“As the passing leaves, so is the passing of men;” and this man was
passing from life into civil death before their eyes. Clavering, in
his beautifully clear and well–modulated voice, began his defence, if
defence it could be called. He told briefly but impressively of his
youthful struggles, of his lack of education, of the wild life of the
West into which he was inducted early, of the disregard of written laws
in the administration of the justice with which he was familiar, how
the strong men ruled by virtue of their strength, how great enterprises
were carried through by forces not understood or even known in old and
settled communities. His story was like a book out of the “Odyssey.” He
described the effect of his operations in large sections of country,
which made him hosts of friends and hosts of enemies. He subtly called
attention by indirection to that unwritten law, noted by a British
general in India, that there were in all partly civilized countries
certain necessary and salutary rascalities, to be carried through
by the strong and wise against the weak and foolish. Coming down to
his own case, he made no appeal for mercy, and offered no plea in
abatement. On the contrary, he became distinctly aggressive, and heaped
ridicule upon the committee of elderly gentlemen sitting in their
luxurious committee–room, passing judgment on the storm and stress
of men and things as unknown to them as the inhabitants of another
planet. His conclusion was a ringing defiance of his enemies, a promise
of vengeance upon them, and a solemn declaration that he would return,
rehabilitated, to the Senate of the United States, and every man who
believed him guilty might count himself the everlasting enemy of James
Clavering from that day forth.
When he sat down there was from the public galleries an involuntary
burst of applause, which was instantly suppressed. Two or three women
wept aloud; an aged senator attempted to rise from his seat, fell
back, and was carried out half–fainting. There were a few minutes of
nervous quiet and whispering, and then the final proceedings began.
They were short and exquisitely painful. The resolution of expulsion
was put, and received a three–fourths vote in its favor. Half a dozen
senators in a group voted against the resolution, and a few others
were absent or refrained from voting. Of the half–dozen senators who
voted in Clavering’s favor, some voted in a spirit of sheer perversity,
and the rest by absolute stupidity. When the result was declared amid
a deathlike silence, Clavering rose and, making a low bow toward the
senators who had voted for him, left his seat and went toward the
aisle. As he reached it he turned to the chair and made another bow,
full of dignity and respect; and then, without the least flurry or
discomposure, retired from the Senate chamber which it had been the
summit of his lifelong ambition to enter and of which he was never
again to cross the threshold. He was to see no more service of the
great Demos. But not Alcibiades, when he called the Athenians a pack of
dogs, looked more sincerely contemptuous than did James Clavering of
the United States Senate when, a disgraced and branded man, he walked
out of the Senate chamber.
_Chapter Eighteen_
In the first week of April Richard Baskerville and Anne Clavering were
married, in the little Iowa town where Mrs. Clavering’s family lived
and where Anne had remained since her mother’s death. The wedding took
place at Mr. Joshua Hicks’s house, one of the best in the town.
Mr. Hicks was Anne’s uncle by marriage, a leading merchant in the
place; and a better man or a better citizen could not be found in
the state of Iowa. He wore ready–made clothes, weighed out sugar
and tea and sold calico by the yard, was a person of considerable
wit and intelligence, and had a lofty self–respect which put him at
ease in every society. His wife was a younger, better–looking, and
better–educated woman than Mrs. Clavering, and as good as that poor
woman had been. Their sons and daughters were ornaments of the high
school, had mapped out careers for themselves, but meantime treated
their parents with affectionate deference. In their drawing–room,
called a front parlor, furnished in red plush and with chromos on the
walls, Anne Clavering was made the wife of Richard Baskerville, the
descendant of the oldest landed aristocracy in Maryland and Virginia.
Clavering himself had said he would be present, but at the last minute
telegraphed that he would be unable to come, having been suddenly
called to Washington. He sent Anne a handsome cheque as a wedding gift.
Élise and Lydia, who had spent the intervening time between their
mother’s funeral and their sister’s marriage in shopping in Chicago
and preparing for a precipitate trip to Europe, returned to the little
town and remained over a train in order to be present at the wedding.
Baskerville would have been glad if they had decided to stay away.
Reginald Clavering gave his sister away.
