When a master painter, crowned with international renown, had
unsuccessfully attempted a portrait of Devota Lindsay, he turned the
canvas head down with face to the wall, and vented his irrepressible
chagrin.
"Miss Lindsay will pardon me for declining to waste any longer her
patience, and my time in finishing a picture that can be merely a pretty
mask. Despite its classic lines and exquisite coloring the locked face
you show me, no more reflects your individual mentality and emotional
potentialities than some flawless alabaster mask. If you will permit a
frank analysis, I should say your habitual expression is that of
complete, well-trained repose, impervious to shocks; and even your
eyes--if windows of your soul--are deftly curtained with a radiant mist
defying scrutiny. If you will excuse the _argot_ of your own countrymen,
should the day ever arrive when you 'let yourself go,' may I be there to
paint the real woman! I shall destroy this baffling work, retaining only
the hand and arm, which you must grant me as some solace for defeat. The
day is not distant when you will recognize your wrist and fingers in my
'Egeria' signalling Numa."
Mature womanhood very rarely preserves the fresh and dainty tints
peculiar to girlish youth, and to-night as Miss Lindsay walked slowly
down the stairs, one might well have doubted the number of years that
had rolled so tenderly, leaving no credentials to line their passage.
Her dinner dress of heliotrope chiffon was cut square at the neck,
garnished with filmy Mechlin, and around her throat she wore a broad
collar composed of three rows of large fire opals, set in delicate
Venetian network of gold wire, from the center of which hung a Maltese
cross of diamonds. In her silk girdle was fastened a bunch of
long-stemmed double white violets. The slender handle of her circular
fan was studded with opals, and the disk glowed with its iridescent
border of peacock feathers.
Avoiding the main door of the long parlor whence came the hum and
chatter of many voices, she paused in an adjoining music-room, where a
lace-curtained arch-way permitted a view of the assembled guests. Above
the arch an electric light glared over her face and figure, enhancing
the golden shimmer of her hair, and the starry brilliance of the
long-lashed velvety hazel eyes. Cautiously lifting the outside edge of
the drapery, she looked at the various groups, and her gaze fastened on
one where the hostess, the Bishop's wife, and Mrs. Van Allen--a gay
young widow--clustered around the tall, athletic form of Governor Royal
Armitage.
At forty-three years of age he looked older; his massive, finely
modelled head and very regular features justified the generally conceded
epithet "handsome"; yet in repose his face was cold, and the sombre,
dark grey eyes rarely changed their brooding, _en garde_ expression,
even when the well-cut lips parted in a smile that disclosed a superb
set of teeth.
Devota studied the countenance for a moment, and crushed back a
half-uttered moan, while a tremor shook her; then lifted the lace
curtain and entered the drawing-room.
"Ah, Miss Lindsay, how welcome you are after we had abandoned all hope
of this pleasure! Following my example, our entire household wept over
your failure to come sooner. My wife tells me you know everybody here
except the Governor, and since you are strangers, I am glad it is my
privilege to make you both my debtor by an introduction."
Mr. Churchill drew her hand to his arm, and she bowed to right and left
to guests, as the host led her forward. The Governor was bending over an
engraving in Mrs. Roscoe's hand, but suddenly drew himself erect and
threw his head back proudly.
"Gov' Armitage, I am exceedingly glad to present you to Miss Lindsay,
our family mascot."
Both bowed impressively, and a deep, well-trained, manly voice answered:
"I assure you it is a pleasant surprise to find myself numbered among
those so fortunate as to claim Miss Lindsay's acquaintance."
The cold grey eyes looked steadily at Devota, but his face evinced no
more pleasure than the granite gargoyle on the roof.
"It is my privilege to remember that a great many years ago, when quite
young, I met your Excellency, but certainly I have no right to expect
that after the long lapse of time any recognition could occur."
"You are very gracious to recall a casual incident of 'auld lang syne'
that I dared not flatter myself you cared to remember; but that you have
not entirely forgotten it is as unexpected as it is complimentary."
The eyes of each probed deep, but neither flinched, and as Mrs.
