first evening she saw that Clavering was determined to secure her
society. She wondered at herself for submitting to it, but in truth it
would have been more remarkable if she had not done so. The extreme
dulness of her life made almost any companionship a resource, and
Clavering had certain fascinating qualities which were very obvious.
Without making himself the hero of his own recitals, he gave the most
vivid and interesting pictures of life on the wide Wyoming ranges, on
the Staked Plains, in California mining camps, amid the boulders of
the Yellowstone. Elizabeth listened under a kind of bewitchment, while
Clavering, in his rich voice, told the story of those years—a story
pulsing with movement, brilliant with adventure, with life and death
at issue every moment. She began to understand this man’s power over
men, and to recognize a kind of compulsion he exercised over her. She
might have remained out of the study, where, with a map spread out,
to amuse General Brandon, Clavering talked to him and at Elizabeth.
She was present not only because she wished to be, but she recognized
distinctly that she also came because Clavering wished her to come.
Especially was this true with regard to those odd half–hours which she
spent with Clavering alone.
Once she went out of the room when Serena brought Clavering’s card
up. In a minute or two Serena came with a message: “De gent’mun seh he
mus’ see you, Miss ’Liz’beth, ’bout some dem papers outen de Gin’l’s
trunk.” And Elizabeth, obeying this strange compulsion, went back into
the room, and saw Clavering’s eyes light up with lambent fire at sight
of her.
That he was deeply and even desperately in love with her from the
start there could be no question to any woman, and least of all to a
woman as clever as Elizabeth Darrell. She received a profound shock
when this was quickly revealed to her, not by any explicit word of
Clavering’s, but by all his words, his looks, his course of conduct. He
knew too much to venture to make open love to Elizabeth, and in other
ways she made him keep his distance in a manner which Clavering had
never experienced in his life before. He would no more have dared the
smallest personal liberty with Elizabeth Darrell than he would have
ventured to put a stick of dynamite into the fire. He had never really
been afraid of a woman before, and this of itself added a powerful
interest to Elizabeth. He realized fully the difficulties which beset
him when he thought of his chances of making Elizabeth his wife. He
could manage a divorce from his present wife in a way not known by the
poor soul herself, or by Anne, or by any one else in the world except
Clavering. That once accomplished, though, Elizabeth remained still to
be won. She probably inherited the Southern prejudice against divorce,
and it might not be easy to overcome it. And there was General Brandon
to be considered. Clavering, studying that honest, simple, handsome
face across the table from him, bent earnestly over the ridiculous maps
and useless memoranda, remembered that the General still cherished
an ancient pair of duelling pistols, which he had inherited from his
grandfather. He had taken these antique shooting–irons out of the old
escritoire in the corner and had shown them, not without pride and
reverence, to Clavering, saying solemnly:—
“These weapons, my dear sir, have never been used since my grandfather
purchased them in 1804, when he unfortunately became involved in a
dispute concerning politics with a gentleman of the highest character
in Virginia. They had a hostile meeting and shots were exchanged, but
no blood was spilled. I am exceedingly glad that the old practice of
duelling over trifles is gone, never to return. But there is one class
of cases left in which a gentleman has but one resource—the duello.
That is, when the honor of the ladies of his family is impugned. In
most instances the transgressor should be shot down like a dog. But
there are other cases when, owing to imprudence on the lady’s part, the
code must be invoked. Thank God, the honor of Southern women is safe in
their own keeping. But behind her, every woman, sir, of every country,
should have the protection of a man with arms in his hands, if need be.
I am aware that my ideas are antiquated; but I have always held them
and I always shall.”
Clavering listened to this without a word or smile. Nothing would be
more likely, if he should betray his design toward Elizabeth, than that
he should find himself looking down the barrel of one of those queer
old pistols in the hands of this soft–voiced, gullible, guileless old
Don Quixote. These, however, were but obstacles; and obstacles, in
Clavering’s lexicon, were things to be overcome.