It was the plainest and simplest wedding imaginable. The bride wore a
white muslin, made by the village dressmaker. The bridegroom arrived
on foot from the village tavern, where he had been staying. They
began their wedding tour by driving away in the Hicks family surrey
to another little country village seven miles off. It was a golden
April afternoon, with an aroma of spring in the air; and the fields
and orchards echoed with songs of birds—it was their mating–time. Mr.
Hicks’s hired man, who drove the married lovers to their destination,
where they spent their honeymoon, declared he had never seen a bride
and bridegroom so little spoony. He had in truth, although he knew it
not, never seen a bride and bridegroom who loved each other so much.
Clavering’s call to Washington, which prevented him from attending his
daughter’s wedding, in reality consisted of a few lines from Elizabeth
Darrell. After that March day in the Senate chamber, Elizabeth fell
into a settled listlessness. She felt herself obliged to marry
Clavering eventually, as the only way out of an intolerable position;
and this listlessness from which she suffered always falls upon those
who succumb to what is reckoned as irrevocable fate. The spring was
in its full splendor, and the town was beautiful in all its glory of
green trees and emerald grass, and great clumps of flowering shrubs and
sweet–scented hyacinths and crocuses and tulips. No city in the world
has in it so much sylvan beauty as Washington, and in the spring it is
a place of enchanting verdure. All this awakening of the spring made
Elizabeth Darrell only the more sad, the more dispirited. The old, old
feeling came upon her of the dissonance of nature and man—the world
beautiful, and man despairing.
Reading, her sole resource, no longer amused her. It was a solace she
had tried, and it had failed her; so she read no more, nor thought, nor
worked, nor did anything but quietly endure. She affected cheerfulness
when she met her father in the afternoons, and General Brandon, whom
a child could deceive, thought how improved in spirits she had grown
since the autumn. The General’s confidence in Clavering continued quite
unshaken, and he proclaimed solemnly that no man in public life, since
the foundation of the government, had been so hounded and persecuted as
“that high–toned gentleman, sir, ex–Senator Clavering.”
Next to the thought of marrying Clavering, the most heart–breaking
thing to Elizabeth was the memory of the rash letter she had written to
Hugh Pelham. The only mitigation of this was that he would not get it
for many months, perhaps never. Her cheeks burned at every recollection
of it. The month had passed away at the end of which McBean had
promised to appear, but so far she had heard and seen nothing more of
him. She felt sure, however, that McBean had not forgotten her, and she
looked for him daily. Then she must ask Clavering for money, and that
would settle her fate.
One soft spring night she sat at the open window of the drawing–room,
looking out on the quiet street, where the great Clavering house loomed
dark and silent and deserted. There was no light in the drawing–room
where Elizabeth sat, but a gas–jet in the hall cast a flame of yellow
radiance in at the doorway. Elizabeth sat in the shadow and the
silence. Suddenly a peremptory ring was heard at the bell, and in a
minute or two Serena entered the room and handed Elizabeth a white
envelope with a telegram in it.
Elizabeth had more than the usual feminine dread of a telegraphic
despatch, and she held the envelope in her hand for ten minutes before
she could summon courage to open it. Only Clavering or McBean could
be telegraphing her, and to hear from either meant a stab. At last
she forced herself to tear the envelope open. It was a cablegram from
London, and read:—
“Your letter just received. Am sailing for America next Saturday. You
must not, shall not, marry Clavering. Why did you not write me before?
HUGH PELHAM.”
Serena, who dreaded telegrams, went back to her own regions. Presently
she returned and looked in the drawing–room door at Elizabeth. She
was still–sitting by the open window in the half darkness, in the
same position in which she had been half an hour before. The colored
woman, who knew and had known all the time that Elizabeth was unhappy,
went away and was troubled in mind. Half an hour later she returned.
Elizabeth had changed her position slightly. She was resting her elbows
on the window–sill, and her face was buried in her hands.
“Miss ’Liz’beth,” said Serena, in her soft voice, and laying a hard,
honest, sympathetic black hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder, “fur de Lord’s
sake, doan’ ’stress yo’sef so. Doan’ yo’ marry dat Clavering man, nor
any ‘urr man, ef you doan’ want to. Me and de Gin’l will teck keer on
you. Doan’ yo’ trouble ‘bout nothin’ ’t all, honey.”
