than for the oratorical drilling. No doubt they thought that their Tommy
could have done as well in any case; but the splendid horseshoe was
another matter!
Ten years passed before Mrs. Carriswood saw her pupil again. During
those years the town had increased and prospered; so had the Lossing Art
Furniture Works. It was after Harry Lossing had disappointed his father.
This is not saying that he had done anything out of the way; he had
simply declined to be the fourth Harry Lossing on the rolls of Harvard
College. Instead, he proposed to enter the business and to begin by
learning his own trade. He was so industrious, he kept at it with such
energy that his first convert was his father--no, I am wrong, Mrs.
Carriswood was the first; Mrs. Lossing was not a convert, SHE had
believed in Harry from the beginning. But all this was years before Mrs.
Carriswood's visit.
Another of Master Harry's notions was his belief in the necessity of his
“meddling”--so his father put it--in the affairs of the town, the state,
and the nation, as well as those of the Lossing furniture company. But,
though he was pleased to make rather cynical fun of his son's
political enthusiasm, esteeming it in a sense a diverting and therefore
reprehensible pursuit for a business man, the elder Lossing had a
sneaking pride in it, all the same. He liked to bring out Harry's
political shrewdness.
“Fancy, Margaret,” says he, “whom do you think Harry has brought over
to our side now? The shrewdest ward politician in the town--why, you saw
him when he was a boy--Tommy Fitzmaurice.”
Then Mrs. Carriswood remembered; she asked, amused, how was Tommy and
where was he?
“Tommy? Oh, he went to the State university; the old man was bound to
send him, and he was more dutiful than some sons. He was graduated with
honors, and came back to a large, ready-made justice court's practice.
Of course he drifted into criminal practice; but he has made a fine
income out of that, and is the shrewdest, some folks say the least
scrupulous, political manager in the county. And so, Harry, you have
persuaded him to cast in his lot with the party of principle, have you?
and he is packing the primaries?”
“I see nothing dishonest in our trying to get our friends out to vote at
the primaries, sir.”
“Of course not, but he may not stop there. However, I want Bailey
elected, and I am glad he will work for us; what's his price?”
Harry blushed a little. “I believe he would like to be city attorney,
sir,” said he; and Mr. Lossing laughed.
“Would he make a bad one?” asked Mrs. Carriswood.
“He would make the best kind of a one,” replied Harry, with youthful
fervor; “he's a ward politician and all that, I know; but he has it in
him to be an uncommon deal more! And I say, sir, do you know that he
and the old man will take twenty-five thousand of the stock at par if we
turn ourselves into a corporation?”
“How about this new license measure? won't that bear a little bit hard
on the old man?” This from Mr. Lossing, who was biting his cigar in deep
thought.
“That will not prevent his doing his duty; why, the old man for very
pride will be the first to obey the law. You'll SEE!”
Six months later they did see, since it was mostly due to Fitzmaurice's
efforts that the reform candidate was elected; as a consequence, Tommy
became prosecuting attorney; and, to the amazement of the critics, made
the best prosecuting attorney that the city had ever known.
It was during the campaign that Mrs. Carriswood met him. Her
goddaughter, daughter of the friend to whom years ago she described
Tommy, was with her. This time Mrs. Carriswood had recently added
Florida to her disappointments in climates, and was back, as she told
Mrs. Lossing, “with a real sense of relief in a climate that was too bad
to make any pretensions.”
She had brought Miss Van Harlem to see the shops. It may be that she
would not have been averse to Harry Lossing's growing interested in
young Margaret. She had seen a great deal of Harry while he was East at
school, and he remained her first favorite, while Margaret was as good
as she was pretty, and had half a million of dollars in her own right.
They had seen Harry, and he was showing them through the different
buildings or “shops,” when a man entered who greeted him cordially, and
whom he presented to Mrs. Carriswood. It was Tommy Fitzmaurice, grown
into a handsome young man. He brought his heels together and made the
ladies a solemn bow. “Pleased to meet you, ladies; how do you like the
West?” said Tommy.
His black locks curled about his ears, which seemed rather small now;
he had a good nose and a mobile, clean-shaven face. His hands were very
white and soft, and the rim of linen above them was dazzling. His black
frock-coat was buttoned snugly about his slim waist. He brushed his face
with a fine silk handkerchief, and thereby diffused the fragrance of the
best imported cologne among the odors of wood and turpentine. A diamond
pin sparkled from his neckscarf. The truth is, he knew that the visitors
were coming and had made a state toilet. “He looks half like an actor
and half like a clergyman, and he IS all a politician,” thought Mrs.