Churchill arched her brows and pinched her husband's arm, Devota smiled,
and turning away held out her hand to Bishop Roscoe.
"My dear Miss Lindsay, I am glad to have an opportunity to wish you
Godspeed on the long tour you contemplate. When do you sail?"
"At dawn, day after to-morrow."
Mrs. Churchill's fan tapped the Bishop's wrist.
"It is your duty to lecture her soundly on her descent into the Bohemian
ranks of roaming 'bachelor girls,' who, running after tinsel kites they
call 'careers,' turn their backs on all home duties, forsake every form
of genuine feminine domesticity, cast family ties to the winds and herd
in tenements, boat-houses and mountain camps. Professional female
tramps!"
"I am very sure he will agree with me in thinking that Mrs. Churchill is
cruel in smothering her innocent friend under an avalanche of
opprobrious epithets. My sole 'family tie' happens to be Uncle Hollis,
and I hold fast to him, though to do so necessitates surrender of 'home
duties' in order to keep under his protecting wing. Not at all a
'bachelor girl' if you please; but having recently bidden a reluctant
and tearful adieu to my thirty-first birthday, I have deliberately
selected a very different and more subdued type of serene
old-maidhood--the effete and much-derided spinster of less degenerate
days, a hundred years ago-who studied Mrs. Chapone and Mrs. Opie, spent
all tender affections on pugs, canaries and knitting needles, sternly
confined hilarity within the prim boundary of the minuet, and revered
chaperons almost as devoutly as the 'Apostles' Creed.'"
The announcement of dinner rearranged the groups, and escorted by
Captain Winstead, Devota was seated at an unusually large circular table
where sixteen persons found ample room. There were no candelabra so
suggestive of childish "peek-a-boo" or the tinsel frippery of Christmas
trees, and the colored tapers of juvenile birthday fêtes; but from the
ceiling a flood of light fell from clustered electric globes upon glass,
silver and the snowy damask cloth, wherein woven wreathes of orchids
seemed to stand out as though embroidered in satin tissues. Neither tall
vase nor _bonbonnière_ impeded view of the entire table, and in the
center a long, low silver shell was filled with stephanotis and
amber-edged Farleyense fronds, while in front of each guest lay a
slender spray of daphne starred with bloom.
Mrs, Churchill sat between the Governor, assigned to Mrs. Roscoe, and
the Bishop, whose next neighbor was the vivacious young widow Mrs. Van
Allen, a recent donor to his favorite church of an old and very costly
silver sacrament service that Cellini was said to have embossed and
engraved.
Gradually the overture of general chatter diminished, and as
conversation became dialogues between individual couples, Devota found
it difficult to fix her attention upon Captain Winstead's remarks, to
which her replies were brief and perfunctory. Notwithstanding her
efforts to resist the impulse, her eyes turned often to the smiling face
of the man immediately opposite her, and she was aware that he
studiously avoided looking at her.
He was an amused listener during the progress of a spirited skirmish
between the hostess and Mrs. Roscoe on the subject of "bridge," which
the latter denounced as "social gambling leprosy," that was swiftly
bringing the morals of Monte Carlo into family circles, and all phases
of club life. Apparently claiming victory in the argument, the Bishop's
aggressive wife next opened fire on the Governor, because of his failure
to approve a bill framed to secure a large appropriation for
establishment of an additional State reformatory.
"It is hard to believe that you, sir, could turn a deaf ear to the cry
for help that calls to you from the criminal outcast children, whose
salvation should be your dearest aim. An enemy of reformatories at the
head of our State government is surely a mournful and disheartening
spectacle."
"Really, my dear madam, your indictment is so severe, you force me to
plead 'not guilty.' For a thorough, efficacious reformatory system I am
an earnest advocate, but my convictions relative to desirable methods
and conditions may not meet your entire approval. When I was vested with
necessary authority I made an exhaustive inspection of all State penal
and reform institutions, and found an ample reformatory centrally
located and well equipped along educational and industrial lines.