“Oh, Serena,” cried Elizabeth, raising a pale, glorified, serene face
and throwing her arms around Serena’s black neck, “I am the happiest
person in the world! He is coming! He will start day after to–morrow.
Oh, Serena, I am not distressed, I am not frightened any more!”
“‘Tain’ dat Clavering man!” answered Serena. She alone of the whole
world had suspected Clavering’s intentions.
“No, no, no! It is another man—the man I—“ Elizabeth, without finishing
the sentence, slipped out of Serena’s arms, upstairs to her own room,
to be alone with her happiness.
Although she had heard Clavering’s name spoken, it was near midnight
before she really gave him a thought. Then she wrote him a few lines,
very humble, very apologetic; but no man of sense on earth could fail
to know, on reading them, that the woman who wrote them was fixed in
her resolution not to marry him. And as in the case of the former
letter, she watched for the passing postman in the early morning and
dropped the letter at his feet.
She summoned up courage to tell her father next day that Pelham was
coming. “And I am sure,” she said, blushing and faltering, “all will
be right between us, and he will explain all that seemed unkind in his
conduct to me.”
General Brandon was sure of it, too, just as he was sure everybody
meant to do right on all occasions, and was as pleased at the notion of
rehabilitating Pelham as if somebody had left him a block of stock in
the Standard Oil Company.
Elizabeth scarcely knew how the next week passed, so great was her
exaltation. It is said that the highest form of pleasure is release
from pain. She had that, and other joys besides. It was to her as if
the earth had at last recovered its balance, with Pelham once more her
friend. She did not dare to whisper anything more, even to herself. And
every day brought her nearer to that hour—that poignant hour—when she
should see Pelham once more as he had always been to her. She scanned
the newspapers, and found what steamers sailed on the Saturday. She
guessed by which one Pelham would sail. She watched out eagerly when
they should be reported, and the morning and afternoon papers were in
her hands by the time they were left at the door.
On the Saturday afternoon, which was warm and summer–like, Elizabeth
was watching at the window for the afternoon newspaper—the morning
newspaper had not chronicled the arrival of any of the Saturday
steamers. When the negro newsboy threw it on the doorway, she ran
out, and in her eagerness stood bareheaded on the steps, looking for
the names of the incoming steamers. She found them—all the Saturday
steamers had arrived to the day, and at an early hour. And Hugh Pelham
might come at any moment! The thought brought the red blood to her
cheeks and a quivering smile to her lips.
She looked down the street, under an archway of green, where played a
fountain in a little open space, with brilliant tulip beds. The avenue
into which the street debouched was gay with carriages and autos and
merry, well–dressed girls and men, tripping along by twos and threes.
As she gazed toward it, a hansom clattered up and in it sat Clavering.
His arrival was so sudden that he could not but note the change in
Elizabeth. He had thought on his first glance that he had never seen
her look so youthful and so handsome. She had in truth regained much of
her lost beauty, and when she saw him and recognized him, the pallor,
the shame, the repulsion, in her face were eloquent. She drew back from
him involuntarily, and her greeting, although gentle, did not conceal
her feelings in the least.
As usual, Clavering appeared to be in the pink of condition. The crisis
through which he had lately passed, the shock of the disappointment
contained in Elizabeth’s letter, his four days of hard travel, had left
no mark upon him. He was a strong man in physique as well as in will.
Elizabeth showed great embarrassment, but Clavering met her without the
least awkwardness. As soon as they were alone in the drawing–room, cool
and darkened from the too ardent sun, Clavering came to the point.
“I was, of course, astounded to receive your letter,” he said. “I was
on my ranch. I had just arrived, and was sitting down to supper when
the mail was brought from the post–office twenty miles away. I found
if I left at once I could make the midnight train, and that would give
me fast connections all the way through. So, when I had finished my
supper—it took me just twenty minutes—you know a ranchman’s supper
isn’t a function, so to speak—I got on horseback and rode nearly thirty
miles in four hours and a half. I had been riding all day, too. So you
see I’m a very determined lover. This is my first love, you know,—the
first like this, I mean,—and I couldn’t afford to throw it away.”