Carriswood; “I don't think I shall like him any more.” While she
thought, she was inclining her slender neck toward him, and the gentlest
interest and pleasure beamed out of her beautiful, dark eyes.
“We like the West, but _I_ have liked it for ten years; this is not my
first visit,” said Mrs. Carriswood.
“I have reason to be glad for that, madam. I never made another speech
so good.”
He had remembered her; she laughed. “I had thought that you would
forget.”
“How could I, when you have not changed at all?”
“But you have,” says Mrs. Carriswood, hardly knowing whether to show the
young man his place or not.
“Yes, ma'am, naturally. But I have not learned how to make a speech
yet.”
“Ah, but you make very good ones, Harry tells me.”
“Much obliged, Harry. No, ma'am, Harry is a nice boy; but he doesn't
know. I know there is a lot to learn, and I guess a lot to unlearn; and
I feel all outside; I don't even know how to get at it. I have wished a
thousand times that I could talk with the lady who taught me to speak in
the first place.” He walked on by her side, talking eagerly. “You don't
know how many times I have felt I would give most anything for the
opportunity of just seeing you and talking with you; those things you
said to me I always remembered.” He had a hundred questions evidently
stinging his tongue. And some of them seemed to Mrs. Carriswood very
apposite.
“I'm on the outside of such a lot of things,” says he. “When I first
began to suspect that I was on the outside was when I went to the
High School, and sometimes I was invited to Harry's; that was my first
acquaintance with cultivated society. You can't learn manners from
books, ma'am. I learned them at Harry's. That is,”--he colored and
laughed,--“I learned SOME. There's plenty left, I know. Then, I went to
the University. Some of the boys came from homes like Harry's, and
some of the professors there used to ask us to their houses; and I saw
engravings and oil paintings, and heard the conversation of persons of
culture. All this only makes me know enough to KNOW I am outside. I can
see the same thing with the lawyers, too. There is a set of them that
are after another kind of things; that think themselves above me and my
sort of fellows. You know all the talk about this being a free and equal
country. That's the tallest kind of humbug, madam! It is that. There are
sets, one above another, everywhere; big bugs and little bugs, if you
will excuse the expression. And you can't influence the big ones without
knowing how they feel. A fellow can't be poking in the dark in a speech
or anywhere else. Now, these fellows here, they go into politics,
sometimes; and there, I tell you, we come the nearest to a fair
field and no favor! It is the best fellow gets the prize there--the
sharpest-witted, the nerviest, and stanchest. Oh, talk of machine
politics! all the soft chaps who ain't willing to get up early in the
morning, or to go out in the wet, THEY howl about the primaries and
corruption; let them get up and clean the primaries instead of holding
their noses! Those fellows, I'm not nice enough for them, but I can beat
them every time. They make a monstrous racket in the newspapers, but
when election comes on they can't touch side, edge, or bottom!”
Discoursing in this fashion, with digressions to Harry in regard to the
machines, the furniture, and the sales, that showed Mrs. Carriswood that
he meant to keep an eye on his twenty odd thousand dollars, he strolled
at her side. To Miss Van Harlem he scarcely said three words. In fact,
he said exactly three words, uttered as Miss Margaret's silken skirts
swung too near a pot of varnish. They were “Look out, miss!” and at the
same second, Tommy (who was in advance, with really no call to know of
the danger), turned on his heel and whisked the skirts away, turning
back to pick up the sentence he had dropped.
Tommy told Harry that Miss Van Harlem was a very handsome lady, but
haughty-looking. Then he talked for half an hour about the cleverness of
Mrs. Carriswood.
“I am inclined to think Tommy will rise.” (Mrs. Carriswood was
describing the interview to her cousin, the next day.) “What do
you think he said to me last of all? 'How,' said he, 'does a man, a
gentleman'--it had a touch of the pathetic, don't you know, the little
hesitation he made on the word--'how does he show his gratitude to a
lady who has done him a great service?' 'Young or old?' I said. 'Oh, a
married lady,' he said, 'very much admired, who has been everywhere.'
Wasn't that clever of him? I told him that a man usually sent a few
flowers. You saw the basket to-day--evidently regardless of expense. And
fancy, there was a card, a card with a gilt edge and his name written on
it.”
