man in his class, in spite of having been also the handsomest and one
of the dullest. So when his old classmates in the army had heard of
his straits, they all agreed that “something must be done for Dick
Brandon.” Although a West Point man, he was not a scientific man; he
was too handsome to know much. His old friends did the best they could
for him by getting him a clerkship in Washington; and General Brandon,
who had commanded a brigade of three thousand fighting men, during
four years of unremitting warfare, found himself subject to a chief of
division young enough to be his son and as ignorant as men are made.
The old soldier had borne his lot with a fine patience and a sweet
calmness that placed him well up in the ranks of unrecorded heroes.
He had a superb courage, a charming temper; he remained incurably
handsome, and likewise he was and always remained incurably simple in
every way. Anybody could hoodwink him, and most people did. When he
had come to Washington, bringing with him his daughter Elizabeth, then
eighteen, and some remnant of property coming to him, he bought the
shabby house. Or, rather, he thought he bought it, for it had a heavy
mortgage on it, which General Brandon never had the least expectation
of lifting—mortgages being as natural to Virginians as sparks flying
upward.
Washington in those days was a simple, merry place, with a delightful
and unique society based upon official rank, and a few old resident
families, who were in society when Abigail Adams had the clothes dried
in the East Room of the White House. Elizabeth remembered that she
had been a great belle with gay young army and navy men and sprigs of
diplomats and was not unhappy, although she had felt at every turn
the prick of poverty. She had been ashamed to complain, however, in
the presence of General Brandon’s cheerful submission. He had his
compensations, though,—chiefly his evening visits to and from other
grizzled officers of both sides, when they sat and talked gravely and
tensely of issues as dead as Julius Cæsar, and solemnly discussed
what might have been, to an accompaniment of whiskey and cigars.
General Brandon’s whiskey and cigars were poor—he smoked a pipe
himself, declaring he preferred it. But no army man of any rank ever
animadverted on the General’s whiskey or cigars; and, although both
were evilly cheap, they drank and smoked cheerfully, with a relish for
the man if not for his entertainment.
General Brandon had no knowledge of the words “getting on in society,”
or anything like them. He belonged to that sturdy oligarchy in Virginia
which, whatever might be its shortcomings, knew nothing of snobs or
snobbery, because everybody was just as good as everybody else. But his
social career had been such that the newly rich might have asked him
his patent for knowing everybody worth knowing. He was asked everywhere
in those days, which he took as a matter of course, just as, during his
occasional brief sojourns in England during his Egyptian days, he was
asked everywhere and took it as a matter of course. Your true Virginian
has many faults and some vices, but he is socially the wisest person in
the world because he is the simplest. Nobody can patronize him, nobody
can snub him. He takes the notice of royalty with the same unconscious
ease that he does the rapturous salutation of a negro barber who
belonged to him “befo’ de war, sir,”—always polite, considerate,
mindful of the small, sweet courtesies of life.
There is but one section of society with which he cannot get on. This
is the newly rich smart set, fresh from the forge, the shop, the mine,
the liquor saloon—that rapid fungus which has grown up in America
during the last forty years, of which it has been said that no parallel
exists to its license and irresponsibility, unless one goes back to
the later Roman and Byzantine emperors. This class is free with a
freedom that is staggering to contemplate; free from any traditions
of the past, any responsibility in the present, any accountability to
the future; free to marry, to be divorced, to live where it likes, to
change its residence every week in the year; free from the care of
the few children they have, free from taxes as far as rank perjury
goes, and free to command all the science of the world to keep death
at bay as long as possible. The advent of this class anywhere changes
the aspect of things, and therefore when it moved in columns upon
Washington, the people of General Brandon’s class and Elizabeth’s time
became “Cave–dwellers,” and the General was asked “nowhere,”—that is,
he was still asked, but it was “nowhere.” The General, however, did
not know this at the time, or ever afterwards.
Elizabeth sat at the window and, looking out upon the murky evening,
continued that sad review of her life.
