mother’s door she stopped, and a tremulous voice within called her. She
entered and sat awhile on her mother’s elaborate, lace–trimmed bed.
Mrs. Clavering, a homely and elderly woman, looked not less homely and
elderly because of her surroundings. But not all the splendor of her
lace and satin bed could eclipse the genuine goodness, the meekness,
the gentleness, in her plain, patient face. She listened eagerly to
Anne’s description of the dinner, which was cheerful enough, albeit her
heart misgave her cruelly about Élise and Lydia.
When she had finished speaking Mrs. Clavering said, patting Anne’s
head with a kind of furtive affection, “I think you know real nice,
well–behaved people, my dear, and I wish the other girls”—“gurls” she
called them—“were like you.”
At that moment Baskerville and Senator Thorndyke were sitting in
Baskerville’s library, discussing a bottle of prime old whiskey and
looking at some books from a late auction. Mrs. Thorndyke had driven
home, and Senator Thorndyke, preferring to walk, was spending an hour
meanwhile in masculine talk unrestrained by the presence of the ladies.
The two men were intimate, an intimacy which had originated when
Baskerville was a college senior and Thorndyke was on the committee
of their Greek–letter society. There was a strong sympathy between
them, although Thorndyke was a New Englander of New Englanders and
Baskerville a Marylander of Marylanders. Both were lawyers of the
old–time, legal–politico sort, both of them scholarly men, both of them
independent of popular favor; and both of them, while preaching the
purest democracy, were natural aristocrats. They belonged to opposite
political parties, but that rather added zest to their friendship. The
library in Baskerville’s home, across the garden from Mrs. Luttrell’s,
was in the second story and extended the full width of the house. It
was essentially a bachelor’s working library, plain, comfortable, well
warmed and lighted, and with an engaging touch of shabbiness. A big
leather–covered table was in the middle of the room, and under the
green light from a student lamp were displayed the books, the whiskey,
the water, and the glasses. Baskerville’s mind was not, however, on
the books he was showing, but on Anne Clavering, and incidentally on
Senator Clavering.
“How do you account for Miss Clavering being the daughter of Senator
Clavering?” he asked Thorndyke, as they pulled at their cigars.
“Those things can’t be accounted for, although one sees such strange
dissimilarities in families, everywhere and all the time. Miss
Clavering is, no doubt, a case of atavism. Somewhere, two or three
generations back, there was a strain of refinement and worth in her
family, and she inherits from it. But I see something in her of
Clavering’s good qualities—because he has some good qualities—courage,
for example.”
“Courage—I should think so. Why, the way that man has fought the courts
shows the most amazing courage. He is a born litigant, and it is
extraordinary how he has managed to use the law to crush his opponents
and has escaped being crushed himself. And in trying to follow his
turnings and windings in this K. F. R. swindle it is astounding to see
how he has contested every step of an illegal transaction until he
has got everybody muddled—lawyers, State and Federal courts, and the
whole kit of them. As fast as one injunction was vacated he would sue
out another. He seems to have brought a separate and distinct lawsuit
for every right in every species of property he ever possessed at any
time—of all sorts: lands, mines, railways, and corporations. He has
pocketed untold millions and has invoked the law to protect him when
ninety–nine men out of the hundred would have been fugitives from
justice. He is the most difficult scoundrel to catch I ever met—but we
will catch him yet.”
“I think you are hot on his trail in the K. F. R. matter,” answered
Thorndyke. “I believe myself that when the great exposé is made before
the investigating committee it will recommend his expulsion from the
Senate, and three–fourths of the senators will support the committee.
The legislature is safe, so the party won’t lose a seat; and in any
event I don’t believe we can afford to hold on to a man like Clavering
after the country knows about him—especially with a presidential
campaign coming on within the year. I think, with all his talents,
he would not be fitted for public life if he were as honest as he is
dishonest. He has no idea, after all his litigation, of sound legal
principles, and he is fully persuaded that any man, any court, any
legislature, may be bought; and a more dangerous fallacy doesn’t exist
for a public man than that. He has never submitted to party discipline
and has played politics with every party that has ever made a showing
in his state. For all his money, he has never been a contributor to
party funds; so I think, making due allowances for the weakness of
human nature, that a horrible example will be made of Clavering, and we
shall thereby deprive you of an effective party cry in the campaign.
