THEY drove home in silence, Mrs. Lee disturbed with anxieties and
doubts, partly caused by her sister, partly by Mr. Ratcliffe; Sybil
divided between amusement at Victoria's conquest, and alarm at her own
boldness in meddling with her sister's affairs. Desperation, however,
was stronger than fear. She made up her mind that further suspense was
not to be endured; she would fight her baffle now before another hour
was lost; surely no time could be better. A few moments brought them to
their door. Mrs. Lee had told her maid not to wait for them, and they
were alone. The fire was still alive on Madeleine's hearth, and she
threw more wood upon it. Then she insisted that Sybil must go to bed at
once. But Sybil refused; she felt quite well, she said, and not in the
least sleepy; she had a great deal to talk about, and wanted to get it
off her mind. Nevertheless, her feminine regard for the “Dawn in June”
led her to postpone what she had to say until with Madeleine's help she
had laid the triumph of the ball carefully aside; then, putting on her
dressing-gown, and hastily plunging Carrington's letter into her breast,
like a concealed weapon, she hurried back to Madeleine's room and
established herself in a chair before the fire. There, after a moment's
pause, the two women began their long-deferred trial of strength, in
which the match was so nearly equal as to make the result doubtful; for,
if Madeleine were much the cleverer, Sybil in this case knew much better
what she wanted, and had a clear idea how she meant to gain it, while
Madeleine, unsuspicious of attack, had no plan of defence at all.
“Madeleine,” began Sybil, solemnly, and with a violent palpitation of
the heart, “I want you to tell me something.”
“What is it, my child?” said Mrs. Lee, puzzled, and yet half ready
to see that there must be some connection between her sister's coming
question and the sudden illness at the ball, which had disappeared as
suddenly as it came.
“Do you mean to marry Mr. Ratcliffe?”
Poor Mrs. Lee was quite disconcerted by the directness of the attack.
This fatal question met her at every turn. Hardly had she succeeded in
escaping trom it at the ball scarcely an hour ago, by a stroke of good
fortune for which she now began to see she was indebted to Sybil, and
here it was again presented to her face like a pistol. The whole town,
then, was asking it.
Ratcliffe's offer must have been seen by half Washington, and her reply
was awaited by an immense audience, as though she were a political
returning-board. Her disgust was intense, and her first answer to Sybil
was a quick inquiry:
“Why do you ask such a question? have you heard anything,--has anyone
talked about it to you?”
“No!” replied Sybil; “but I must know; I can see for myself without
being told, that Mr. Racliffe is trying to make you marry him. I don't
ask out of curiosity; this is something that concerns me nearly as much
as it does you yourself. Please tell me! don't treat me like a child any
longer! let me know what you are thinking about! I am so tired of being
left in the dark! You have no idea how much this thing weighs on me. Oh,
Maude, I shall never be happy again until you trust me about this.”
Mrs. Lee felt a little pang of conscience, and seemed suddenly to
become conscious of a new coil, tightening about her, in this wretched
complication. Unable to see her way, ignorant of her sister's motives,
urged on by the idea that Sybil's happiness was involved, she was now
charged with want of feeling, and called upon for a direct answer to a
plain question.
How could she aver that she did not mean to marry Mr. Ratcliffe? to say
this would be to shut the door on all the objects she had at heart. If
a direct answer must be given, it was better to say “Yes!” and have
it over; better to leap blindly and see what came of it. Mrs.
Lee, therefore, with an internal gasp, but with no visible sign of
excitement, said, as though she were in a dream:
“Well, Sybil, I will tell you. I would have told you long ago if I had
known myself. Yes! I have made up my mind to marry Mr. Ratcliffe!”
Sybil sprang to her feet with a cry: “And have you told him so?” she
asked.
“No! you came and interrupted us just as we were speaking. I was glad
you did come, for it gives me a little time to think. But I am decided
now. I shall tell him to-morrow.”
