I
“WILLIAM FOX? He’s the most brilliant man they’ve got, but a two-edged
sword; they’re all afraid of him!”
The speaker had just left the swinging doors at the foot of the
staircase from the Rotunda, under the old Library rooms in the west
front of the Capitol, and his companion, who was also a member, was
working himself slowly into his greatcoat.
“No wonder; he’s got a tongue like a whiplash and his smooth ways
only make its sting worse,” he retorted, between his struggles with a
recalcitrant sleeve lining and a stiff shoulder.
“That’s it, his tongue and his infernal sarcastic humor,” Fox’s admirer
admitted with reluctance, “but his logic--it’s magnificent,--his mind
cuts as clean as a diamond; look at his speech on the Nicaraguan
affair. Lord, I’d like to see the opposition beat it! They can’t do
it; they’ve done nothing but snarl since. He’ll be President some
day--if he doesn’t cut his own throat.”
“Pshaw, man!” retorted the other irritably, “he’s brilliant, but as
unstable as water, and a damned egoist!”
They had reached the top of the wide steps which descend from the west
terrace, and Allestree lost the reply to his outburst in the increasing
distance as they went down into the park below. He stood looking after
their indistinctly outlined figures as they disappeared slowly into
the soft mist which enveloped the scene at his feet. It was about six
o’clock, an early December evening, and already night overhead where
the sky was heavily clouded. The streets, streaming with water, showed
broad circles of shimmering light under the electric lamps, and the
naked trees and the ilexes clustered below the terrace made a darkness
through which, and beyond, he saw the long, converging vista of the
Avenue, lined on either side with what seemed to be wavering and
brilliant rainbows, suspended above the wet pavements and apparently
melting into one in the extreme distance, as though he looked into the
sharp apex of a triangle. The whole was veiled and mystically obscured
by a palely luminous vapor which transformed and softened every object,
while the vehicles and pedestrians, constantly hurrying across the
foreground, loomed exaggerated and fantastic in the fog. Now and then
a keen point of light, the eye of some motor-car, approached, flashed
past the Peace Monument and was lost at the elbow of the Hill.
The terrace, except for Allestree, was deserted, and the continuous
murmur and roar of city life came up to him slightly softened and
subdued, both by the atmospheric depression and the intervening space
of the park. Behind him both wings of the Capitol were vividly lighted,
for the House had just risen after a heated debate, prolonged, as he
amusedly surmised, by the eloquence of William Fox.
At the thought, that much discussed figure arose before his mind’s eye
in a new aspect created by the fragment of conversation which had just
reached him. He was in the habit of viewing Fox from that intimate
standpoint which, discovering all the details, loses the larger effect
of the whole; as the man in the wings of the theatre, disillusioned
by the tinsel on the costume of an actor and the rouge on his face,
loses the grand climax of his dramatic genius and sees instead only
the charlatan. Yet Allestree’s affection for his cousin was strong
enough to embrace even those defects, of which he was keenly aware, and
personal enough to feel a thrill of elation at the constant evidences
of an increasing recognition of Fox’s really great abilities. Yet there
was something amusing in the fear which he was beginning to inspire in
his opponents; amusing, at least, to one who knew him, as Allestree
did, to be a man of careless good humor and large indifference.
Knowing all Fox’s peculiarities, his not infrequent relaxations, and
the complex influences which were at work upon his temperament--the
irresponsible temperament of genius--Allestree could not but speculate
a little upon that future which was beginning to be of poignant
interest to more than one aspirant in the great arena of public life.
But his reflections were cut short at this point by the abrupt
appearance of Fox himself. He came out of the same door which had,
a few moments earlier, emitted his critics, and as he emerged upon
the terrace the keen light from the electric globes at the head of
the steps fell full on his remarkable face and figure. For, while by
no means above the average in stature, Fox possessed one of those
personalities which cannot be overlooked. Genius like beauty has
magnetic qualities of its own and, even at night and out of doors,
Allestree was fully aware of the singular brilliance and penetration of
his glance.
“Well, Bob,” he said genially, as he joined his cousin, “you’re a lucky
dog, out here in the open! The House has steamed like the witches’
cauldron to-night and brewed devil’s broth, tariff revision and all
manner of damnable heresies.”