You are really doing us a service by your course, because without your
unravelling the legal tangle I doubt if anything could have been made
out of the K. F. R. frauds. I have no sympathy to waste on Clavering
or any of his family that I know of, except Miss Clavering. It will go
hard with her.”
Baskerville’s tanned complexion grew a little pale, and he sat
silent for some moments; so silent that Thorndyke began to suspect
Mrs. Thorndyke’s idea was the right one after all—Baskerville was in
love with Anne Clavering. Thorndyke had laughed at it as a woman’s
fancy, saying to her that a woman couldn’t see a man pick up a girl’s
handkerchief without constructing a matrimonial project on the basis
of it; but Constance Thorndyke had stoutly maintained her opinion that
Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering. His attitude now certainly
indicated a very strong interest in her, especially when he said, after
a considerable pause:—
“If I had known Miss Clavering before this K. F. R. matter was started,
perhaps I shouldn’t have gone into it. There is something very painful,
you must know, Thorndyke, in dealing a blow at a woman—and a woman like
Miss Clavering. By heaven, for all the luxury she lives in and all the
respect and admiration she commands, there is not a woman in Washington
whom I pity more!”
Thorndyke had been turning over the leaves of a beautiful Apuleius,
which was one of the treasures Baskerville was exhibiting to him. He
opened the volume at the fifth metamorphosis and read out of it a
single phrase which made Baskerville’s face gain color:“‘The bold,
blind boy of evil ways.’ There’s nothing in all those old Greek
literary fellows which excels this in humor, although what there is
humorous in modern love I can’t see. It’s the most tragic thing in
life, and if it is genuine, it draws blood every time.”
Thorndyke had reason to say this. He had spent the eighteen best years
of his life solitary and ill at ease because of a woman’s love and
another woman’s spite, and not all the happiness of married life could
ever make either him or Constance Thorndyke forget their starved hearts
in those eighteen years of estrangement and separation. But as normal
men deal with sentimentalities in a direct and simple manner, he added,
after a minute: “Miss Clavering ought to marry. If she could be cut
loose from Clavering himself and those two handsome and outrageous
sisters of hers, it would be an unmixed blessing. But with all Miss
Clavering’s merit and charms, that family of hers will always be a
handicap with a man of the sort she would be likely to marry.”
“Not if he really loved her, Thorndyke.” Senator Thorndyke smoked on
in silence. “And,” continued Baskerville, “her mother is a most worthy
woman, if uneducated; and although Reginald Clavering is a great fool,
I believe he is a thoroughly upright man and even a gentleman. So you
see it is not wholly a family of degenerates.”
Thorndyke, seeing which way the tide was setting, remarked with perfect
sincerity, “Miss Clavering is worthy of any man; and I say so not only
on my own judgment, but on my wife’s.”
“Sanest, soundest woman in Washington—except Miss Clavering herself,”
was Baskerville’s reply to this.
When Senator Thorndyke reached home an hour afterwards, he roused his
wife to tell her that he believed that Baskerville was in love with
Anne Clavering after all.
“And has been ever since he knew her; but men are so dense, he didn’t
know it himself—much less did you know it until it became as obvious as
the Washington Monument,” was Mrs. Thorndyke’s wifely reply.
_Chapter Nine_
The next day was a bright November Sunday, and after an early luncheon
Baskerville started out for a walk into the country. Anne Clavering
was much in his mind, and he was beginning to debate with himself in
this wise: if Senator Clavering had no delicacy about inviting him to
call, why should he be too delicate–minded to go? Which proves that
Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering, or he would have said that
for him to go to a man’s house under the circumstances in which he
would enter Senator Clavering’s was an outrageous breach of propriety.
When he got well out of the town, he met the scanty congregation of a
small Episcopal chapel in the suburbs. Among those strolling homeward
he speedily recognized General Brandon and Elizabeth Darrell—and with
them Reginald Clavering. This only son of Senator Clavering’s was no
more like him than Anne was, and, indeed, very much resembled Anne,
except that he had neither her grace nor her intelligence. He had a
good and affectionate heart, and in a foolish, blundering way was
both an honest man and a gentleman. His life, however, was given over
to small and futile things, and even his piety, which was genuine,
embodied a childish worship of ecclesiastical trifles. He was the
mainstay, chief financial backer, and clerical man–of–all–work in the
little chapel, while his sisters, Élise and Lydia, fought with the
Brentwood–Baldwins at St. John’s, and Anne, after going to an early
morning service at the nearest church, devoted the rest of her Sunday
to her mother.