There is a French school of moralists which says that a man may love
two women at once. Elizabeth Darrell had certainly loved two men at
once. Pelham was always and forever the man she would have married,
but Darrell’s honest love was not thrown away on her. She mourned him
as she had mourned for her child, neither one infringing in the least
on Pelham’s place in her heart. She had been a wife and a mother, she
had suffered a real and lasting passion for a man not her husband, but
she had not transgressed a hair’s–breadth; she had experienced both
poverty and wealth, she had known and felt more in her thirty years
than most women do in a lifetime; and yet it seemed to her as if she
had only turned over, without the opportunity to read and study, those
glowing pages in the book of a woman’s life—the love of a man, the love
of a child, the beauty of the world. Now all was over—even Pelham’s
love and tender consideration, which had been hers for so long that she
scarcely recognized the face of life without them. Nothing was left for
her except her father, the best of men and fathers; but this was not
enough for a nature like Elizabeth Darrell’s.
While these thoughts were passing through Elizabeth’s mind, darkness
had fallen. Lights were twinkling everywhere. The great house opposite
radiated brightness from many windows, and it occurred to Elizabeth,
as to every sorrowful and disappointed person, that every one in that
luxurious and brilliant home must be happy. Probably the girl of the
boudoir, whose attitude had expressed such dejection, was grieving
over some trifle like a disappointment in a dance or the failure of
some plan of pleasure. Then she heard the street door open and a step
which she recognized as her father’s, and she had the first sensation
of gladness she had felt for so long that she had almost forgotten what
gladness was.
General Brandon, standing under the flaring gas–jet in the narrow
hall, saw the black figure flying down the stairs towards him. He
stopped, trembling with emotion; he who had without a tremor faced
death a hundred times was shaken at the sight of his child in her
mourning garments. The next minute her head was on his shoulder and he
was patting it, saying, “My child,—my ever dear child,—welcome at all
times, more welcome in your sorrow.”
Elizabeth looked up, smiling and weeping. It was the first time since
her husband’s death that she had not seemed in everybody’s way. General
Brandon gazed at her, at the changes that ten years had made, at the
marks of the recent shipwreck of her hopes and joys, at the pallor and
thinness that brooding over her misfortunes had brought upon her; and
then he said, with a tremulous smile and with tears in his honest eyes,
“It is doubly sweet to have you back unchanged.”
He led her into the dingy, well–remembered drawing–room, and they
sat hand in hand on the sofa, talking, Elizabeth dwelling upon her
husband’s goodness to her, and mentioning none of her woes and
perplexities in that first hour of meeting. Then Serena announced
dinner, and General Brandon, with the air of escorting a queen regent,
placed his daughter at the head of the table. “And never, since the day
of your marriage, my love, have I ever sat down to this table without
remembering you and wishing that you were seated at this place,” he
said.
To Elizabeth it seemed that the place she had in that dull dining room
was the only spot she had had any right to, except under sufferance,
since that June morning, now nearly a year and a half past, when
her husband had died. Not only was General Brandon glad to see her,
but Serena seemed equally so. Serena was a distinct acquisition to
Elizabeth. When the dinner was fairly begun the General produced a
bottle of that doubtful champagne which had been served at Elizabeth’s
wedding. “Saved to celebrate your return, my dearest,” he said.
Elizabeth could scarcely drink it for the tears that threatened to
overflow.
The dining room was just as it had been ten years ago, only duller and
dingier; but it was scrupulously neat. General Brandon’s joy at seeing
her was not troubled by any apprehensions as to the shortcomings of his
household. All during dinner his spirits did not flag, and insensibly
Elizabeth’s turbulent heart grew more composed. Her father asked her
minute particulars concerning her married life, and when Elizabeth
told of Darrell’s unvarying goodness to her, a singular look of relief
came into her father’s face. He had always had a dim apprehension
that Elizabeth was not rightly mated with Darrell—which was true. He
delicately refrained from asking any questions about her means, but
Elizabeth told him frankly that the sole provision available for her,
after Pelham inherited the property, was about one hundred pounds a
year, contingent on her remaining a widow.
“Why, that is opulence!” said General Brandon, with the ideas of
opulence of an ex–Confederate officer in a government clerkship. “That
will suffice amply for your needs; and whatever I can supply, my dear,
is yours, and my house and all in it are at your complete disposal.”
