without an experienced canoe-man. It is about time for us to return;
don't you think so?"
"That depends on whether you really want to go to the island," returned
Rutledge, who was quick to see and resent the intimation that he was not
equal to the business of putting her across the racing water between
them and the small cluster of trees and shrubs growing among a misshapen
pile of rocks nearly across the river.
"I am told no one but these half-breed guides have ever tried the
passage," he continued. "Not because it is so very dangerous, I
suppose, but because it is too small to attract visitors to try the
rough water."
"They can get to it easily from the other side, can't they? It seems so
near to that," said Elise.
"No. Jacques tells me that the narrow water on the other side runs like
a race-horse, and has many rocks to smash the canoe. Even going from
this side I would prefer to leave you here, Miss Phillips, and of course
that would make the visit without inducement to me."
"You allow your carefulness of me and your politeness to me to reason
you out of the danger," said Elise, without any sinister purpose; but
Rutledge recalled Helen Phillips' words about Elise and heroes, and
became uncomfortable.
"I used them to reason you out of the danger," he replied. "If the
argument does not appeal to you I am ready for your orders."
"Then let's go over," said Elise, prompted half by the challenge in his
eyes and half by her subconscious desire to see him vindicate his
feminine grace.
"I admit I am a coward," Rutledge remarked as he turned the canoe toward
the island.
"Oh, if you confess to being afraid!" said Elise in mingled surprise and
pity. "I certainly cannot insist. Let's return to the hotel."
"You mistake me," Rutledge replied as he sent the light craft on toward
the rapids. "My cowardice is in permitting you to bully me into
carrying you into some danger. I should have the courage to refuse."
"You would have me believe in your courage, then, whether you choose
danger or avoid it. That is artful," Elise rejoined.
The word "artful" nettled Rutledge, and he put his resentment into the
strokes which sent the canoe forward. If Elise Phillips could believe
of him that he would attempt to establish a reputation for courage by a
trick of words, words would be inadequate, of course, to defend him from
the imputation. There was no chance now to convince her, he thought,
save to try the passage. So, despising the weakness which would not let
him point the canoe homeward, he set his strength against the increasing
current, and soon lost thought of the argument in the zest of sparring
with the river.
Elise became absorbedly interested in the contest and in his handling of
the boat. The interest of both became more and more intense as the
water began to slap the canoe viciously and toss them with careless
strength. A wave rolling over a sunken rock rushed upon them with a
gurgle and swash and passed under the canoe with a heave and splash that
tilted them uncomfortably and threw a hatful of water over the side.
Another came with a more impatient toss, and Elise crouched upon the
seat to preserve her equilibrium. Rutledge looked round at her face,
which was unsmiling but without fear, and asked:
"Shall we go back?"
"No," the girl answered.
They soon found that the water was swifter than they had judged it from
the shore, and that they had not put across far enough up-stream to make
the island easily. They were nearing it, but the current was becoming
boisterous and they were drifting faster and faster down-stream.
Swifter water and rougher met the canoe at every paddle-stroke.
Rutledge with his back to Elise dropped on one knee in the water in the
canoe bottom and gave every energy to his work. If Elise had not been
with him he would have liked nothing better.
As for the girl, she would not insist on this wild ride again, but,
being in, she was having many thrills of pleasure. Rutledge's manner
gave her confidence that they would reach the island, but with how much
discomfiture she was as yet uncertain. She was drenched with water from
the slapping waves and the swiftly flying paddle, which was Rutledge's
only weapon against the wrath of the river. She saw in his resolute
efforts that their situation was at least serious if not dangerous, and
she hardly took her eyes from him; but with her closest scrutiny she did
not detect the slightest indecision or apprehension.
Only once did fear come to her, and that but for a moment. The struggle
was now quick and furious. They were in the mad whirl of crushing water
that tore alongside the island and was ripped and ground among the
bullying rocks. She heard Rutledge stifle a cry as he sent the canoe
out with a back-stroke that almost threw her overboard, and the rioting
current slammed them past a jagged vicious-looking rock just under the
river's surface which would have smashed their cockle-shell to
splinters. When she looked down upon it as they were shot past she
thought for an instant of death and dead men's bones. Then--
"Out! Quick--now!" yelled Rutledge, as with a strength that seemed as
much of will as of muscle, he shoved the canoe's nose up against the
island and held it for a moment against the fury of the water.
Elise rose at his sharp command and leaped lightly out upon a bare rock,
giving the canoe a back kick which sent it swinging around broad across
the current. As it swung off Rutledge, seeing no favourable place below
him to make another landing, quickly gave his end of the boat a cant
toward the island, dropped the paddle in the canoe, grabbed the mooring
chain and jumped for the land. He jumped and alighted unsteadily but
without further mishap than so far capsizing the canoe that it shipped
enough water to more than half submerge it and threaten to sink it. With
his effort to draw it up on the rock and save it from sinking entirely,
the water in the canoe rushed to the outer end, sending that completely
under and floating the paddle out and away. He yanked the canoe up on
the island and, turning, looked straight into Elise's eyes for ten
seconds without speaking.
"Why don't you say it?" the young woman asked with amused defiance.
"Say what?" inquired Rutledge.
"What you are dying to tell me."
"I love you," answered Rutledge simply.
"Oh! You--you--impudent--you horrible!" cried Elise with a gasp. "To
presume I would invite you to tell me--that! How dare you!"
"I dare anything for you," said Rutledge. "I love you and--"
"Stop! Not another word on that subject--lest your presumption become
unbearable! You know very well, Mr. Stupidity, that I expected you to
say 'I told you so.'"
"I have told you--so--your--exp--"
"Stop, I say! I will not listen to another word. Your persistence is
almost--insulting!"
"Insulting!" said Rutledge in amazement. "Then pardon me and I'll not
offend again;" and he turned to take a look at the fast-riding paddle as
it turned and flashed far down the river.
Elise was glad of the chance to gather her wits together and prepare a
defence against this abrupt method of wooing. Indeed she was on the
defensive against her own heart. One fact alone, however, would justify
her deliberation: that she was not certain of her own mind. Friendship
may halt and consider, admiration may sit in judgment; but love that
questions, or is of two minds, or hesitates, is not love.
She turned away from him and the river to give attention to this new
problem which was of more immediate interest to her than the question of
how they were to get away from the island. Rutledge came to her after
awhile.
"Miss Phillips," he said, "I have the honour to report that, while we
are prisoners on this island now, our imprisonment will not be lengthy.
Fortunately I saw Jacques on the other side of the river and made him
understand, I think, that we have lost our paddle. At any rate he put
off toward the hotel at great speed, and will be down with another canoe
I hope before you become tired of your island." And he added, as if to
relieve the tense situation: "While we wait I shall be glad to show you
over the premises and to talk about anything that you may prefer to
discuss."
Elise could not tell from the formal manner of Rutledge's words whether
he was really offended or humourously stilted in his speech. She could
be as coldly polite as any occasion demanded; but, believing that she
had effectually put an end to his love-making for the day, she met his
formality of manner in her naturally charming and friendly spirit.
"Sit down here then, and tell me where you learned to handle a canoe. I
did not know canoeing was a Southern sport."
"It is not," Rutledge said, taking the place she gave him at her feet.
"I was never in a canoe till I came here this summer."
"Now, Mr. Rutledge, don't ask too much of credulity. One surely cannot
become skilful without practice."
"I did not mean that I have never been on the water before," said
Rutledge; "but in my country we do not have these curved and graceful
canoes. We navigate our rivers with the primitive dugout or pirogue. I
have used one of those on my father's Pacolet plantation since I was a
boy. The dugout is made by hollowing out a section of a tree. That
makes the strongest and best boat, for it never leaks or gets smashed
up. It is very narrow and shallow, however, and it takes some skill to
handle it in a flood."
"Were you ever in a flood?--a worse flood than this?" asked Elise.
"Yes. When our little rivers get up they are as bad as this or worse.
I have seen them worse. During the great flood on the Pacolet some years
ago, when railroad bridges, mill dams, saw-mills, cotton mills, houses,
barns, cotton bales, lumber, cattle, men, women and children were all
engulfed in one watery burial, the little river was for six hours a
monster--a demon."
"Tell me about that," Elise said; and to entertain her Rutledge told her
at length the story of that cataclysm of piedmont South Carolina. He
went into the details without which such description is only awful, not
interesting. Many were the incidents of heroism and hairbreadth escapes
and unspeakable calamity which he related; and he told the stories with
such vividness of portraiture, dramatic fire and touches of pathos that,
with the roar of many waters actually pounding upon her ear-drums, Elise
could close her eyes and see the scenes he depicted.
In looking upon the pictures he drew with such living interest she found
herself straining her tight-shut eyes in search of his figure among the
throng that lined the river-bank or fought the awful flood. Time after
time as he described an act of heroic courage in words that burned and
glowed and crackled with the fire that could stir only an eye-witness or
an actor in the unstudied drama he was reproducing, she would clothe the
hero with Rutledge's form, identify his distinctive gestures and
movement and catch even the tones of his voice as it shouted against the
booming of the waters: but with studied regularity and distinctness
Rutledge at some point in every story, incidentally and apparently
unconsciously, would make it plain that the hero of that incident was a
person other than himself.
He might have told her, indeed, many things to his own credit:
especially of a desperate ride and struggle in one of those dugouts
which he had volunteered to make in order to prevent an old negro man
adrift on a cabin-top from going over Pacolet Dam Number 3, where so
many unfortunates went down and came not up again; but at no time could
Elise infer from his speech that he was the hero of his own story. Her
word "artful" still rankled in his memory, and he swore to his own soul
that she should never, never hear him utter a word that might show he
possessed or claimed to possess courage.
The only method by which Elise could deduce from his words the
conclusion that Rutledge was of courageous heart was that courage seemed
such a commonplace virtue among the people of his section that he
probably possessed his share of it. Her curiosity was finally aroused
to know whether by any artifice she might induce him to tell of his own
exploits, which his very reticence persuaded her must be many and
interesting, and she brought all her powers into play to draw him out:
but to no purpose. She refrained from any direct appeal to him in fear
that a personal touch might turn the conversation along dangerous lines;
and Rutledge, having been properly rebuked, waited for some intimation
of permission before presuming to discuss other than impersonal themes.
