I
November 29. At half-past one to-day--half-past one exactly--I began my
"career."
Mrs. Carteret said she would call for me at five minutes to one. But
it was ten minutes after when she appeared, away down at the corner of
I Street. Jim was walking up and down the drawing-room; I was at the
window, watching that corner of I Street. "There she blows!" I cried,
my voice brave, but my heart like a big lump of something soggy and
sad.
Jim hurried up and stood behind me, staring glumly over my shoulder. He
has proposed to me in so many words more than twenty times in the last
three years, and has looked it every time we've met--we meet almost
every day. I could feel that he was getting ready to propose again, but
I hadn't the slightest fear that he'd touch me. He's in the army, and
his "pull" has kept him snug and safe at Washington and has promoted
him steadily until now he's a Colonel at thirty-five. But he was
brought up in a formal, old-fashioned way, and he'd think it a deadly
insult to a woman he respected enough to ask her to be his wife if he
should touch her without her permission. I admire Jim's self-restraint,
but--I couldn't bear being married to a man who worshiped me, even if
I only liked him. If I loved him, I'd be utterly miserable. I've been
trying hard to love Jim for the past four months, or ever since I've
really realized how desperate my affairs are. But I can't. And the most
exasperating part of my obstinacy is that I can't find a good reason or
excuse for it.
As I was saying--or, rather, writing--Jim stood behind me and said in a
husky sort of voice: "You ain't goin' to do it, are you, Gus?"
I didn't answer. If I had said anything, it would have been a feeble,
miserable "No"--which would have meant that I was accepting the
alternative--him. All my courage had gone and I felt contemptibly
feminine and dependent.
I looked at him--I did like the expression of his eyes and the strength
and manliness of him from head to foot. What a fine sort of man a
"pull" and a private income have spoiled in Jim Lafollette! He went on:
"Surely, I'm not more repellent to you than--than what that auto is
coming to take you away to."
"Shame on you, Jim Lafollette!" I said angrily--most of the anger so
that he wouldn't understand and take advantage of the tears in my eyes
and voice. "But how like you! How _brave_!"
He reddened at that--partly because he felt guilty toward me, partly
because he is ashamed of the laziness that has made him shirk for
thirteen years. "I don't care a hang whether it's brave or not, or
_what_ it is," he said sullenly. "I want _you_. And it seems to me I've
got to do something--use force, if necessary--to keep you from--_from
that_. You ain't fit for it, Gus--not in any way. Why, it's worse than
being a servant. And you--brought up as you've been--"
I laughed--a pretty successful effort. "I've been educating for it all
my life, without knowing it. And it's honest and independent. If you
had the right sort of ideas of self-respect, you'd be ashamed of me if
you thought I'd be low enough to marry a man I couldn't give my heart
to--for a living."
"Don't talk rubbish," he retorted. "Thousands of women do it. Besides,
if I don't mind, why should you? God knows you've made it plain enough
that you don't love me. Gus, why can't you marry me and let me save you
from this just as a brother might save a sister?"
"Because I may love somebody some day, Jim," said I. I wanted to hurt
him--for his own sake, and also because I didn't want him to tempt me.
The auto was at the curb. He didn't move until I was almost at the
drawing-room door. Then he rushed at me and his look frightened me a
little. He caught me by the arm. "It's the last chance, Augusta!" he
exclaimed. "Won't you?"
I drew away and hurried out. "Then you don't intend to have anything
to do with me after I've crossed the line and become a toiler?" I
called back over my shoulder. I couldn't resist the temptation to be
thoroughly feminine and leave the matter open by putting him in the
wrong with my "woman's last word." I was so low in my mind that I
reasoned that my adventure might be as appalling as I feared, in which
case it would be well to have an alternative. I wonder if the awful
thoughts we sometimes have are our real selves or if they just give us
the chance to measure the gap between what we might be as shown by them
and what we are as shown by our acts. I hope the latter, for surely I
can't be as poor a creature as I so often have impulses to make myself.
