destinies of America to his
own re-election. When at length, on the stroke of ten o'clock, Ratcliffe
entered the room, the President turned to him with nervous eagerness,
and almost before offering his hand, said that he hoped Mr. Ratcliffe
had come prepared to begin work at once. The Senator replied that,
if such was the President's decided wish, he would offer no further
opposition. Then the President drew himself up in the attitude of an
American Cato, and delivered a prepared address, in which he said that
he had chosen the members of his Cabinet with a careful regard to the
public interests; that Mr. Ratcliffe was essential to the combination;
that he expected no disagreement on principles, for there was but one
principle which he should consider fundamental, namely, that there
should be no removals from office except for cause; and that under these
circumstances he counted upon Mr. Ratcliffe's assistance as a matter of
patriotic duty.
To all this Ratcliffe assented without a word of objection, and the
President, more convinced than ever of his own masterly statesmanship,
breathed more freely than for a week past. Within ten minutes they
were actively at work together, clearing away the mass of accumulated
business.
The relief of the Quarryman surprised himself. Ratcliffe lifted the
weight of affairs from his shoulders with hardly an effort. He knew
everybody and everything. He took most of the President's visitors at
once into his own hands and dismissed them with great rapidity. He knew
what they wanted; he knew what recommendations were strong and what were
weak; who was to be treated with deference and who was to be sent
away abruptly; where a blunt refusal was safe, and where a pledge was
allowable. The President even trusted him with the unfinished manuscript
of the Inaugural Address, which Ratcliffe returned to him the next
day with such notes and suggestions as left nothing to be done beyond
copying them out in a fair hand. With all this, he proved himself a very
agreeable companion. He talked well and enlivened the work; he was not a
hard taskmaster, and when he saw that the President was tired, he boldly
asserted that there was no more business that could not as well wait
a day, and so took the weary Stone-cutter out to drive for a couple of
hours, and let him go peacefully to sleep in the carriage. They dined
together and Ratcliffe took care to send for Tom Lord to amuse them, for
Tom was a wit and a humourist, and kept the President in a laugh. Mr.
Lord ordered the dinner and chose the wines. He could be coarse enough
to suit even the President's palate, and Ratcliffe was not behindhand.
When the new Secretary went away at ten o'clock that night, his chief;
who was in high good humour with his dinner, his champagne, and his
conversation, swore with some unnecessary granite oaths, that Ratcliffe
was “a clever fellow anyhow,” and he was glad “that job was fixed.”
The truth was that Ratcliffe had now precisely ten days before the new
Cabinet could be set in motion, and in these ten days he must establish
his authority over the President so firmly that nothing could shake it.
He was diligent in good works. Very soon the court began to feel his
hand. If a business letter or a written memorial came in, the President
found it easy to endorse: “Referred to the Secretary of the Treasury.”
If a visitor wanted anything for himself or another, the invariable
reply came to be: “Just mention it to Mr. Ratcliffe;” or, “I guess
Ratcliffe will see to that.”
Before long he even made jokes in a Catonian manner; jokes that were not
peculiarly witty, but somewhat gruff and boorish, yet significant of a
resigned and self-contented mind. One morning he ordered Ratcliffe to
take an iron-clad ship of war and attack the Sioux in Montana, seeing
that he was in charge of the army and navy and Indians at once, and
Jack of all trades; and again he told a naval officer who wanted a
court-martial that he had better get Ratcliffe to sit on him for he was
a whole court-martial by himself. That Ratcliffe held his chief in no
less contempt than before, was probable but not certain, for he kept
silence on the subject before the world, and looked solemn whenever the
President was mentioned.
Before three days were over, the President, with a little more than
his usual abruptness, suddenly asked him what he knew about this
fellow Carson, whom the Pennsylvanians were bothering him to put in his
Cabinet. Ratcliffe was guarded: he scarcely knew the man; Mr. Carson
was not in politics, he believed, but was pretty respectable--for a
Pennsylvanian. The President returned to the subject several times; got
out his list of Cabinet officers and figured industriously upon it with
a rather perplexed face; called Ratcliffe to help him; and at last
the “slate” was fairly broken, and Ratcliffe's eyes gleamed when the
President caused his list of nominations to be sent to the Senate on the
5th March, and Josiah B. Carson, of Pennsylvania, was promptly confirmed
as Secretary of the Interior.