While indeed it only confirmed her woman's intuition, Elise was
unconsciously happier because of Rutledge's blunt statement of his love,
for it made certain a fact that was not displeasing to her. Yet she
would hold him at arm's length, for she could with sincerity bid him
neither hope nor despair. The glamour of her day-dreams made the
reading of her heart's message uncertain. Rutledge had not the
glittering accessories that attended the wooer of her visions; and yet
as he talked to her she was mentally placing him in every picture her
mind drew of the future, and was impressed that whether in the soft
scenes where knightly gallantry and grace wait upon fair women, or in
the stern dramas where bitter strength of mind and heart and body is
poured out in libation to the god of grinding conflict, he, in every
scene, looked all that became a man.
Rutledge's flow of narrative and Elise's absent-minded reverie were
broken in upon by the hail of Jacques, who was approaching them from
almost directly up-stream. His canoe was doing a grapevine dance as he
pushed it yet farther across the river and dropped rapidly down to a
landing on the far side of the island.
"Sacre! Wrong side!" he exclaimed when he came across and saw where
Rutledge had pulled his canoe out of the water. "Here I lose two canoe
sometime. How you mek him land?"
Rutledge did not answer the question but set about getting his canoe
across the island to the point designated by Jacques as the place for
leaving it. He had no desire to stay longer since all hope of further
_tete-a-tete_ with Elise was gone; and in a few minutes they were ready
to embark.
"No hard pull, but kvick paddle lak feesh-tail," said Jacques in
explaining the course by which they were to return, the which was
plainly beset with numberless rocks and shoals.
"Sweem out seex times befor I lairn road," he added as a comforting
proof of the thoroughness of his knowledge. The return was a simple
matter of dropping off from the far side of the island, floating down a
few rods, and then picking along through the rocks across the river as
the canoe gathered speed down-stream.
"Miss Phillips," Rutledge said when they were ready, "perhaps you had
better take ship with Jacques. He knows the road."
Their rescuer looked pleased at the honour, and turned to pull his canoe
within easier reach.
"No, thank you," she said to Rutledge. "I prefer to go with you."
Rutledge caught his breath at the loyalty and the caress in her voice,
and ungratefully wished Jacques at the bottom of the river. He handed
her into his canoe with a tenderness that was eloquent; and Jacques,
seeing through the game which robbed him of the graceful young woman for
a passenger, put off just ahead of them, saying:
"I go fairst. Follow me shairp."
It was no easy task to follow that canoe; and Elise, as she watched the
precision with which Rutledge used the "kvick paddle lak feesh-tail,"
was convinced that such skill had not gone to waste at the Pacolet
flood. As she looked at him when the rough water was past and he was
sending the canoe up the river with even swing again, graceful as
before, her eyes had a light in them that would have gladdened his heart
to see.
They landed near the hotel and hurried straight to it upon Elise's plea
that she was late and must hurry to dress for her train. Rutledge
walked beside her down the long hall of the hotel, and at the foot of
the stairway, feeling that opportunity was slipping past him, he stopped
her short with--
"Your answer, Elise! In heaven's name, your answer!"
Elise was again startled by his abruptness, and her unrestrained heart's
impulse sent a look of tenderness to her eyes that would have crowned
Rutledge's life with all happiness, had not that glamour of her
daydreams, fateful, insistent, overclouded and banished it in a moment.
She looked at him confusedly a moment more, then took a quick step away
from him, hesitated, and, turning quickly, said:
"There is no answer,"--and fled up the stairs.
Rutledge turned away dazed by the reply to his heart's question. "There
is no answer!"--as if he were a "Buttons" who had carried to her
ladyship an inconsequential message which deserved no reply. He could
not get his mind to comprehend the import of it; and he was walking back
down the hallway with a vexed frown upon his face trying to untangle his
thoughts, when Helen Phillips passed him and, seeing him in such a mood
after his parting ride with Elise, prodded him with--
"None but heroes need apply, Mr. Rutledge. I warned you."
Rutledge passed on with an irritated shrug of the shoulders; and Helen,
laughing, ran to tease Elise for a history of the morning's ride and the
reason "why Mr. Rutledge is so grumpy." Little satisfaction did she get
from Elise, however, for that young woman evinced as much of reticence
as Rutledge had shown of irritation.
"I told him none but heroes need apply," laughed Helen.
"What do you know of heroes?" asked Elise with a snap.
*CHAPTER IX*
Within a week after Evans Rutledge and Elise Phillips parted at the St.
Lawrence resort, the newspapers told the people that at a Saratoga
restaurant Colonel Phillips and his wife and daughter, and Doctor
Martin, a negro of national reputation, had sat down to dine together.
It was soon after this that one evening, at his home in Cleveland, Ohio,
Colonel Phillips happened upon a mixed quartette (all negroes) who had
been brought over from New York to sing at a sacred concert in one of
the fashionable churches, but who could not obtain what they considered
a respectable lodging-place. With characteristic impulsiveness the
Colonel, who heard of it, invited the two men and two women up to his
house and entertained them overnight.
On those occasions Mrs. Phillips had shown unmistakable opposition to
the acts of her liege lord. Elise had more than seconded her mother in
haughty indignation; though with her superb training in obedience she
could not be openly rebellious. When he had brought the quartette into
his home Mr. Phillips could not fail to see the pain in his wife's eyes
as she asked:
"Was that necessary?"
"Why, can you not see," he replied with some hot feeling in his tones,
"that it was the only thing to be done? They are very respectable
people, all of them. They are intelligent and well-bred, as you can see.
Why should the simple matter of colour alone keep me from doing what I
just as quickly might have done for a white man?"
The unconscious humour of this way of putting it did not reach Mrs.
Phillips, and the Colonel's tone and manner, not his words, kept her
silent when he had finished. She could not quarrel with him; and he
thought he had answered her reason, though he admitted inwardly that her
prejudices were unconverted. Nevertheless he did not open the discussion
again.
Helen, however, naturally siding with her father, did not hesitate to
bring it up repeatedly, and youthfully to descant at length and with
some elaboration of ideas on the propriety and admirableness of her
father's act. Mrs. Phillips, with the sole purpose of preserving
parental discipline and not wishing even slightly to encourage
insubordination, had very little to say to Helen about it; while Elise
answered all the younger girl's effusions with sniffs of disdain.
* * * * *
These incidents and Elise's womanly perversity and curiosity really gave
Evans Rutledge a great opportunity if he only could have read the
portents of circumstance and calculated to a nicety the eccentricity of
a woman's heart. The entertainment of negro guests at the mansion of an
aspirant for the presidency was given wide publicity by the press and
was the subject of universal though temporary notice by newspapers and
editorial writers of every class. Rutledge, in his capacity as
Washington representative of a half-dozen newspapers over the country,
contributed his share to the general chorus of comment.
When Elise read in a Cleveland paper a clipping accredited to "Evans
Rutledge in Chicago American," she suddenly became desirous of seeing
that young man again. The sentiments, stripped of the tartness in their
expression and a seeming lack of appreciation of her distinguished
father's dignity, were so in accord with hers that she was startled at
the exact coincidence of thought--while still resentful of the free and
fierce criticism.
Resentment and thoughts of coincidences were pushed out of her mind,
however, by the question, "Would he tell me again he loves me?" This
was both a personal and a sentimental question and was therefore of
chief interest to her woman's mind. Not that she had a whit more of
love for him than upon that last day upon the St. Lawrence--oh, no; but
his love for her? his willingness to avow it? was it still hers? was it
ever hers really?--for not a word or a line had he addressed to her
since the day they fought the river. She would confess to a slight
curiosity and desire to meet him when she should go to Washington on
that promised visit to Lola DeVale.
Rutledge assuredly had escaped none of the untoward influences which the
Phillips-negro incidents might have had upon his love for Elise. His
good mother religiously attended to the duty of impressing upon him the
disgraceful horrors of those affairs. She found no words forceful enough
properly to characterize them, though she applied herself with each new
day to the task. What might have been the result if her son's heart had
been inclined to fight for the love of Elise of course cannot be known.
His mother's philippics effected nothing, for the good reason that he
had lost hope of winning Elise before the negro incidents occurred, and
the personal turn his mother gave them was only tiresome to him.
Elise's last words to him, "There is no answer," had put their affair
beyond the effect of anything of that sort. She had not only refused
him, but had flouted him, treated him with contempt: yes, had said to
him in effect that his proffer of love was not worth even a negative
answer. He had gone over every incident of their association, and, with
a lover's carefulness of detail, had considered and weighed her every
word and look and gesture; and, with a lover's proverbial blundering,
had found as a fact the only thing that was not true.
* * * * *
When Elise came to Washington on her visit Rutledge knew of course that
she was in town, and he kept his eyes open for her. His pride would not
let him call upon her, for he had meditated upon her treatment of him
till his grievance had been magnified many fold and his view had become
so distorted that in all her acts he saw only a purpose to play with his
heart. Yet, he wished to see her, wished very much to see
her--doubtless for the same reason that a bankrupt will look in upon
"the pit" that has gulfed his fortune.
They met unexpectedly at Senator Ruffin's, where only time was given
them to shake hands in a non-committal manner before Mrs. Ruffin sent
them in to dinner together. If each had spoken the thoughts in the
heart a perfect understanding would have brought peace and friendship at
least, but no words were spoken from the heart. All of their
conversational sparring was of the brain purely. They fenced with
commonplaces for some little time, each on guard. Rutledge, without a
thought of Doctor Martin or the negro quartette, formed all of his
speeches for the ear of a woman who had mocked his love; while Elise
talked only for the man who had written the article in the _Chicago
American_. She saw the change in his manner, in his polite aloofness,
his insincere, careless pleasantries.
"It is delightfully kind of you, Miss Phillips, to come over and give
Washington some of those thrills with which you have favoured
Cleveland."
"What is the answer?" asked Elise blankly.
"My meaning is no riddle surely," said Rutledge. "The Cleveland
newspaper reporters have taught us to believe that you are the centre of
interest in that city and that, as one signing himself 'Q' wrote in
yesterday's _Journal_,--something to the effect that you radiate a sort
of three-syllable waves which make the younger men to thrill and the old
beaux to take a new lease on life. When I read that, I could see a lot
of small boys crowding around an electric machine, all wanting to get a
touch of the current but fearful of being knocked endways."
"Now diagnose the form of your dementia," said the girl. "You not only
read but you _believe_ the statements of the penny-a-liners. Your case
is hopeless."
"I must read somewhat of such things--to know my craft. I must believe
somewhat of them--to respect my craft."
"Is either knowledge or respect necessary, Mr. Rutledge? The craft is
admitted; but I had thought the purpose of all this craft was the
penny-a-line,--not knowledge or truth--which are not only incidental but
often unwelcome. Why read or believe the line after the cent has been
paid?"
"You are unmerciful to us, Miss Phillips. It is true every news item of
interest has its money value for a newspaper man, but you must
understand that we try to use them honestly and say no more than we
feel--often far less than we feel."