He was smiling now. The idea that the slim woman, dressed in black,
sitting before him, with the red and white coming and going in her
cheeks, could seriously resist him really seemed preposterous to him.
Elizabeth remained silent, and Clavering knew that silence in a woman
is momentous. As she made no reply he said, after a long pause, “And
how about that other man?”
Elizabeth had said no word in her letter about any one else, and
started at Clavering’s words. “I—I—” She could get no farther. It was
in the beginning only a shrewd surmise of Clavering’s, but Elizabeth’s
faltering words and shrinking manner had confirmed it.
“I knew, of course, another man had turned up; that’s why I came
post–haste,” coolly remarked Clavering. “Now tell me all about him.”
Elizabeth was forced to answer. “It is—there was—my husband’s cousin,
Major Pelham.”
“Oh, yes; the fellow that persecuted you after your husband’s death.
He, however, is hardly the man to interfere with me.”
“I—I don’t understand it quite. I thought he knew all that was being
done. But I had a cablegram from him.”
“You must have written to him.”
“Yes.”
“Before or after you wrote me?”
“Before. And when I got his reply by cable I wrote you.”
“I see. You prefer to marry him?”
“Major Pelham has not asked me to marry him,” replied Elizabeth, with
dignity.
“But he will. Elizabeth, you are promised to me. I told you I loved
you—not in the flowery style of a young loon, but of a man who has
worked and thought and fought and seen enough to make him know his own
mind. Of course I can’t coerce you, but the man who gets you away from
me may look out for himself. See, the habits of a man’s early life and
thought never leave him. My first instinct has always been to take care
of my own, and I was bred and made my mark in a country where neither
wife–stealing nor sweetheart–stealing is permitted. Sometimes wives and
sweethearts were stolen, but it was a dangerous business. Oh, I don’t
mean to use a gun; that went out twenty–five years ago. But there are
many ways of ruining a man—and a woman, too.”
He spoke quite pleasantly, sitting close to Elizabeth and holding his
crape–covered hat in his hand. There was nothing to indicate vengeance
in Clavering’s easy, graceful manner and charming voice, but Elizabeth
shuddered at the truth of what his speech might mean.
“Now tell me how you feel toward this man Pelham?”
“Major Pelham was my best friend during all my married life. I could
not understand his conduct to me after my husband’s death. One night
lately I felt the impulse to write to him—shall I tell you everything?”
“Yes.” Clavering was all calm attention then.
“It was the night after our last interview. It come over me that—that
I would rather die than marry you. Yes, I mean what I say. I didn’t
mean to kill myself. Oh, no! But I would rather have been killed than
married to you.”
Clavering’s ruddy face grew pale. He got up, walked about the room, and
sat down again, still close to Elizabeth. He saw she did not mean to be
intentionally cruel, but was striving earnestly to tell him the whole
truth.
“I have often heard of your power over other men, and I am sure you
have great power over women too; for I felt in some way obliged to
marry you unless some one came in to help me. And then I thought of
Hugh Pelham, and I thought it would be at least two or three months
before he got my letter; but he was evidently in London, and he cabled
back. I feel sure he reached New York early this morning.”
“And did that money you owed have anything to do with it?”
“Yes. It troubled me dreadfully.”
“And for a paltry thousand or two you have broken your word to me,
broken it when I needed most of all your faith in me?”
“It was not the money wholly.”
“It was also that I had lost my seat in the Senate of the United
States?”
“Not altogether that; but I knew—I knew—I was at the Capitol that day.”
“Pardon me, but you don’t know. What does a woman know about such
things? How do you know what it is for a man as strong as I am, as
mature as I am, and with such a history as I have, to love? Yes, by
God, to love for the first time. What does a woman’s pale reflection
of passion know of the love of a man like me? I know all about life
and death too. I have been a half–dozen times within six inches of a
bullet that was extremely likely to be shot into my brain. I have felt
the whir of a knife, that sometimes got planted in me, but never quite
far enough to kill me. I have signed my name fifty times to things
that meant either millions of dollars to me or state’s prison. These
are only a few of the things that I know all about, but I tell you,
Elizabeth Darrell, that they all seem like milk and water compared with
what I feel for you. Do you know that the first time I saw you, when
you were a mere slip of a girl, that night I crushed your little pearl
heart under my foot, I felt a strange, even a superstitious interest
in you? I never forgot you; and the first moment I saw you that Sunday
afternoon, last November, something came over me which made everything
in the world seem small, beside the thought of winning you. I have
gone through a good deal since, but nothing has really mattered to me
except you.” Clavering stopped. His voice, always earnest, had remained
calm and even low.