Mrs. Carteret was waiting for the servant to open the door. I hurried
her back toward the auto, being a little afraid that Jim would be
desperate enough to come out and beg her to help him--and I knew she
would do it if she were asked. In the first place, Jessie always does
what she's asked to do--if it helps her to spend time and breath. In
the second place, she'd never let up on me if she thought I had so good
a chance to marry. For she knows that Washington is the hardest place
in the world for a woman to find a husband unless she's got something
that appeals to the ambition of men. Besides, she thinks, as do many of
my friends, that I am indifferent to men and discourage them. As if any
woman was indifferent to men! The only point is that women's ideas of
what constitutes a man differ, and my six years in this cosmopolis have
made me somewhat discriminating.
But to return to Jessie, she was full of apologies for being late.
"I've thought of nothing but you, dear, for two days and nights. And I
thought that for once in my life I'd be on time. Yet here I am, fifteen
minutes late, unless that clock's wrong." She was looking at the
beautiful little clock set in the dashboard of the auto.
"Only fifteen minutes!" I said. "And you never before were known to
be less than half an hour late. You even kept the President waiting
twenty minutes."
"Isn't it stupid, this fussing about being on time?" she replied. "I
don't believe any but dull people and those who want to get something
from one are ever on time. For those who really live, life is so full
that punctuality is impossible. But I should have been on time, if I
hadn't been down seeing the Secretary of War about Willie Catesby--poor
Willie! He has been _so_ handicapped by nature!"
"Did you get it for him?" I asked.
"I think so--third secretary at St. Petersburg. The secretary said:
'But Willie is almost an imbecile, Mrs. Carteret. If we don't send
him abroad, his family'll have to put him away.' And I said: 'That's
true, Mr. Secretary. But if we don't send that sort of people to
foreign courts, how are we to repay the insults they send us in the
form of imbecile attachés?' And then I handed him six letters from
senators--every one of them a man whose vote he needs for his fight
on that nomination. They were _real_ letters. So presently he said,
'Very well, Mrs. Carteret, I'll do what I can to resent the Czar's last
insult by exporting Willie to him."
I waited a moment, then burst out with what I was full of. "You think
she'll take me?" I said.
Jessie reproached me with tragedy in her always intensely serious gray
eyes. "Take _you_?" she exclaimed. "Take a Talltowers when there's a
chance to get one? Why, as soon as I explained who you were, she fairly
quivered with eagerness."
"You had to _explain_ who a Talltowers is?" I said with mock
amazement. It's delightful to poke fun at Jessie; she always
appreciates a jest by taking it more seriously than an ordinary
statement of fact.
"But, dear, you mustn't be offended. You know Mrs. Burke is very common
and ignorant. She doesn't know the first thing about the world. She
said to me the other day that she had often heard there were such
things as class distinctions, but had never believed it until she came
to Washington--she had thought it was like the fairy stories. She never
was farther east than Chicago until this fall. She went there to the
Fair. You must get her to tell you how she and three other women who
belong to the same Chautauqua Circle went on together and slept in the
same room and walked from dawn till dark every day, catalogue in hand,
for eleven days. It's too pathetic. She said, 'My! but my feet were
sore. I thought I was a cripple for life.'"
"That sounds nice and friendly," said I, suspicious that Jessie's
quaint sense of humor had not permitted her to appreciate Mrs. Burke.
"I'm so dreadfully afraid I'll fall into the clutches of people that'll
try to--to humiliate me."
Tears sprang to Jessie's eyes. "Please don't, Gus!" she pleaded.
"They'll be only too deferential. And you must keep them so. I suspect
that Mrs. Burke chums with her servants."
