Betty went very often to the Senate Gallery in these days, for it was
the only place where one might have relief from the eternal subject of
Cuba. Although the House broke loose under cover of the Diplomatic and
Consular Appropriation Bill when it was in the Committee of the Whole
and free of the Speaker's iron hand, and raged for two days with the
vehemence of long-repressed passion, the Senate permitted only an
occasional spurt from its warlike members, and pursued its even way
with the important bills before it. But at teas, dinners, luncheons,
and receptions people chattered with amiability or in suavity about the
hostile demonstrations at Havana against Americans, the Spanish
Minister's letter, Spain's demand for the recall of Consul-General Lee,
the dying reconcentrados, the exploits of the insurgents, and the
general possibilities of war. The old Madison house, which had ignored
politics for half a century, vibrated with polite excitement on
Thursday evenings. About a hundred people came to these receptions,
which finished with a supper, and it was understood that the free
expression of opinion should be the rule; consequently several
repressed members of both Houses delivered impromptu speeches, in the
guise of toasts, before that select audience; much to the amusement of
Senator North and the Speaker of the House. Burleigh's was really
impassioned and brilliant; and Armstrong's, if woolly in its phrasing
and Populistic in its length, was sufficiently entertaining.
As for Mrs. Madison, she became imbued with the fear that war would be
declared in her house. Two Cabinet ministers had been added to the
_salon_, and what they in conjunction with the colossal Speaker and
Senators North and Ward might accomplish if they cared to try, was
appalling to contemplate. She begged Betty to adjourn the _salon_ till
peace had come again.
But to this Betty would not hearken. It was the sun of her week,
through whose heavy clouds flickered the pale stars of distractions for
which she was beginning to care little. One of life's compensations is
that there is always something ahead, some trifling event of interest
or pleasure upon which one may fix one's eye and endeavour to forget
the dreary tissue of monotony and commonplace between. Betty found
herself acquiring the habit of casting her eye over the day as soon as
she awoke in the morning, and if nothing distracting presented itself,
she planned for something as well as she could.
She endeavoured to introduce the pleasant English custom of asking a
few congenial spirits to come for a cup of afternoon tea. These little
informal reunions are among the most delightful episodes of London
life, and if established as a custom in Washington would be like the
greenest of oases in the whirling breathless sandstorms of that social
Sahara. But even Betty Madison, strong as she was both in position and
personality, met with but a moderate success. When women have from six
to twenty-five calls to pay every afternoon of the season, with at
least one tea a day besides, they have little time or inclination for
pleasant informalities. Doubtless Miss Madison's friends felt that they
should be relieved of the additional tax. Even the women of the
fashionable set, which includes some of the Old Washingtonians and many
newer comers of equally high degree, and which ignores the official
set, preserve the same ridiculous fashion of calling in person six days
in the week instead of merely leaving cards as in older and more
civilized communities. In London, society has learned to combine the
maximum of pleasure with the minimum of work. Washington society is its
antithesis; and although many of the most brilliant men in America are
in its official set, and the brightest and most charming women in its
fashionable as well as political set, they are, through the exigencies
of the old social structure, of little use to each other. Betty
occasionally managed to capture three or four people who talked
delightfully when they felt they had time to indulge in consecutive
sentences, but as a rule people came on her reception day only, and
many of them walked in at one door of her drawing-room and out at the
other.
The debate in the Senate on the payment of bonds interested her deeply,
for she knew that it meant days of uneasiness for Senator North, who
rarely was absent from his seat. His brief speech on the subject was
the finest she had heard him make, and although it was bitter and
sarcastic while he was arraigning the adherents of the resolution to
pay the government debt in silver, he became impersonal and almost
impassioned as he argued in behalf of national honesty.
Betty never had seen him so close to excitement, and she wondered if he
found it a relief to speak out on any subject. But if he ever thought
of her down there he made no sign, for he neither raised his eyes to
the gallery nor did he pay her a second visit in her select but
conspicuous precinct.
The resolution passed the Senate, and on that evening Senator North
called at the Madison house. It was two weeks since he had called
before, and although he had come to her evenings and they had met at
several dinners, they had not attempted conversation.
