years I’ve been in the Senate,” he said. “No man can come to the Senate
of the United States with the education of a sutler, miner, promoter,
speculator, and what not—such as I have had—and not work hard; that
is, if he expects to be anything else than a dummy. But it isn’t in
James Clavering to be a dummy anywhere. So I have thought and read
and worked and slaved, and bought other men’s brains in the last five
years as earnestly as any man ever did. The result is that when I open
my mouth now the senators listen. At first the lawyers in the Senate
used to hide a grin when I began to speak, and I admit I did make some
bad breaks in the beginning. But I saw my way out of that clearly
enough. I found a man who was really a great constitutional lawyer,
although he had never been able to make more than a bare living out of
his profession in Chicago. I have always invested liberally in brains.
When you can actually buy brains or news, you are buying the two most
valuable commodities on earth. Well, when I took up a question I had
my man go over the legal aspects of it and put them down in black and
white. Then I knew well enough how to use them, and I may say without
boasting that I have done as well, or better, than any man of my
opportunities now in the Senate. However, I don’t compare myself with
such men as Andrew Johnson. You know his wife taught him to write, and
that man rose to be President of the United States. Of course he wasn’t
what you would call a scholarly man, like many of the senators, but
good Lord! think of the vast propelling force that took an illiterate
man from the tailor’s bench and gave him such a career as Andrew
Johnson’s, and made him Vice–President of the United States. Those
men—and men like me, too—can’t be called all–round men, like Senator
Thorndyke, for example. All of us have got great big gaps and holes in
our knowledge and judgment and conduct that the normal well–educated
man hasn’t. But where we are strong, we are stronger than they. Do you
know anything about Thorndyke?”
“I have heard my father speak of Mrs. Thorndyke, whose family he knew
many years ago, and he visits occasionally at Senator Thorndyke’s. Mrs.
Thorndyke sent me a request that I would call to see her, but—but—I
don’t pay any visits now.”
“It’s a shame you don’t—a woman like you. Mrs. Thorndyke is charming,
but not so charming as you. And I lay claim to great nobility of soul
when I praise Mrs. Thorndyke, or Thorndyke either, for that matter.
Mrs. Thorndyke has no use for me or for anybody of my name, except my
second daughter. And Thorndyke, although he isn’t leading the pack of
hounds who are baying after me to get me out of the Senate, is quietly
giving them the scent. Yet I swear I admire Thorndyke—or, rather, I
admire his education and training, which have made him what he is.
If I had had that training—a gentleman for my father, a lady for my
mother, association with the sons of gentlemen and ladies, a university
education, and then had married a lady—“
Clavering got up and took a turn about the narrow room. Finally he came
and sat down in a chair closer to Elizabeth, and continued: “Thorndyke
is one of the lawyers in the Senate who used to bother me. It seemed to
me at first that every time I opened my mouth in the Senate chamber I
butted into the Constitution of the United States. Either I was butting
into the shalls or the shall nots, and Thorndyke always let me know it.
I could get along from the first well enough in the rough–and–tumble
of debate with men like Senator Crane, for example,—a handsome fellow,
from the West, too, very showy in every way, but not the man that
Thorndyke is. It was the scholarly men that I was a little afraid of,
I’m not ashamed to say. I am a long way off from a fool; consequently
I know my own limitations, and a want of scholarship is one of those
limitations.”
Elizabeth listened, more and more beguiled. She could not but see
a sort of self–respect in this man; he respected his own intellect
because it was worth respecting, and he had very little respect for
his own character and honor because he knew they were not worth
respecting. As Elizabeth studied him by the mellow lamplight, while
his rich voice echoed through the small room, she could not but
recognize that here was a considerable man, a considerable force; and
she had never known a man of this type before. She noted that he was
as well groomed as the most high–bred man she had ever known—as well
as Pelham, for example. He had come into the room with ease and grace.
No small tricks of manner disfigured him; he was naturally polished,
and he had the gift, very rare and very dangerous, of saying what he
would without giving offence,—or, rather, of disarming the person
who might be offended. And in spite of his frank talking of himself
Elizabeth saw in him an absence of small vanity, of restless self–love.
Unconsciously she assumed an air of profound interest in what Clavering
was saying,—a form of flattery most insidious and effective because of
its unconsciousness.
