DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY
DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY
A STUDY IN WASHINGTON
SOCIETY AND POLITICS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS
AND COMPANY
MCMIII
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY
McCLURE, PHILLIPS AND CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.
Published, June, 1903, R
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MEN AND WOMEN 3
II. THE RISE OF A PREMIER AND SOMETHING ABOUT TWO HEARTS 30
III. DOWN AMONG THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING 48
IV. GOVERNMENT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED 73
V. A RAPTUROUS HOUR WHICH WAS RUDELY INTERRUPTED 91
VI. DEVILS AND ANGELS FIGHT FOR THE SOULS OF MEN 112
VII. HOW VARIOUS PERSONS SPENT A MAY SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON 130
VIII. A NEW SENATOR--A RAILWAY JOURNEY--THE ROSE OF THE
FIELD AND THE ROSES OF THE GARDEN 148
IX. CONCERNING THINGS NOT TO BE MENTIONED IN THE
SOCIETY JOURNALS 172
X. THERE ARE MEN WHO CAN RESIST EVERYTHING EXCEPT TEMPTATION 203
XI. IN THE SWEET-DO-NOTHING OF THE SUMMER-TIME 229
XII. WHAT IS IT TO BE HONEST IN POLITICS AND TRUE IN LOVE? 256
XIII. WAR AND PEACE 283
DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY
_Chapter One_
MEN AND WOMEN
Certain aspects of Washington, both outward and inward, are like Paris.
Especially is this true of the outward aspect on a wet night, when
the circles of yellow-flaring gas lamps are reflected in the shining
expanse of asphalt, when the keen-flashing electric lights blaze
upon the white façades of great buildings and the numerous groups
of statuary against a black background of shrubbery, and when some
convention or other brings crowds of people to swarm upon the usually
dull Washington streets. The Honourable Geoffrey Thorndyke, M.C., spoke
of this Parisian resemblance to his colleague, the Honourable Julian
Crane, M.C., as they sat together on a warm, rainy April night in the
bay-window of Thorndyke’s apartment. The rooms were lofty, wide, and
dark, according to the style of forty years ago, and overlooked one of
those circular parks in Washington which fashion seemed only to have
patronised briefly in order to desert permanently. But the rooms and
the situation suited Thorndyke perfectly, and he had spent there all of
the five terms of Congress which he had served. Thorndyke’s remaining
in that locality secretly surprised Crane, a man from the Middle West.
He himself had an apartment in a modish hotel, which cost him more
than he could afford and was not half so comfortable as Thorndyke’s.
But then Thorndyke was born to that which Crane was toilsomely
achieving--for this vigorous product of the Middle West was sent into
the world with enormous ambitions of all sorts, and not the least of
these was social ambition. And combined with this social ambition was
a primitive enjoyment of society such as the Indian gets out of his
pow-wows with unlimited tobacco and fire-water. Crane, although bred
on the prairie, cared nothing for fields and woods and the skies of
night and the skies of morning. Men, women, and their affairs alone
interested him. Thorndyke, on the contrary, although town-bred, cared
for the God-made things, and at that very moment was studying with
interest the great tulip-tree, dark and dank before his window. When
he made the remark about Washington having sometimes a look of Paris,
he added:
“And I expected to be in Paris at this very moment but for this”--here
he interjected an impolite adjective--“extra session. However,” he
continued, good-humouredly, “I hardly expect you to agree with me,
considering your late streak of luck--or, rather, your well-deserved
promotion, as I shall call it on the floor of the House.”
Crane acknowledged this with a smile and a request for another cigar,
if possible, not so bad as the last. He was tall and well made, and
had a head and face like the bust of the young Augustus in the Vatican
gallery. He was elaborately groomed, manicured and all, judging that
time spent on beauty like his was not thrown away. In contrast to this
classic beauty was Thorndyke--below, rather than above, the middle
height, with scanty hair and light-blue eyes, and who could not be
called handsome by the mother that bore him. But when women were about,
Geoffrey Thorndyke could always put the handsomest man in the room
behind the door.