But his eyes gleamed still more humorously when, a few days afterwards,
the President gave him a long list of some two score names, and asked
him to find places for them. He assented good-naturedly, with a remark
that it might be necessary to make a few removals to provide for these
cases.
“Oh, well,” said the President, “I guess there's just about as many as
that had ought to go out anyway. These are friends of mine; got to be
looked after. Just stuff 'em in somewhere.”
Even he felt a little awkward about it, and, to do him justice, this
was the last that was heard about the fundamental rule of his
administration.
Removals were fast and furious, until all Indiana became easy in
circumstances. And it was not to be denied that, by one means or
another, Ratcliffe's friends did come into their fair share of the
public money.
Perhaps the President thought it best to wink at such use of the
Treasury patronage for the present, or was already a little overawed by
his Secretary.
Ratcliffe's work was done. The public had, with the help of some
clever intrigue, driven its servants into the traces. Even an Indiana
stone-cutter could be taught that his personal prejudices must yield to
the public service. What mischief the selfishness, the ambition, or
the ignorance of these men might do, was another matter. As the affair
stood, the President was the victim of his own schemes. It remained to
be seen whether, at some future day, Mr. Ratcliffe would think it worth
his while to strangle his chief by some quiet Eastern intrigue, but
the time had gone by when the President could make use of either the
bow-string or the axe upon him.
All this passed while Mrs. Lee was quietly puzzling her poor little
brain about her duty and her responsibility to Ratcliffe, who,
meanwhile, rarely failed to find himself on Sunday evenings by her side
in her parlour, where his rights were now so well established that no
one presumed to contest his seat, unless it were old Jacobi, who from
time to time reminded him that he was fallible and mortal. Occasionally,
though not often, Mr. Ratcliffe came at other times, as when he
persuaded Mrs. Lee to be present at the Inauguration, and to call on the
President's wife. Madeleine and Sybil went to the Capitol and had the
best places to see and hear the Inauguration, as well as a cold March
wind would allow. Mrs. Lee found fault with the ceremony; it was of
the earth, earthy, she said. An elderly western farmer, with silver
spectacles, new and glossy evening clothes, bony features, and stiff;
thin, gray hair, trying to address a large crowd of people, under the
drawbacks of a piercing wind and a cold in his head, was not a hero.
Sybil's mind was lost in wondering whether the President would not soon
die of pneumonia. Even this experience, however, was happy when compared
with that of the call upon the President's wife, after which Madeleine
decided to leave the new dynasty alone in future. The lady, who was
somewhat stout and coarse-featured, and whom Mrs. Lee declared she
wouldn't engage as a cook, showed qualities which, seen under that
fierce light which beats upon a throne, seemed ungracious. Her antipathy
to Ratcliffe was more violent than her husband's, and was even more
openly expressed, until the President was quite put out of countenance
by it. She extended her hostility to every one who could be supposed to
be Ratcliffe's friend, and the newspapers, as well as private gossip,
had marked out Mrs. Lee as one who, by an alliance with Ratcliffe, was
aiming at supplanting her own rule over the White House.
Hence, when Mrs. Lightfoot Lee was announced, and the two sisters were
ushered into the presidential parlour, she put on a coldly patronizing
air, and in reply to Madeleine's hope that she found Washington
agreeable, she intimated that there was much in Washington which struck
her as awful wicked, especially the women; and, looking at Sybil, she
spoke of the style of dress in this city which she said she meant to do
what she could to put a stop to. She'd heard tell that people sent to
Paris for their gowns, just as though America wasn't good enough to make
one's clothes! Jacob (all Presidents' wives speak of their husbands by
their first names) had promised her to get a law passed against it. In
her town in Indiana, a young woman who was seen on the street in such
clothes wouldn't be spoken to. At these remarks, made with an air and
in a temper quite unmistakable, Madeleine became exasperated beyond
measure, and said that “Washington would be pleased to see the President
do something in regard to dress-reform--or any other reform;” and with
this allusion to the President's ante-election reform speeches, Mrs. Lee
turned her back and left the room, followed by Sybil in convulsions of
suppressed laughter, which would not have been suppressed had she seen
the face of their hostess as the door shut behind them, and the energy
with which she shook her head and said: “See if I don't reform you yet,
you--jade!”