Elizabeth herself, in the eighteen months of loneliness, poverty, and
desperate anxiety which she had lately known, had almost lost the sweet
fluency which had once distinguished her; but presently Clavering chose
to make her talk, and succeeded admirably. She found herself speaking
frankly about her past life and telling things she had never thought of
telling a stranger; but Clavering seemed anything but a stranger. In
truth, he had probed her so well that he knew much more about her than
she had dreamed of revealing.
When at last General Brandon’s step was heard, Elizabeth started like a
guilty child; she had forgotten that her father was to return. General
Brandon was delighted to see Clavering, and took a quarter of an hour
to explain why he had been ten minutes late.
“I didn’t expect to see any papers to–night,” replied Clavering, “but
I should like to talk over some things with you. Please don’t go, Mrs.
Darrell; what I have to say you are at perfect liberty to hear.”
Elizabeth hesitated, and so did General Brandon; but Clavering settled
the matter by saying: “If I am to drive you out of your sitting room, I
shall feel obliged to remain away, and thereby be deprived of General
Brandon’s valuable services.” Elizabeth remained.
Clavering then began to give the history from his point of view of the
K. F. R. land grants. It was a powerfully interesting story, told with
much dramatic force. It embraced the history of much of Clavering’s
life, which was in itself a long succession of uncommon episodes.
It lost nothing in the telling. Then he came to the vindictive and
long–continued fight made on him politically, which culminated in the
bringing of these matters before a Senate committee by a powerful
association of Eastern railway magnates and corporation lawyers, aided
by the senators in opposition and others in his own party who, because
he was not strictly amenable to party discipline, would be glad to see
him driven out of the Senate. But Clavering was a fighting man, and
although driven to the wall, he had his back to it; he was very far
from surrender, and so he said.
Elizabeth listened with breathless interest. Nothing like this had
ever come into her experience before. It struck her as being so much
larger and stronger than any of the struggles which she had heretofore
known that it dwarfed them all. Everybody’s affairs seemed small beside
Clavering’s. Yet she was fully conscious all the time that this was
special pleading on Clavering’s part. She admired the ingenuity, the
finesse, the daring, that Clavering had shown and was showing; but it
all seemed to her as if there must be something as large and as strong
on the other side.
No such idea, however, came into General Brandon’s kind, simple wooden
head. When Clavering had finished speaking, the General rose and,
grasping him by the hand, said solemnly: “My dear sir, I sympathize
with you profoundly. I am convinced that you have been the victim of
misplaced confidence, and that this unprincipled hounding of you on the
part of men who wish to rob you, not only of your property and your
seat in the Senate, but your high character and your priceless good
name, is bound to come to naught. I offer you my sincere sympathy, and
I assure you that I place entire credence in every word that you have
told me.”
This was more than Elizabeth did; and when Clavering thought of it
afterward, sitting over his library fire, he laughed to himself. On the
strength of it, however, he had secured opportunities of seeing General
Brandon’s daughter very often, and he did not mean to let the grass
grow under his feet.
_Chapter Eleven_
The season opened with a bang on the first of December. The smart set
could barely get six hours in bed from going to parties at all hours.
This did not apply to Mrs. Luttrell, who, although she was out every
night, did not disturb herself to appear in public until four o’clock
in the afternoon. That particular form of barbaric entertainment known
as a ladies’ luncheon had no charms for Mrs. Luttrell, because there
were no men to be found at them; for this woman, who cherished with an
idolatrous recollection the memory of the only man she had ever loved,
and who had refused more offers of marriage than any other woman of
her day, frankly admitted that she couldn’t enjoy anything without a
masculine element in it. And men she contrived to have in plenty, with
a success but little inferior to that of Ninon de l’Enclos.
For that reason Richard Baskerville was not only the person Mrs.
Luttrell loved best in the world, but was really her most intimate
friend. There was nothing Mrs. Luttrell enjoyed so much as a midnight
tête–à–tête over her bedroom fire with Baskerville, he just from his
books and she just from her nightly gayety. Mrs. Luttrell scorned
a boudoir,—or the modern version of it, a den. She had a huge,
old–fashioned bedroom, with an ancient four–poster mahogany bed, with
green silk curtains, and a lace valance; and everything in the room was
big and square and handsome and comfortable, like the bed. There was a
large fireplace, with shining brass fire–dogs and a monumental brass
fender; and Mrs. Luttrell frequently admitted that when she got her
feet on that fender and her dressing–gown on, she grew so communicative
that she would tell the inmost secrets of her soul to the veriest
stranger, if he had his feet on the fender at the same time.