Baskerville stopped and spoke with great cordiality to the party. He
had known Elizabeth Darrell well in her girlhood, and there was a
remote, seventeenth–cousin, Maryland–Virginia connection between the
Baskervilles and the Brandons. His first glance at her in her mourning
costume showed him that she had suffered much, and her beauty was
partially eclipsed. She had gained interest, however, as the case often
is, by learning the hard lessons of life, and Baskerville saw that she
might regain all and more of her good looks with returning flesh and
color, and a loss of the wearied and forlorn expression in her still
glorious dark eyes. He asked permission to call upon her, and Elizabeth
assented with outward grace and cheerfulness; but, in truth, it
mattered little to her then whether she ever saw any one again, except
her father, and—humiliating thought!—Pelham, once more. For, deeply
incensed as she was with Pelham, the thought of ever again meeting him
was profoundly agitating to her. She inquired of Baskerville about Mrs.
Luttrell, and sent her a kind message; then they parted and went upon
their several ways.
Half an hour afterwards, when Elizabeth Darrell was nearing her own
door, Senator Clavering—who, sitting at his library window, caught
sight of her graceful black figure as she stopped with her father and
talked a few minutes with Reginald Clavering—started to his feet,
his keen, handsome eyes fixed upon her with admiring approval. He
remembered her perfectly well, that beautiful girl he had seen on the
icy night ten years ago when he had watched the gay people flocking to
the Charity Ball, and the little trinket he had unconsciously crushed
under his foot. He had wondered a dozen times since he had been in
Washington, and had often asked, what had become of General Brandon’s
beautiful daughter, and was told that she had married a British Army
man and had disappeared in the wilderness. He had never seen General
Brandon from that hour, although they lived opposite, General
Brandon’s hours being very different from Senator Clavering’s and their
habits being as dissimilar as could possibly be imagined.
Clavering was a connoisseur in feminine beauty, and all forms of it
appealed to him. He thought Elizabeth twice as beautiful as he had done
in that passing glimpse of her, ten years before, in the bloom of her
girlhood. Strange to say, the languid, interesting, and somewhat tragic
type which Elizabeth Darrell now represented was the most attractive to
him—perhaps because it is the rarest. “By Jove, what a woman! I must
know her,” was his inward comment. He watched Elizabeth intently, her
fragile figure, her peculiar grace of movement, the note of distinction
in her whole person and air; and then and there he determined to
resurrect his acquaintance with General Brandon, whose relationship to
her was obvious, and whom Clavering had no more forgotten than General
Brandon had forgotten him.
Presently Reginald Clavering entered the house, and the first sound
that met his ears was something between a wail and a shout which came
from the upper region. Reginald winced at the sound. His mother still
held to her original Baptist faith—about the only thing pertaining
to her early life which she had not meekly given up. She was at that
moment enjoying the spiritual ministrations of a Baptist minister
who came sometimes on Sundays to pray with her and sing camp–meeting
hymns—to the intense diversion of the smart English footman and gay
French maids, of whom Mrs. Clavering was in deadly fear. And to make it
worse for Reginald, Anne Clavering, instead of setting her face against
this unchurchmanlike proceeding, actually aided and abetted her mother
in her plebeian sort of religion, and joined her clear note to the Rev.
Mr. Smithers’ bellowing and Mrs. Clavering’s husky contralto. The whole
thing offended Reginald Clavering’s æsthetic sense; but it was a proof
that he had much that was good in him that he bore these proceedings
silently, as became a gentleman, a Christian, and an Anglican, and made
no complaint to any one except Anne.
As he passed the open library door, Senator Clavering called out to
him in that rich and melodious voice which the stenographers in the
Senate gallery declared the most agreeable and easily followed voice of
any member of the Senate: “Hello! What is the name of that infernally
pretty woman whom you were escorting just now?”
