Brandon at the usual hour of half–past nine. And at nine o’clock
promptly he was sitting with Elizabeth in the little study, waiting for
General Brandon’s return.
The first thing he said to her was: “Of course that affair about the
necklace must be straightened out at once. I can cable to my London
agent, and he can find out all about it and recover it, for it can be
easily traced and recovered. And leave me to deal with the solicitor on
the quiet.”
“I hardly think you know what you are offering,” replied Elizabeth,
with involuntary haughtiness. “I could not accept money or services
from you. It is not to be thought of for a moment.”
“Then what are you going to do about it?” asked Clavering, coolly, in
the words of a celebrated character.
Ah, what was she going to do about it? thought poor Elizabeth. Tell her
father and see him turned out of the only shelter he had for his aged
head? If only she had been more experienced, had known more! She had
been so very, very ignorant in those London days. If Pelham had not
behaved so basely to her!
Clavering talked on, quietly assuming that he would take charge of the
matter for her; but Elizabeth, after listening to him in silence and
even in weakness, suddenly and impulsively rose and said, “I desire you
never to speak to me on that subject again.”
Then General Brandon’s step was heard upon the stair, and nothing more
was said between them. Elizabeth remained in the room while Clavering
was there, and he honestly thought he was progressing quite as fast as
he had any right to expect.
It was now the middle of January, and the investigating committee
continued to sit and the newspapers to print the proceedings. This did
not tend to make it any pleasanter for Clavering’s family. Anne, with
a touch of her father’s courage, continued to go out and to entertain,
but it was with an aching heart. To add to her other anxieties, Mrs.
Clavering was very ailing and unhappy. By some strange accident—for
the poor lady never read the newspapers—she got an inkling that
Clavering was under fire, and she often asked questions which Anne had
difficulty in answering. Whatever love Mrs. Clavering had ever felt
for Clavering had long since been cast out by fear; but she had the
true feminine instinct which makes a dove fierce in the presence of the
despoiler of her nest. Reginald Clavering redoubled his attention to
his mother, and was of more help to Anne than she had thought possible.
It had been determined, chiefly at Clavering’s suggestion, that a grand
musical, followed by a ball, should be given at the Clavering house on
Shrove Tuesday, as a wind–up to the splendid entertainments for which
the house had long been noted; and the undisguised intention was to
eclipse everything that had hitherto been done in Washington in the way
of entertaining. Anne opposed it, but Élise and Lydia carried the day,
backed up by their father.
Only Clavering suspected that it was likely to be the last
entertainment given there. He felt confident of knowing the decision
of the committee before Shrove Tuesday, and he fully realized the
possibility that it might mean expulsion from the Senate on his record
alone; as, unluckily for him, there was a very complete and authentic
legal record of his doings, which Baskerville had unearthed. So far
Clavering had kept out of jail; but there had been more than one true
bill found against him, and even verdicts in criminal cases, which
had never been enforced. He was still fighting, and meant to go down
fighting; but he devoted far more thought to planning what he would do
if he were compelled to leave public life than if he were permitted
to stay in it. He reckoned that by expediting matters he could get
the divorce granted and the decree entered by the first of June,
when he would marry Elizabeth Darrell, go abroad for the summer, and
then arrange his life for the future. And while he was taking it for
granted that he could marry Elizabeth, and was seeing her in private
two or three times a week by General Brandon’s innocent connivance,
Clavering had touched her hand but once and had never pressed his lips
to her cheek, nor had she ever allowed him one word of acknowledged
love–making. And this was a woman he was ready to dower with millions,
which, as he grimly thought, a young husband, his successor, would get!
Clavering concluded that some women were ungrateful. At the same time,
he did not seriously doubt that he could marry Elizabeth in June.
He began to congratulate himself on his good luck in his constant
presence at General Brandon’s house escaping notice. No one but
himself, the General, and Elizabeth seemed to have any knowledge of
his visits, although General Brandon, at his club, did some innocent
bragging about the assistance he was giving to Senator Clavering “in
the unholy warfare against a man incapable of the smallest dishonesty.”