Mrs. Lee gave Ratcliffe a lively account of this interview, and he
laughed nearly as convulsively as Sybil over it, though he tried to
pacify her by saying that the President's most intimate friends openly
declared his wife to be insane, and that he himself was the person most
afraid of her. But Mrs. Lee declared that the President was as bad as
his wife; that an equally good President and President's wife could be
picked up in any corner-grocery between the Lakes and the Ohio; and
that no inducement should ever make her go near that coarse washerwoman
again.
Ratcliffe did not attempt to change Mrs. Lee's opinion. Indeed he
knew better than any man how Presidents were made, and he had his
own opinions in regard to the process as well as the fabric produced.
Nothing Mrs. Lee could say now affected him. He threw off his
responsibility and she found it suddenly resting on her own shoulders.
When she spoke with indignation of the wholesale removals from office
with which the new administration marked its advent to power, he told
her the story of the President's fundamental principle, and asked her
what she would have him do. “He meant to tie my hands,” said Ratcliffe,
“and to leave his own free, and I accepted the condition. Can I resign
now on such a ground as this?” And Madeleine was obliged to agree that
he could not. She had no means of knowing how many removals he made in
his own interest, or how far he had outwitted the President at his own
game. He stood before her a victim and a patriot. Every step he had
taken had been taken with her approval. He was now in office to prevent
what evil he could, not to be responsible for the evil that was done;
and he honestly assured her that much worse men would come in when he
went out, as the President would certainly take good care that he did go
out when the moment arrived.
Mrs. Lee had the chance now to carry out her scheme in coming to
Washington, for she was already deep in the mire of politics and
could see with every advantage how the great machine floundered about,
bespattering with mud even her own pure garments. Ratcliffe himself,
since entering the Treasury, had begun to talk with a sneer of the way
in which laws were made, and openly said that he wondered how government
got on at all. Yet he declared still that this particular government was
the highest expression of political thought. Mrs. Lee stared at him and
wondered whether he knew what thought was. To her the government seemed
to have less thought in it than one of Sybil's gowns, for if they, like
the government, were monstrously costly, they were at least adapted to
their purpose, the parts fitted together, and they were neither awkward
nor unwieldy.
There was nothing very encouraging in all this, but it was better than
New York. At least it gave her something to look at, and to think about.
Even Lord Dunbeg preached practical philanthropy to her by the hour.
Ratcliffe, too, was compelled to drag himself out of the rut of machine
politics, and to justify his right of admission to her house. There Mr.
French discoursed at great length, until the fourth of March sent him
home to Connecticut; and he brought more than one intelligent member
of Congress to Mrs. Lee's parlour. Underneath the scum floating on the
surface of politics, Madeleine felt that there was a sort of healthy
ocean current of honest purpose, which swept the scum before it, and
kept the mass pure.
This was enough to draw her on. She reconciled herself to accepting
the Ratcliffian morals, for she could see no choice. She herself had
approved every step she had seen him take. She could not deny that there
must be something wrong in a double standard of morality, but where was
it? Mr.
Ratcliffe seemed to her to be doing good work with as pure means as he
had at hand. He ought to be encouraged, not reviled. What was she that
she should stand in judgment?
Others watched her progress with less satisfaction. Mr. Nathan Gore was
one of these, for he came in one evening, looking much out of temper,
and, sitting down by her side he said he had come to bid good-bye and to
thank her for the kindness she had shown him; he was to leave Washington
the next morning. She too expressed her warm regret, but added that she
hoped he was only going in order to take his passage to Madrid.
He shook his head. “I am going to take my passage,” said he, “but not to
Madrid. The fates have cut that thread. The President does not want my
services, and I can't blame him, for if our situations were reversed, I
should certainly not want his. He has an Indiana friend, who, I am told,
wanted to be postmaster at Indianapolis, but as this did not suit the
politicians, he was bought off at the exorbitant price of the Spanish
mission. But I should have no chance even if he were out of the way. The
President does not approve of me. He objects to the cut of my overcoat
which is unfortunately an English one. He also objects to the cut of my
hair. I am afraid that his wife objects to me because I am so happy as
to be thought a friend of yours.”
Madeleine could only acknowledge that Mr. Gore's case was a bad one.
“But after all,” said she, “why should politicians be expected to love
you literary gentlemen who write history. Other criminal classes are not
expected to love their judges.”
“No, but they have sense enough to fear them,” replied Gore
vindictively; “not one politician living has the brains or the art to
defend his own cause. The ocean of history is foul with the carcases of
such statesmen, dead and forgotten except when some historian fishes one
of them up to gibbet it.”