The Montgomery's and Carters had dined at the house, and all were in
the parlour when he arrived. After a few minutes he was able to talk
apart with Betty. They moved gradually toward the end of the room and
sat down on a small sofa.
"I am glad you came to-night," she said. "It was my impulse to go to
you when I heard how the vote had gone."
"I knew it," he replied, "and if I could have come straight up here to
the old room, I should have hung up the vote with my overcoat in the
hall."
He looked harassed, and his eyes, while they had lost nothing of their
magnetic power, were less calmly penetrating than usual. They looked as
if their fires had been unloosed more than once of late and were under
indifferent control.
"You will not come to that room again!"
"No. And I soon shall cease to come here at all except on Thursdays."
"You almost have done that now. I think I get more satisfaction
watching you from the gallery than anything else. You look very calm
and senatorial, and you always are standing some one in a corner who is
trying to make a speech."
"I am relieved to know that I do not inspire the amazement of my
colleagues. It is a long while since I have felt calm and senatorial,
however. But these are days for alertness of mind, and even the most
distracting of women must be shut up in her cupboard and forgotten for
a few hours every day."
"I think I rather like that."
"Of course you do. A woman always likes a strong lover. And you have
plenty of revenge, if you did but know."
"I know," she said; and as she raised her eyes and looked at him
steadily, he believed her.
"Tell me at least that you miss coming to that room--I want to hear you
say it."
"Good God!"
Betty caught her breath. But when women feel fire between their fingers
and are reckless before the swift approach of a greater wretchedness
than that possessing them, they are merciless to themselves and the man.
"Can you stay away?" she whispered. "Can you?"
"It is the one thing I can do."
"Do you realize what you are saying?--that you have put me aside for
ever? Are you willing to admit that it is all over? How am I to live on
and on and on? Can you fancy me alone next summer in the Adirondacks--"
"Hush! Hush! Do you wish me to come? Answer me honestly, without any
feminine subterfuge."
"No, I do not." "And I should not come if you did, for I know the price
we both should pay better than you do, and only complete happiness
could justify such a step. You and I could find happiness in marriage
only--we both demand too much! But I also know that the higher
faculties of the mind do not always prevail, and I shall not see you
alone again."
She pushed him further. "You take this philosophically because you have
loved before and recovered. You feel sure that no love lasts."
"When a man loves as I love you, he has no past. There are no
experiences alive in his memory to help him to philosophy. With the
entire world the last love is the only love. As for myself, I shall not
love again and I shall not recover."
"I wore white because I knew you would come tonight," she said softly.
"Yes, and you would torment me if I went down on my knees and begged
for mercy."
"Senator," said Montgomery, approaching them. "I suppose it is some
satisfaction to you to know that that resolution cannot pass the House."
"I hope you will make a speech on the subject that will look well in
the Record," said North, with some sarcasm.
Montgomery laughed. "That is a good suggestion. I wonder if some of our
orators ever read themselves over in cold blood. The back numbers of
the Record ought to be a solemn warning."
"Unfortunately most people don't know when they have made fools of
themselves; that is one reason the world grows wise so slowly. I don't
doubt your speech will look well. You've been remarkably sane for a
young man of enthusiasms. Reserve some of your logic, however, for the
greater conflict that is coming. The pressure on the President is
becoming very severe, and the worst of it is that a great part of it
comes from Congressmen of his own party."
"One of our Populists has christened these 'kickers' 'the
reconcentrados;' which is not bad, as there is said to be a kickers'
caucus in process of organization. But if the pressure on the President
is severe, it is equally so on us, and I suppose the 'kickers' are
those who have one knob too few in their backbones. Some, however, have
got the war bee inside their skulls instead of in their hats, and will
be fit subjects for a lunatic asylum if the thing doesn't end soon, one
way or another. And they reiterate and reiterate that they don't want
war, when they know that any determined step we can take is bound to
lead to it. I have no patience with them. They either are fools or are
trying to keep on both sides of the fence at once."
"Politics are very complicated," said Senator North, dryly.
"How do you and Mary manage to live in the same house?" asked Betty.