Rutledge's manner was serious when he had finished; and Elise, feeling
sure that the same incident was in his mind as in hers, had it on her
tongue's end to reply with spirit and point, when he continued lightly:
"But that is shop. It is good of you to come over now and gradually
accustom us to those Q-waves instead of giving us the sudden full
current when Colonel Phillips rents the White House. You will not care
if some few become immune before that time, for there will be no end of
rash youths to get tangled up with the wires."
Elise had not been a woman if Rutledge's impersonal "we" and "us" and
suggestion of persons immune to her charms had not piqued her. He need
not put his change of heart so bluntly, she thought. Yet what incensed
her was not the loss of his love, but that that love had been so poor
and frail a thing.
"I am glad you guarantee a full supply of the raw material, Mr.
Rutledge. It is a very interesting study, I think, to watch the effect
of the--current--on youths of different temperaments: on the
black-haired, black-eyed one who raves and swears his love--to two women
in the same month; or the light-haired, blue-eyed one who laughs both
while the current is on and when it is off; or the red-headed lover who
will not take 'no' for an answer; or the gray-eyed, brown-haired man who
would appear indifferent while his heart is consuming with a passion
that changes not even when hope is gone. I will depend on you to see
that they all come along, Mr. Rutledge--even to that young Congressman
over there who is so devoted to Lola," she added in an undertone, "if he
can be persuaded to change his court."
"Oh, he will come. His present devotion does not signify. There is
nothing true but Heaven," Rutledge replied, not to be outdone in
cynicism by this young woman who had quite taken his breath away with
her impromptu classification of lovers. His own hair was black and his
eyes, like hers, were gray; and he saw she was making sport of him under
both categories and yet betraying not her real thought in the slightest
degree.
"Beware, Mr. Rutledge. Only woman may change her mind. Men must not
usurp our prerogative."
"True," said Rutledge; "but a man does not know his mind or his heart
either till he's forty. He is not responsible for the guesses he makes
before that time. After that, he knows only what he does _not_ want
which is much; and, if undisturbed, can enjoy a negative consistency and
content."
"I may not defend the sex against such an able and typical
representative," said Elise as the diners arose.
Neither of these wholesome-minded young people had any taste for such a
fictitious basis of conversation; but each was on the defensive against
the supposed attitude of the other, and the moment their thoughts went
outside conventional platitudes they were given an unnatural and cynical
twist. Both felt a sense of relief when the evening was past. But
despite this condition, which prevailed during Elise's visit, Rutledge
could not put away the desire to see as much of her as an assumption of
indifference would permit, if only with the unformulated hope that he
might catch unawares if but for a moment the unstudied good camaraderie
and congenial spirit which had won his heart on the St. Lawrence. But
the sensitive consciousness of one or the other ever had been present to
exorcise the natural spirit from their conversations.
Rutledge lived bravely up to his ideas of what a proper pride demanded
of him, but his assumption of indifference was sorely tried from their
first meeting at Senator Ruffin's. The mischief began with Elise's
offhand little discourse on the colour of eyes and hair as indicia of
the traits and fates of lovers--particularly with her statement that a
red-headed man will not take a woman's "no" for an answer. The point in
that which irritated the cuticle of Mr. Rutledge's indifference was that
Mr. Second Lieutenant Morgan had a head of flame.
Now man--natural man--usually has the intelligence to know when a thing
is beyond his reach, and the philosophy to content himself without it.
He rejoices also in his neighbour's successes. But natural man, with
all his intelligence and all his philosophy and all his brotherly love,
cannot look with patience or self-deceit upon another's success or
probable success where he himself, striving, has failed. In the whole
realm of human experience there are exceptions to this rule perhaps; but
in the tropical province of Love there is none. There a man may
conclude that the woman he wants would not be good for him, even
perforce may decide he loves her not: but the merest suggestion of
another man as a probable winner will surely bring his decision up for
review--and always to overrule it. So with Rutledge: from the moment of
Elise's unstudied remark he conceded to his own heart that his
indifference was the veriest sham and pretence--while still a pretence
necessary to his self-respect.
*CHAPTER X*
Hayward Graham, with an honourable discharge from the service of the
United States buttoned up in his blouse, was taking a look at Washington
before going back to re-enlist. He liked the army life, with all its
restrictions; and having by his intelligence and aptitude attained the
highest non-commissioned rank, he was optimistic enough to believe he
could win a commission before another term of enlistment expired. In
this hope he was not without a fair idea of the obstacle which his
colour placed in the path of his ambition; but in weighing his chances
he counted much on the friendliness of the newly inaugurated executive
for the negro race generally, and most of all on the President's
according his deserts to a man who had saved his life. He would keep
his identity in that respect a secret till the time was ripe, so that
the President's sense of obligation, if it existed, might not be dulled
by the granting of any premature favours--and then he would see whether
gratitude would make a man do justice.
He had more than a month yet in which to re-enlist without loss of rank
or pay, and his visit to Washington was intended to be short, as he had
several other little picnics planned with which to fill out his
vacation. He had been there ten days or more and he had walked and
looked and lounged till he was thoroughly tired of the city and was
decided to leave on the morrow.
But that last afternoon he saw Helen Phillips. Her carriage was driven
slowly across the sidewalk in front of him to enter the White House
grounds. The sudden quickening of his pulses at sight of her was
unaccountable to him. His gaze followed her as she went away from him,
and for the first time in months he remembered in dumb pain he was a
negro. He tried to separate the thought of his blood from his thought of
the young woman, and to put the first and its unpleasantness out of his
mind while he enjoyed the latter and its association with his college
victory and his patriotic enthusiasms: but he could not think of her
without that indefinable and subconscious heartache.
When he came to his lodgings and opened up the afternoon paper, the only
item among all the notes of interest that had the power to catch or hold
his thought for a moment was a brief statement to the effect that the
veteran White House coachman was dead. Hayward sat and turned this over
in his mind a few minutes and then asked himself "Why not?"
Next morning he applied for the vacant position of coachman to the
President. With the purpose to conceal his identity during his little
adventure, as he thought of it, he gave only his Christian names: John
Hayward. With similar purpose he had dressed himself in civilian
clothes; but these could not conceal his magnificent lines, and, though
another employee had been given the dead coachman's place, Hayward's
fine appearance was so much in his favour that he was engaged as footman
on trial. This was really better suited to his wishes than the other.
He had not foregone his army ambition in a night, but neither had he
been able to resist the temptation to spend a short time--the remainder
of his furlough at least--where he could see something of the young
woman who was so closely associated in his mind with the events in his
life that were worth while.
Hayward was not in love with Helen Phillips in any sense--at least not
in the ordinary sense; for that undefined pain, a dumb monitor of the
impossible, kept him hedged away from that. On the other hand, to his
mite of natural feeling of inferiority was added the respect for rank
and dignity which his army life had hammered into him; and his attitude
toward her was the devotion which a loyalist peasant soldier might have
for the daughter of his king. He wished to be near her, to serve her;
and he counted himself fortunate that this opportunity had come to him.
--And a superb footman he made, having every aptitude and manner both of
mind and body for form and show; and being relieved of any humiliation
of spirit by his secret feeling that he had set himself to guard and
serve a crown princess.
A superb footman he made--and a new-rich Pittsburger offered him double
wages to enter his service. The sneer with which Hayward told him that
he was not working for money ever will be a riddle to that Pittsburg
brain.
A superb footman he made; and with the added distinction of the
President's livery he always drew attention and comment. The veteran
Senator Ruffin was entertaining a few friends with reminiscences once
when Hayward passed. One of the party said: "Look at that footman.
Phillips has a fine eye for form, hasn't he?"
"Yes," Senator Ruffin answered, "if he saw him before he employed him,
which he very likely did not.
"But do you know," he went on, "I never see that nigger but I think of
John Hayward of whose last speech in Congress I was telling some of you
yesterday. The nigger has his figure and carriage, even the set and toss
of his head, about everything save his colour. The first time I saw him
get down from the Phillips' carriage I thought of John Hayward, who is
dead these fifty years.
"There was a man for you, gentlemen. No more knightly spirit was ever
carried in a kinglier figure of a man. He was just out of college when
I was a boy, but I can remember that even then John Hayward was a toast
and a young man of mark down in Carolina. Our fathers' plantations
adjoined, and he was the first man that ever stirred in my boyish heart
the sentiment of hero-worship. The Haywards were men of note in my
State in that day as in this, and young John Hayward's future was as
brilliant and well-assured as wealth, fine family, abounding talent,
high purpose and personal force of character could make it."
--"But we lost him. A former half-Spanish, half-devil overseer on his
father's plantation, who had been discharged because of his cruelty and
general wickedness, had bought a small farm near the elder Hayward's
place, and was trying to establish himself as a land and slave holder.
This overseer came back from one of his periodical trips bringing with
him one of the likeliest mulatto girls, as I remember it now, that I
ever saw. All the neighbours knew he could have no good purpose in
buying her, for he needed no house-girl to keep dressed up in calico as
he began to keep her. It was but a few days before reports of his
terrible cruelty to her began to be circulated by both negroes and white
people, who heard her screams as he whipped her day and night.
"Late one afternoon, a week perhaps after he had brought her home, John
Hayward and Dick Whitaker were riding through the overseer's farm and
heard the girl scream. John, who was acquainted with the situation,
said, 'Come on, Dick, let's go up and stop that;' and put his horse at
the little gate and was pounding on the overseer's door before Dick
could reply.
"The sound of blows ceased and the overseer came and opened the door,
revealing the girl crouched down on the floor moaning and sobbing. When
the slave-driver saw it was John his eyes snapped in wrath.
"'What do you want?' he demanded.
"'I want you to quit whipping that nigger,' said John.
"'You go to hell,' retorted the overseer. 'I'll whip my slaves whenever
they won't work like I--'
"'Oh, master, I work, I work,' protested the girl to John.
"'Shut up! you--' began the overseer.
"'Yes, I know you work,' said John to the girl; and he turned to the
man, 'and I know--everybody knows--what your purpose is, you fiend! My
God, it is crime enough for such as you to own the bodies of women
without your tearing their souls!'
"'Get off my land, damn you!' ordered the overseer; and then, as if to
show his contempt for Hayward and Whitaker, he turned again to begin
flogging the cowering girl, saying: 'She's my property, and the law
gives me the right to make her obey!'
"'Stop!' thundered John, laying his hand on his pistol as the
slave-driver raised his arm to strike. 'You son of hell! The man who
puts the weight of his hand on a woman, even his wife, to make her obey
his passions, deserves to die!'