We were stopping before the house--the big, splendid Ralston Castle,
as they call it; one of the very finest of the houses that have been
building since rich men began to buy into the Senate and Cabinet
and aspire for diplomatic places, and so have attracted other rich
families to Washington. What a changed Washington it is, and what a
fight the old simplicity is making against the new ostentation! The
sight of the Ralston Castle in my present circumstances depressed me
horribly. I went to my second ball there, and it was given for me by
Mrs. Ralston. And only a little more than a year ago I danced in the
quadrille of honor with the French Ambassador--and the next week the
Ralstons went smash and hurried abroad to hide, all except the old man
who is hanging round Wall Street, they say, trying to get on his feet
with the aid of his friends. Friends! How that word must burn into
him every time he thinks of it. When he got into a tight place his
"friends" took advantage of their knowledge of his affairs to grab his
best securities, they say. No doubt he was disagreeable in a way, but
still those who turned on him the most savagely had been intimate with
him and had accepted his hospitality.
"You'll be mistress here," Jessie was saying. She had put on her
prophetic look and pose--she really believes she has second sight at
certain times. "And you'll marry the son, if you manage it right. I
counted him in when I was going over the advantages and disadvantages
of the place before proposing it to you. He looks like a mild, nice
young man--though I must say I don't fancy cowlicks right in the part
of the hair. I saw only his picture."
A tall footman with an insolent face opened the door and ushered
us into the small drawing-room to the left: "Mrs. Carteret! Miss
Talltowers!" he shouted--far louder than is customary or courteous. I
saw the impudent grin in his eyes--no proper man-servant ever permits
any one to see his eyes. And he almost dropped the curtain in our
faces, in such haste was he to get back to his lounging-place below
stairs.
His roar had lifted to her feet an elderly woman with her hair so
badly dyed that it made her features look haggard and harsh and even
dissipated. She made a nervous bow. She was of the figure called stout
by the charitable and sumptuous by the crude. She was richly-dressed,
over-dressed, dressed-up--shiny figured satin with a great deal of
beads and lace that added to her width and subtracted from her height.
She stood miserable, jammed and crammed into a tight corset. Her
hands--very nice hands, I noticed--were folded upon her stomach. As
soon as I got used to that revolting hair-dye, I saw that she had in
fact a large-featured, sweet face with fine brown eyes. Even with the
dye she was the kind of looking woman that it sounds perfectly natural
to hear her husband call "mother."
Jessie went up to her as she stood wretched in her pitiful attempt at
youth and her grandeur of clothes and surroundings. Mrs. Burke looked
down kindly, with a sudden quizzical smile that reminded me of my
suspicions as to the Chicago Fair story. Jessie was looking up like a
plump, pretty, tame robin, head on one side. "_Dear_ Mrs. Burke," she
said. "This is Miss Talltowers, and I'm sure you'll love each other."
Mrs. Burke looked at me--I thought, with a determined attempt to be
suspicious and cautious. I'm afraid Jessie's reputation for tireless
effort to do something for everybody has finally "queered" her
recommendations. However, whatever warning Mrs. Burke had received went
for nothing. She was no match for Jessie--Jessie from whom his Majesty
at the White House hides when he knows she's coming for an impossible
favor--she was no match for Jessie and she knew it. She wiped the sweat
from her face and stammered: "I hope we'll suit each other, Miss--" In
her embarrassment she had forgotten my name.
"Talltowers," whispered Jessie with a side-splitting look of tragic
apology to me. Just then the clock in the corner struck out the
half-hour from its cathedral bell--the sound echoed and reëchoed
through me, for it marked the beginning of my "career." Jessie went on
more loudly: "And now that our _business_ is settled, can't we have
some lunch, Mrs. Burke? I'm starved."
Mrs. Burke brightened. "The Senator won't be here to-day," she drawled,
in a tone which always suggests to me that, after all, life is a
smooth, leisurely matter with plenty of time for everything except
work. "As he was leaving for the Capitol this morning, he says to me,
says he: 'You women had better fight it out alone.'"
"The _dear_ Senator!" said Jessie. "He's _so_ clever?"
"Yes, he _is_ mighty clever with those he likes," replied Mrs.