“Why, sir,” he would say to any one who would listen to him, “Senator
Clavering has assured me, on his word of honor, that there is not one
scintilla of truth in the shameful allegations brought against him
in the public prints. Wait, however, until the senatorial committee
has made its report. Then you will see Senator Clavering triumphantly
vindicated; mark my words, sir, triumphantly vindicated.”
Nobody but General Brandon, however, really believed this. Certainly
Anne Clavering did not, and every day that she read the newspaper
accounts of what had occurred and what had not occurred at the meeting
of the investigating committee, her heart sank lower. To keep her
mother from suspecting anything, Anne pursued her usual course of life;
but it required all her resolution to do it. Every time she entered a
drawing–room she called up all her courage to meet an affront, if one
should be offered her. Not one was passed upon her, but she lived in
dread of it.
During this time Baskerville had gone everywhere he thought it
likely that he should meet Anne Clavering, but so far he had not
been fortunate. He did not repeat his visit to Clavering’s house. He
had doubted the propriety of his going in the first instance, and he
doubted it still more as time passed on. But it did not keep him from
falling deeper and deeper in love with the image of Anne Clavering in
his mind. On the Thursday which was Constance Thorndyke’s day at home,
he felt tolerably confident that Anne Clavering would be paying her
dinner call; and so on the stroke of four he presented himself, armed
and equipped as the law directs, at Mrs. Luttrell’s door, to accompany
that redoubtable person upon a round of Thursday visits.
After several perfunctory calls where Baskerville was bored to death
but behaved himself beautifully, he arrived with Mrs. Luttrell at
Constance Thorndyke’s door precisely at five o’clock. Constance
Thorndyke received them with the same charming grace and cordiality
which always distinguished her and which was powerful enough to draw
within her circle, as her guest on her reception day, her husband.
Thorndyke never felt so proud of his wife as when he saw her in his
own drawing–room, and she collected about her, from the wide field
of Washington, persons who made her drawing–room shine. He frankly
admitted to Constance that hers were the only receptions in Washington
which he really enjoyed. He was delighted to see Baskerville and Mrs.
Luttrell, the latter being to him, as to most men, an ever blooming
tree of delight. He came up and established Mrs. Luttrell in a chair
by the fireside, with a good cup of tea and with a man on each side of
her; and Mrs. Luttrell found herself as happy as it is given to mortals
to be on this distressful planet. Thorndyke’s conversation interested
her on the one side, and Admiral Prendergast, a superb specimen of the
old–time chivalrous naval officer, with whom Mrs. Luttrell had had an
intermittent flirtation for not less than forty years, on her other
side.
“What a blessed comfort it is,” sighed Mrs. Luttrell to a listening
group, “to be able to come into a drawing–room like this and have a
good cup of tea, with some cups and saucers and tea–spoons that did
not come out of a curio shop, and some honest bread and butter. I
declare I am tired to death of these brazen retired tradespeople who
have come to this town and undertaken to receive in their Louis Quinze
drawing–rooms, and in their English dining rooms, with a great big
table full of pink and green kickshaws, and candelabra three feet high
all over it, and a big placque of roses just like an old–fashioned
feather bed.”
“Will you listen to Sara?” asked her dutiful nephew. “She has hauled
me about this day from one retired tradesman’s house to another,
scattering compliments as she went, and embracing every man, woman, and
child she met of the smart set—the smarter the better. She couldn’t be
kept from going with those people unless she were chained up.”
“Well,” faintly replied Mrs. Luttrell, “one has to be a hypocrite in
this world; but I do say, Constance, that next my own yours is the best
drawing–room in Washington.”
“That is indeed high praise,” replied Constance Thorndyke, smiling,
“and I am vain enough to believe it is sincere, especially when I can
get my own husband to come home early Thursday afternoon.”
Mrs. Thorndyke had never been strictly beautiful nor even remarkably
pretty before her marriage, but since then she had developed a
late–flowering loveliness which was much more than beauty. She was
happy, she loved and was beloved; she had it in her power to assist the
man she loved without making him hate her; she had, in fact, all that
she had ever asked of high heaven, except one thing—she was childless.
But that one supreme disappointment gave to her face and to her soul a
touch of softness, of resignation, that disarmed fate. With a tender
feminine superstition, she believed that, this last gift having been
denied her, she would be suffered to retain the happiness already hers.