Regarding it as a vital question, I have very carefully studied reports
of various farms, schools, etc., from the days of Pourtalès' tragic
failure, and I trust you will pardon me if I frankly confess that
statistics of juvenile criminology do not encourage me to increase the
number of State reformatories. The urgent need of reform is too
appalling to be ignored, but the facts at my command do not warrant a
belief that herding youthful offenders at State compounds or similar
institutions accomplishes the desired result. A profound and noble
student of mankind admonishes us: 'Children have more need of models
than of critics.' Of course incurable moral degenerates must be denied
opportunity to prey upon their fellow-creatures, and for this sad class,
provision for seclusion is sufficient; but the 'cry of the children' now
ringing through our land is for parental guardianship--for the return of
domestic control. Madam, the best, the divinely appointed reformatories
are preventive as well as corrective, and God commissioned one in every
parent to whom He intrusted an immortal soul for mental and moral
training. No outflow rises higher than its source; as are the family
standards, usage and influence, such inevitably must be the trend of the
nation--the vast aggregation of those practically orphaned as regards
parental authority and guardianship. We are all glad to remember
distinguished exceptions to prevailing conditions, but how little
genuine home life remains to leaven the social masses? Do fathers and
mothers fully realize that they have abdicated their throne on the
hearthstone, now usurped by servants and tutors, and that some day the
souls of their neglected sons and daughters will be lost through their
failure to exert proper care, and watchful guardianship? As I walk the
streets of our cities the terrible truth becomes evident that parents
have gone out after strange club-gods, and the pavements are the real
nurseries of our boys and girls. America's most urgent national need is
the revival of home life."
"In order to promote the system of reform you advocate in opposition to
Mrs. Roscoe's darling scheme, has it never occurred to you that it might
be wise to establish in the Executive Mansion a model household, for the
imitation of our State where other experimental stations of various
character seem to be educational?" asked Mrs. Van Allen.
The Governor bowed and laughed as he replied:
"Your rosy suggestion is so alluring that my utter inability to adopt it
fills me with poignant regret. Instead of spending the past ten or
twelve years in trying to hypnotize some sweet woman into the belief
that I was worthy of her trust, I have unwisely devoted my entire
energies to other and far less charming pursuits, until confirmed old
bachelorship now absolutely bars the possibility of any change. Rest
assured no sour grapes mar my vineyard, and the hopelessly unattainable
is always invested with additional value. Knowing my defrauded
bachelorhood seems inevitably unalterable--are you not needlessly cruel
in dangling so tempting a pink sugar-plum beyond my grasp?"
"My dear child, don't soil your pretty fingers by stoning the prophets!"
said the Bishop, patting the bare, plump arm of his near neighbor.
"Armitage is right. He has diagnosed the social sarcoma that threatens
our national vitals. Instead of purifying and exalting the moral code,
the press, the politicians, even some of the clergy are ranting and
howling Jeremiads over 'cannibal trusts,' and corrupt corporate and
individual fortunes, and lashing Congress, State legislatures and even
the Judiciary to institute a crusade of covetousness, to rob the rich in
order that labor may hold its hands in idleness and batten on plunder.
An American twentieth-century recrudescence of Jacquerie freebooters!
Our youth must be trained in early years by parental precept and example
to understand and to hold sacred the legal line of boundary between
_meum et tuum_--and to obey God's law, 'Thou shalt not covet--anything
that is thy neighbor's'; but will fathers and mothers perform a duty
that may save this country from vicious wholesale spoliation?"
"Good heavens--my Right Reverend friend!" exclaimed Mrs. Churchill,
"Have you no pity for fathers who must fly kites in stock exchange, and
play poker at clubs, and bet on ball games? And where, oh, where, shall
mothers find time for 'bridge' and golf, vaudeville and bargain
counters?"
Bishop Roscoe shook a sprig of daphne at her smiling face, and looked
gravely into her twinkling eyes.
"If, as a privileged guest, I have dared to violate conventional canons
that govern 'table talk,' by obtruding ethics which certainly do not
contribute curry, horse-radish and Tabasco to the conversational menu, I
claim in extenuation of prandial heresy, the obvious fact that such
charming people as surround me to-day are not always in their pews, to
receive and assimilate the homiletic dose distributed once a week at the
ecclesiastical dispensary. Please do not vote me a bore if----"
"Just one moment of parenthesis, Bishop," interrupted Mr. Churchill.