"Whitaker said it was all over before he could slide from his horse.
The overseer struck the girl a vicious cut as John was speaking, and his
whip was descending again when John's pistol flashed and the brute
dropped to the floor with a ball through his brain...."
[Illustration: "HIS WHIP WAS DESCENDING AGAIN WHEN JOHN'S PISTOL
FLASHED."]
"That was why my State lost John Hayward," the Senator continued after a
pause. "It was seen at once that he must not come to trial. While the
plea of self-defence can always be set up, the fact that John had killed
the overseer in his own house and after being ordered out, would have
made the law quite too risky. But beyond that it would have been
necessary, in order that the jury's sympathy might override the law, to
make such a presentation of the proper limitations, and the abuses and
horrors, of slave management as would be clearly inimical, if not
actually dangerous, to public order and safety.
"So the State lost John Hayward," the Senator rambled on. "He exiled
himself less for his own safety than for the sake of a system for which
he had no sympathy, but in which seemed to be bound up the peace and
happiness, the very existence, of his people.... He went away, but the
shadow of the Black Peril was upon his life to the end.... He went to
Massachusetts, located in Boston, and began to practise law. He was
successful from the beginning, though he always spent everything he
made. He married a most lovable and beautiful woman of the finest
family, and life again promised all he had once seemingly lost.... He
had been in Congress two terms when I was first elected to the House.
Mrs. Hayward was the most gracious lady I ever knew, and they made my
first years here at Washington altogether enjoyable, for they knew
everybody that was worth knowing and were great entertainers. I remember
that as a young bachelor Congressman I used to think that if I only had
John Hayward's constituency and a wife the equal of his in beauty,
intelligence and diplomacy, I could be President without trouble.... We
served together in Congress till the beginning of the Great War. It was
just before the outbreak that that fateful shadow fell again upon him.
His son--named for him: John Graham Hayward--a boy that I had watched
grow up from a lad and loved as my own, was a student at Harvard and had
acquired many ideas of which his father had no knowledge, and which
would have startled him--with all his well-known anti-slavery
sentiments. The boy's mother looked on the negro race purely from a
missionary standpoint, and had never given a serious thought, I am sure,
to the negro's social status.
"You perhaps may imagine the shock that came to John Hayward on going
home late one afternoon to dinner to find already seated at his table
his wife, his son, and a young negro about his son's age whom the boy
had brought in to dine with him.... John told me about it a few months
afterward, and even then, with all his heart-break, his eyes would blaze
with an insane anger as he thought of that nigger at his table.... He
looked at the three for a moment; and then he said things that blasted
his home. He kicked the nigger incontinently out of his house, and was
beside himself in the furious wrath he hurled upon his wife and son.
The boy resented his outburst, especially because of its cruel effect
upon the mother. The father in uncontrollable anger at his son's
resentful opposition ordered him to leave his roof, and told him that he
was unworthy of the name of Hayward and had disgraced it beyond repair.
The boy replied with spirit that he would not carry the name of Hayward
away from the house, but would renounce both the house and it then,
there and for ever, and walked out of the door.... On his knees did
John implore his wife's forgiveness, and receive it; but neither father
nor mother ever saw the boy again.... John tried, I think, to learn his
whereabouts, and was driven to desperation as he met failure at every
point. The moment the call came for troops, he resigned his seat in
Congress, volunteered in a Massachusetts regiment and was killed at Bull
Run....
"As he was lost to his native State, so he was lost to the
nation--because the baleful shadow of the Black Peril seemed to be upon
his life.... Heaven save my people--nine-tenths of whom, like him,
would deal with the negro in justice and righteousness and
helpfulness--from the stress and the blood of an open conflict against
social equality with the negro race, and from the further unspeakable,
unthinkable horror of defeat in such a conflict if it shall come upon
them."
*CHAPTER XI*
There can be no doubt Hayward found scant recompense for his first
month's service as part of the White House _menage_. The money
consideration of that service, as he told the gentleman from Pittsburg,
he valued as nothing; and yet it was the money that held him over beyond
the time limit he had set for his little adventure and his return to the
army. He put his eyes on Helen but twice during the month, and that
only for a moment, and he had taken his leave of Washington in less than
a fortnight if his training in the service had not accustomed him to
bear monotony with patience.
Before his time was up, however, a letter from his mother told him that
she was hardly able longer to bear the burden of her own support or even
to supplement his contributions by any appreciable efforts of her own.
Too long and too closely indeed had she striven in his behalf, and the
overwork was demanding its pound of flesh in severe and relentless
compensation. Hayward thought he saw the hand of a kindly Providence in
having already provided him with a wage sufficient to keep both his
mother and himself from want--which his soldier's pay would not have
accomplished; and he postponed his military ambition and brought her to
Washington, where he might look after her comfort more carefully and
less expensively. Very grateful was he for an opportunity to care and
provide for her whose devotion he had always known, but the heroism and
stress of whose struggles and the wonders of whose money-working he was
beginning to appreciate only since leaving the all-providing care with
which she and the quartermaster had hedged him about from the morning of
his birth till ninety days ago.
While his intelligence, his spirit, his cultivated ideals would not let
him rest in entire content as a menial--a footman to however high a
personage--Hayward yet found his first real basis of self-respect in the
consciousness of his responsibility for his mother's support and
happiness, and in the feeling that he was equal to the duty so plainly
laid upon him. However he had no thought but that his present work was
temporary; and, to satisfy his taste for mental recreation and
improvement as well as to have a definite purpose in his mental
pursuits, he began in his spare hours to study the books that pertained
to his proposed life-work as an officer of the army.
His first summer in Washington added no little to his stock of that
knowledge which men acquire not out of books but at first hand. He had
seen as an onlooker something of life on both sides of the earth, and
had acquired more of the spirit of a cosmopolite than nine-tenths of the
statesmen who foregathered in the nation's capital to formulate
world-policies: and yet of the actual conditions of life, of living,
which affected him as a bread-winner, as a social unit, as one having a
part in the Kingdom of the Spirit, he was at the very beginning of
knowledge when he donned the White House livery. His effervescence of
interest in Helen Phillips in great measure subsided, naturally, among
the many new problems that came to meet him, and with his frequent
commonplace beholding of her.
He soon was brought to realize that rigid limitations were upon him not
only by the colour-line which was drawn straight as a knife's edge from
top to bottom of Washington, but by fences and barriers inside the
confines of his own race against which he stumbled repeatedly and
blindly before he dreamed they existed. On several occasions he had met
with slight rebuffs in his friendly advances to persons of his own
colour, and ascribed them to ill-temper or uncouth manners; but he
finally received a jolt which waked him up--in this fashion:
He dropped in at the most imposing negro church in the city one Sunday
evening, and heard a young woman of comely face and person, dressed in
perfect taste, sing a solo which, in the sentiment and the purity and
pathos of the singer's voice, met his idea of all that is exquisite in
song. When the service was finished he spoke to a well-groomed man past
middle age who had sat beside him.
"The young lady who sang did it with marvellous taste and beauty. She
knows both how to sing and what to sing; and since I'm at it I may as
well say that she's no-end good-looking."
The older man could not conceal his satisfaction and interest, for he
had expended many dollars on the singer.
"I'm delighted you think so," he returned. "My daughter has had great
advantages and she ought to sing well."
"Your daughter?" said Hayward. "You should be very proud of her. Will
you not introduce me to her? I'd like to thank her for my share. I am
John Hayward"--and feeling some identification was necessary--"footman
at the White House."
"Excuse me, suh," said the other, with but a very slightly overdone
manner; "we don't introduce strangers to our families--specially
footmen."
The father's manner was not intended to be offensive, but his answer
verily exploded in Hayward's face. Thanks to the younger man's training
he did not wince or change countenance, but he was so bursting full of
wrath that he never knew whether any further word was spoken between
them. He moved with the throng toward the door, but stepped into a
vacant pew for fear he would run over some one in furious impatience.
True it was that in his attempt to volunteer three years before, he had
been roughly impressed with the idea that there was some recognized
difference between a white man and a negro, and in his association with
the rough troopers of the 10th Cavalry he had become in a measure
converted to the correctness of the proposition generally: "but," he
thought in infuriated scorn, "I'm as good as any _nigger_ that ever drew
breath! A footman, am I?"--and he threw back his head with pride as he
recalled his answer to the man from Pittsburg--but dropped it again with
some humility at the thought that he was now a footman for the money it
brought. At the door he spoke to an usher.
"Who was the young woman who sang?"
"Miss Porter--old Henry Porter's daughter."
"So the old scoundrel is Washington's richest negro," he thought.
"Well, his manners and his money are not well matched. I'll even the
score with him yet."
After the first heat of his resentment was off he admitted that his
request to be presented to the negro magnate's daughter was abrupt,
informal and unwarranted, perhaps, but he argued and insisted that old
Porter ought to have seen that his unconventional request was an
impulsive outcome of his admiration for the girl's singing, and at least
have been a little more gracious in his refusal. No, he would not
forgive the manner of it; and when he remembered the song and its
delight to his senses he found it about as hard to forgive the refusal
itself.
Not in three years, except for an occasional moment of patriotic uplift,
had his soul had a taste of something to drink--till he heard that song.
His spiritual sense had virtually lain dormant those three years in the
monotonous round of his world-circling outpost duty. In successive
enlistments he might indeed altogether have stifled it, while perfecting
his intelligence, courage, strength and skill as a soldier: for the only
possibility--and there is only possibility, no certainty or even
probability--of spiritual uplift incident to the profession of arms, is
that of developing a surpassing, unselfish love of the flag. This
sentiment in its pure fulness of bloom is of the spirit, and is an
exalted virtue; but not all even of the heroes whose ashes the nations
keep have appropriated to their souls, untainted with selfish or fleshly
impulse, this the very flowering recompense of their travail and
heroism.
Hayward had enlisted at the bidding of the most admirable impulses and
had made an excellent soldier; but the monotonous round of garrison duty
after the brief war was ended had benumbed his purely patriotic motive,
and left only a great desire for personal advancement. In the dull
grind his very highest nature had become stagnated; and it was with the
joy of one first awakened to unforeseen possibilities that he felt
reawakened within him by that one song desires not of the flesh but of
the spirit so long stupefied and unfed.
As he became acutely conscious of his need in this behalf, he was more
seriously regretful than before that an acquaintance with the singer who
had revivified his finer sensibilities might not be had to satisfy in a
measure the need which her singing had recreated. Under the impulse of
such desires he set about seeking associates, friendships, wherefrom he
might appropriate to himself his God-given share in the kingdom of the
Mind. In his quiet and unobtrusive search for friends among his race
who would be congenial and satisfy the craving of his higher nature for
companionship, success came with starving sloth. Most of the negroes
with whom he came at first in contact were of an order of intelligence
so far below his own that they met not in any degree the demand from
within him, and the few that possessed the intelligence were so
unbearable in manner that he found little pleasure in them.