Thorndyke himself had to be both husband and children to her, and on
him she concentrated all the love and solicitude of her nature. That he
was happy there could be no doubt. In Constance he had all that he had
ever wished for.
The Thorndyke house was one of the few in Washington which Baskerville
could enter with a clear conscience in the matter of duty calls. He
always paid them promptly to Constance Thorndyke, and often went
when there was no obligation for him to go. He had some one besides
Constance Thorndyke in view, however, in paying that particular visit;
it was Anne Clavering whom he had really come to see. Mrs. Thorndyke
found means to let him know that Anne had not been there yet; and
while Baskerville was taking what comfort he could out of this Anne
walked into the drawing–room. She looked pale and worn and much older
than she really was. Baskerville’s keen eye took this in at a glance;
but like a sincere lover he admired her none the less for not being
in a flush of spirits, and felt an increased tenderness for her. A
delicate rosy color flooded her face when she saw who was present, and
rosier still when Baskerville established her in a corner, that he
might have a monopoly of her sweet company.
Bearing in mind his promise to discipline his aunt, almost the first
words Baskerville said to Anne were: “I hear my aunt was quite
impertinent to you the other night; but before I slept I made her
promise to apologize to you.”
This was quite loud enough for Mrs. Luttrell to hear, and she promptly
turned her smiling, sharp old face toward Anne. “My dear, he did,
as I am a sinner! Well, it’s a great thing at my time of life to
discover a new sensation, and I’ve found one in the act of apology. Now
listen, all of you—Constance, make these people stop chattering—Jack
Prendergast, be quiet, and Senator Thorndyke, stop laughing. Miss
Clavering, I was rather impertinent to you at Secretary Slater’s
the other night, but I declare it was those two foolish women, Mrs.
Hill–Smith and Eleanor Baldwin, who were really to blame. However, I
think you got the better of me—ha, ha! I always liked you, and like you
better for your spirit. I offer you my sincere apologies—on condition
that you never again make the least objection to anything I say or
do—for, look you, Sara Luttrell has been used to speaking her mind too
long to change. But I apologize.”
At which Admiral Prendergast remarked piously, “Lord, now lettest Thou
thy servant depart in peace.”
Anne rose and took Mrs. Luttrell’s hand in hers. “I’ll forgive you,”
she said, smiling; “but don’t think I am afraid of you—I like you too
much for that.”
“I know you’re not afraid of me—you and my nephew, Richard Baskerville,
are the only two creatures yet who openly defy me—and when you join
forces, as you have done to–day, you are too strong for me.”
This coupling of their names did not lose anything by Mrs. Luttrell’s
emphatic manner of saying it, and it deepened the color in Anne’s
face and brought the light to Baskerville’s eyes. And as if directly
inspired by Satan, the old lady kept on:—
“You ought to have seen how angry my nephew was with me when he heard
of my behavior—we were having a quiet chat in my bedroom while I was
undressing, and he gave me such a rating as you never heard in your
life. Oh! he took it to heart much more than you did. His language to
me was something shocking. He threatened to tell my age all over town,
and to throw my ermine cape into the fire if I ever misbehaved to you
again. I never saw him in such a way before.”
How much inadvertence and how much malice aforethought there were
in this speech only Sara Luttrell knew, but it was distinctly
disconcerting to Anne Clavering, and visibly shortened her visit. Mrs.
Luttrell went out at the same time, and, after being helped into her
big coach by Baskerville, turned to speak to him as the carriage rolled
off.
“Didn’t I do it handsomely? Why, he isn’t here!” And at that moment she
caught sight of Baskerville sitting by Anne Clavering’s side in her
brougham, then whirling around the corner. Mrs. Luttrell smiled and
then sighed. “The scamp,” she said to herself. “I remember how once—”
She took from her pocket the miniature which never left her, and her
memory went back to the days when to recline in that man’s arms and to
feel his kisses upon her lips were Paradise, a paradise to which the
gate had been forever closed to any other man.
Baskerville had got into his present agreeable situation by simply not
waiting for an invitation, and furthermore by saying authoritatively
to the footman, “Miss Clavering wishes to drive out Connecticut Avenue
until she directs you to turn.”