Allestree smiled grimly in the dusk. “Then you must be the father of
them,” he retorted; “I just heard that you’d been making a speech.”
“Eh? you did, did you?” Fox paused an instant to light his cigar; “so
I did,” he admitted, tossing away the match, “I talked tommyrot for an
hour and a half to keep the House sitting; I might be going on still
if old Killigrew hadn’t got to his feet and howled for adjournment. He
usually dines at six sharp, and it’s a quarter to seven now; he had
death and starvation in his eye, and I yielded the point as a matter of
humanity.”
“According to recent information you have very little humanity in you,”
Allestree replied, as they descended the long flight of steps from the
terrace, “in fact, you are a ‘damned egoist.’”
Fox threw back his head with a hearty, careless laugh. “Which of my
enemies have you been interviewing?” he asked, with unruffled good
humor.
His cousin briefly related the result of his accidental début in the
rôle of eavesdropper, incidentally describing the two men.
“I know who they are,” Fox said amusedly; “one is Burns of
Pennsylvania, and the other a fellow from Rhode Island who is picking
flaws in everything and everybody; the government’s rotten, the
Senate’s corrupt, the Supreme Court is senile--so on and so on _ad
infinitum_! Meanwhile there’s some kind of a scandal attached to his
own election--no one cares what! He reminds me of Voltaire’s enraged
description of Jean Jacques with the rotten hoops off Diogenes’ tub.”
“That is not all; even your admirer feared the suicidal effects of your
tongue,” continued Allestree teasingly, “which is said to be two-edged,
while your sarcasm is ‘infernal.’”
“Oh, that’s a mere _façon de parler_,” laughed Fox, “I’m really as mild
as a lamb and as harmless as a dove!”
“Quite so!” retorted his cousin dryly, “yet I think most of your
enemies and some of your friends resort to the litany when you cut
loose for an oratorical flight.”
“Well, it’s said that even the devil goes to prayers on occasions,”
said Fox with a shrug, “so why not my enemies? By the way, the
nominations were sent to the Senate just before adjournment to-night,
and the Cabinet changes are slated; I heard it as I came out.”
“Does Wingfield go out?” Allestree asked, after a momentary pause, as
they threaded their way between the electric cars and the carriages
which were slightly congested at the crossing below the Peace Monument.
Fox nodded. “And Seymour gets his place, while Wicklow White is made
Secretary of the Navy.”
His companion looked up quickly and caught only his pale profile
outlined against the surrounding fog; his expression was enigmatical.
“Upon my word!” exclaimed Allestree, “White’s luck is stupendous--you
remember what a block-head we always thought him at Harvard? Well,
well, Margaret will have her heart’s desire,” he added amusedly.
Fox slightly frowned. “So!” he said contemptuously, “you think the sum
total of a woman’s desire is to see a chump of a husband with his foot
in the stirrup?”
His cousin smiled coldly. “My dear fellow, it was for that Margaret
married him,” he retorted, “that and his money. When I see her, as I
saw her the other night, the most beautiful and charming creature,
in a miracle of a costume,--she knows how to wear clothes that make
pictures,--I longed to say to her:--
“‘You that have so fair parts of woman on you,
Have too a woman’s heart: which ever yet
Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty.’”
“Pshaw, you dreamer of dreams and painter of pictures; it’s a hollow
show, an ugly travesty! What has a man like White to give such a woman?
The husks of the prodigal!” Fox’s luminous dark eyes kindled with
anger, “when I see him--” he checked himself abruptly and walked on
rapidly, his long, easy stride carrying him ahead of Allestree. “Pearls
before swine!” he muttered to himself after a moment, plunging his
hands into his pockets and relapsing into an angry silence.