“The card was his mother's. She has visiting cards, now, and pays visits
once a year in a livery carriage. Poor Mrs. Fitzmaurice, she is always
so scared; and she is such a good soul! Tommy is very good to her.”
“How about the father? Does he still keep that 'nice' saloon?”
“Yes; but he talks of retiring. They are not poor at all, and Tommy is
their only child; the others died. It is hard on the old man to retire,
for he isn't so very old in fact, but if he once is convinced that
his calling stands in the way of Tommy's career, he won't hesitate a
second.”
“Poor people,” said Mrs. Carriswood; “do you know, Grace, I can see
Tommy's future; he will grow to be a boss, a political boss. He will
become rich by keeping your streets always being cleaned--which means
never clean--and giving you the worst fire department and police to be
obtained for money; and, by and by, a grateful machine will make him
mayor, or send him to the Legislature, very likely to Congress, where he
will misrepresent the honest State of Iowa. Then he will bloom out in a
social way, and marry a gentlewoman, and they will snub the old people
who are so proud of him.”
“Well, we shall see,” said Mrs. Lossing; “I think better things of
Tommy. So does Harry.”
Part of the prophecy was to be speedily fulfilled. Two years later, the
Honorable Thomas Fitzmaurice was elected mayor of his city, elected by
the reform party, on account of his eminent services--and because he was
the only man in sight who had the ghost of a chance of winning. Harry's
version was: “Tommy jests at his new principles, but that is simply
because he doesn't comprehend what they are. He laughs at reform in the
abstract; but every concrete, practical reform he is as anxious as I or
anybody to bring about. And he will get them here, too.”
He was as good as his word; he gave the city an admirable
administration, with neither fear nor favor. Some of the “boys” still
clung to him; these, according to Harry, were the better “boys,” who
had the seeds of good in them and only needed opportunity and a leader.
Tommy did not flag in zeal; rather, as the time went on and he soared
out of the criminal courts into big civil cases involving property,
he grew up to the level of his admirers' praises. “Tommy,” wrote Mr.
Lossing, presently, “is beginning to take himself seriously. He has been
told so often that he is a young lion of reform, that he begins to study
the role in dead earnest. I don't talk this way to Harry, who believes
in him and is training him for the representative for our district. What
harm? Verily, his is the faith that will move mountains. Besides, Tommy
is now rich; he must be worth a hundred thousand dollars, which makes a
man of wealth in these parts. It is time for him to be respectable.”
Notwithstanding this preparation, Mrs. Carriswood (then giving
Washington the benefit of her doubts of climate) was surprised one day
to receive a perfectly correct visiting card whereon was engraved, “Mr.
Thomas Sackville Fitzmaurice, M.C.”
The young lady who was with her lifted her brilliant hazel eyes and half
smiled. “Is it the droll young man we met once at Mrs. Lossing's? Pray
see him, Aunt Margaret,” said Miss Van Harlem.
Mrs. Carriswood shrugged her shoulders and ordered the man to show him
up.
There entered, in the wake of the butler, a distinguished-looking
personage who held out his hand with a perfect copy of the bow that
she saw forty times a day. “He is taking himself very seriously,” she
sighed; “he is precisely like anybody else!” And she felt her interest
snuffed out by Tommy's correctness. But, directly, she changed her mind;
the unfailing charm of his race asserted itself in Tommy; she decided
that he was a delightful, original young man, and in ten minutes they
were talking in the same odd confidence that had always marked their
relation.
“How perfectly you are gotten up! Are you INSIDE, now?”
“Ah, do you remember that?” said he; “that's awfully good of you. Which
is so fortunate as to please you, my clothes or my deportment?”
“Both. They are very good. Where did you get them, Tommy? I shall take
the privilege of my age and call you Tommy.”
“Thank you. The clothes? Oh, I asked Harry for the proper thing, and he
recommended a tailor. I think Harry gave me the manners, too.”
“And your new principles?” She could not resist this little fling.
“I owe a great deal in that way to Harry, also,” answered he, with
gravity.
Gone were the days of sarcastic ridicule, of visionary politics.
Tommy talked of the civil service in the tone of Harry himself. He was
actually eloquent.
“Why, Aunt Margaret, he is a remarkable young man,” exclaimed Miss Van
Harlem; “his honesty and enthusiasm are refreshing in this pessimist
place. I hope he will come again. Did you notice what lovely eyes he
has?”