It was on a night early in January that Mrs. Luttrell nabbed
Baskerville at her door, as she was being let in by the sleepy black
butler. Baskerville followed her upstairs into her room, considerately
turning his back while the old lady got out of her black–velvet
gown, and whisked off her flannel petticoat, into her comfortable
dressing–gown—an operation she performed without the least regard for
his presence. Then, when her delicate, high–bred feet were on the
fender before the glowing wood fire, she said:—
“Now you can turn around—and I’m a great deal more clothed than the
women you take down to dinner or dance with at balls.”
“I don’t dance at a great many balls. Let me see—I haven’t danced for—“
“Oh, I know. Well, I’m just from a dinner at Secretary Slater’s, where
that ridiculous little Mrs. Hill–Smith, his daughter, was in great
feather, and also the Baldwin girl and Anne Clavering.”
“You ought to beg Miss Clavering’s pardon for bracketing her with Mrs.
Hill–Smith and Eleanor Baldwin.”
“My dear boy, it would make you die laughing to see the patronizing air
Mrs. Hill–Smith and Eleanor Baldwin put on with Anne Clavering. As the
Slater family is at least forty years old and the Brentwood–Baldwins
quite twenty years old, they regard the Claverings, who have come
up within the last six years, very much as the old French nobility
regarded the _bourgeoisie_. But I think Anne Clavering is a match for
them. Indeed, she proved herself a match for a much more considerable
antagonist—that is, myself—this very night.”
“Have you been impertinent to Miss Clavering?”
“Well, Richard, my dear boy, I am afraid I have been. But it was all
the fault of those two foolish creatures, Mrs. Hill–Smith and Eleanor
Baldwin. It was in this way. The gentlemen,”—Mrs. Luttrell still used
this antique word,—“the gentlemen had come into the drawing–room after
dinner—very prim and proper they were after their cigarettes and two
glasses of hock. In my time, when the gentlemen came in after dinner
they were always as merry as lords and delightfully free: I have been
slapped on the back by Daniel Webster at a dinner, when I was sixteen
years old. But nothing so agreeable happens now—and there aren’t any
Daniel Websters, either. Well, when I was talking to that ridiculous
Mrs. Hill–Smith something unluckily started me off upon the new people
in Washington. Mrs. Hill–Smith, you know, assumes that she has sixteen
quarterings, so she has to grin and bear it when I begin telling
about people; and I always say to her, ‘You and I, Mrs. Hill–Smith,
who knew some people before 1860.’ Somebody was speaking about Mrs.
James Van Cortlandt Skinner’s private chaplain—that woman has added
much to the gayety of nations. There’s a story going around that she
had a darling of a fight over it, not only with the bishop, but with
the bishop’s wife; and I was giving a very amusing account of it,
when Anne Clavering quietly remarked that she happened to know that
Mrs. Skinner had not spoken of it yet to the bishop. Of course this
spoiled my story, and I was a little cross about it. Judge Woodford
was present, and he told a pleasant little tale about my grandfather
having been very cross on one occasion, and having pulled somebody’s
nose, and I said my crossness was a case of atavism on my part. And so
it was turned into a joke. When we were leaving I was sorry I had been
short with Anne Clavering, so I went up and asked her to come and see
me on my next day at home, and to pour tea for me—that I still held to
the good old fashion of keeping a day at home and seeing my friends.
And what do you think the minx said? She was very sorry, but she had an
attack of atavism, too,—her grandfather wasn’t used to afternoon tea
and she had never acquired any real taste for it!”
Baskerville laughed delightedly.
“Oh, it wasn’t so clever, after all,” said Mrs. Luttrell, smiling with
that unshakable good humor which was the most exasperating thing on
earth to all her enemies and her friends alike. “It is just because
you’re in love with Anne Clavering; and I think she likes you pretty
well, too.”
Baskerville sat up then, sobered in an instant. What Mrs. Luttrell knew
or suspected all Washington would shortly know. “Why do you say that?”
he asked quietly.
“Because I think it, that’s why. It’s one of the strangest things in
the world that people in love think all the rest of the world blind and
deaf. And a woman lets her secret out just as readily as a man. I say
Anne Clavering likes you. I don’t say she is pining and can’t eat and
sleep for you; but I do say she likes you, though. And I feel sorry
for the girl—such a family! You ought to see how that divorcée, Mrs.