This was not said with the air or one whose heart beat warmly at the
thought of confessing her love. Mrs. Lee spoke mechanically, and almost
with an effort. Sybil flung herself with all her energy upon her sister;
violently excited, and eager to make herself heard, without waiting
for arguments, she broke out into a torrent of entreaties: “Oh, don't,
don't, don't! Oh, please, please, don't, my dearest, dearest Maude!
unless you want to break my heart, don't marry that man! You can't love
him! You can never be happy with him! he will take you away to Peonia,
and you will die there! I shall never see you again! He will make you
unhappy; he will beat you, I know he will! Oh, if you care for me at
all, don't marry him! Send him away! don't see him again! let us go
ourselves, now, in the morning train, before he comes back. I'm
all ready; I'll pack everything for you; we'll go to Newport; to
Europe--anywhere, to be out of his reach!”
With this passionate appeal, Sybil threw herself on her knees by her
sister's side, and, clasping her arms around Madeleine's waist, sobbed
as though her heart were already broken. Had Carrington seen her then
he must have admitted that she had carried out his instructions to the
letter. She was quite honest, too, in it all. She meant what she
said, and her tears were real tears that had been pent up for weeks.
Unluckily, her logic was feeble. Her idea of Mr. Ratcliffe's character
was vague, and biased by mere theories of what a Prairie Giant of
Peonia should be in his domestic relations. Her idea of Peonia, too,
was indistinct. She was haunted by a vision of her sister, sitting on
a horse-hair sofa before an air-tight iron stove in a small room with
high, bare white walls, a chromolithograph on each, and at her side a
marble-topped table surmounted by a glass vase containing funereal dried
grasses; the only literature, Frank Leslie's periodical and the New York
Ledger, with a strong smell of cooking everywhere prevalent. Here
she saw Madeleine receiving visitors, the wives of neighbours and
constituents, who told her the Peonia news.
Notwithstanding her ignorant and unreasonable prejudice against western
men and women, western towns and prairies, and, in short, everything
western, down to western politics and western politicians, whom she
perversely asserted to be tue lowest ot all western products, there
was still some common sense in Sybil's idea. When that inevitable hour
struck for Mr.
Ratcliffe, which strikes sooner or later for all politicians, and an
ungrateful country permitted him to pine among his friends in Illinois,
what did he propose to do with his wife? Did he seriously suppose that
she, who was bored to death by New York, and had been able to find no
permanent pleasure in Europe, would live quietly in the romantic village
of Peonia? If not, did Mr. Ratcliffe imagine that they could find
happiness in the enjoyment of each other's society, and of Mrs. Lee's
income, in the excitements of Washington? In the ardour of his pursuit,
Mr. Ratcliffe had accepted in advance any conditions which Mrs. Lee
might impose, but if he really imagined that happiness and content lay
on the purple rim of this sunset, he had more confidence in women and in
money than a wider experience was ever likely to justify.
Whatever might be Mr. Ratcliffe's schemes for dealing with these
obstacles they could hardly be such as would satisfy Sybil, who, if
inaccurate in her theories about Prairie Giants, yet understood women,
and especially her sister, much better than Mr. Ratcliffe ever could do.
Here she was safe, and it would have been better had she said no more,
for Mrs. Lee, though staggered for a moment by her sister's vehemence,
was reassured by what seemed the absurdity of her fears. Madeleine
rebelled against this hysterical violence of opposition, and became more
fixed in her decision.
She scolded her sister in good, set terms--
“Sybil, Sybil! you must not be so violent. Behave like a woman, and not
like a spoiled child!”
Mrs. Lee, like most persons who have to deal with spoiled or unspoiled
children, resorted to severity, not so much because it was the proper
way of dealing with them, as because she knew not what else to do.
She was thoroughly uncomfortable and weary. She was not satisfied with
herself or with her own motives. Doubt encompassed her on all sides, and
her worst opponent was that sister whose happiness had turned the scale
against her own judgment.
Nevertheless her tactics answered their object of checking Sybil's
vehemence. Her sobs came to an end, and she presently rose with a
quieter air.
“Madeleine,” said she, “do you really want to marry Mr. Ratcliffe?”
“What else can I do, my dear Sybil? I want to do whatever is for the
best. I thought you might be pleased.”
“You thought I might be pleased?” cried Sybil in astonishment. “What a
strange idea! If you had ever spoken to me about it I should have told
you that I hate him, and can't understand how you can abide him. But I
would rather marry him myself than see you marry him. I know that you
will kill yourself with unhappiness when you have done it. Oh, Maude,
please tell me that you won't!” And Sybil began gently sobbing again,
while she caressed her sister.