They walked on at a smart pace, having occasionally to thread their
way single file through the increasing throng, as the long blocks
slipped behind them and they approached the heart of business life
near Fourteenth Street. When they came together again after such a
separation, Allestree asked Fox if he could come home with him to dine
but Fox declined rather curtly, pleading an early evening engagement,
and Allestree said no more, having his own surmises as to the nature
of that engagement, and being somewhat guiltily aware that he was not
an entirely involuntary party to his mother’s conspiracy to draw Fox
away from a dangerous attraction. Both men were, in fact, conscious
that a discord had arisen in their usually confidential relations, and
neither of them desired to broach any subject which would add acrimony
to the conversation; with the usual masculine instinct of self-defense,
therefore, they relapsed into silence. However, at the entrance of
a large hotel on the corner, their hurried progress was interrupted
to give way to a visitor who was crossing the wide pavement to her
carriage, escorted by one of the attendants and a footman. The light
from the lobby, brilliantly illuminating the space beneath the awning,
outlined her as sharply as a silhouette against the darkness, and
her figure,--she was a young and slender girl,--was thrown into high
relief; the quiet elegance of her dress, the sables on her shoulders,
as well as the large picture hat which framed her face, being merely
superfluous accessories to beauty of a type at once unusual and
spiritual.
Fox, startled out of a revery which was largely pervaded by the
personality of another woman, could not but observe this radiant
picture; there was a vitality, a power of expression in every feature
of her face and every movement of her tall, lithe figure which at once
specialized her. She seemed to belong to a different race of beings
from those who were hurrying past her through the fog, whose figures
lost themselves at once to vision and memory, dissolving into the
masses of the commonplace, as completely as the individual sands at the
seashore are lost in the larger sweep of the dunes.
She turned her head, saw Allestree and smiled. “How are you?” she said,
with the easy manner of an old intimacy; “I hardly dare look at you--I
know I broke the appointment and several of the studio commandments!”
Allestree had hurried forward at once, apparently forgetting his
companion, and was helping her into her carriage. “You did,” he said,
“and shamelessly; but you must come and make amends.”
She laughed, her hand on the carriage door, and her eyes, involuntarily
passing him to Fox, were as quickly averted. “I will, on Saturday
at twelve--will that do, Bobby? Don’t be too exacting. I’ve a dozen
engagements, you know,” she added lightly, in a tone of careless
propitiation.
Fox did not catch his cousin’s reply, it was too low spoken, and in a
moment the horses started and the carriage passed him on its way to F
Street. Secretly a little piqued at Allestree’s failure to present him,
and yet amused at his discovery of his cousin playing knight-errant to
a beauty, Fox walked on a few moments in silence, aware that the other
was not a little confused.
But at last: “Who is she, Bob, wood-nymph, dryad, or Psyche herself?”
Allestree’s face sobered sharply. “It was Miss Temple,” he said, a
trifle stiffly.
Fox gave a moment to reflection. “Ah,” he observed, “I recollect, Judge
Temple has a daughter. I had never seen her; I’ve heard her spoken of,
though, a hundred times; her name is--?”
“Rose Temple.”
William Fox glanced at his companion obliquely and smiled, but he made
no attempt at pleasantry. After a little, however, as they approached
the residential quarter and neared his club, where he intended to dine,
he returned to the subject. “You are painting Miss Temple’s portrait?”
“Yes, attempting it,” assented Allestree, with marked reluctance; he
felt it to be almost a sacrilege to speak of a piece of work which had
become, in more ways than one, a labor of love.
He was indeed painting Rose Temple’s portrait, for he was already
a notable portrait painter, but he was doing it much as Raphael
may have painted the Sistine Madonna, with a reverence which was
full of ineffable tenderness and inspiration, and he was too keenly
aware of Fox’s intimate knowledge of him and his unmerciful insight
into human motives to endure the thought of Fox in possession of
his inmost secrets and on terms of friendship with Rose. Fox! one
of the most enigmatical, the most dangerous, the most fascinating
personalities--Allestree had seen the potency of that spell--to be
brought in contact with any woman, and most of all with a young and
imaginative girl.
After a moment Fox’s laugh interrupted him. “My dear Allestree,” he
said provokingly, “why not paint the Angel Gabriel?”
His companion, whose sensitiveness amounted to an exquisite
self-torture, bit his lip and made no reply.
At the door of the club they both paused as Allestree prepared to take
a car uptown while his cousin went in to dine.
“Sorry you can’t come to us,” he said, in a tone which was a shade less
cordial than usual; “mother will be disappointed; there is no one else
coming, and she always counts greatly on a talk with you.”
“Give her my love instead,” Fox retorted, with easy kindness, “I’m
sorry, but I dine here and then go up to the Whites’. I promised;
there’s to be music--or something--to-night.”
Allestree slightly shrugged his shoulders. “So I supposed,” he said
dryly, and signalled his car.