Denman, goes on with Count von Kappf, who, I believe, has been sent
over here by a syndicate to marry an American heiress. Nobody knows
what Anne Clavering has to suffer for the conduct of that sister of
hers.”
“And you, who call yourself a Christian, had to add to Miss Clavering’s
mortification.”
“Oh, it was only a trifle, and she came out ahead.”
“Anyhow, you shall apologize to her. Do you understand me, Sara
Luttrell? You shall apologize, and before me, too.”
“Very well,” replied Mrs. Luttrell, unabashed. “The first time I catch
you and Anne Clavering together I’ll apologize.”
Baskerville sat silent for a while as Mrs. Luttrell luxuriously toasted
her toes. Presently he said, “So people are kind enough to say that I
am in love with Miss Clavering?”
“Yes, indeed. People are always kind enough to say things—and a great
many people are saying that you are in love with her. You haven’t
escaped notice as much as you thought.”
“I don’t desire to escape notice. And I only hope enough people will
say it so it will get to Miss Clavering’s ears. Then she may not be
so surprised as to throw me over when—the opportunity comes. I may be
a good many sorts of a blamed fool, Sara, but I am not such a fool
as to be anything but flattered when my name is associated with Miss
Clavering’s.”
“Very decently said. But how are you going to manage about this
senatorial investigation—trying to ruin the father as a preliminary to
marrying the daughter?”
Baskerville grew grave at once. The investigation was on in earnest.
The committee which had been appointed before the adjournment
of Congress had begun its sittings directly upon the meeting of
Congress, and Baskerville had at once come into prominence as one of
the representatives of the Civil Service League. The question of
Clavering’s culpability with regard to the land grants was complicated
with the open barter and sale of Federal offices, and the Civil Service
League had taken it up actively. The League was in no way bound
by senatorial courtesy, and it had a formidable array of evidence
to produce, which pointed straight to criminal as well as civil
indictments. Baskerville found himself in a difficult position. He
had gone too far in one direction toward exposing Senator Clavering,
and his heart had carried him too far in another direction, for he
was at last beginning to realize that he had fallen in love with Anne
Clavering—a path upon which a strong man never halts. It is your
weakling who falls halfway in love and then stops.
Mrs. Luttrell studied Baskerville keenly. Herself a sentimentalist in
disguise, she loved Baskerville the better for doing what she had long
dreaded—for she had a woman’s jealousy of another woman’s usurping
the first place with this nephew–in–law, who was son, companion,
and comrade in one. But at least he did not contemplate foisting a
pink–and–white nonentity upon her; Mrs. Luttrell always declared
herself afraid of silly women. She not only liked Anne Clavering, but
she saw in her a large and generous spirit, who would not, by small
artifices, try to come between Baskerville and Mrs. Luttrell. And the
ineradicable interest which is every woman’s inalienable right in a
love–affair was strong in Mrs. Luttrell’s breast. She began to wish
that Baskerville and Anne would marry; and after sitting quite silent
for ten minutes watching Baskerville’s moody face, she suddenly got up,
went over to him, and smoothing the hair back from his forehead, kissed
it tenderly. Two tears dropped upon his brow. Baskerville looked up and
took her hands in his. He spoke no word, but he knew that the memory
of the man so long dead was poignant still; and Mrs. Luttrell, after a
pause, said in a low voice:—
“I hope Anne Clavering will love you as I loved my Richard. And if you
can make her as happy as he made me—Good night. I can’t bear to speak
much of it, even to you.”
“If any woman ever loves me as you loved my uncle, I should think
myself eternally blessed with such love. Good night, Sara dear.”
He kissed her warmly, went out of the room and downstairs and across
the garden to his own house, and into his library. The first thing he
saw upon the big library table was a mass of documents relating to
the K. F. R. land grants. Baskerville pushed them away, and taking
up a well–thumbed volume of Theocritus tried to forget himself in the
pictures of the fair shining of the Sicilian sun, in the sound of the
pipe of Daphnis, in the complainings of the two poor old fishermen
lying by night in their wattled cabin on the sand dunes.