Elizabeth rose and went over to him and kissed him. After all, there
was some goodness left in the world. She did not once mention Pelham’s
name; but presently her father asked: “And in your trouble, where was
Major Pelham, of whom you so often wrote me in years past, as being
most kind and brotherly to you? As he was the next heir, he owed you
much consideration.”
Elizabeth, by an effort, spoke calmly. “He had just started for West
Africa when Jack died. I have heard nothing from him, but I know
through his solicitor—a very rude person—that Major Pelham has not been
to England.”
“And Major Pelham has not even written you a letter of condolence?”
“No.”
“Most strange. And his solicitor is in communication with him?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth was surprised at the steadiness of her voice in
answering these questions, but General Brandon noticed for the first
time a tremor in her tones.
“I cannot understand such conduct, and particularly as I retain a most
agreeable recollection of Major Pelham,—Captain Pelham he was at the
time of your marriage.”
Then, to Elizabeth’s relief, her father left off speaking of Pelham
and gave her a minute account of all her Virginia relations and their
doings during the last ten years. Elizabeth listened, her head on
her hand, the light from the flaring chandelier falling upon her
rich hair, one of her beauties left unimpaired. She appeared to be
strictly attentive, but in truth she scarcely heard one word of what
her father, in his soft, well–bred voice, was saying. Her mind was
going over, as it had done many hundreds of times, the strange problem
about Pelham. Was it possible that a mere matter of money and an
estate had so changed him that he could forget her, after nine years
of devotion—silent, it is true, but none the less eloquent? Or was it,
after all, mere lip service he had paid her? This she could not quite
believe, and so was ever tormented between longing and regret on one
hand, and a silent but furious resentment on the other. Pelham at
least was a gentleman, and yet he had not observed any sentiment of
courtesy or attention to her when he was under every obligation to do
so. He must know what sort of man Mr. McBean was, and yet he had left
her completely in the solicitor’s power. And the remembrance of McBean
brought back the recollection of the money she owed on the necklace of
which McBean had tried to rob her. She went over the whole weary story
again, that strange, contradictory story of Pelham’s agent, technically
and actually—and she was glad to take refuge from her perplexing and
contradictory thoughts by paying more heed to what her father was
saying. He had got through with a part of his relations, and with
a view to interesting Elizabeth in her future home was telling her
something of those friends and acquaintances left in Washington.
“You remember Sara Luttrell, my dear?” asked General Brandon, with a
smile. “Well, she is the same Sara Luttrell I danced with forty–five
years ago at West Point. Nobody knew her age then and nobody knows
it now—and time seems to have passed her by. She still lives in her
fine old house, gives two dinners a week herself and goes out to dine
the remaining five evenings, and nobody dares cross her except her
nephew—her husband’s nephew, I should say—Richard Baskerville.”
“I remember Mr. Baskerville perfectly. He was always very kind to me,
and so was Mrs. Luttrell.”
“Richard Baskerville, my dear, is a very remarkable man. He has
developed a comfortable fortune of his own, and will inherit every
stiver of Sara Luttrell’s money. But he works hard at his profession of
the law and has made a name for himself. His fortune and position make
it possible for him to devote himself to civics, and he is frequently
engaged in the investigations of violations of the civil service law
and in matters coming before Congress in which there is reason to
suspect fraud. Just now he is in the thick of a fight with my neighbor
in the fine house across the way, Senator Clavering, who is under fire
at the present time before a senatorial committee concerning some
alleged gigantic frauds with railway land grants in the Far West. I
knew Clavering well before the war, when I was a captain of infantry
and he was a sutler,—post–traders they now call themselves, and I
understand that at army posts their daughters aspire to be visited by
the young officers.”
So the big, beautiful house belonged to this man Clavering. Elizabeth
felt an immediate and strange interest on hearing about the people who
lived in that charming abode. She wondered why she should wish to hear
more of these people whose names she had heard only at that moment,
but nevertheless she did. Nothing pleased General Brandon so much as
to talk of things which happened before the war, except to talk about
those which happened during the war.
“Clavering, however, was not the man to remain a sutler very long.