In the narrowness and dulness of her life, Elizabeth naturally thought
much of Clavering. If she had been asked at any moment whether she
would marry him, should he get a divorce, she would instantly and with
horror have answered “no.” But she had seen enough of the great,
self–indulgent world to know that divorce and remarriage are by no
means the impossible and unheard–of things which simple people in
staid communities think they are. She began to speculate idly, in her
lonely afternoon walks and in the evenings when Clavering did not come,
as to what would happen if she should marry Clavering. Whenever she
caught herself at this she would recoil from the idea in horror. But it
returned. Pelham’s conduct had shattered all her ideals of man’s love.
If he could act as he had done, where was the difference between the
love of the best and the worst of men?
This bitterness toward Pelham was much increased by the receipt of a
letter from Mr. McBean, the solicitor, more hard, more peremptory,
more insulting, than any he had yet written her. There had been no
trouble in finding Elizabeth’s whereabouts, for although she had not
thought fit to notify McBean of her leaving England, it was known
that she had returned to America, and McBean’s letter reached her
promptly. In it threats of legal proceedings were repeated, with an
earnestness terrible to Elizabeth. This letter made her ill in bed.
She called it a neuralgic headache, to soothe her father, but in truth
it was a collapse from alarm and grief. It was an emergency which
could only be helped by money; and a large sum of money, it seemed to
Elizabeth—twenty–five hundred dollars to begin with, and then cost
and expense which she could not understand added to it. This referred
solely to the necklace. What else had to be accounted for nearly
staggered her,—but where was she to get two or three thousand dollars?
Her father could not have produced it had he converted his blood into
money; and the poor old house, plastered with mortgages from roof to
cellar, would scarcely sell for more than what had been borrowed on it.
It was now the height of the season, and the whirl of gayety and of
politics made Washington seethe like a caldron. Carriages were dashing
about from the early afternoon to all hours of the morning. Houses were
lighted up, music resounded, men and women rushed hither and thither in
the race after pleasure.
At the great white building on Capitol Hill history was being steadily
and rapidly made. One subject, not wholly political, aroused deep
interest on the House side as well as in the Senate. The investigating
committee on the K. F. R. land grants had already held several
meetings, and it was known that for some reason of political expedience
the party in power wished the question settled at the earliest possible
date. There was, among certain senators who did not really understand
the matter, a disposition to throw Clavering overboard like Jonah.
Those senators who really understood the question reckoned Clavering
to be perfectly deserving of a long term in state’s prison. There
was no hope of acquittal for him from the moment the whole evidence
against him was known to be available; and for this nobody deserved so
much credit as Richard Baskerville. He had been more than two years
unravelling the tangled web of litigation, and only a very astute
lawyer, with money and time to spend on it, could have done it at
all. It was quite clear now, compact and available. A lesser man than
Clavering would at this stage of the proceedings have resigned from the
Senate and decamped.
Clavering, however, was incapable of understanding defeat, and had
no more thought of surrender than the Old Guard at Waterloo. His
entertainments, always lavish and frequent, grew more lavish and more
frequent. Washington was not big enough to supply half the luxuries he
required; New York was called upon, and Paris and Vienna, for rarities
of all sorts to make the dinners and balls at the Claverings’ more
brilliant, more startling. Élise and Lydia revelled in this; Anne’s
good taste and good sense revolted against it. She read every word in
the newspapers concerning her father, and she began to see that ruin
and disgrace were threatening him with fearful quickness. Even Reginald
Clavering, dull and self–centred, became frightened and ashamed. Not
so Clavering; he was not the man to “roll darkling down the torrent of
his fate.” He would go if he had to go, with all the splendor which
unlimited money and assurance could contrive. It gave him little
spells of laughter and amusement when he thought how much Washington
would miss his princely entertaining, in case he should be struck
down by his enemies. If that should occur, however, he reflected that
Washington was not the only city, nor America even the only country,
in the world. He was not really much grieved at the possibility of
leaving public life, although he fought with a gladiator’s courage
against being thrown out. He had accomplished much of what he had gone
into public life for,—the making of a vaster fortune than the vast
one he had before. And then, that new dream which had come into his
life—Elizabeth Darrell. If he should win her, as he fully intended
and expected, she might not find Washington a very comfortable place
of residence. He would give her a splendid hotel in Paris, or a grand
establishment in London. He would spend half the year in America, in
the West, which he liked far better than the East; and the other half
he could spend having what he would have called “a great big bat” in
Europe. He might go into European financiering and teach those old
fogies a thing or two—Clavering indulged in many Alnaschar dreams about
this time.