Before long it was not pure good-nature that caused Mrs. Carriswood to
ask Fitzmaurice to her house. He was known as a rising young man, One
met him at the best houses; yet he was a prodigious worker, and had made
his mark in committees, before the celebrated speech that sent him into
all the newspaper columns, or that stubborn and infinitely versatile
fight against odds which inspired the artist of PUCK.
Tommy bore the cartoon to Mrs. Carriswood, beaming. She had not seen
that light in his face since the memorable June afternoon in the
Opera-house. He sent the paper to his mother, who vowed the picture “did
not favor Tommy at all, at all. Sure Tommy never had such a red nose!”
The old man, however, went to his ex-saloon, and sat in state all the
morning, showing Tommy's funny picture.
It was about this time that Mrs. Carriswood observed something that took
her breath away: Tommy Fitzmaurice had the presumption to be attentive
to my lady's goddaughter, Miss Van Harlem. Nor was this the worst; there
were indications that Miss Van Harlem, who had refused the noble names
and titles of two or three continental nobles, and the noble name
unaccompanied by a title of the younger son of an English earl, without
mentioning the half-dozen “nice” American claimants--Miss Van Harlem was
not angry.
The day this staggering blow fell on her, Mrs. Carriswood was in her
dressing-room, peacefully watching Derry unpack a box from Paris, in
anticipation of a state dinner. And Miss Van Harlem, in a bewitching
wrapper, sat on the lounge and admired. Upon this scene of feminine
peace and happiness enter the Destroyer, in the shape of a note from
Tommy Fitzmaurice! Were they going on Beatoun's little excursion to
Alexandria? If they were, he would move heaven and earth to put off a
committee meeting, in order to join them. By the way, he was to get the
floor for his speech that afternoon. Wouldn't Mrs. Carriswood come to
inspire him? Perhaps Miss Van Harlem would not be bored by a little of
it.
It was a well-worded note; as Mrs. Carriswood read it she realized
for the first time how completely Tommy was acclimated in society. She
remembered his plaint years ago, and his awe of “oil paintings” and
“people of culture;” and she laughed half-sadly as she passed the note
over to Miss Van Harlem.
“I presume it is the Alexandria excursion that the Beatouns were talking
about yesterday,” she said, languidly. “He wants to show that young
Irishman that we have a mild flavor of antiquity, ourselves. We are to
see Alexandria and have a real old Virginian dinner, including one
of the famous Beatoun hams and some of the '69 Chateau Yquem and the
sacred '47 port. I suppose he will have the four-in-hand buckboard.
'A small party '--that will mean the Honorable Basil Sackville, Mrs.
Beatoun, Lilly Denning, probably one of the Cabinet girls, Colonel
Turner, and that young Russian Beatoun is so fond of, Tommy
Fitzmaurice------”
“Why do you always call Mr. Fitzmaurice Tommy?”--this interruption comes
with a slight rise of color from young Margaret.
“Everybody calls him Tommy in his own town; a politician as popular as
he with the boys is naturally Tommy or Jerry or Billy. They slap him on
the back or sit with an arm around his neck and concoct the ways to rule
us.”
“I don't think anyone slaps Mr. Fitzmaurice on the back and calls him
Tommy, NOW,” says Margaret, with a little access of dignity.
“I dare say his poor old father and mother don't venture on that
liberty; I wish you had seen them----”
“He has told me about them,” says Margaret.
And Mrs. Carriswood's dismay was such that for a second she simply
gasped. Were things so far along that such confessions were made?
Tommy must be very confident to venture; it was shrewd, very shrewd,
to forestall Mrs. Carriswood's sure revelations--oh, Tommy was not a
politician for nothing!
“Besides,” Margaret went on, with the same note of repressed feeling in
her voice, “his is a good family, if they have decayed; his ancestor was
Lord Fitzmaurice in King James's time.”
“She takes HIM seriously too!” thought Mrs. Carriswood, with
inexpressible consternation; “what SHALL I say to her mother?”
Strange to say, perhaps, considering that she was so frankly a woman of
the world, her stub-bornest objection to Tommy was not an objection of
expediency. She had insensibly grown to take his success for granted,
like the rest of the Washington world; he would be a governor, a
senator, he might be--anything! And he was perfectly presentable, now;
no, it would be on the whole an investment in the future that would pay
well enough; his parents would be awkward, but they were old people, not
likely to be too much _en evidence_.