And he had a peculiarly soft and musical voice which made everything
he said sound pleasant, even when he proceeded to make uncomfortable
remarks about the late turn in national affairs which had sent Crane’s
political fortunes upward with a bound.
“For my part,” he said, knocking the ash off his cigar, “I have lived
long enough and read enough to know that such a stupendous opportunity
as your party has now is generally fatal to that party before the next
Presidential election. See--in the middle of a Presidential term, you
carry the Congressional elections by a close shave. The new Congress
is not expected to meet for thirteen months afterward. The Brazilian
matter reaches an acute stage, and the President is forced to call an
extra session in April instead of the regular meeting in December. Of
course, the Brazilian matter will come out all right. Any party, at
any time, in any civilised country, is capable of managing a foreign
affair in which all the people think the same way. But when it comes
to domestic affairs--my dear fellow, when the President saw how
things were going and that he really could invite you to make fools
of yourselves for the next fourteen months before the Presidential
convention, it was beer and skittles to him.”
Crane turned in his chair and sighed. The intricacies of national
politics, the wheels within wheels, the way of putting out a pawn to
be taken, puzzled and confused him. It had seemed to him the most
unmixed political good to him when his party had secured control of the
House at an international crisis. It could vote supplies with splendid
profusion, it could shout for the flag, it could claim the credit
for everything done, while the Senate and the Administration being
in opposition, very little real responsibility attached to anything
the House might leave undone. And when the man who was certain to be
the caucus nominee for Speaker had sent for Crane at one o’clock in
the morning and had offered him the chairmanship of the Committee on
Foreign Affairs to succeed Thorndyke, Crane had felt his cup of joy to
be overflowing. Everything was in his favour. Without the least doubt
about his powers, which were considerable, he had some diffidence on
the score of experience; but Thorndyke, who would be the ranking member
of the minority on the committee, would help him out, quietly and
generously. In the midst of his elation Crane remembered that Thorndyke
had not been wholly satisfied with the chairmanship of that great
committee--and Thorndyke had been suffered to exercise a degree of
power far greater than Crane felt would be permitted him for some time
to come. On most Congressional committees there are two or three men
who have come into the world booted and spurred, while the remainder
were born saddled and bridled. Thorndyke was one of those who got into
the saddle early, and yet, the saddle or the steed had not seemed to
suit his taste exactly. Crane spoke of this, and bluntly asked the
reason.
“Because,” replied Thorndyke, coolly, “there was no more promotion for
me--and I was made to accept it, whether I wanted it or not. You see,
although the Constitution guarantees every State a republican form of
government, all the States don’t have it. Mine hasn’t, nor has yours.
My boss, however, is a good deal more astute than your boss. Mine never
lets any man have what he wants. Unluckily, when I was a Congressional
tenderfoot I wanted the earth and the fulness thereof, and I worked
for it as well as I knew how. When the next nominating convention was
held I was left out in the cold world. I waited two years. Then, being
still green, with all the courage of inexperience, I went to my boss.
I said to him that I wished to get back in public life, and to stay
there--and he said----”
Thorndyke paused and blushed a little.
“Out with it,” said Crane, encouragingly.