Mrs. Lee was infinitely distressed. To act against the wishes of her
nearest friends was hard enough, but to appear harsh and unfeeling to
the one being whose happiness she had at heart, was intolerable. Yet
no sensible woman, after saying that she meant to marry a man like Mr.
Ratcliffe, could throw him over merely because another woman chose to
behave like a spoiled child.
Sybil was more childish than Madeleine herself had supposed. She could
not even see where her own interest lay. She knew no more about Mr.
Ratcliffe and the West than if he were the giant of a fairy-story, and
lived at the top of a bean-stalk. She must be treated as a child; with
gentleness, affection, forbearance, but with firmness and decision. She
must be refused what she asked, for her own good.
Thus it came about that at last Mrs. Lee spoke, with an appearance of
decision far from representing her internal tremor.
“Sybil, dear, I have made up my mind to marry Mr. Ratcliffe because
there is no other way of making every one happy. You need not be afraid
of him. He is kind and generous. Besides, I can take care of myself; and
I will take care of you too. Now let us not discuss it any more. It is
broad daylight, and we are both tired out.”
Sybil grew at once perfectly calm, and standing before her sister, as
though their rôles were henceforward to be reversed, said:
“You have really made up your mind, then? Nothing I can say will change
it?”
Mrs. Lee, looking at her with more surprise than ever, could not force
herself to speak; but she shook her head slowly and decidedly.
“Then,” said Sybil, “there is only one thing more I can do. You must
read this!” and she drew out Carrington's letter, which she held before
Madeleine's face.
“Not now, Sybil!” remonstrated Mrs. Lee, dreading another long struggle.
“I will read it after we have had some rest. Go to bed now!”
“I do not leave this room, nor will I ever go to bed until you have read
that letter,” answered Sybil, seating herself again before the fire
with the resolution of Queen Elizabeth; “not if I sit here till you are
married. I promised Mr. Carrington that you should read it
instantly; it's all I can do now.” With a sigh, Mrs. Lee drew up the
window-curtain, and in the gray morning light sat down to break the seal
and read the following letter:--
“Washington, 2nd April.
“My dear Mrs. Lee,
“This letter will only come into your hands in case
there should be a necessity for your knowing its contents. Nothing short
of necessity would excuse my writing it. I have to ask your pardon for
intruding again upon your private affairs. In this case, if I did not
intrude, you would have cause for serious complaint against me.
“You asked me the other day whether I knew anything against Mr.
Ratcliffe which the world did not know, to account for my low opinion of
his character. I evaded your question then. I was bound by professional
rules not to disclose facts that came to me under a pledge of
confidence. I am going to violate these rules now, only because I owe
you a duty which seems to me to override all others.
“I do know facts in regard to Mr. Ratcliffe, which have seemed to me to
warrant a very low opinion of his character, and to mark him as unfit to
be, I will not say your husband, but even your acquaintance.
“You know that I am executor to Samuel Baker's will. You know who Samuel
Baker was. You have seen his wife. She has told you herself that I
assisted her in the examination and destruction of all her husband's
private papers according to his special death-bed request. One of the
first facts I learned from these papers and her explanations, was the
following.
“Just eight years ago, the great 'Inter-Oceanic Mail Steamship Company,'
wished to extend its service round the world, and, in order to do so, it
applied to Congress for a heavy subsidy. The management of this affair
was put into the hands of Mr. Baker, and all his private letters to the
President of the Company, in press copies, as well as the President's
replies, came into my possession. Baker's letters were, of course,
written in a sort of cypher, several kinds of which he was in the habit
of using. He left among his papers a key to this cypher, but Mrs. Baker
could have explained it without that help.
“It appeared from this correspondence that the bill was carried
successfully through the House, and, on reaching the Senate, was
referred to the appropriate Committee. Its ultimate passage was very
doubtful; the end of the session was close at hand; the Senate was very
evenly divided, and the Chairman of the Committee was decidedly hostile.