One afternoon in the latter part of January Elizabeth went out for
her usual solitary walk. It had been very cold, with snow, and the
thermometer that day suddenly jumped into the sixties, bringing a damp
white fog which enveloped everything. Elizabeth walked straight down
the street on which she lived, without regard to where she was going;
she meant to be out of doors only for so many hours, and to find in the
loneliness of a walk a change from the loneliness of the house. It was
within a week of the time she had received McBean’s letter, and it lay
heavy on her heart.
She had walked but a few squares, when she heard a step behind her
which she recognized as Clavering’s. She stopped involuntarily, the
red blood surging into her pale face. In a moment Clavering was by her
side.
“I saw you go out, and followed you,” he said.
Elizabeth made no reply. He had never joined her on the street before,
although sometimes she had passed him getting in and out of his
automobile or driving behind a notable pair of sorrels. But this time
he had not only joined her—he had followed her. Elizabeth’s sudden
flushing was by no means lost on Clavering.
They walked on due east through the mist which enveloped all
things, the snow still piled in drifts along the edges of the
streets. They spoke little, but Elizabeth felt instinctively that
Clavering had something of consequence to say to her when they got
into the unfamiliar part of the town, where he could be certain of
being unobserved. The street, which had been fashionable as far as
Sixteenth Street, grew semifashionable, and then became a region of
lodging–houses, places with dressmakers’ signs, and an occasional
small shop. Then, growing more and more remote, it became a street of
comfortable, quiet houses, tenanted by people to whom the West End of
Washington mattered as little as the west end of Bagdad. By that time
they had gone a mile. They came to one of those small triangular parks
which abound in Washington, where there are seats under the trees and
asphalt walks winding in and out of shrubbery.
Elizabeth, under the spell of compulsion which Clavering had cast upon
her, made no objection to entering the park with him. Usually it was
completely open to observation, but now the soft and clinging fog drew
a misty curtain between the little park and the world. Clavering led
the way to a bench among a clump of evergreens, and Elizabeth, without
a word of protest, sat down upon the bench, the Senator at her side.
“There are places within half a mile of everywhere in this town,” he
said, “where one can be as secure from observation as if one were in
a back street of the city of Damascus. And if I had designed this
afternoon for meeting you and talking confidentially with you, nothing
could have been better. The people who live in these houses seem
always to be asleep or dead, and if they knew our names, they couldn’t
recognize us ten feet off. Now,” he continued, “tell me what is
troubling you—for I have seen ever since that first glimpse of you that
something is preying upon you.”
Elizabeth remained silent.
“What is it?” asked Clavering again, with authority in his voice. And
Elizabeth, still with that strange feeling of being obliged to do what
Clavering required, told him the whole story of the necklace.
Clavering listened attentively. Elizabeth had tried to keep out of it
the personal note, the shame and disappointment and resentment she felt
at Pelham’s conduct; but she was dealing with a very astute man, who
read her with extraordinary keenness, and who saw the good policy, from
his own point of view, of still further embittering her feelings toward
Pelham.
“I should say that fellow Pelham ought to have shown you a little more
consideration, especially as you say he inherited everything.”
“Yes.”
“A woman, standing alone, is almost bound to fall in with just such
brutes as Pelham and that Scotch solicitor. Mind, I say that you were
obliged to meet with some men who were traitors, all in fact except
those who happen to be in love with you. Look—” he opened his watch,
and on the inner case Elizabeth saw a Greek sentence engraved, [Greek:
memnêstein apistein]. “You didn’t think I knew Greek. Of course I
don’t. No man born and raised in my circumstances ever knew Greek, and
I never expect to know it. I have heard about some one of those old
classics learning to play the fiddle when he was eighty, and always
thought him a great fool for so doing. No, I only had this put in Greek
to puzzle fools; it means, ‘Remember to distrust.’ It was a pity that
you had not remembered to distrust that Pelham scoundrel.”