Elizabeth was trembling from head to foot. Her resolution never to
marry Clavering was not shaken in the least, or even touched, but like
a child who has heedlessly set the torch to a powder magazine, she was
appalled at her own work. She remained silent—what was there for her
to say? And then she saw a figure pass the bowed shutters, making a
shadow flit across the floor; and it was the shadow of Hugh Pelham. She
sprang to her feet, a new light in her eyes which Clavering had never
seen before. Clavering was for an instant as completely forgotten as
if he had never been. He saw his fate in that look, that action. He
rose, too, and the next moment Hugh Pelham walked into the room. He was
visibly older, more weather–beaten, than he had been two years before,
and, although ten years Clavering’s junior, he looked quite the same
age. Evil–doing is very often good for the physical man and well–doing
bad for the physical man. The two men instinctively recognized each
other at the first glance, and hated each other instantly with a
mortal hatred. Elizabeth stood next Pelham. She had given him her hand
without a word, and he held it firmly.
Clavering turned to Elizabeth and said: “When can I see you again? Pray
make it as soon as possible. That much I can ask, after what has passed
between us.”
“Excuse me,” said Pelham, politely, “but I don’t think Mrs. Darrell can
see you again.”
A dull red showed under Clavering’s skin, and a slight tremor shook his
massive figure. It was a situation hard for any man to bear, and almost
intolerable to James Clavering. He said the only thing possible under
the circumstances. “I must decline to accept your decision. It rests
with Mrs. Darrell.”
Elizabeth turned to Major Pelham. “Will you kindly leave me with Mr.
Clavering for a moment? It is his right, and later I will explain all
to you.”
Pelham, with a bow, walked out of the drawing–room, and, opening the
street door, gazed upon the great pile of stone which the Claverings
had lately inhabited. Clavering, when he and Elizabeth were alone, said
at once:—
“I know how it is; I saw it in your face and eyes when the other man
came. I am not one likely to ask for quarter or give quarter. I accept
my fate as I accepted my expulsion from the Senate and the loss of
many millions of dollars. There are in the world compensations to me
for the other things. For the loss of you there is no compensation. It
is my first and my last chance of leading a better life, for I swear to
you, Elizabeth, I meant to lead a better life if you had married me.
But now—it doesn’t matter in the least. I was born a hundred years too
late; then I should have married you by force. I would have given my
seat in the Senate to have seen such a look in your eyes when I came in
as I saw when the other man came. Good–by, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth gave him her hand. In all their acquaintance this was the
first glimpse, the first suspicion, she had had that anything like
a noble and uplifting love existed in Clavering; but he, this man,
smirched all over, a bad husband, a bad father, who knew no truth nor
honesty in his dealings with men or other women, loved once, truly,
and at the moment of losing everything else he lost the only thing
worthy the name of love which he had ever known in his whole life. He
held Elizabeth’s hand in his; he had never so much as kissed it. He
raised it to his lips, but Elizabeth drawing back with a violent and
undisguised repulsion, he at once dropped it again. He looked at her
for a full minute, compelling her against her will to meet his gaze,
and then, turning, walked out of the house. On the steps outside he
passed Pelham. Neither man spoke.
Pelham went into the drawing–room, where Elizabeth stood, pale and
trembling. As he closed the door after him she said in an indescribable
voice, “He never kissed me—he never so much as kissed my hand.”
“I don’t think you would ever have married him in any event,
Elizabeth,” replied Pelham, gently. “But let us not speak of him. I
came home as soon as I could—I had not had any news from England after
I was well in the interior of Africa. I knew nothing of what had been
done until I got your letter. I was coming to you, anyway—your year of
widowhood was over. Oh, Elizabeth, how could you misjudge me as you
did?”
* * * * *