He had held aloof from the troopers of the 10th with the certain feeling
that they were below his type and below the type of the best negroes he
knew must exist somewhere: but he came to doubt the correctness of his
own estimate in his search for congenial spirits in Washington.
Educated negroes? Yes, there were many that had seen as much of the
schools as he, and more. Men of money? Yes, scores of negroes who
could buy him ten times over with a month's income. And yet it seemed
that he could not happen upon any in his limited and slowly growing
acquaintance who did not in some way offend his tastes.
*CHAPTER XII*
When the heat of summer came down upon Washington, President Phillips'
wife and daughters fled to the shades of the family summer home,
"Hill-Top," at Stag Inlet on Lake Ontario. There, in a roomy, rambling
old house set back on the low wooded bluffs which enclose in more than
half-circle the peaceful little bay, he and his wife and daughters, with
a few congenial but not too closely situated neighbours, passed the hot
days of summer, and stayed on usually into the red-splashed autumn, when
the little cove put on its most inviting dress and brewed its most
exhilarating air.
It was Hayward's fortune to be carried to the Inlet with the family
carriage and horses for the summer outing. He was happy enough to be
quit of brick walls and asphalt pavements for a time, and to get into
God's out-of-doors, for whose open air he had become so hungry in a few
short months. His duties were not very onerous, and he had much time to
employ himself with his own pleasures. One form which this took was in
learning to handle the various kinds of diminutive water-craft with
which his master's family and their neighbours helped to while away
their summer vacations. Before the summer was over he was a fairly good
fisherman, a safe skipper on any small sail-craft used in the inlet, and
a devoted and skilful driver of the gasoline, naphtha and electric
launches of which the cottagers had quite a number. He was quick and
adept at any and everything that came to his hand, and so careful and
entertaining of the children of the near-by families whom he met and
amused when they came down to play by the water's edge, that he came to
be quite in demand as one servant who "knew how" and could be depended
upon in any circumstances.
Helen Phillips was still a girl, natural, ingenuous, untouched by pride
or affectation. She looked forward with some zest of anticipation to
the time of her debut two winters to come; but was well content to have
that time approach without haste. She evinced much interest in the
plans that her mother and Elise made and re-made, discarded and revised
for the social campaign of the next winter, and many lively and original
suggestions did she make offhand and unasked. But as for her own
personal plans she gave them no thought a day's time ahead. She was
quite willing to receive her pleasures in the order chance ordained.
"I am so glad to get away from Washington and back to Hill-Top," she
wrote to her Cleveland chum. "It was awful dull down there. Five whole
days in the week I had to spend trying to catch the style dispensed at a
Finishing School for Young Ladies there, where it is possible to take
lady-like sips and nibbles at literature and music and art and things
like that, but where the real purpose seems to be to teach young women
to descend from a carriage gracefully. Just think! Another whole year
of finishing touches will have to be applied to me before Miss Eugenia
can in good conscience certify that I may be depended upon properly to
arrange myself upon a chair in case it ever becomes necessary for me to
sit down."
Helen's tastes were along lines widely different from the Finishing
School's curriculum. She preferred above all things else a talk or a
walk, a ride or a romp with her father. She had no brother to share her
pranks and enthusiasms, her little sister Katherine was much too young
to be companionable, and her father was her necessary and natural ally.
Him did she not only love, but him did she glorify. Tall and straight,
seemingly lacking in flesh but tough as whip-cord, with a patrician
face, prematurely gray hair and moustache, Helen thought he was the
model of all manly beauty. None in life or in fiction was to her
thinking so brave or strong or good as he. Being in her esteem strong in
body, unerring in wisdom, pure in purpose, fearless in spirit, he
touched the periphery of her ideal of manhood at every point. Her mother
and Elise often were amused at her headlong championship of him upon the
slightest intimation of criticism, and rightfully were astonished at her
information upon public questions as they affected or were connected
with his political fortunes or good name. Helen devoured the newspapers
(a limited number it is true) with no other purpose, seemingly, than to
know what people said of him. Of those that favoured him and his
policies she thought well, and mentally commended their good taste and
excellent sense: but those that criticized! Woe to them had she had
power to utter condemnation!
* * * * *
One morning in midsummer Hayward brought the saddle-horses to the door
for the father and daughter to take a canter and prove Helen's new mount
before the mother and Elise were up. They were about ready to be off
when a telegram was brought out to Mr. Phillips by the operator who had
an office in the house.
"I was ordered not to wake you, sir, but to give it to you at once when
you were up."
Mr. Phillips read it over slowly. Then he turned to Helen.
"Well, little girl, you must miss your ride again. I'm sorry, but it
can't be helped."
"Oh, no, papa! Let the country go play till we come back. You promised
me this ride sure when we missed the last one."
"Can't do it, little woman. Take the horses back, Hayward," he said,
and turned to follow the telegraph man. But seeing the great
disappointment in Helen's face, he called to the man.
"Here, Hayward. Get into a proper coat and on my horse and see that
Miss Helen has her gallop round the Inlet and back without damage. Can
you ride?"
"Yes, sir," answered Hayward.
"I thought so. You seem to be able to do everything else. Now you are
fixed up, old girl," he said as he chucked Helen under the chin. "Don't
let the mare all the way out. You don't know her yet,"--and he was
gone.
Most of Helen's pleasure in the ride was lost with her father's absence,
and yet there was much enjoyment in it for her. She felt the liberty to
choose her own road, and decided to do a little exploring. She set out
at a good canter, with Hayward swinging along a protective distance in
the rear; and with the exercise her spirits rose and she gave herself up
to the full joy of it. She forgot her father's injunction and sent the
mare along several stretches of road with little restraint.
Hayward, on Mr. Phillips' favourite saddler, was having the time of his
life, and for himself wished nothing better than that his young mistress
would keep up the pace; though he did not altogether approve of her
speeding down-hill. He did not like the way the mare managed her feet
on the down grades. When Helen pulled up to ask him where a certain
road led, he spoke, unconsciously with decision, out of his experience,
but with all deference, and said:
"Pardon me, Miss Helen, but it is a little dangerous the speed with
which you ride down-hill. I'm afraid your mount is not so sure-footed
as she might be.... This road you speak of leads out by Mr. Radwine's
cottage into the Lake Drive. It is worse riding than those you have
tried."
Helen thought Hayward's apprehensions were creatures of his discomfort
in keeping pace with her, and she was nothing more than amused at his
attempts to limit the speed to his abilities under pretence of care for
her safety. She thought she would give him one more shaking-up to tell
her father about--and plunged off down the Radwine road, leaving him to
follow as best he might.
Hayward had passed over that cross-road but a few days earlier and he
knew its present condition. Helen heard him call to her, but her spirit
of mischief was fully aroused at the thought of his bumping along after
her, and she gave the mare free rein.
They were going down a longer and steeper hill than any they had passed,
near the foot of which the summer rains had washed out the roadway.
Hayward, knowing of this dangerous place ahead, and seeing that it was
impossible to stop the young woman in his front before she reached it,
sent Prince William after the mare under pressure of the spur and with
the hope to come up with her in time. He arrived on the very moment of
fate. The thundering horse tore alongside the flying mare just as she
reached the washed-out road. Either through feminine excitability at
being overtaken or because of the defective foot action Hayward had
noted, the mare, when she struck the rough road, stumbled and went down.
In that instant the open-eyed Prince William cleared the washout with a
magnificent stride, and the ex-cavalryman swept his right arm about
Helen and lifted her out of the saddle.
Slowly reining in his horse, Hayward brought him to a standstill and
gently lowered his astonished young mistress to the ground. She was
almost too overcome to stand, and walked unsteadily a few steps before
she recovered herself. Hayward had thrown himself off Prince William
and was leading him back down the road to where the mare had fallen.
She had already picked herself up, minus a saddle and plus a few
bruises, and was standing in the road comparatively unhurt but shaking
as with an ague.
Hayward approached her quietly and she came eagerly up to him as if to
escape from her fears. He looked her over carefully, and finding no
serious damage done, set himself about brushing the dust from her with
wisps of weeds and grass. Helen came down while he worked with the
mare, and watched him some minutes without speaking. She hardly could
think of anything civil to say. She knew that she had disobeyed orders
and that he had warned her--and that made her angry. The very silence
of the man became irritating to her.
When he had done all he could to put the mare in order he picked up
Helen's saddle and started to put it on, but stopped to ask whether he
should exchange mounts with her.
"No," his young mistress replied. "I've ridden her here and I will ride
her home."
The negro put her saddle on the mare while the girl looked on. When he
came to buckle the girth he found that the leather tongue was torn off.
He lengthened the girth on the other side and proceeded to bore with his
pocket-knife a new hole in the short broken tab. Helen's eyes fell at
length on the knife. She looked at it uncertainly a few moments, and
then lost interest in everything else. Finally she could keep quiet no
longer.
"Where did you get that knife, Hayward?" she asked with something like
accusation in her voice.
"Miss Helen, I got this knife in--that is, this knife belongs to--"
"Wait a moment," interrupted Helen. "Let me see it.... Yes, it's the
same. I gave my father this knife on his birthday four years ago. I
had the carving done at Vantine's. How long have you had it?"
"Miss Helen, I have had it long before I entered your father's service.
I--"
"Yes, I know; but just how long have you had it, Hayward?"
"Well, Miss Helen, to be accurate, I've had it three years and--four
months."
"Hayward, were you ever in the army--the cavalry--the 10th Cavalry?"
"Yes, Miss Helen."
"You were in the battle of Valencia?"
"Yes, Miss Helen."
"You took this knife from an officer whose life you had saved, didn't
you?"
"Yes, Miss Helen."
"Papa says the negro trooper saved his life and stole his knife."
"But I did not steal the knife, Miss Helen--I did not know I had it till
two months after the battle, when they gave me back my clothes in the
hospital. There was--"
"That stealing part is one of papa's jokes, Hayward. But you didn't
know it was papa, did you?"
"Yes, Miss Helen. I knew him when I saw him fall."
"What? And you've never let him know? Why have you kept it secret?"
Hayward did not answer. She continued.
"He would be very grateful. He does not know who it was, for I've heard
him say so. All that he knows is that it was a trooper of the 10th."