It was all done so suddenly that Anne did not realize it until it was
over; but what woman who loves is averse to having the man of her
choice sitting by her side in the intimate seclusion of a brougham
at dusk of a winter’s evening? Baskerville, however, was there for a
purpose—a purpose quickly formed but to be resolutely carried out. He
said to Anne: “I saw that my aunt’s heedless words embarrassed you,
and I felt sorry for you. But it was quite true—I made her promise to
apologize to you; and as long as I live, as far as I have the power, I
shall force everybody who injures you to make you amends.”
Baskerville’s eyes, fastened upon Anne, gave a deeper meaning to
his words. The flush faded from Anne’s cheeks, and she looked at
Baskerville with troubled eyes, knowing a crisis was at hand. “I am
very bold in forcing myself on you,” he said, “but the time has come
for me to speak. I have not the same chance as other men, because I
can’t go to your father’s house. I went once upon your mother’s kind
invitation, but I doubt whether I should have done so; I can only plead
my desire to see you, and I feel I can’t go again. You know, perhaps,
that I am one of the lawyers engaged in prosecuting this investigation
before the Senate. If I had known you before I began it, I would have
never gone into it. But being in it I can’t honorably withdraw. Perhaps
you can’t forgive me for what I have done, but it has not kept me from
loving you with all my soul.”
Anne shrank back in the carriage. At any other time she would have
heard these words with palpitating joy; and even now they opened to her
a momentary glimpse of Paradise. But the memory of all that was said
and done about her father, the conviction of his impending disgrace,
overwhelmed her. She sat silent and ashamed, longing to accept the
sweetness of the love offered her, conscious of her own integrity, but
with a primitive honest pride, reluctant to give any man the dower of
disgrace which she felt went with her father’s daughter.
Silence on the part of the beloved usually augurs well to the lover,
but when Anne’s silence was accentuated by two large tears that dropped
upon her cheeks Baskerville realized that they were not happy tears.
He would have soothed her with a lover’s tenderness, but Anne repulsed
him with a strange pride. “You are not to blame for what you have done
in my father’s case, but I know, as well as you do, that before this
month is out my father may be a disgraced man. And although you may not
believe it—you with your generations of ladies and gentlemen behind
you”—she spoke with a certain bitterness—“may not believe that the
daughter of people like my father and my mother can have any pride, yet
I have—whether I am entitled to it or not. I would not take a disgraced
name to any man.”
Baskerville’s answer to this was to take her two hands in his. It
became difficult for her to be haughty to a man who plainly indicated
that he meant to kiss her within five minutes. And he did.
Anne’s protests were not those of a woman meaning to yield; Baskerville
saw that she felt a real shame, the genuine reluctance of a high and
honorable spirit. But it was swept away in the torrent of a sincere
and manly love. When they parted at Anne’s door Baskerville had wrung
from her the confession of her love, and they were, to each other,
acknowledged lovers.
That night Anne and her father dined alone. Élise and Lydia were dining
out with some of their “larky” friends, and Reginald was out of town.
Clavering noted that Anne was rather silent. Anne for her part looked
at her father with a kind of resentment she had often felt before.
What right had he to dower his children with his own evil deeds?
Why, instead of acquiring a vast fortune, which he spent on them, as
on himself, with lavishness, should he not have given them a decent
inheritance. Was it not wholly through him that she had not been able
to give herself freely and joyfully to the man who loved her and whom
she loved? With these thoughts in her mind she sat through the dinner,
silent and distrait; but she could not wholly subdue the happiness that
Baskerville had given her, even though happiness with her could never
be without alloy.
When dinner was over she went up to her mother’s room, and spent the
rest of the evening cheering and comforting the poor soul. After Mrs.
Clavering was in bed Anne came downstairs to remain until Élise and
Lydia returned from their party. She sat in the library with a book in
her hand, but her thoughts were on Baskerville. And, thinking of him,
she fell into a soft, sweet sleep to dream of him. When she awakened it
was almost midnight, and Élise and Lydia had not returned.