“The Chairman of that Committee was Senator Ratcliffe, always mentioned
by Mr. Baker in cypher, and with every precaution. If you care, however,
to verify the fact, and to trace the history of the Subsidy Bill through
all its stages, together with Mr. Ratcliffe's report, remarks, and votes
upon it, you have only to look into the journals and debates for that
year.
“At last Mr. Baker wrote that Senator Ratcliffe had put the bill in
his pocket, and unless some means could be found of overcoming his
opposition, there would be no report, and the bill would never come to
a vote. All ordinary kinds of argument and influence had been employed
upon him, and were exhausted. In this exigency Baker suggested that the
Company should give him authority to see what money would do, but he
added that it would be worse than useless to deal with small sums.
Unless at least one hundred thousand dollars could be employed, it was
better to leave the thing alone.
“The next mail authorized him to use any required amount of money not
exceeding one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Two days later he
wrote that the bill was reported, and would pass the Senate within
forty-eight hours; and he congratulated the Company on the fact that he
had used only one hundred thousand dollars out of its last credit.
“The bill was actually reported, passed, and became law as he foretold,
and the Company has enjoyed its subsidy ever since. Mrs. Baker also
informed me that to her knowledge her husband gave the sum mentioned, in
United States Coupon Bonds, to Senator Ratcliffe.
“This transaction, taken in connection with the tortuousness of his
public course, explains the distrust I have always expressed for him.
You will, however, understand that all these papers have been destroyed.
Mrs. Baker could never be induced to hazard her own comfort by revealing
the facts to the public. The officers of the Company in their own
interests would never betray the transaction, and their books were
undoubtedly so kept as to show no trace of it. If I made this charge
against Mr. Ratcliffe, I should be the only sufferer. He would deny
and laugh at it. I could prove nothing. I am therefore more directly
interested than he is in keeping silence.
“In trusting this secret to you, I rely firmly upon your mentioning
it to no one else--not even to your sister. You are at liberty, if you
wish, to show this letter to one person only--to Mr. Ratcliffe himself.
That done, you will, I beg, burn it immediately.
“With the warmest good wishes, I am,
“Ever most truly yours,
“John Carrington.”
When Mrs. Lee had finished reading this letter, she remained for some
time quite silent, looking out into the square below. The morning had
come, and the sky was bright with the fresh April sunlight. She threw
open her window, and drew in the soft spring air. She needed all the
purity and quiet that nature could give, for her whole soul was in
revolt, wounded, mortified, exasperated. Against the sentiment of all
her friends she had insisted upon believing in this man; she had wrought
herself up to the point of accepting him for her husband; a man who, if
law were the same thing as justice, ought to be in a felon's cell; a man
who could take money to betray his trust. Her anger at first swept away
all bounds. She was impatient for the moment when she should see
him again, and tear off his mask. For once she would express all the
loathing she felt for the whole pack of political hounds. She would see
whether the animal was made like other beings; whether he had a sense of
honour; a single clean spot in his mind.
Then it occurred to her that after all there might be a mistake; perhaps
Mr.
Ratcliffe could explain the charge away. But this thought only laid
bare another smarting wound in her pride. Not only did she believe the
charge, but she believed that Mr. Ratcliffe would defend his act. She
had been willing to marry a man whom she thought capable of such a
crime, and now she shuddered at the idea that this charge might have
been brought against her husband, and that she could not dismiss it with
instant incredulity, with indignant contempt. How had this happened? how
had she got into so foul a complication? When she left New York, she had
meant to be a mere spectator in Washington. Had it entered her head
that she could be drawn into any project of a second marriage, she
never would have come at all, for she was proud of her loyalty to her
husband's memory, and second marriages were her abhorrence. In her
restlessness and solitude, she had forgotten this; she had only asked
whether any life was worth living for a woman who had neither husband
nor children. Was the family all that life had to offer? could she find
no interest outside the household? And so, led by this will-of-the-wisp,
she had, with her eyes open, walked into the quagmire of politics, in
spite of remonstrance, in spite of conscience.
She rose and paced the room, while Sybil lay on the couch, watching her
with eyes half shut. She grew more and more angry with herself, and as
her self-reproach increased, her anger against Ratcliffe faded away. She
had no right to be angry with Ratcliffe. He had never deceived her.