All was in vain. His thoughts were no sooner diverted from Anne
Clavering than they turned to Clavering and his affairs. How amazing
was this man who had rough–hewn his way to a high place, to enormous
wealth, to great power, from which he was likely to be thrown
headlong into an abyss of shame! Baskerville had very little doubt
that, no matter how successful might be the suits against Clavering,
he would manage to retain great tangible sums of money. Men of the
Clavering type hold on to their money more intelligently than to their
supposititious honor. And finding it impossible to get away from his
own thoughts, even in books which had heretofore been an unfailing
sedative, Baskerville went to bed, and tossed in true lover’s fashion
half the remaining night, before he fell into a troubled sleep to dream
of Anne Clavering.
_Chapter Twelve_
It is said that all truly benevolent women are matchmakers, and
although Mrs. Thorndyke would have indignantly denied the charge of
being a matchmaker, it was an indisputable fact that within a fortnight
of dining at Mrs. Luttrell’s she contrived an impromptu dinner at which
Anne Clavering and Baskerville were the first guests to be asked; and
if they had declined, it is doubtful if the dinner would have come
off at all. However, they both accepted; and Mrs. Thorndyke, whether
by inadvertence, as she stoutly alleged, or by design, as Thorndyke
charged, had Baskerville take Anne in to dinner.
Some faint reflection of the rumor which was flying about Washington
concerning Baskerville’s devotion had reached Anne Clavering’s ears.
It gave a delightful shyness to her eyes, a warm color to her usually
pale cheeks. Something in Baskerville’s manner—the ingenuity with which
he managed to perform every little service for her himself, conveyed
subtly but plainly to Anne his interest in her. She had been deeply
flattered and even made happy by Baskerville’s calling at last at
her house. There was every reason why he should remain away—so much
Anne had admitted to herself often, and always with a burning blush,
remembering what she knew and had read about the investigation through
which her father was passing. But Baskerville had come, and there must
have been a powerful force, much stronger than her mother’s timid
invitation, to bring him. Perhaps he came because he could not stay
away.
At this thought Anne, who was sitting at her dressing–table after
the dinner at the Thorndykes’, caught sight of her own face in the
mirror. A happy smile hovered about the corners of her mouth, her eyes
became eloquent. Women, being close students of their own emotions,
can always detect the dawning and the development of this silent but
intense interest in a certain man, an interest which is born, grows,
and often dies for want of nourishment, but sometimes lives and thrives
on neglect—and sometimes,—O glorious consummation!—comes into its
kingdom of love. Anne Clavering, who had passed her twenty–seventh
birthday, and who, shamed and indignant at the conduct of her sisters,
had maintained a haughty reserve toward men and had hitherto found it
easy, knew that it was not without meaning she felt herself watching
for Baskerville’s entrance into a room; that she was secretly uneasy
until he had placed himself beside her; that when he talked, an
instant, sweet, and positive mental sympathy came into being between
them which seemed to bring them together without any volition on their
part.
January was flying by. Anne Clavering went out quite as much as Mrs.
Luttrell, but with a different motive. To Mrs. Luttrell society was
a necessity, as a thing becomes after a lifetime of habitude. Anne
Clavering would have liked society well enough if it had been merely a
means of pleasure. But she had to maintain before the world a position
which her father and her two sisters jeopardized every hour. The place
of the Claverings in society was by no means a fixed one. All the idle
and careless people, all the worshippers of money, all those who love
to eat and drink at somebody else’s expense, all those who pursue
pleasure without conscience or delicacy, thronged the Clavering house.
Clavering himself was seldom invited out, and did not regret it. The
small talk of society bored him, and he was conscious that he did not
shine unless he had the centre of the stage. Occasionally he met a man
who interested him, and semi–occasionally a woman who did the same.
But no woman had ever interested him as much as Elizabeth Darrell. He
was amazed, himself, at the power she had of drawing him to her; for,
under the specious pretence of getting information from General Brandon
concerning the K. F. R. land grants, Clavering soon managed to spend
two or three evenings a week in Elizabeth’s company. He speedily found
out General Brandon’s ways—his hour or two at the club in the evening,
his visits to his old friends, all of which were clock–like in their
regularity. On these evenings, when General Brandon returned to meet
an appointment, Clavering would invariably be found established in the
study. Any other man in the world but General Brandon would have had
his suspicions aroused, but the General was born to be hoodwinked. His
chivalric honor, his limpidness of character, his entire innocence,
were strong forces, as all these things are. He radiated good
influences upon honest men, and gave active encouragement to every
rogue of every sort who had dealings with him.