Mr. Gore was so much out of temper that after this piece of extravagance
he was forced to pause a moment to recover himself. Then he went
on:--“You are perfectly right, and so is the President. I have no
business to be meddling in politics. It is not my place. The next time
you hear of me, I promise it shall not be as an office-seeker.”
Then he rapidly changed the subject, saying that he hoped Mrs. Lee was
soon going northward again, and that they might meet at Newport.
“I don't know,” replied Madeleine; “the spring is pleasant here, and we
shall stay till the warm weather, I think.”
Mr. Gore looked grave. “And your politics!” said he; “are you satisfied
with what you have seen?”
“I have got so far as to lose the distinction between right and wrong.
Isn't that the first step in politics?”
Mr. Gore had no mind even for serious jesting. He broke out into a long
lecture which sounded like a chapter of some future history: “But Mrs.
Lee, is it possible that you don't see what a wrong path you are on.
If you want to know what the world is really doing to any good purpose,
pass a winter at Samarcand, at Timbuctoo, but not at Washington. Be a
bank-clerk, or a journeyman printer, but not a Congressman. Here you
will find nothing but wasted effort and clumsy intrigue.”
“Do you think it a pity for me to learn that?” asked Madeleine when his
long essay was ended.
“No!” replied Gore, hesitating; “not if you do learn it. But many people
never get so far, or only when too late. I shall be glad to hear
that you are mistress of it and have given up reforming politics. The
Spaniards have a proverb that smells of the stable, but applies to
people like you and me: The man who washes his donkey's head, loses time
and soap.”
Gore took his leave before Madeleine had time to grasp all the impudence
of this last speech. Not until she was fairly in bed that night did it
suddenly flash on her mind that Mr. Gore had dared to caricature her as
wasting time and soap on Mr. Ratcliffe. At first she was violently
angry and then she laughed in spite of herself; there was truth in the
portrait. In secret, too, she was the less offended because she half
thought that it had depended only on herself to make of Mr. Gore
something more than a friend. If she had overheard his parting words to
Carrington, she would have had still more reason to think that a little
jealousy of Ratcliffe's success sharpened the barb of Gore's enmity.
“Take care of Ratcliffe!” was his farewell; “he is a clever dog. He has
set his mark on Mrs. Lee. Look out that he doesn't walk off with her!”
A little startled by this sudden confidence, Carrington could only ask
what he could do to prevent it.
“Cats that go ratting, don't wear gloves,” replied Gore, who always
carried a Spanish proverb in his pocket. Carrington, after painful
reflection, could only guess that he wanted Ratcliffe's enemies to show
their claws. But how?
Mrs. Lee not long afterwards spoke to Ratcliffe of her regret at Gore's
disappointment and hinted at his disgust. Ratcliffe replied that he had
done what he could for Gore, and had introduced him to the President,
who, after seeing him, had sworn his usual granitic oath that he would
sooner send his nigger farm-hand Jake to Spain than that man-milliner.
“You know how I stand;” added Ratcliffe; “what more could I do?” And
Mrs. Lee's implied reproach was silenced.
If Gore was little pleased with Ratcliffe's conduct, poor Schneidekoupon
was still less so. He turned up again at Washington not long after
the Inauguration and had a private interview with the Secretary of the
Treasury.
What passed at it was known only to themselves, but, whatever it
was, Schneidekoupon's temper was none the better for it. From his
conversations with Sybil, it seemed that there was some question about
appointments in which his protectionist friends were interested, and he
talked very openly about Ratcliffe's want of good faith, and how he had
promised everything to everybody and had failed to keep a single pledge;
if Schneidekoupon's advice had been taken, this wouldn't have happened.
Mrs. Lee told Ratcliffe that Schneidekoupon seemed out of temper, and
asked the reason. He only laughed and evaded the question, remarking
that cattle of this kind were always complaining unless they were
allowed to run the whole government; Schneidekoupon had nothing
to grumble about; no one had ever made any promises to him. But
nevertheless Schneidekoupon confided to Sybil his antipathy to Ratcliffe
and solemnly begged her not to let Mrs. Lee fall into his hands, to
which Sybil answered tartly that she only wished Mr.
Schneidekoupon would tell her how to help it.
The reformer French had also been one of Ratcliffe's backers in the
fight over the Treasury. He remained in Washington a few days after the
Inauguration, and then disappeared, leaving cards with P.P.C. in the
corner, at Mrs. Lee's door. Rumour said that he too was disappointed,
but he kept his own counsel, and, if he really wanted the mission
to Belgium, he contented himself with waiting for it. A respectable
stage-coach proprietor from Oregon got the place.