"She is all for war."
"Oh, I think she rather likes the opportunity to argue. And she is so
divided between the desire for me to be a good American and the desire
that England shall have an excuse to hug us that she could not get into
a temper over it if she tried. She has made no attempt to influence my
course. Heaven knows how much money I've been made to disburse in
behalf of the reconcentrados, but I like women to be tender-hearted and
would not harden them for the sake of a few dollars, even were they
dumped in Havana Harbor--By the way, I wonder if the _Maine_ is all
right down there? She has the city under her guns, and they know it--"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, don't suggest any new horrors," said Senator
North, rising. "Besides, the Spaniards are not in the final stages of
idiocy. It would be like the New York _Journal_ to blow up the _Maine_,
as it seems to have reached that stage of hysteria which betokens
desperation; but the ship is safe as far as the Spaniards are
concerned."
Lady Mary rose to go; and Betty, who was informal with her friends,
went out into the hall with her instead of ringing for a servant.
Senator North remained in the parlor for a few moments to say
good-night to Mrs. Madison and the Carters, and Betty, although the
Montgomerys did not linger, waited for him to come out. There was
nothing to reflect the light in the dark walls of the large square
hall, and it always was shadowy, and provocative to lovers at any time.
When he entered it, he looked at her for a moment without speaking, and
did not approach her.
"You might be the ghost of another Betty Madison--in that white gown,"
he said. "Was there not a famous one in the days of 1812, and did she
not love a British officer--or something of that sort?"
"They parted here in this hall--and she lived on and died of old age.
Such is life. I sleep in her bed, where, I suppose, she suffered much
as I do."
She came forward and pushed her hand into his. "I am not a ghost," she
said.
He too believed it to be their last meeting alone, and he raised her
hand to his lips and held it there.
"I wish we could have stayed on and on in the Adirondacks," she said
unsteadily. "Everything seemed to go well with us there."
"People in mid-ocean usually are happy and irresponsible. They would
not be if it were anything but an intermediate state. But it is enough
to know that on land our troubles are waiting for us."
She shivered and drew closer to him. The dangerous fire in her eyes
faded.
"Mine are becoming very great," she said. "All I can do is to distract
my mind, to fill up my time."
"And I can do nothing to help you! That is the tragedy of a love like
ours: the more a man loves a woman he cannot marry the more he must
make her suffer--either way; it is simply a choice of methods, and if
he really loves her he chooses the least complicated."
"It is bad enough."
Her eyes filled for the first time in his presence since the morning of
Harriet's death, but her mental temper was very different, and she
looked at him steadily through her tears.
"_I_ cannot help _you_," she said. "That is the hardest part. You are
harassed in many ways, and you are dreading the bitterness of a greater
defeat than today. I could be so much to you--so much. And I can be
nothing. By that time you will have ceased to come here. I know that
you mean not to come again after to-night, except when the house is
full of company."
He began to answer, but stopped. She felt his heart against her arm,
and his lips burnt her hand, his eyes her own.
"Listen," she said rapidly, "if war should be declared I shall be in
the gallery to hear it. I will come straight home and shut myself up in
my boudoir--for hours--to be with you in a way--Shall I? Will--would it
mean anything to you?"
"Of course it would!"
His face was fully unmasked, and she moved abruptly to it as to a
magnet. In another moment they were in the more certain seclusion of
the vestibule, and she was in his arms. They clung together with a
passion which despair with ironic compensation made perfect, and their
first kiss which was to be their last expressed for a moment the
longing of the year of their love and of the years that were to come.
That such a moment ever could end was so incredible that when Betty
suddenly found herself alone she looked about in every direction for
him, and then the blood rushed through her in a tide of impotent fury.
It was this blind rage that enabled her to go back to the parlor and
keep up until the Carters went home a few moments later, and her mother
had gone to bed. Then she went to her boudoir and locked herself in.
How she got through that night without sending him an imperious summons
she never knew, unless it were that she found some measure of relief in
a letter she wrote to him. If she could not see him, he was still her
lover, her only intimate friend, and her confessor. She promised not to
write again, but she demanded what help he could give her.