Elizabeth remained silent and almost stunned at this characterization
of Pelham, and Clavering, seeing he had gone far enough in that
direction, said:—
“If the diamond broker—pawn–broker, I should call him—gave you five
hundred pounds on the necklace, it was probably worth fifteen hundred.
However, fifteen hundred pounds is a small matter.”
“It is a great deal to me and always was, except for that short time
in London when we thought ourselves the richest people in the world,”
replied Elizabeth.
“You may, if you choose, be one of the richest women in America.”
[Illustration: “THE LITTLE PARK WAS WHOLLY DESERTED EXCEPT FOR
THEMSELVES.”]
Elizabeth’s face had grown deathly pale. She was sensible of the
dishonor of any proposal Clavering might make to her. All of the
stories she had heard from the beginning about Clavering’s intention to
divorce his wife rushed upon her mind—all of her own vague and haunting
speculations for the past few weeks. She remained silent, but every
moment she grew more agitated.
Clavering was silent for a few moments, allowing the leaven to work.
Then he continued: “Of course there is but one way to do this. I can
get a divorce and then you must marry me. No doubt you have a lot of
unpractical ideas about divorce, but let me tell you that when a man
and a woman are indispensable to each other—as you are to me—what does
anything on earth matter?”
No one listening to Clavering’s cool and measured tones would have
surmised what he was proposing to Elizabeth; nor did he attempt the
smallest endearment, free as they were from observation, for the fog
grew denser every moment and the little park was wholly deserted except
for themselves.
At his last remarks Elizabeth attempted some faint protest, which went
unheeded by Clavering, who spoke again: “People call me a successful
man. So I am, with money, politics, cards, and horses. But I have no
luck with women. First, I married before I was twenty–one—cursed folly
that it was! You have seen my wife—I’ll say no more. Then, my eldest
and youngest daughters—well, they are like me in some ways, that’s
enough. Élise has been through the divorce court. It cost me something
like fifty thousand dollars to keep the truth about her from coming
out. Lydia will go the same way. My best plan with them will be to
marry them to men who will get the upper hand of them—keep a tight rein
over them. So far, I haven’t succeeded; and I am seriously considering
giving them each a handsome fortune, marrying them to foreigners, and
getting them out of the country.”
Elizabeth’s pale face had grown red while Clavering was speaking. He
was close enough to see it, even by the uncertain light that penetrated
the mist.
“You think I’m a brute, eh? No, on the contrary I have a strong
hankering after decency in my womenkind.”
“Your daughter Anne—” Elizabeth spoke falteringly.
“Ah, yes, bad luck again. Anne has twice the sense of her sisters, is
really more attractive and is perfectly certain to behave herself.
But she is on her mother’s side, and if—or when—I do get a divorce,
I shall have to fight her, and she is the only one of my children
whose opposition would amount to anything. You know what a Miss Nancy
Reginald is.”
“But—but—how can you get a divorce if Mrs. Clavering—“
“Doesn’t want it? Well, I never was properly married to her in the
first place. She didn’t know it at the time, and I was a youngster
and didn’t know it, either; but our marriage wasn’t regular at all.
I should have got the license in Kentucky instead of in Ohio, where
we crossed the river to get married. So we are not really married and
never have been, according to law. When I mention the subject to Mrs.
Clavering, I shall offer to get the divorce; if she is contumacious, I
shall simply prove that we have never been married at all. That will
be hard on the children, and on that account I think there is no doubt
she would agree to the divorce, if it were not for Anne. Anne, however,
doesn’t know anything about the defect in the marriage, and I rather
think she will back down when she finds out just where we stand.”
Elizabeth listened to this with horror. But it was horror of the deed,
not of the man. Clavering’s calm and lucid presentation of the case,
the absence of hypocrisy, his quiet determination, seemed to lift him
out of the class of vulgar criminals and make him almost respectable.
And then he went on to give his side of the case, and his voice had in
it a strange note of longing.