As for Jacobi, who was not disappointed, and who had nothing to ask
for, he was bitterest of all. He formally offered his congratulations to
Ratcliffe on his appointment. This little scene occurred in Mrs.
Lee's parlour. The old Baron, with his most suave manner, and his most
Voltairean leer, said that in all his experience, and he had seen a
great many court intrigues, he had never seen anything better managed
than that about the Treasury.
Ratcliffe was furiously angry, and told the Baron outright that foreign
ministers who insulted the governments to which they were accredited ran
a risk of being sent home.
“Ce serait toujours un pis aller,” said Jacobi, seating himself with
calmness in Ratcliffe's favourite chair by Mrs. Lee's side.
Madeleine, alarmed as she was, could not help interposing, and hastily
asked whether that remark was translatable.
“Ah!” said the Baron; “I can do nothing with your language. You would
only say that it was a choice of evils, to go, or to stay.”
“We might translate it by saying: 'One may go farther and fare worse,'”
rejoined Madeleine; and so the storm blew over for the time, and
Ratcliffe sulkily let the subject drop. Nevertheless the two men never
met in Mrs.
Lee's parlour without her dreading a personal altercation. Little by
little, what with Jacobi's sarcasms and Ratcliffe's roughness, they
nearly ceased to speak, and glared at each other like quarrelsome dogs.
Madeleine was driven to all kinds of expedients to keep the peace, yet
at the same time she could not but be greatly amused by their behaviour,
and as their hatred of each other only stimulated their devotion to her,
she was content to hold an even balance between them.
Nor were these all the awkward consequences of Ratcliffe's attentions.
Now that he was distinctly recognized as an intimate friend of Mrs.
Lee's, and possibly her future husband, no one ventured any longer to
attack him in her presence, but nevertheless she was conscious in a
thousand ways that the atmosphere became more and more dense under
the shadow of the Secretary of the Treasury. In spite of herself she
sometimes felt uneasy, as though there were conspiracy in the air. One
March afternoon she was sitting by her fire, with an English Review in
her hand, trying to read the last Symposium on the sympathies of Eternal
Punishment, when her servant brought in a card, and Mrs. Lee had barely
time to read the name of Mrs. Samuel Baker when that lady followed the
servant into the room, forcing the countersign in so effective style
that for once Madeleine was fairly disconcerted. Her manner when thus
intruded upon, was cool, but in this case, on Carrington's account, she
tried to smile courteously and asked her visitor to sit down, which Mrs.
Baker was doing without an invitation, very soon putting her hostess
entirely at her ease. She was, when seen without her veil, a showy woman
verging on forty, decidedly large, tall, over-dressed even in mourning,
and with a complexion rather fresher than nature had made it.
There was a geniality in her address, savouring of easy Washington ways,
a fruitiness of smile, and a rich southern accent, that explained on
the spot her success in the lobby. She looked about her with fine
self-possession, and approved Mrs. Lee's surroundings with a cordiality
so different from the northern stinginess of praise, that Madeleine
was rather pleased than offended. Yet when her eye rested on the Corot,
Madeleine's only pride, she was evidently perplexed, and resorted to
eye-glasses, in order, as it seemed, to gain time for reflection. But
she was not to be disconcerted even by Corot's masterpiece:
“How pretty! Japanese, isn't it? Sea-weeds seen through a fog. I went to
an auction yesterday, and do you know I bought a tea-pot with a picture
just like that.”
Madeleine inquired with extreme interest about the auction, but after
learning all that Mrs. Baker had to tell, she was on the point of being
reduced to silence, when she bethought herself to mention Carrington.
Mrs.
Baker brightened up at once, if she could be said to brighten where
there was no sign of dimness:
“Dear Mr. Carrington! Isn't he sweet? I think he's a delicious man. I
don't know what I should do without him. Since poor Mr. Baker left
me, we have been together all the time. You know my poor husband left
directions that all his papers should be burned, and though I would not
say so unless you were such a friend of Mr. Carrington's, I reckon it's
just as well for some people that he did. I never could tell you what
quantities of papers Mr. Carrington and I have put in the fire; and we
read them all too.”
Madeleine asked whether this was not dull work.