"Possess your soul in patience. This wild craze of greedy, omnivorous,
grudging 'Have Nots' is no new phase of that variety of original sin
that claims something for nothing. Don't forget how long it has been
since Thurlow's snarl: 'Corporations have neither a soul to lose, nor a
body to kick.' Demagogues are persuading the disgruntled of all classes
that they are now kicking the vile, corrupt body of corporations, but an
inevitable reaction will be forced when it becomes evident that the
kicks are aimed at the cornerstone of civic equity--the universal and
inalienable right of every human being to the fruit of his labor, mental
or manual--whether that fruit be dividends of the capitalists, or daily
wages of miners, blacksmiths and ploughmen. This popular creed of
wholesale confiscation which teaches 'Love thy neighbor's goods more
than thy soul,' has reached its ultimatum in arranging even pre-natal
conditions whereby all children shall be born equal--not mentally, not
morally; oh, no! simply financially, in consequence of abolishing the
right of unlimited inheritance. Don't worry. The wave is nearing its
crest, and when it ebbs it will suck out as wreckage the political
charlatans that hope to float into office."
Captain Winstead's handsome black eyes sparkled mischievously.
"Party politics are as unsuitable on this occasion as would be a
shooting jacket worn at a Court function; but, Mrs. Churchill, I am sure
you will forgive me if I dare ask one question: Is not your husband a
Democrat?"
"Captain, your state of serene single blessedness is evidently the
result of fright engendered by cartoon fables depicting the abject
subjugation of husbands, by emancipated wives. Dismiss that termagant
scarecrow, for behold! my undaunted, conjugal Czar speaks for himself."
"Am I a Democrat? You very well know I have always been one, and I am
still clinging with grim, dogged fealty to the few precious fragments of
genuinely orthodox democracy, that survive the blows of disloyal
demagogic platform carpenters who raided recent national conventions.
Americans of all parties need to remember that their first duty as
citizens is allegiance to individual convictions of the morality of
public policies, instead of the existing mischievous custom of servile
submission to the ukase of committee and convention dictators. The
time-honored party name, Democracy, is disgraced by the effort to make
it mother a mongrel brood of socialists, whose wild antics and schemes
of universal confiscation would cause Thomas Jefferson to gasp. If he
could only leave his grave long enough to make one speech, he would
stamp out the clubs profaning his revered name, and scourge the
'populistic' leaders--now strutting under the standard of his stolen
mantle--as Christ emptied the polluted temple. The spectacle of the
so-called 'Democracy' of to-day would so sicken his wise, honest, sturdy
soul that, I verily believe, a spiritual somersault would land him close
to Metternich's axiom: 'All _for_, not _through_, the people.' The
constitutional basic, and virile principles of my dear old Party will
weather this dusty whirlwind of popular delusion, stirred up by ravening
socialist wolves, cloaked in Jeffersonian fleeces; and primitive,
genuine, untainted democracy must come to its own once more."
"Yours is a rosy view, Mr. Churchill, but who will undo the mischief
accomplished by American demagogues who are spurring the people into the
pitch and sulphur pit of rank, Godless communism? What remedy will
avail? Not schools, not colleges, not universities where athletics,
'higher criticism' and 'phonetic spelling' absorb attention to the
exclusion of Christian ethics--now thrown aside as obsolete as the
Ptolemaic system of astronomy. The decadent tendency of our people to
habitually seek excitement and diversion at public places of amusement,
has reduced the once attractive home to a mere economic residential
combination of refectory, dormitory and station for laundry delivery.
Interest in the outside world usurps domestic attachments, loosens
family ties and that interdependence of the members of the hearthstone
circle, that once made genuine, old-fashioned home life so potent a
factor in developing well-balanced, wholesome character, both individual
and national. It seems to me the dear old 'Home, Sweet Home' of other
days is now sadly transformed into the nest of _ennui_ and hysterical
unrest, whence all must flee who determine to 'have a good time'----"
The Bishop's homily was cut short by a sharp cry in the hall, the patter
of running steps,--and into the dining-room darted a red-haired child of
six years, followed by a panting nurse, flushed and trembling, who held
in one hand a discarded small slipper and silk sock.