Mrs. Carriswood, while not overjoyed, would not feel crushed by such a
match, but she did view what she regarded as Tommy's moral instability,
with a dubious and fearful eye. He was earnest enough for his new
principles now; but what warrant was there of his sincerity? Margaret
and her mother were high-minded women. It was the gallant knight of her
party and her political faith that the girl admired, the valiant fight,
not the triumph! No mere soldier of fortune, no matter how successful
or how brilliant, could win her; if Tommy were the mercenary, not the
knight, no worldly glory could compensate his wife.
Wherefore, after a bad quarter of an hour reflecting on these things,
Mrs. Carriswood went to the Capitol, resolved to take her goddaughter
away. She would not withdraw her acceptance of the Beatouns' invitation,
no; let the Iowa congressman have every opportunity to display his
social shortcomings in contrast with the accomplished Russian, and Jack
Turner, the most elegant man in the army; the next day would be time
enough for a telegram and a sudden flitting. Yet in the midst of her
plans for Tommy's discomfiture she was assailed by a queer regret and
reluctance. Tommy's fascination had affected even a professional critic
of life; he had been so amusing, so willing, so trusting, so useful,
that her chill interest had warmed into liking. She felt a moving of
the heart as the handsome black head arose, and the first notes of that
resonant, thrilling voice swelled above the din on the floor.
It was the day of his great speech, the speech that made him, it was
said.
As Mrs. Carriswood sank back, turning a little in an instinctive effort
to repulse her own sympathy, she was aware of the presence near her
of an elderly man and woman. The old man wore a shining silk hat and
shining new black clothes. His expansive shirt-bosom was very white, but
not glossy, and rumpled in places; and his collar was of the spiked and
antique pattern known as a “dickey.” His wrinkled, red face was edged by
a white fringe of whisker. He wore large gold-bowed spectacles, and his
jaws worked incessantly.
The woman was a little, mild, wrinkled creature, with an anxious blue
eye and snowy hair, smoothed down over her ears, under her fine bonnet.
She was richly dressed, but her silks and velvets ill suited the
season. Had she seen them anywhere else, Mrs. Carriswood might not
have recognized them; but there, with Tommy before them, both of them
feverishly absorbed in Tommy, she recognized them at a glance. She had
a twinge of pity, watching the old faces pale and kindle. With the first
rustle of applause, she saw the old father slip his hand into the
old mother's. They sat well behind a pillar; and however excited they
became, they never so lost themselves as to lean in front of their
shield. This, also, she noticed. The speech over, the woman wiped her
eyes. The old man joined in the tumult of applause that swept over the
galleries, but the old woman pulled his arm, evidently feeling that it
was not decent for them to applaud. She sat rigid, with red cheeks and
her eyes brimming; he was swaying and clapping and laughing in a roar of
delight. But it was he that drew her away, finally, while she fain would
have lingered to look at Tommy receiving congratulations below.
“Poor things,” said Mrs. Carriswood, “I do believe they haven't let him
know that they are here.” And she remembered how she had pitied them
for this very possibility of humiliation years before. But she did not
pursue the adventure, and some obscure motive prevented her speaking of
it to Miss Van Harlem.
Did Tommy's parents tell Tommy? If they did, Tommy made no sign. The
morning found him with the others, in a beautiful white flannel suit,
with a silk shirt and a red silk sash, looking handsomer than any man of
the party. He took the congratulations of the company modestly. Either
he was not much puffed up, or he had the art of concealment.
They saw Alexandria in a conscientious fashion, for the benefit of the
guest of the day. He was a modest young fellow with a nose rather too
large for his face, a long upper lip, and frank blue eyes. He made
himself agreeable to one of the Cabinet girls, on the front seat, while
Tommy, just behind him, had Miss Van Harlem and bliss for his portion.
The old streets, the toppling roofs, the musty warehouses, the uneven
pavement, all pleased the young creatures out in the sunshine. They made
merry over the ancient ball-room, where Washington had asked a far-away
ancestress of Beatoun to dance; and they decorously walked through the
old church.
IT happened in the church. Mrs. Carriswood was behind the others; so she
saw them come in, the same little old couple of the Capitol.
In the chancel, Beatoun was explaining; beside Beatoun shone a curly
black head that they knew.
Mrs. Carriswood sat in one of the high old pews. Through a crack she
could look into the next pew; and there they stood. She heard the old
man: “Whist, Molly, let's be getting out of this! HE is here with all
his grand friends. Don't let us be interrupting him.”