“Oh, dear, no! You see I know all about it, and told Mr. Carrington the
story of every paper as we went on. It was quite amusing, I assure you.”
Mrs. Lee then boldly said she had got from Mr. Carrington an idea that
Mrs.
Baker was a very skilful diplomatist.
“Diplomatist!” echoed the widow with her genial laugh; “Well! it was as
much that as anything, but there's not many diplomatists' wives in this
city ever did as much work as I used to do. Why, I knew half the members
of Congress intimately, and all of them by sight. I knew where they came
from and what they liked best. I could get round the greater part of
them, sooner or later.”
Mrs. Lee asked what she did with all this knowledge. Mrs. Baker shook
her pink-and-white countenance, and almost paralysed her opposite
neighbour by a sort of Grande Duchesse wink:
“Oh, my dear! you are new here. If you had seen Washington in war-times
and for a few years afterwards, you wouldn't ask that. We had more
congressional business than all the other agents put together. Every one
came to us then, to get his bill through, or his appropriation watched.
We were hard at work all the time. You see, one can't keep the run of
three hundred men without some trouble. My husband used to make lists
of them in books with a history of each man and all he could learn about
him, but I carried it all in my head.”
“Do you mean that you could get them all to vote as you pleased?” asked
Madeleine.
“Well! we got our bills through,” replied Mrs. Baker.
“But how did you do it? did they take bribes?”
“Some of them did. Some of them liked suppers and cards and theatres
and all sorts of things. Some of them could be led, and some had to be
driven like Paddy's pig who thought he was going the other way. Some
of them had wives who could talk to them, and some--hadn't,” said Mrs.
Baker, with a queer intonation in her abrupt ending.
“But surely,” said Mrs. Lee, “many of them must have been above--I mean,
they must have had nothing to get hold of; so that you could manage
them.”
Mrs. Baker laughed cheerfully and remarked that they were very much of a
muchness.
“But I can't understand how you did it,” urged Madeleine; “now, how
would you have gone to work to get a respectable senator's vote--a man
like Mr. Ratcliffe, for instance?”
“Ratcliffe!” repeated Mrs. Baker with a slight elevation of voice that
gave way to a patronising laugh. “Oh, my dear! don't mention names.
I should get into trouble. Senator Ratcliffe was a good friend of my
husband's. I guess Mr. Carrington could have told you that. But you see,
what we generally wanted was all right enough. We had to know where
our bills were, and jog people's elbows to get them reported in time.
Sometimes we had to convince them that our bill was a proper one, and
they ought to vote for it. Only now and then, when there was a great
deal of money and the vote was close, we had to find out what votes were
worth. It was mostly dining and talking, calling them out into the lobby
or asking them to supper. I wish I could tell you things I have seen,
but I don't dare. It wouldn't be safe. I've told you already more than
I ever said to any one else; but then you are so intimate with Mr.
Carrington, that I always think of you as an old friend.”
Thus Mrs. Baker rippled on, while Mrs. Lee listened with more and more
doubt and disgust. The woman was showy, handsome in a coarse style, and
perfectly presentable. Mrs. Lee had seen Duchesses as vulgar. She knew
more about the practical working of government than Mrs. Lee could
ever expect or hope to know. Why then draw back from this interesting
lobbyist with such babyish repulsion?
When, after a long, and, as she declared, a most charming call, Mrs.
Baker wended her way elsewhere and Madeleine had given the strictest
order that she should never be admitted again, Carrington entered, and
Madeleine showed him Mrs. Baker's card and gave a lively account of the
interview.
“What shall I do with the woman?” she asked; “must I return her card?”
But Carrington declined to offer advice on this interesting point. “And
she says that Mr. Ratcliffe was a friend of her husband's and that you
could tell me about that.”
“Did she say so?” remarked Carrington vaguely.
“Yes! and that she knew every one's weak points and could get all their
votes.”
Carrington expressed no surprise, and so evidently preferred to change
the subject, that Mrs. Lee desisted and said no more.
But she determined to try the same experiment on Mr. Ratcliffe, and
chose the very next chance that offered. In her most indifferent manner
she remarked that Mrs. Sam Baker had called upon her and had initiated
her into the mysteries of the lobby till she had become quite ambitious
to start on that career.
“She said you were a friend of her husband's,” added Madeleine softly.
Ratcliffe's face betrayed no sign.
“If you believe what those people tell you,” said he drily, “you will be
wiser than the Queen of Sheba.”