Tiptoeing on his bare foot, the boy glanced swiftly around the circle,
and sped to the chair where Miss Lindsay sat. With a gurgling laugh he
threw himself against her, and pushing her chair slightly away from the
table, she put one arm around and drew him close to her.
"Rex, go back with Bertha," said his mother, beckoning to the
discomfited nurse who approached the table. Two little arms clung
desperately, and the large blue eyes brimmed with tears, while a sweet,
childish voice pleaded quaveringly:
"Oh, mamma, Miss 'Vota runs away before breakfast, and I must stay with
her! I'm so afraid of that awful sea--and Jonah's whale and the Devil's
fish--and slimy, pollywog, wriggling things that may catch her--and
please, mamma darling, you know she's just my very onliest sweetheart!"
Devota leaned forward, and with the assistance of Captain Winstead
lifted the boy to her lap.
"Mrs. Churchill, please let me keep him. He comes in with the other
sweets, and I beg for him as my one special _bonbon_. Be gracious to me,
will you not? I stand sponsor for his being 'seen and not heard.'"
Mrs. Churchill flushed, but instantly the Bishop raised his hand.
"Governor, veto that maternal sentence of banishment."
Governor Armitage smiled.
"This is the first time I have ever regretted the limitations of my veto
prerogative, but in recognition of Rex's indubitable taste in selection
of his 'onliest sweetheart,' I ask the privilege of signing Miss
Lindsay's petition for retention of her loyal lover."
A tender light shone in his eloquent grey eyes, but they were fixed on
the pretty boy's ruddy locks, rather than the golden head bending
against his long curls.
Mrs. Churchill motioned to the nurse to withdraw, and her lips twitched
as she replied:
"Can your Excellency, and your Reverence, magnanimously ignore the vivid
object lesson, so unexpectedly illustrative of your lectures on
neglected parental discipline? My young rebel would certainly prefer
your inconsistent leniency to my exacting domestic code. In honor of
your pet theory--that, like other distinguished doctrinaires, you both
decline to practise--I must ask you all to drink a toast once offered by
a cynical wit when dining at a table, which was similarly invaded by
marauders from the host's nursery. I propose to drink to 'King Herod.'"
She lifted her wine glass, but each guest laid a hand over theirs, and
in the midst of a chorus of protests the butler approached the Governor
and held out a salver on which lay two telegrams.
"If you please, sir, Mr. Walton says he thinks, sir, you must see these
at once."
Pushing aside his untasted pink ice, Governor Armitage took the yellow
envelopes, rose, bowed to his hostess, and said:
"Pardon my unceremonious desertion."
As he walked away, Mr. Churchill called to him:
"Come back to us for coffee and cigars. We shall wait for you."
He shook his head.
"Thank you; no. I will join you later."
As the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room, Mrs. Churchill paused at the
foot of the stairway, where the sullen nurse lingered.
"Go on, Bertha, and get Rex's bath ready. Miss Lindsay will take him
with her, as she wishes to see Grace and Otto."
Turning to Devota, whose arm encircled the boy's shoulder, she looked
steadily at both.
"Mrs. Churchill, you must do me the favor to set my fears at rest about
Rex. Promise me he shall have no reason to regret that he proved himself
my brave and loyal lover. Recollect I encouraged his rebellion."
The mother twined over one finger a red silk curl, and shook her free
hand warningly.
"You both deserve a sound, old-fashioned, hearty spanking, and I make no
rash promises; but as the pair of you seem equally culpable, I might be
embarrassed in administering justice. Good night, Rex. No, naughty boys
cannot kiss their mothers. Don't forget your prayers, you need them.
Now, Miss Devota, do not let my pretty imps, my tawny cub triad keep you
too long. Perhaps Providence is aiding your mission by calling the
Governor to the library. Better watch his door from the side hall. Good
luck to you, dear, when you beard the lion!"