“Mrs. Darrell, the widowed daughter of General Brandon. General
Brandon is one of the vestrymen at St. Gabriel’s Chapel,” replied
Reginald, stiffly.
“Yes, fine old fellow. I knew him more than thirty years ago when he
was a captain of infantry out on the plains and I was a sutler, as it
was called then. Handsome old chap still, and his daughter is like
him. You show good taste, my boy. I thought you’d find something more
entertaining than religion out at that chapel.”
Reginald Clavering scorned to reply to this, but went on to his study
in another part of the house. In a few minutes he heard his father’s
step on the stair, and dutifully opened the door for him. Clavering
entered, threw himself in a great chair, and began to look around him
with an amused smile. The room was a museum of ecclesiastical pictures
and gimcracks.
“When I was your age,” said Clavering, laughing openly, “I hadn’t a
room like this—I shared a board shanty with a fellow from God knows
where, who had served a term in state’s prison. But he was the finest
smelter expert I ever saw, and had the best eye for a pretty woman. You
couldn’t see the boards in our walls for the pictures of ballet dancers
and the like. Nothing in the least like this.” And he laughed.
Reginald’s pale face flushed with many emotions. His father’s tone
and manner expressed a frank scorn for him and all his surroundings.
Clavering kept on:—
“My roommate—nobody had a room to himself in those diggings—taught me
how to differentiate among pretty women.” Clavering was diverted at
the spectacle of a man shrinking from such a discussion. “Now, of your
sisters, Anne is really the best looking—the most effective, that is.
Élise and Lydia are of the tulip variety. Anne is something more and
different.”
“Élise and Lydia are both of them strikingly like you, sir,” replied
Reginald. It was the nearest approach to sarcasm he had ever made in
his life. Clavering enjoyed the cut at himself immensely.
“Very neat; thank you. Now I should say that Mrs.—what’s her name?—old
Brandon’s daughter is a remarkably attractive, even beautiful woman,
although she strikes me at first glance as one of those women, not
exactly young, who haven’t yet found themselves. Perhaps you’ll show
the lady the way.”
“Sir,” said Reginald, after a pause, “you shock me!”
Clavering was not in the least annoyed at this. He looked at Reginald
as one studies an amusing specimen, and said, as if to himself, “Good
God! that you should be my son!” He then took up some of the books on
the table and began to turn them over, laughing silently to himself the
while. The books corresponded with the pictures and ornaments. Reginald
Clavering found all of his family a cross, except his sister Anne, and
his father the heaviest cross of all. He was sincerely relieved when
Clavering took himself downstairs to his own library again.
It was a handsome library, and quite what the library of a senator, if
not a statesman, should be. The walls were lined with encyclopædias,
histories, and the English classics. Clavering, however, was a student
of far more interesting documents than any ever printed in a book. He
had studied unceasingly the human subject, and knew men and women as a
Greek scholar knows his Sophocles. This knowledge of men had made him
not only dazzlingly and superbly successful, but even happy in his way.
The most saintly man on earth might have envied James Clavering his
mind, ever at ease; for he knew no morals, and was unmoral rather than
immoral.
Two things only in life disturbed him. One was that he would have
liked to get rid of his wife, whom he had married when he was barely
twenty–one. She had served his turn. Although homely, shapeless,
and stupid now, she had made him comfortable—in the days when his
miner’s wages barely kept a humble roof over his head. She had
brought her children up properly. Clavering had enough of justice in
him not to hold her accountable for the fastness, the vagaries, the
love of splendor, the lack of principle, that made his eldest and
youngest daughters the subject of frequent paragraphs in scandalous
newspapers, and had landed one in the divorce court. They were like
him—so Clavering admitted to himself, without a blush. His one fear
was that they would, as he expressed it, “make fools of themselves.”
He admired chastity in women and even respected it, so far as he could
feel respect for anything; and he would, if he could, have kept all the
women in his family strictly virtuous. But he never was quite at ease
about either Élise or Lydia; and when he saw the simple way in which
Élise had slipped off the matrimonial fetters, Clavering had begun to
fear greatly—those two girls were so extremely like himself!
He knew well enough from whom Reginald inherited his temperament. Mrs.