She stopped and waited for an answer, but he stood in silent indecision
as to what he should say to her. If he should now disclose himself the
President would doubtless weaken the force of his obligation by giving
him in token of his gratitude some appointment which not only would fall
far short of the lieutenant's commission to which he aspired, but also
would remove him from the young woman who in the last minute had become
so simply and earnestly sympathetic in her manner. He weighed the pros
and cons quickly.
"Why haven't you told him?" persisted Helen.
"I have preferred not, Miss Helen. In fact there are reasons why I
cannot--must not--now."
"What reasons?" demanded Helen.
"Please, Miss Helen, I cannot tell you--nor him."
"You are not ashamed of it, surely?"
"No, Miss Helen. I would do it again this morning--willingly--at any
cost to myself. But do not ask me to tell of it."
Helen regarded him narrowly for a minute in silence.
"And you kept me from--death--also. Am I not to tell him of that
either?"
"Please no, Miss Helen. If I have done you a service and you think it
worth reward, I ask that you repay me by telling no one that I am either
your father's rescuer or your own."
Mystery always annoyed Helen unbearably, and she looked at Hayward as if
uncertain whether to peremptorily demand his secret or to inform him she
herself would acquaint her father with the facts he sought to conceal.
Hayward saw something of her purpose in her eyes, and pleaded with her.
"Miss Helen, I beg you. My reasons are imperative--and honourable.
When the time comes that I may I will gladly tell your father, but if
now you would do me the greatest favour you will say nothing of it."
While Hayward was speaking it occurred to Helen that she willingly would
have her father remain in ignorance of her disobedience and reckless
riding and its consequent narrowly averted disaster. This
consideration, together with Hayward's earnestness in his mystifying
request, finally prevailed upon her.
"Very well, Hayward, if you insist. You only will be the loser. It is
puzzling to me.... But tell me about your rescue of papa."
Hayward, glad to buy her silence, gave her a modest account of his very
creditable bit of heroism, and in response to Helen's interested
questioning he was still recounting incidents of the battle and his
hospital experiences when they reached the Lake Drive and quickened
their pace into a fast canter for home. They arrived and alighted and
Hayward got the horses away to the stable without any one's seeing the
dust-splashed mare.
Helen could hardly contain herself with her knowledge, but she was as
scrupulously honest as she was impulsive, and stood by her promise not
to divulge the footman's secret. She vainly tried to imagine some
satisfactory explanation of his strange request, but could conceive none
that seemed plausible. She finally came to believe that he was a heroic
soul whom some implacable misfortune had denied the right to the fruits
of his heroism, and in her heart she pitied him.
Hayward was not certain just how far his young mistress credited him
with good and honest reasons for wishing his identity to remain
undisclosed to her father. He feared that she must think any reason
inadequate. He was very much afraid that in all her interested
inquiries she would discover that he was not using his real name. If
she became possessed of that knowledge she doubtless would think the
circumstance sufficiently suspicious to warrant her laying all the facts
before her father. This matter of his name perplexed him no little. He
gladly would have Helen acquainted with the facts relating to the
crimson pennant, and yet he must guard against it. That would reveal
his masquerade, as she certainly would remember the name of the Harvard
man who had saved his college from defeat. He heartily regretted the
excess of caution which had made him place himself in this dilemma.
* * * * *
In the long and lazy summer days that came after that morning's ride
Helen was given without seeking it some little opportunity to question
the footman about the ever interesting matter of her father's rescue and
allied incidents of battle and campaign. Her father insisted, on a few
occasions when he could not accompany her, on her riding alone, with
Hayward as a guard. In her sailing parties, also, in which Hayward was
usually skipper of sailboat or launch, she was thrown occasionally with
him alone before she had picked up, or after she had dropped off, her
guests at the several landings around the Inlet.
She had a child's interest in listening to the ex-trooper's
reminiscences of the battle of Valencia, the Venezuelan campaign, and of
his world's-end following of the flag. The footman, never for a moment
lacking in deference or presuming upon the liberty of speech allowed
him, was an entertaining talker. He had used his eyes and his ears in
his journeyings through the earth, and the lively imagination
characteristic of his race and his negro knack of mimicry, together with
his intelligence and his ability to use the English language with
precision and skill, made him a raconteur of fascinating charm. Helen
quite often wished to acquaint her father and mother and Elise with some
of the things he recounted to her, but the tales were always so mixed in
with his experiences as a soldier that she could not re-relate them
without breaking her promise to respect his secret....
And thus the summer days dragged slowly to an end, with Helen and her
footman becoming at odd times better acquainted with the thoughts and
personal views each of the other on a wider and ever wider range of
subjects. Helen was too unsophisticated in her thought to notice
anything unusual in a lackey's being possessed of Hayward's intelligence
and ease of manner. The ever present mystery of his refusal to exploit
his heroic deeds dwarfed or overshadowed all other questions that might
have arisen in her mind as to anything out of the ordinary in him. She
did believe that he was suffering some sort of martyrdom in silence, and
her womanly sympathy grew stronger as she knew more of him. Not for a
moment was the relation of mistress and man lost sight of by either; but
the revelation of the real woman and man, each to other, went steadily
on.
*CHAPTER XIII*
The era of good feeling seemed to have been ushered in along with Mr.
Phillips' inauguration. The country was prosperous to a degree. Labour
was receiving steady employment and a fair wage and uttered no
complaint. Capital was adding surplus to per cent., and was content.
The Cuban skirmish with Spain and the trial-by-battle with Germany had
cemented again in blood the sections divided by the Great War--so
closely indeed that nobody, not even Presidents on hand-shaking junkets,
thought to mention it. Any sporadic "waver of the bloody shirt" was
considered an anachronism and laughed at as a harmless idiot. It was
true that the negro question, being present in the flesh and incapable
of banishment, was yet a momentous problem: but it was considered in
cooler temper as being either a national or a local question--not
sectional in any sense.
President Phillips in his first message to Congress, as in his inaugural
address, felicitated his countrymen upon the unity of the American
people and the American spirit, and on both occasions gave a new
rhetorical turn and oratorical flourish to the statement that his father
was from Massachusetts and his mother a South Carolinian. In sections
of the South where his party was admittedly effete or undoubtedly
odorous he hesitated not to appoint to office men of political faith
radically differing from his own--and all good citizens applauded.
Partisanry was settling itself down for a good long sleep, and strife
had ceased. The lion and the lamb were lain down together, and there was
none that made afraid in all the holy mountain of American good-will and
fair prospect.
Into this sectionally serene and peaceful situation, which Mr. Phillips
deemed largely the result of his personal effort as a non-sectional
American executive, he deliberately or impulsively pitched an issue
which set one-third of his admiring countrymen by the ears.
The good commonwealth of Mississippi was in a state of upheaval. A
peaceable revolution was being attempted there which would have changed
the essential nature and purpose of the State government. Incited by the
wordy eloquence of a provincial governor, with a few scraps of
statistics gone mad, good men, honest men, men of intelligence were
seriously considering the proposition to so amend the State constitution
as to put upon the negro in his ignorance and poverty the whole burden
of his own education--by a division of the school fund between the races
in proportion to the taxes each paid to the State.
This reactionary and truly astonishing proposition of Governor
Wordyfellow was commonly known as the Wordyfellow Idea. It was giving
great concern to the sober statesmanship of the entire nation, North and
South--indeed greater concern to the thoughtful men of the South who
realized its momentous import, its far-reaching effect upon Southern
white people, than to the thoughtful outsiders who viewed it
philosophically as having a speculative interest but no actual part in
its settlement or effects.
The proposition to so divide the school funds indeed found its most
violent and active opposition, as it found its strongest advocates, not
only among the men of the South but even in the very State of
Mississippi itself. The fact soon developed that this was to be the
greatest political battle that was to be fought concerning the negro.
All prior conflicts had been white man against negro. This was white
man against white man, with the negro as an interested onlooker.
The lines were drawn roughly with the church, the schools and the
independent press allied against the politicians, the political press
and the less intelligent citizenship. Notable individual exceptions
there were to this alignment--which all men remember--but the line of
cleavage, taking it by and large, was as stated. Though the matter of
an actual constitutional revision was presented as yet only to the
people of Mississippi, the battle was being waged in serious purpose to
a no less actual finish in every State from the Potomac to the Rio
Grande.
It was into this situation, fraught with dire possibilities of course,
but full of promise to the negro's friends, that the new President
projected his impulsive and forceful personality. Anxious as always to
be in the fight and leader in the fight, he set about to devise some
plan for helping along the black man's cause. That he might do this
more intelligently he conferred often with his most trusted advisers.
It was on the occasion of the memorable Home-Coming Week at Cleveland in
191- that he held the famous conference which gave that great civic
celebration a fixed place in history. He stood loyally by his home city
in its effort to enjoy and advertise itself, for he betook himself and
family and several friends, including two members of his cabinet, away
from busiest Washington for two days, and opened up his Cleveland home
at great expense for that brief stay.
Doctor Woods, a negro of national reputation, also claimed Cleveland as
his birthplace, and he had journeyed thither from afar to swell the
throng of loyal sons of the city, and had brought with him Doctor
Martin, now a bishop of the A.M.E. Zion Church, to add dignity and
strength to the negro end of the programme. Meeting officially with
these two dignitaries of colour suggested to Mr. Phillips a discussion
of the Wordyfellow disturbance, and he called an impromptu consultation.
In between the review of a morning parade and luncheon, therefore, on
the second day of his stay, he sandwiched this hurried conference. At
it, beside Martin and Woods, were Secretary of the Navy Mackenzie, whose
wisdom seemed to cover all politics and statecraft, and the Secretary of
Agriculture, Baxter--himself a Mississippian, but thoroughly opposed to
the Mississippi governor's policy.
The conference, which was held at Mr. Phillips' home, rejoiced his
heart. He was pleased at the favourable reports which Bishop Martin and
Doctor Woods gave of the situation in the several Southern States. He
accepted with approval the suggestions of the sapient Mackenzie; and
when he saw with what earnestness and vigour and assured personal
knowledge of the situation Baxter was putting his energies into the
fight and predicting victory even in Mississippi, his enthusiasm knew no
bounds. The conference was of such interest that luncheon was announced
before a definite plan of action was threshed out.
"By George, I'm hungry as a wolf!" exclaimed Mr. Phillips. "Come along
to the dining-room, gentlemen, and we'll wind this thing up while we
replenish our stores."
While this invitation was quite unexpected by the bishop and Doctor
Woods, it completely confounded Secretary Baxter who was right in the
middle of a little speech when the interruption and invitation came. He
looked confused for a moment, and began mumbling some excuse as Mr.
Phillips held open the door and his other guests passed out into the
hall.