To keep herself from falling asleep again she took up at random one of
a pile of periodicals on the table. It was a scurrilous newspaper which
she loathed; but the first paragraph in it which, before she could lay
it down, fell under her eye enchained her attention. An hour afterward
Élise and Lydia came in and tiptoed softly up to their rooms; but Anne
remained in the same position in the great library chair in which she
had been for the last hour, still holding the newspaper in her hand.
Clavering had gone out directly after dinner, and after a visit to
the club, which he found rather chilling, went to General Brandon’s
house, as usual in advance of his appointment. It seemed to Clavering
on that evening as if Elizabeth relaxed a little of her reserve, which
was at the same time both timid and haughty. Later he went down town
and managed to put up a tolerably stiff game of poker, and it was two
o’clock in the morning before he found himself at his own door. He
let himself in, and went into the vast, luxurious library, where the
fire still glowed. He turned up the electric light in a superb bronze
electrolier on his library table, stirred the fire, and then perceived
Anne sitting in a chair drawn up to the fender.
“Why, what are you doing here?” asked Clavering, good–naturedly.
“I wanted to speak to you to–night,” Anne replied quietly.
“Go on,” said Clavering, seating himself and lighting a cigar. “Make it
short, because when a woman wants to ‘speak’ to a man it always means a
row.”
“I hope this does not,” replied Anne.
Her father looked at her closely. She had a wearied and anxious look,
which belied her youth, and she had good cause to be both wearied and
anxious a good part of the time. She handed him the newspaper which
battened upon scandal, and the first paragraph in it announced the
forthcoming divorce of Senator Clavering and his subsequent marriage to
a Chicago widow, nearly his age, with a fortune almost as large as his
own. Clavering’s strong–beating heart gave a jump when he began reading
the paragraph, but when he found how far off the scent was the report
his countenance cleared. It was as good an opportunity as he could have
desired to have it out with Anne, and he was not sorry she had broached
the subject.
“Well,” he said, laying the paper down, “are you surprised?”
“No,” replied Anne, looking at him steadily.
“Then we may proceed to discuss it,” said Clavering. “I intend to
provide handsomely for your mother, and I dare say she will be a
hundred times happier out in Iowa among her relations and friends than
she can be here.”
“I hardly think my mother would look at it from that point of view,”
said Anne. She controlled her agitation and her indignation admirably,
and Clavering saw in her his own cool courage and resource. “Of course
my mother has felt and known for years that you had no further use for
her, now that her drudgery is not necessary to you. But she is, as you
know, a very religious woman. She thinks divorces are wrong, and, timid
as she is, I believe she would resist a divorce. She would, I am sure,
be willing to go away from you and not trouble you any more—and I would
go with her. But a divorce—no. And I have the same views that she has,
and would urge her to resist to the last; and she will.”
She had not raised her tones at all, but Clavering understood her
words perfectly. She meant to fight for her mother. He smoked quietly
for several minutes, and Anne knew too much to weaken her position by
repeating her protest. Then Clavering leaned over to her and said: “I
think, when you know the circumstances, you will be more than willing
to let your mother get the divorce. We were never legally married.”
The blood poured into Anne’s face. She rose from her chair, and stood
trembling with anger, but also with fear. “I don’t believe—I can’t
believe—” She stopped, unable to go on.
“Oh, there’s no reflection on your mother or on me, either. We ran
away to be married—a couple of young fools under twenty–one. I got the
license in Kentucky, but we crossed the Ohio River into Ohio. There
we found a minister, an ignorant old fellow and a rogue besides, who
didn’t know enough to see that the license had no effect in Ohio. And
then I found out afterwards that he had been prohibited from performing
marriage services because of some of his illegal doings in that line.
I knew all about it within a week of the marriage, but being ignorant
then myself, I thought the best way was to say nothing. Afterward, when
I came to man’s estate, I still thought it best to keep it quiet for
the sake of you children. And I am willing to keep it quiet now—unless
you force me to disclose it. But, understand me, I mean to be divorced
in order to marry a lady to whom I am much attached—not this old whited
sepulchre from Chicago”—for so Clavering alluded to the widow with
millions—“but a lady without a penny. Have you any suspicion to whom I
refer?”
“I have not the least suspicion of any one,” Anne replied, as haughtily
as if she had all the blood of all the Howards, instead of being the
nameless child she was.