He made money at the business—they all do; Napoleon Bonaparte was
the only man who knew how to treat a man supplying soldiers. In the
days when I knew Clavering, a sutler was a sutler; nevertheless,
Clavering was such a remarkable man that no one who knew him could
forget him. I used often to talk with him, and he professed to be
under some obligations to me for certain small acts of kindness.
After giving up the post–tradership for something better, I heard of
him at intervals. I even saw him once here in Washington just before
your marriage—sometimes he was up and sometimes he was down. Then he
went into mining, prospecting, and land buying on a great scale and
developed what I had always observed in him, a remarkable capacity for
men and affairs. Five years ago he came to the Senate, built this
splendid house you saw on the corner, and set up for a statesman and a
gentleman. Ha, ha! I must say, however, that he had some qualifications
for both. His family are conspicuous socially. He has three daughters
and a deadly pious son, a confirmed ritualist like most of those common
people. He goes to St. Bartholomew’s Chapel, where I attend service
still, as I did when I had the joy of having you with me, my child.”
The General was a strict churchman, and it was no small recommendation
that Clavering had a son who was also a strict churchman.
“And one of Clavering’s daughters—Miss Anne Clavering—is very much
admired and respected. Another of his daughters has had the misfortune
to be divorced. His wife is little seen in society. She was a plain
but most excellent woman when I knew her thirty years ago. This
investigation of which Richard Baskerville is one of the leading
spirits must be extremely painful to the ladies of Clavering’s family.”
General Brandon prattled on until ten o’clock came, when he always went
to his modest club for an hour. He escorted Elizabeth to her door and
said good night, giving her a blessing like the patriarchs’ of old.
As soon as she was alone Elizabeth put out the gas and, opening the
window, looked out upon the night. It was a damp and chilly night,
with a few vagrant stars in the sky and a sickly moon setting. The
vast mass of foliage which makes Washington a great park still hung
upon the trees, but was yellowing and decaying. There were not many
lights in the houses round about, except in the Clavering mansion, for
it was not yet the full season in Washington. But while Elizabeth was
looking a carriage drove under the Clavering porte–cochère, an alert
footman opened the huge street door and spread a carpet down the steps.
In a moment the girl Elizabeth had seen in the boudoir came out in an
evening costume, with a white silk mantle enveloping her. Elizabeth
had a perfectly clear view of her as she passed down the steps under
a great swinging lantern. She was not beautiful, but interesting,
graceful, and with an air of perfect breeding. After her came one of
the handsomest men Elizabeth had ever seen. He was well past middle
age, but his figure was noble, his features without line or wrinkle,
his complexion ruddy with health, and his close–cropped iron–gray hair
abundant. Elizabeth divined that it was Clavering, and what was more,
the instant her eyes rested upon him she knew that she had seen him
before; that she had seen him at some crisis in her life and seen
him so as never to have forgotten him. She drew back from the window
when the shock of surprise struck her. She could not recall at what
particular crisis her eyes and this man’s had met, except that it was
long ago. She had not once during all those intervening years recalled
him, but now his face was as instantly recognized by her as had been
her own father’s. It was as if, sailing upon the ocean, she had passed
a beacon light upon a headland, which she remembered perfectly having
seen in a remote past, but of which nothing was known to her except the
fact that she had once seen it and the sight of it was at a crucial
point in her life. The girl had by no means the beauty of the man, but
there was sufficient likeness to indicate that they were father and
daughter.
Elizabeth watched them with singular interest as the carriage rolled
off. She had never expected to feel an interest in anything again,
and that which she felt in these strange people seemed ominous. For
Elizabeth, being a woman, was superstitious, and where before had she
seen the face and figure of that man?
_Chapter Eight_
Sara Luttrell, as General Brandon called her, was sitting in her fine,
old–fashioned drawing–room, enjoying her invariable Saturday evening
gossip with her nephew–in–law, Richard Baskerville, preparatory to
her customary Saturday evening dinner. This Saturday dinner was as
much of an institution with Mrs. Luttrell as her ermine cape and her
black–velvet gown, which were annually renewed, or her free–spoken
tongue, all of them being Medic and Persian in nature.