“I have before me twenty years yet, and although I am reckoned a man
who can live on bonds and stocks and lawsuits and fighting other men,
still I’ve had my dreams—I have them still. If I could find a woman
who would be a wife to me, and yet could be an intellectual companion
for me—that would be something that all my money hasn’t brought me. Do
you blame a man for longing after it? Don’t you think I am more nearly
human for wanting it than if I were satisfied to go on all my life as I
have done for the last thirty–five years?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth spoke unwillingly, but the assent was forced out
of her. And whether it was his words, his voice,—always singularly
captivating,—his compelling glance, or his powerful personality,
Elizabeth began to feel a toleration, along with a reprehension, of
him. For Clavering, like all men, was made up of things to admire and
things to abhor; only he possessed both in a stronger degree than
common. He was much older than Elizabeth, but he had not lost the fire
and vigor of youth.
Elizabeth’s agitation had subsided somewhat, but she was still unable
or unwilling to speak. The gray mist was becoming denser, and they
could see the gas–lamps studding the fast–falling darkness like jewels;
the sound of wheels and hoofs upon the asphalt was deadened by the
fog and grew fainter, the street was quieter, more deserted even than
Washington streets usually are. In the little park, with the masses
of evergreen shrubbery around them, they were as alone, as little
subject to intrusion, as if they had been on a desert island. After a
considerable pause Clavering spoke again.
“I saw you first, just ten years ago, one night as you were waiting on
the street with your father, for some lady to take you to a ball. You
dropped a little trinket from around your neck.”
Elizabeth started with surprise. “That was the night I first met my
husband—and Hugh Pelham. And I lost my little pearl heart and never
found it.”
“I was the guilty man,” said Clavering, with a smile. “I crushed your
heart under my foot.” It was an accidental joining of words, but
Clavering wished he had expressed himself otherwise. The words had an
ominous sound, and Elizabeth, after looking at him intently for a few
minutes, turned her head away.
Clavering, hastening to recall his lost ground, added: “The day will
come when I will give you the most superb diamond locket that the South
African mines can produce. I will make duchesses envy you your jewels
and princesses cry with envy of them. I remembered you ever after
that night, and a month ago I met you. Don’t think people are fools
who talk of love at first sight for anybody at any age, or under any
circumstances. The moment my eyes fell upon you I was anxious to know
you. When I knew you, I wanted to know you better. When I knew you
better, I became willing to do anything for you, to jeopardize anything
in order to marry you. And I will give you a great fortune, millions
of money, of which I shall get very little benefit, because you will
outlive me many years and probably marry some other man and endow him,
by gad, with my money. I will go anywhere you may desire to live, for
I don’t believe you would consent to live in Washington. You may have
a splendid house in London or Paris, a great country house, a château,
any and everywhere you like, and you may command me as no other woman
has ever commanded me. Now will you marry me after I am divorced?”
Elizabeth felt dazed. She had known from the first what was coming,
but when Clavering put his wish into words it was as strange and
staggering as if the idea had never before occurred to her. The thought
of committing so great a wrong upon another woman, as Clavering
suggested, appalled her—a wrong so vast and far–reaching that she
turned away from the contemplation of it. But she did not fly from the
temptation, and the temptation which is not fled from is the conqueror.
Clavering interpreted her silence with ease. He took her hand, pulled
off her glove, and held her soft palm between his two strong ones.
Five minutes passed; they seemed an hour to Elizabeth, frightened yet
fascinated, her mind overwhelmed with what Clavering had told her,
had promised her, had urged upon her. Through it all came the cry
of her heart for Pelham. Had he been true to her, this temptation
would never have come in her way. And as he had forgotten her and had
even persecuted her, what did it matter what became of her, so she
had ease instead of this frightful poverty, companionship instead of
this dreadful loneliness, security instead of this perpetual terror
over the small and sordid matter of a few hundred pounds? Clavering
was too clever a man to urge her overmuch when he saw that he had a
tempter always with her in her own self. At last, after five minutes of
agitated silence, she managed to withdraw her hand and rise. Clavering,
without a word, walked with her out of the little park, hailed a
passing hansom in the dusk and put her in, only saying at the last:—
“I will see you again as soon as possible. Meanwhile, remember you have
but to say one word and all is yours.”
The hansom rolled off, and Clavering, putting his hands in his pockets,
walked away at a quick gait. The expression on his face was like that
of a successful gladiator. It was not pleasant to see.
_Chapter Thirteen_