"Oh, you don't have to go," said Mr. Phillips. "Come on and finish up
your idea. I know you have no other engagement, for you were to lunch
with me to-day to discuss that Williams matter."
The Secretary of Agriculture saw he was caught, and his manner changed
in a moment as he decided to meet the issue squarely.
"You will please excuse me, Mr. President," he said formally and
finally.
"Why, Baxter, surely I do not have to explain to you that--"
"You certainly do not, Mr. President," interrupted the Secretary. "Good
morning, gentlemen,"--and he bowed himself out.
President Phillips turned in ill-restrained anger and followed his
guests to the dining-room. They found Mrs. Phillips and Helen awaiting
them. With these Mr. Mackenzie shook hands, and to them the President
introduced Doctor Woods. The bishop was already acquainted, and spoke
of the dinner at the Saratoga restaurant.
Mrs. Phillips had long been accustomed to the surprises her husband made
for her, and had too good control of her faculties to show any annoyance
on beholding her unexpected and unwelcome guests.
Any possible shade of restraint in her manner would not have been
noticed, however, in the general feeling of constraint which Mr.
Baxter's abrupt departure had left on Mr. Phillips and his other guests.
The host set himself to the task of throwing off this feeling by
plunging volubly into a resume of the discussion they had been having.
His vigour and enthusiasm were such that by their very physical force he
was bringing a wholesome situation to pass, when Elise came humming down
the hall with Lola DeVale, stopped short in the doorway--and turned
quickly back.
[Illustration: "ELISE ... STOPPED SHORT IN THE DOORWAY--AND TURNED
QUICKLY BACK."]
While there was nothing unusual or pointed in Elise's manoeuvre her
father felt and resented her protest. He talked away for a few minutes
in nervous hope that his supposition was wrong and that she would come
and bring Lola in to lunch. When she did not his choler rose at this
open mutiny in his own household, and he awkwardly tossed the ball of
conversation to Mackenzie and busied himself keeping his indignation
within bounds.
From this point the meal progressed uncertainly. In the midst of the
embarrassment of it all there was brought to the President a note, upon
opening which he read:
"SIR:--I have the honour to present my resignation as Secretary of
Agriculture, to take effect at the earliest moment you may be able to
relieve me of the duties of the office.
"With assurances of my highest consideration and sincerest good wishes
for yourself and the success of your administration, I am
"Your obedient servant,
"W. E. BAXTER."
At the bottom of the page there was added:
"P.S.--I am willing to assign any plausible reason for this resignation
that you may desire, or that may suggest itself to you as likely to
relieve you of any embarrassment as a result of it. W.E.B."
Mr. Phillips punctuated his first hasty perusal of the note with a snort
of contempt, and checked an outburst of sarcastic, wrathful comment to
read it over a second time. Fortunately at this moment Bishop Martin
and Doctor Woods rose and apologized for having to withdraw in order to
catch a train.
Their host was loth to have them go, and expressed regret that they had
not been able to arrive at some definite plan of campaign. He asked
that they inform him if they should come to Washington, so that he might
discuss the subject further with them. Expressing their great pleasure
that the chief executive took such a lively and intelligent interest in
the weal and progress of their race, the two negro worthies withdrew,
Mrs. Phillips dismissing them with a formal bow and smile and Helen,
following her father, giving them a cordial hand-shake as they retired.
When they had gone Mr. Phillips thrust the letter of resignation at
Mackenzie, and exploded:
"Mac, just read that! The provincial, patronizing, postscript-writing
popinjay! Could you have imagined the impudence of it! Does not wish
me to be embarrassed as a result of his quitting us--the conceited ass!
I wonder if he thinks I care a rap, or that the people care, for his
cheap little melodramatics. I might have known that it was too much to
have expected a sensible secretary from that cursed negro-phobia State!
But he was so strongly pressed for a cabinet appointment, and really did
appear to be such a strong fellow. I might have guessed his apparent
excellences were too good to be true! Oh, but the patronizing insolence
of his offer to hush it up for us! I swear it's unbearable. Damn the
superior high-and-mighty airs these Southerners assume! My mother was a
South Carolinian, but I can't feel a sympathetic tremor in my blood for
any such damnable bigotry. I'll give Mr. Baxter and all his hide-bound,
moss-backed, supercilious gang to know that this is one administration
that proposes to make a democratic government a reality in this
democratic country. A man shall be measured by the essential qualities
of manhood he possesses, and dealt with accordingly, whatever his
position, pull, size, sentiments, claims or colour! What do you think
of that infernal note?"
"He does show great consideration for us--distinguished consideration, I
may say. He will not tell it on us," sarcastically commented Mackenzie.
"The devil take his distinguished consideration!" snapped Mr. Phillips.
"I'll accept his little resignation before he can wink, and give the
papers a full statement of the circumstances just as they occurred. I'll
show the upstart what a small potato he is--damn his impudence! And
then just to think, Mac, of the inexpressible insult in refusing to
lunch with persons that I deem worthy to dine with my wife and
daughters! It really makes it almost too damnably personal to be
overlooked. He must understand that respectability, presentability,
acceptability, in my home is a matter that is as sacred to me as such
things are to him with all his Bourbon notions!--but thank God he may
understand also that such acceptability is based on true merit, and that
a man's colour has absolutely nothing to do with it.... Come along with
me to the library and we will accept this little resignation before it
gets cold, and have it at his hotel before he gets cold!"
*CHAPTER XIV*
Mrs. Phillips, ill at ease during the luncheon, had taken the
opportunity to retire offered by the departure of the negro guests, and
had taken Helen with her; but that young lady, feeling the electric
condition of the atmosphere and full of lively curiosity, had returned
to hover around the dining-room door and learn what all the row was
about. She heard her father's outburst with great interest--being no
little shocked at his sulphurous words, but no less deeply concerned at
the suggestion of embarrassment to him politically, and forcibly and
enthusiastically impressed with his fine scorn of subterfuge and manly
decision to fight out his battles in the open.
When President Phillips came in to dinner and asked for his daughters,
their mother told him Helen was in her room and Elise had gone driving
with Lola. "I did not like Elise's conduct at lunch. It was too
pointed, entirely too pointed. I shall talk to the young lady very
plainly."
"Now, Hayne, don't worry the child with this affair. It is bad enough
as it is. I hope--"
"Bad enough as it is! Why, one would think you wished to resign also.
Were you insulted, too?"
"Not insulted, Hayne; but ever since you sent me to the pinelands of
North Carolina that winter for Elise's throat I have not been able to
think of a negro as I did before--and Elise feels the same way, I know.
It is so plain down there: the negroes are so many and so--different. I
can't receive them with any sort of pleasure. Just think of what the
Southern papers will have to say. The awful things they said about your
negro quartette were almost unbearable, and I know that was mild to what
this will be. I do wish you had not brought them in to lunch, Hayne."
"Why, May, you are surely not going over against me with those
supercilious Southern fanatics?"
"Hayne! That is almost insulting. You know that I am for you against
the world, whatever comes. No one, not even Elise or Helen, has ever
heard me offer the least criticism of anything you have done--and no one
ever will, my dearest"--she spoke simply and earnestly as she held her
hands up toward him in a gesture eloquent of abiding love--"but I cannot
have pleasure in receiving negroes. I have seen the negro as he really
is, and I cannot feel that some soap and water and a silk hat make a--"
"Stop, May, right there"--Mr. Phillips' arms went about his wife in
tenderness as he placed a hand upon her lips. "Listen to me. You dear
women are creatures of impulse and sentiment--and thank Heaven for that,
too: for when the time ever comes that you shall judge men from your
heads instead of your hearts, woe to us!"--and he kissed her hair in
reverent gentleness---"but--"
"Well, this is an idyllic scene!" exclaimed Elise, coming into the room
with Helen. "It is better than a play. Daddy dear, you do it
beautifully. You should have gone on the stage."
Mr. Phillips' state of mind, his bottled-up vexation because of Elise's
behaviour at luncheon, his impatience at the interruption of his
conversation with his wife at the point where she seemed to have made
out her case against him and before he had opportunity to demolish her
sentiment with masculine logic, added to Elise's lightness of manner and
speech, which nettled him in his serious concern over Baxter's
resignation, were, all together, too much for moderation.
"Now look here, young lady," he growled out ungraciously, "you have
presumed entirely too much upon your privileges to-day. When did you
become too good to dine with people your mother and sister were
entertaining?"
"Why, papa!" the girl exclaimed in amazement at the roughness of his
manner;--but the sternness of his face did not relax, and she stumbled
along seeking some excuse. "Lola and I did not want any lunch, and all
those men--"
"Stop! Don't be a dodger! You know very well, miss, that you declined
to lunch because Bishop Martin and Doctor Woods were there. Now you
must understand that I am as regardful of your honour as you are, that
my life is at your service to protect it against the slightest affront,
but that I will not be sponsor for any silliness, and will certainly not
overlook or permit any high-flown impertinence that affronts me in the
presence of guests of my choosing. What do you suppose Mr. Mackenzie
thinks of your high-and-mighty rebuke to him for sitting at my table in
that company? He must feel very properly subdued, I suppose you think.
And the bishop and Doctor Woods--they are doubtless overcome with
humiliation because of your refusal to meet them."
He dropped his overbearing manner as Elise's face turned from crimson to
white and her lips began to tremble--for he was a tender-hearted and
gallant gentleman.
"Now let me say once for all, my daughter, that I must be the judge of
who is a proper person to be entertained in this household, and I want
no more such exhibitions of filial disrespect as you made to-day. I
think no explanation is due: but I will tell you that one of the
gentlemen who lunched with us to-day is a bishop in his church and a
leader of ten million citizens of this country, while Doctor Woods is a
graduate of Harvard and Heidelberg, a man whose learning is surpassed by
that of very few men in America, and is the very best type of his own
race and a creditable product of any race. Both these gentlemen are
entirely worthy of your highest respect."
"But, papa, they are negroes!" said Elise, emboldened to attempt a
defence when her father dropped his browbeating tone and assumed to
address her reason.
"Negroes?--and what of that? It is not the first time a negro has
lunched with a President of the United States. Calm your misgivings by
remembering that it is assuredly safe, either socially or politically,
to follow any precedent set by Mr. Roosevelt. But further, my daughter,
what does the term 'negro' impute to these men more than a colour of
skin? Nothing. My child, 'the man's the thing,'--his colour is
absolutely nothing. A negro must be judged individually, by his own
character and ability--you judge white men so. He is not responsible
for the whole race, but for himself, and must stand or fall upon his
individual merit and not upon his colour or caste. It is the glory of
our America that it has but one order of nobility--a man; and when that
order is abolished or others established our democratic institutions
will be a hollow pretence and our decadence have set in. Heaven defend
a daughter of mine should be either dazzled by a tinselled rank or class
pretension, or fail to appreciate simple, genuine, personal excellence."