Nobody knew how many decades this Saturday evening dinner had been
established, just as nobody knew Mrs. Luttrell’s age, except that it
was somewhere between sixty and ninety. This dinner, which no more than
six persons attended, took place at the unfashionable hour of seven.
But seven had been the fashionable hour when Mrs. Luttrell began her
Saturday dinners, and although she conceded much to the new fashions
introduced by the smart set—more indeed than she ever admitted—and had
advanced her formal dinner hour to half–past eight, yet she clung to
seven for this Saturday evening institution. No other dinner invitation
could lure Mrs. Luttrell from her own table on Saturday evenings, and
it was one of the incidents of the warfare which had once raged between
her and the then lady of the White House that Mrs. Luttrell should
have been asked to dine at the White House on a Saturday evening. Mrs.
Luttrell, however, came off triumphant. She could not have her own
dinner that night, but in the very nick of time she heard of the death
of a seventeenth cousin in Maryland. Mrs. Luttrell immediately asked
to be excused from the White House on the ground of the death of a
relative, and clapped herself, her coachman, and footman in mourning
for a seventeenth cousin she had not seen in thirty years and had
always cordially detested.
To be in ignorance of the sacredness of Mrs. Luttrell’s Saturday
evenings was a crime of grave magnitude in her eyes, and to respect her
rights on Saturday was to take a toboggan slide in her favor. It was
the law that Richard Baskerville should dine with her on Saturday, and
although that young gentleman maintained a perfect independence towards
her in every other respect, in spite of the fact that she had made a
will giving him every stiver of her fortune, he was careful to reserve
his Saturday evenings for her.
The old lady and the young man sat opposite each other before a
glowing wood fire in the great drawing–room. Mrs. Luttrell was a
small, high–bred, handsome woman, with snow–white hair, perfect teeth,
a charming smile, a reckless tongue, and a fixed determination to
have her own way twenty–four hours out of the day and three hundred
and sixty–five days in the year, with an additional day thrown in
at leap–year. Time had left a few external marks upon her, but in
essentials she was the same woman General Brandon had danced with
forty–five years before. She was in love with the same man, who even
then was in his early grave,—Richard Luttrell, the husband of her
youth. He had been dead unnumbered years, and only one person on
earth—his nephew, Richard Baskerville—suspected that Mrs. Luttrell
cherished her husband’s memory with a smouldering and silent
passion,—the only thing she was ever known to be silent about in her
life.
Mrs. Luttrell sat bolt upright, after the ancient fashion, in her
carved ebony chair, while Richard Baskerville lounged at his ease
on the other side of the marble mantel. He was a well–made man of
thirty–five, without any particular merit in the way of beauty; but
so clear of eye, so clean cut of feature, so expressive of a man’s
intelligence and a man’s courage, that people forgot to ask whether he
was handsome or not. Mrs. Luttrell always maintained that he was very
handsome, but found few to agree with her. Her belief came, however,
from his resemblance to the miniature of her husband which she kept in
her capacious pocket—for she still insisted on pockets in her gowns,
and this miniature never left her by day or night.
Mrs. Luttrell’s drawing–room was the admiration and the despair of
people who knew something about drawing–rooms. It might have been taken
bodily from the Second French Embassy, of which Mrs. Luttrell had
seen a good deal, for she had known the third Napoleon well at some
indefinite period in her history. The room was large and square and
high–pitched, and wholly innocent of bay–windows, cosey corners, and
such architectural fallals. The ceiling was heavily ornamented with
plaster in the Italian style, and the cornice was superb. Over the
fireplace was a great white marble mantel with a huge mirror above it,
and in one corner of the room a grand piano something under a hundred
years old looked like a belle in hoopskirts. There was a wealth of
old rosewood furniture, pictures, candelabra, girandoles, Dresden
ornaments, and other beautiful old things which would have made a
collector turn green with envy.
Mrs. Luttrell was vain about her drawing–room, and with reason. She
proudly claimed that there was not a single technical antique in it,
and frequently declared she could tell the age of any family by a
glance at their drawing–room. The newer the family the more antique
the furniture, and when a family was absolutely new their house was
furnished with antiques, and nothing but antiques, from top to bottom.