Burke--Jessie looking at me to make sure I would note Mrs. Burke's
"provincial" way of using the word clever.
Jessie saved the luncheon--or, at least, thought she was saving it.
Mrs. Burke and I had only to listen and eat. I caught her looking at
me several times, and then I saw shrewdness in her eyes--good-natured,
but none the less penetrating for that. And I knew I should like her,
and should get on with her. At last our eyes met and we both smiled.
After that she somehow seemed less crowded and foreign in her tight,
fine clothes. I saw she was impatient for Jessie to go the moment
luncheon was over, but it was nearly three o'clock before we were left
alone together. There fell an embarrassed silence--for both of us were
painfully conscious that nothing had really been settled.
"When do you wish me to come--if you do wish it at all?" I asked, by
way of making a beginning.
"When do you think you could come?" she inquired nervously.
"Then you do wish to give me a trial? I hope you won't feel that Mrs.
Carteret's precipitate way binds you."
She gave me a shrewd, good-natured look. "I want you to come," she
said. "I wanted it from what I'd heard of you--I and Mr. Burke. I want
it more than ever, now that I've seen you. When can you come?"
"To-morrow--to-morrow morning?"
"Come as early as you like. The salary is--is satisfactory?"
"Mrs. Carteret said--but I'm sure--you can judge better--whatever--" I
stuttered, red as fire.
Mrs. Burke laughed. "I can see you ain't a great hand at business. The
salary is two thousand a year, with a three months' vacation in the
time we're not at Washington. Always have a plain understanding in
money matters--it saves a lot of mean feelings and quarrels."
"Very well--whatever you think. I don't believe I'm worth much of
anything until I've had a chance to show what I can do."
"Well, Tom--Mr. Burke--said two thousand would be about right at the
set-off," she drawled in her calming tone. "So we'll consider that
settled."
"Yes," I gasped, with a big sigh of relief. "I suppose you wish me to
take charge of your social matters--relieve you of the burdensome part
of entertaining?"
"I just wish you could," she said, with a great deal of humor in her
slow voice. "But I've got to keep that--it's the trying to make people
have a good time and not look and act as if they were wondering why
they'd come."
"That'll soon wear off," said I. "Most of the stiffness is strangeness
on both sides, don't you think?"
"I don't know. As nearly as I can make out, they never had a real,
natural good time in their lives. They wear the Sunday, go-to-meeting
clothes and manners the whole seven days. I'll never get used to it.
I can't talk that kind of talk. And if I was just plain and natural,
they'd think I was stark crazy."
"Did you ever try?"
She lifted her hands in mock-horror. "Mercy, no! Tom--Mr. Burke--warned
me."
I laughed. "Men don't know much about that sort of thing," said I. "A
woman might as well let a man tell her how to dress as how to act."
She colored. "He does," she said, her eyes twinkling. "He was here
two winters--this is my first. I've a kind of feeling that he really
don't know, but he's positive and--I've had nobody else to talk about
it with. I'm a stranger here--not a friend except people who--well, I
can guess pretty close to what they say behind my back." She laughed--a
great shaking of as much of her as was not held rigid by that tight
corset. "Not that I care--I like a joke myself, and I'm a good deal of
a joke among these grand folks. Only, I do want to help Tom, and not be
a drag." She gave me a sudden, sharp look. "I don't know why I trust
you, I'm sure."
"Because I'm your confidential adviser," said I, "and it's always well
to keep nothing from a confidential adviser." The longer I looked and
listened, the larger possibilities I saw in her. My enthusiasm was
rising.
She rose and came to me and kissed me. There were tears in her eyes.
"I've been _so_ lonesome," she said. "Even Tom don't seem natural any
more, away off here in the East. Sometimes I get so homesick that I
just can't eat or anything."
"We're going to have a lot of fun," said I encouragingly--as if she
were twenty-four and I fifty, instead of it being the other way.
"You'll soon learn the ropes."