Elise was glad enough her father had calmed down and branched off into
generalities. She was discreetly, not impudently, silent, and took the
first opportunity to retire.
* * * * *
On that afternoon Elise had met Evans Rutledge and had really found
pleasure in his friendliness. She speculated whether his manner would
have been quite so cordial if he had known of the luncheon then but two
hours past. She had seen no little of him in a casual way since living
in Washington, for he was an acceptable visitor at most of the desirable
places. With repeated meetings they had come to an unspoken truce,
Elise being impelled to friendly simplicity by her very nature, and
Rutledge by the love which would not permit him to deny himself any
opportunity to be near her despite some rebellious notions of
self-respect.
Rutledge's vacillation of mind concerning Elise was evidenced by his
presence in Cleveland. It comported very well with his former status as
a freelance correspondent that in search of "copy" he should have
followed the President out to Ohio, but he confessed to himself that it
was somewhat below the dignity of his present position and standing as
an editorial writer that he should have asked for the assignment as news
representative allotted to his paper on the Presidential special. He
called himself a fool, and--thought of many situations that might happen
to evolve themselves on the train.... They didn't evolve.
Only one paltry three minutes' talk with Elise did he win for all his
journeying. He had stood by her carriage that afternoon as she waited
for Lola DeVale in front of Vantine's, and they had talked in the
unaffected manner of the first days of their acquaintance until Lola
came out and invited him to join them on an evening at the end of the
week at an informal gathering of young people at her home in Washington.
He had accepted with what he afterward thought was childish and
compromising eagerness.
"I like that Mr. Rutledge so much. I invited him for you, Elise," Lola
said as they drove homeward.
"Why for me?" asked Elise.
"Perhaps I should say because of you. Can't you see the reason in his
eyes every time he looks at you? I can."
"You are mistaken there, my dear. I happen to know that Mr. Rutledge
loves, or once loved, a young woman who has greatly disappointed him."
"How?"
"He has learned that her family--and perhaps she--is impossible."
"How did you know of his love for the girl?"
"He told me himself," Elise answered with a nonchalant air that proved
her an actress of the finest art.
"He did! You were playing with fire, Elise. The sympathetic 'other
girl' is always in a dangerous role. Did he tell you of his
disappointment also?"
"Oh, no. But that was--and is--evident."
"But the girl? Was she really--nice--better than her people?"
"Yes. No--yes--that is, nice. Of course you know Mr. Rutledge would
not love a woman who was not--nice."
"Oh, certainly; but if he was really disappointed in her, all the more
reason he might find a solace in your smiles."
"It was her family rather than herself, I think. He is uncertain about
her--is afraid to love her."
"He does seem to have an uncertain look at times that has puzzled me. I
think you are responsible for some of his uncertainty, however; or
perhaps the other girl makes him uncertain about you. If it were not
for her you would have to look to your defences.... He must have loved
her very much or he could not stand the temptation you are to him....
I'm glad you've solved the riddle, but very sorry you told me. I have
liked Mr. Rutledge; but I despise any man who would not brush aside all
obstacles to marry the woman he loves and who loves him. Don't you?"
"Oh," said Elise uncertainly, "but, really, it was--it may have
been--because she did not love him. I do not think he lacks
courage--exactly. He simply would not--pursue--the young woman because
her father's--because the--the obstacle
was--seemed--insurmountable,--but really I must not be violating
confidences. There is no reason why you should not at least respect
him, Lola. His course is not without some justification, for the
objection, from his point of view, is--vital."
"But what if the girl loves him? Does she love him?"
"Really, Lola, he--he did not inform me--whether she does or not. He
has not made the slightest reference to the subject, nor spoken the
smallest of confidences to me since that summer on the St. Lawrence....
I think he regrets ever having told me anything about his--heart's
affairs. I suppose I should not repeat them--they were spoken under
peculiar circumstances."
"There is nothing peculiar, my dear. It is easy to see why a man who is
not free to make love to you will choose the next best thing and talk of
love with you.... You would better be careful of Mr. Rutledge, however,
for I fear his loyalty to that first love totters on its throne every
time he looks into your gray eyes. You must not shatter his faith in
his own faithfulness."
*CHAPTER XV*
The second morning's papers were aflame with the news of it! President
Phillips, true to his outspoken character, himself had called in the
Associated Press representative immediately on his return to Washington
and dictated a concise statement of all the circumstances leading to Mr.
Baxter's resignation. The Secretary's house was besieged by reporters,
but all were referred to the White House for information. The daily
newspapers featured the item in every conceivable style of display
head-lines, and the affair was a nine-day sensation in Washington and a
reverberating tempest throughout the South.
Evans Rutledge by the force of his genius, his wide knowledge of men and
affairs and the accuracy of his political information had gone rapidly
toward the front rank in his profession. He was now the leading
editorial writer on the _Washington Mail_, an anti-administration organ.
Of that paper Elise sought the first issue with surreptitious eagerness.
She picked it up fully expecting to read quite the most scathing
philippic she had ever seen in print. She was surprised to find that
the former correspondent had put off his extravagances for a more
judicial editorial manner. She recognized his work by several phrases
that had been in the _Chicago American_ article.
The editorial was severe, but dignified and fairly respectful. Rutledge
commended Secretary Baxter for his prompt and emphatic refusal to lunch
with a negro even though at the table of a President of the United
States and at the President's personal invitation or "command." He said
the fact that Mr. Phillips had intended no insult made the insult no
less real; and that Baxter had done the only possible thing--the duel
being no longer in vogue--declined and resigned.
He went on to say that there was an irreconcilable difference between
the Northern and the Southern ideas of the social equality of the races;
that the Southern man's idea was bred in the bone, and no amount of
argument or abuse or lofty advice from the Northern press, or boyish
impulsiveness in the President's chair, could change that idea one iota;
that while their fears sometimes might be lulled to sleep, might be
forgotten like other ills in the interest or excitement of other
concerns, the black peril was their great Terror in both their waking
and sleeping hours, and even when asleep they slept upon their arms.
Elise read that in face of this Terror all other questions were
insignificant, and all arguments, prejudices, passions, _loves and
hates_ (she put her fingertip on the words) among Southern gentlemen
melted away or were fused into a mighty and unalterable sentiment to go
down to death rather than to permit social intermingling with the negro
race.
The editorial concluded that the Southern feeling on this subject was
ineradicable, and was so deep-seated and universal that it became a
great Fact which any man of fair discretion and sensible purpose would
have recognized and reckoned with; that no President with an abiding
sense of the proprieties would have proposed the luncheon to Baxter, and
no gentleman of the South would have hesitated for a moment in declining
the insulting invitation. The subject was dismissed with the prediction
that the cause of the negro immediate and remote would be damaged
immeasurably by this act of the impulsive gentleman in the White House
who would take the Southern situation by the seat of the trousers as
though it were a self-willed small boy pouting in a cellar and yank it
incontinently up the Phillips stairs of progress.
There was no other subject discussed in hotel lobbies, committee-rooms
or wherever else two or more men were gathered together on the day after
the facts were known. In the afternoon in one of the committee-rooms of
the Senate, Senators Ruffin and Killam, Representatives Smith and
Calhoun of Killam's State, and Representative Hazard of a New York City
district, were ventilating their views on the matter when Rutledge
joined them, on the hunt for Calhoun.
The comments on the President's negro luncheon were all adverse, though
expressed in terms of varying elegance and force from the keen and
polished irony of Mr. Ruffin to Mr. Killam's brutal outbursts and
picturesque profanity. Mr. Hazard, not having the same sectional
view-point as the others, though of the same political creed, was an
interested listener. Senator Ruffin referred to the editorial in _The
Mail_ and drew Evans into the discussion.
The young man, glad to be untrammelled by editorial discretion, gave
free rein to his indignation, but in deference to Mr. Hazard's presence
was careful to make some allowance and excuses for the opinion of
Northern people on the matter of social amenities to negroes. However,
to compensate for this concession and leave no doubt of his opinion, he
was even more picturesque than Mr. Killam, if not so profane--and
consequently more forcible, Hazard thought--in paying his respects to
Mr. Phillips' negro policy.
But Senator Killam resented even the suggestion of excuse for Northern
opinion, and opened up an even more choice and outrageous assortment of
profanity and invective. Rutledge, Calhoun and Senator Ruffin were
ashamed at his disregard of ordinary decencies, while Hazard assumed a
look of polite amusement. Mr. Killam's satellite, Smith, however, was
vastly tickled at his master's performance, and took pains to show his
surpassing admiration. Smith was a raw-boned, half-washed giant with
long hair that never knew a shampoo, who owed his election to Congress
to a gift of stump-speaking and a consistent devotion to Senator
Killam's political fortunes. He usually kept quiet when his chief was
there to speak. He did so on that afternoon till, carried away by Mr.
Killam's extravagances about niggers in white dining-rooms, he blurted
out:
"Yes; I suppose now Miss Elise Phillips will be getting sweet on Doctor
Woods. The nig--"
Smash!
Rutledge struck him on the point of the jaw and he fell in an awkward
heap between a chair and the wall. He was up in a moment growling like
a mastiff, but was restrained by Calhoun and Hazard. Rutledge was
standing perfectly still, his thumbs in his trousers pockets, showing no
excitement save in the glint of his eye. Smith was muttering his desire
to fight it out. He could not talk plainly, for the blow had unhinged
his loosely clacking jaw. Hazard, Killam and Calhoun held him by force
till he was quiet. It would have been impossible to prevent his forcing
a further clash perhaps if Senator Ruffin had not insisted on ending the
matter just there.
"Gentlemen!" he said, "this must stop right here. None of us can afford
to pursue the miserable affair further. We should all be ashamed that a
young lady's name has been used in this discussion at all, and
especially in such a manner was it unpardonable! Mr. Smith certainly
forgot himself; and while Mr. Rutledge acted from a chivalrous impulse
he will learn when he is older that a blow usually advertises rather
than suppresses an insult to a woman."
It began to dawn upon Mr. Smith by this time that he had committed a
woeful breach of good manners, and with a parvenu's awe of "propriety"
he was more than anxious to have the affair hushed up. None the less did
he wish to keep secret his knockdown. He got out as quietly as possible
in search of a surgeon. Rutledge retired with Calhoun, who slapped him
on the back as they went down the corridor and whispered, "Good old boy!
Served him right, the damn dog."