He had always openly enough avowed that he knew no code of morals in
politics; that if virtue did not answer his purpose he used vice. How
could she blame him for acts which he had repeatedly defended in her
presence and with her tacit assent, on principles that warranted this or
any other villainy?
The worst was that this discovery had come on her as a blow, not as
a reprieve from execution. At this thought she became furious with
herself.
She had not known the recesses of her own heart. She had honestly
supposed that Sybil's interests and Sybil's happiness were forcing her
to an act of self-sacrifice; and now she saw that in the depths of
her soul very different motives had been at work: ambition, thirst for
power, restless eagerness to meddle in what did not concern her, blind
longing to escape from the torture of watching other women with full
lives and satisfied instincts, while her own life was hungry and sad.
For a time she had actually, unconscious as she was of the delusion,
hugged a hope that a new field of usefulness was open to her; that great
opportunities for doing good were to supply the aching emptiness of that
good which had been taken away; and that here at last was an object
for which there would be almost a pleasure in squandering the rest of
existence even if she knew in advance that the experiment would fail.
Life was emptier than ever now that this dream was over. Yet the worst
was not in that disappointment, but in the discovery of her own weakness
and self-deception.
Worn out by long-continued anxiety, excitement and sleeplessness, she
was unfit to struggle with the creatures of her own imagination. Such a
strain could only end in a nervous crisis, and at length it came:
“Oh, what a vile thing life is!” she cried, throwing up her arms with a
gesture of helpless rage and despair. “Oh, how I wish I were dead! how
I wish the universe were annihilated!” and she flung herself down by
Sybil's side in a frenzy of tears.
Sybil, who had watched all this exhibition in silence, waited quietly
for the excitement to pass. There was little to say. She could only
soothe.
After the paroxysm had exhausted itself Madeleine lay quiet for a time,
until other thoughts began to disturb her. From reproaching herself
about Ratcliffe she went on to reproach herself about Sybil, who really
looked worn and pale, as though almost overcome by fatigue.
“Sybil,” said she, “you must go to bed at once. You are tired out. It
was very wrong in me to let you sit up so late. Go now, and get some
sleep.”
“I am not going to bed till you do, Maude!” replied Sybil, with quiet
obstinacy.
“Go, dear! it is all settled. I shall not marry Mr. Ratcliffe. You need
not be anxious about it any more.”
“Are you very unhappy?”
“Only very angry with myself. I ought to have taken Mr. Carrington's
advice sooner.”
“Oh, Maude!” exclaimed Sybil, with a sudden explosion of energy; “I wish
you had taken him!”
This remark roused Mrs. Lee to new interest: “Why, Sybil,” said she,
“surely you are not in earnest?”
“Indeed, I am,” replied Sybil, very decidedly. “I know you think I am
in love with Mr. Carrington myself, but I'm not. I would a great deal
rather have him for a brother-in-law, and he is so much the nicest man
you know, and you could help his sisters.”
Mrs. Lee hesitated a moment, for she was not quite certain whether it
was wise to probe a healing wound, but she was anxious to clear this
last weight from her mind, and she dashed recklessly forward:
“Are you sure you are telling the truth, Sybil? Why, then, did you say
that you cared for him? and why have you been so miserable ever since he
went away?”
“Why? I should think it was plain enough why! Because I thought, as
every one else did, that you were going to marry Mr. Ratcliffe; and
because if you married Mr. Ratcliffe, I must go and live alone; and
because you treated me like a child, and never took me into your
confidence at all; and because Mr. Carrington was the only person I had
to advise me, and after he went away, I was left all alone to fight Mr.
Ratcliffe and you both together, without a human soul to help me in case
I made a mistake. You would have been a great deal more miserable than I
if you had been in my place.”
Madeleine looked at her for a moment in doubt. Would this last? did
Sybil herself know the depth of her own wound? But what could Mrs. Lee
do now?
Perhaps Sybil did deceive herself a little. When this excitement had
passed away, perhaps Carrington's image might recur to her mind a little
too often for her own comfort. The future must take care of itself.
Mrs. Lee drew her sister closer to her, and said: “Sybil, I have made a
horrible mistake, and you must forgive me.”