"I'm so glad you use slang," she drawled, back in her chair and
comfortably settled. "My, but Tom'll be scandalized. He's made
inquiries about you and has made up his mind that whatever you say is
right. And I almost believed he knew the trails. I might 'a' known!
He's a man, you see, and always was stiff with the ladies. You ought
to 'a' seen the letter he wrote proposing to me. You see, I'm kind of
fat and always was. Mother used to tease me because I hadn't any beaux
except Tom, who wouldn't come to the point. She said: 'Lizzie, you'll
never have a man make real love to you.' And she was right. When Tom
proposed he wrote very formal-like--not a sentimental word. And when
we were married and got better acquainted, I teased him about it, and
tried to get him to make love, real book kind of love. But not a word!
But he's fond of me--we always have got on fine, and his being no good
at love-talk is just one of our jokes."
It was fine to hear her drawl it out--I knew that she was sure to make
a hit, if only I could get her under way, could convince her that it's
nice to be natural if you're naturally nice.
"Tom" came in from the Senate and I soon saw that, though she was a
"really" lady, of the only kind that is real--the kind that's born
right, he was a made gentleman, and not a very successful job. He was
small and thin and dressed with the same absurd stiff care with which
he had made her dress. He had a pointed reddish beard and reddish
curls, and he used a kind of scent that smelt cheap though it probably
wasn't. He was very precise and distant with me--how "Lizzie's" eyes
did twinkle as she watched him. I saw that she was "on to" Tom with the
quickness with which a shrewd woman always finds out, once she gets the
clue.
"Have you had Miss Talltowers shown her rooms, Mrs. Burke?" he soon
inquired.
"Why, no, pa," replied Mrs. Burke. "I forgot it clear." As she said
"pa" he winced and her eyes danced with fun. She went on to me: "You
don't mind our calling each other pa and ma before you, do you, Miss
Talltowers? We're so used to doing it that, if you minded it and we had
to stop, we'd feel as if we had company in the house all the time."
I didn't dare answer, I was so full of laughter. For "pa" looked as if
he were about to sink through the floor. She led me up to my rooms--a
beautiful suite on the third floor. "We took the house furnished," she
explained as we went, "and I feel as if I was living in a hotel--except
that the servants ain't nearly so nice. I do hope you'll help me with
them. Tom wanted me to take a housekeeper, but those that applied were
such grand ladies that I'd rather 'a' done all my own work than 'a'
had any one of them about. Perhaps we could get one now, and you could
kind of keep her in check."
"I think it'd be better to have some one," I replied. "I've had
some experience in managing a house." I couldn't help saying it
unsteadily--not because I miss our house; no, I'm sure it wasn't that.
But I suddenly saw the old library and my father looking up from
his book to smile lovingly at me as I struggled with the household
accounts. Anyhow, deep down I'm glad he did know so little about
business and so much about everything that's fine. I'd rather have my
memories of him than any money he could have left me by being less of a
father and friend and more of a "practical" man.
Mrs. Burke looked at me sympathetically--I could see that she longed
to say something about my changed fortunes, but refrained through fear
of not saying the right thing. I must teach her never to be afraid of
that--a born lady with a good heart could never be really tactless.
She went to the front door with me, opening it for me herself to
the contemptuous amusement of the tall footman. We shook hands and
kissed--I usually can't bear to have a woman kiss me, but I'd have felt
badly if "ma" Burke hadn't done it.
When I got back to Rachel's and burst into the drawing-room with a
radiant face, I heard a grunt like a groan. It was from Jim in the
twilight near Rachel at the tea-table. "I'm going out to service
to-morrow," said I to Rachel. "So you're to be rid of your visitor at
last."
"Oh, Gus!" exclaimed Rachel between anger and tears. And Jim looked
black and sullen. But I was happy--and am to-night. Happy for the
first time in two years. I'm going to _do_ something--and it is
something that interests me. I'm going to launch a fine stately ship, a
full-rigged four-master in this big-little sea of Washington society.
What a sensation I can make with it among the pretty holiday boats!