Clavering’s father had been a weak, well–meaning Baptist preacher, and
Reginald was a replica of him, plus a university education and a large
allowance superadded. Where Anne came in Clavering frankly acknowledged
himself beaten. She inherited his own strong will and her mother’s
gentleness of address. But she had an innate delicacy, a singular
degree of social sense, a power of making herself felt and respected,
that Clavering admired but the origin of which he could not trace. She
was the one person in the world whom he feared and respected. It was
due to her that the Claverings had any real social status whatever. It
was through her, and for her alone, that certain honest, dignified,
and punctilious senators and public officials came to the grand
Clavering dinners and musicals, and allowed their wives to come. It
was Anne who would have to be vanquished when, as Clavering had always
intended, he should get a divorce from his wife and marry again. He
had not attempted this, merely because, so far, the women who would
have married him he did not want or could get on easier terms, and the
women he might have wanted would not have him at any price. Anne was
known as her mother’s champion, and Clavering knew that she would fight
the divorce with all the skill, courage, and pertinacity which, as
Baskerville had truly said, was all she had inherited from her father.
She had in her, disguised by much suavity and sweetness, a touch of
aggressiveness, a noble wilfulness that would not be reasoned away.
Clavering knew that the tussle of his life would come when the divorce
was seriously mooted; but he was not the less ready for the tussle.
The first sight of Elizabeth Darrell had impressed him wonderfully, and
the second vision of her had determined him to renew his acquaintance
with General Brandon; and while he was turning the mode of this over
in his mind he was summoned to luncheon. At luncheon all of the family
assembled—Élise and Lydia in elaborate negligées, Anne simply but
properly dressed. She sat next her mother at the table and was that
poor creature’s only outspoken champion.
“So you had a nice morning, with the psalm–singing and all that,” said
Élise to Anne.
“Very nice,” replied Anne. “Mamma seemed to enjoy it very much.”
“We had a nice morning, too,” replied Élise. “The Brentwood–Baldwins
glared at us as we went into church; they will never forgive us for
getting that pew in the middle aisle, so close to the President’s.
Then, after church, Count Rosalka asked to walk home with me. Lydia
got Laurison, the new British third secretary; so we sent the carriage
on and walked out Connecticut Avenue with all the Seventh Street
shopkeepers. It was very amusing, though.”
“It must have been,” said Clavering, gravely. “You must have recalled
the time when you would have thought yourself as rich as Pierpont
Morgan and Rockefeller combined if you had been as well dressed as a
Seventh Street shopkeeper’s daughter. It was only twelve years ago, you
remember, since I struck pay dirt in mines and politics.”
Élise and Lydia both smiled pleasantly. They were their father’s own
daughters, and along with many of his vices they inherited his superb
good humor, which never gave way except to a preconcerted burst of
imposing wrath.
“I remember those days quite well,” said Anne. Her voice, as well as
her looks, was quite different from her sisters’. Instead of their rich
and sensuous tones, beautiful like their father’s, Anne’s voice had a
dovelike quality of cooing softness; but she could always make herself
heard. “I remember,” she continued, touching her mother’s coarse hand
outspread on the table, “when mamma used to make our gowns, and we
looked quite as nice as the girls who could afford to have their
clothes made by a dressmaker.”
“Them was happy days,” said Mrs. Clavering. It was her only remark
during luncheon.
They talked of their plans for the coming week, as people do to whom
pleasure and leisure are new and intoxicating things. Anne was plied
with questions about Mrs. Luttrell’s dinner. She told freely all about
it, being secretive only concerning Baskerville, merely mentioning that
he was present.
“A more toploftical, stuck–up F. F. V.—or F. F. M., I suppose he is—I
never saw than this same Mr. Baskerville, and as dull as ditchwater
besides,” said Lydia.
Here Reginald spoke. “Mr. Baskerville is very highly esteemed by the
bishop of the diocese,” he said.
“And by people of a good deal more brains than the bishop of the
diocese,” added Clavering. “Baskerville is one of the brainiest men of
his age I ever knew. He is fighting me in this K. F. R. business; but
all the same I have a high opinion of his gray matter, and I wish you
two girls—Élise and Lydia—knew men like Baskerville instead of foreign
rapscallions and fortune–hunters like Rosalka. And I wish you went to
dinners such as Anne went to last night, instead of scampering over
the town to all sorts of larky places with all sorts of larky people.”