“My boss has some extraordinary virtues--all real bosses have--among
them a very engaging frankness. He said, without beating about the
bush a moment, that it wasn’t his policy to promote men who might--who
might one day get a little too big for him. That was about what he
said. He told me if I would be satisfied with a seat in Congress and
the chairmanship of a good committee, I could have it as long as I kept
out of State politics, and didn’t make myself offensively prominent at
national conventions. Then he proceeded to advise me as Cardinal Wolsey
advised Thomas Cromwell. He charged me to fling away ambition, and
reminded me that by that sin the angels fell, and likewise a number of
very imprudent young politicians--I don’t use the word statesman any
more--all over the State. I squirmed, and the old fellow grinned and
told me if at any time I hankered after a foreign mission I could get
it. I thanked him and told him I had no fancy to be buried until I was
dead, and at last we compromised on his first proposition. I like the
life--God knows why. The salary is enough for me to live on and support
an invalid sister--all I have in the world. I have sense enough to see
that I am better off than if I gave a loose rein to my ambition and was
forever chasing rainbows. A man without fortune, who lives upon the
hopes of an office which will beggar him if he gets it----”
“That’s it!” cried Crane, suddenly interrupting, his eyes lighting up
with anxiety. “That’s it, Thorndyke. I know all about it. I’ll tell you
the whole story--the story I never even told my wife----”
There is something touching and appealing when a man lays bare his
wounds and bruises. Thorndyke, without saying a word, gave a look, a
slight movement of the head that brought out Crane’s story. He told it
readily enough--he had the mobile mouth and quick imagination of the
orator, and he was always eloquent when he was talking about himself.
“You see, when I got the nomination to Congress it was that or
bankruptcy. For two months before the convention was held I’d walk the
floor half the night, and the other half I’d pretend to be asleep, to
keep my wife from breaking her heart with anxiety. Annette is a good
woman--too good for me. I had neglected my law practice for politics
until I had no practice left, and then I was transported to Congress
and Heaven and five thousand dollars a year. I determined to do two
things--cut a wide swath in Washington and save one-third of my salary.”
“Great fool--you,” murmured Thorndyke, sympathetically.
“But--I didn’t know what a wide swath was. I didn’t know anything
about it. I came to Washington and brought my wife and three children.
We went to a boarding-house on Eleventh Street--you called to see us
there.”
“Yes. I remember thinking Mrs. Crane the prettiest, sweetest woman I
had seen that season.”
This was true, for Annette Crane had the beauty of form, of colour,
of sweetness and gentleness to an extraordinary degree. She was no
Perdita--no one would have taken her for a princess stolen in infancy.
But not Ruth in the harvest-field was more natural, more sweetly
graceful than this lady from Circleville, somewhere in the Middle West.
“Annette admired you tremendously,” continued Crane, in the easy tone
of a man who knows his wife is desperately in love with him, and
thinks her fully justified. “She said it was kind of you to call.
Like me, she thought we were going to do wonderful things--I believe
she used to pray that our hearts might not be hardened by our social
triumphs. Well, you know all about it. We were asked to the President’s
receptions, and my wife called on the Cabinet officers’ families,
and at the houses of the Senators and the Representatives from our
own State. We were asked to dinner at our junior Senator’s house. I
thought it would be grand. It was, in a way--the old man is pretty well
heeled--but it was exactly like one of those banquets a Chamber of
Commerce gives to a distinguished citizen. Annette was the prettiest
woman there, but she didn’t wear a low-necked gown like the other
women, and that embarrassed her. In the end she found out more things
than I did. She said to me before the season was over:
“‘Julian, it’s not being rich that makes people in Washington. If
it were, we shouldn’t mind not being in it. But there are plenty of
people, like the Senator, who have the money and the wish to make a
stir socially--but they can’t, while a plenty of poor ones do. Look at
Mr. Thorndyke’--she hit upon you the first man--‘he’s asked everywhere,
and he says he is as poor as a church-mouse. No, Julian, to be as you
would wish to be here, needs not only the money we haven’t got, but
something else we haven’t got and can’t acquire, so let’s give it up.
Another winter I’ll stay in Circleville--it will be better for the
children, better for me, better for you’--for I own up to having been
deuced surly all that winter. So we adopted that plan, and Annette
has never been to Washington since. But--I’ll confess this, too--I
had from the beginning a fancy to see the inside of those houses
where the people live who make up this world of Washington. It wasn’t
merely idle curiosity. I was convinced, and I am so still, that the
number and variety of people in Washington must make these Washington
parlours--drawing-rooms, you call them--the most interesting of their
kind in the world. Well--I’ve got into some of them. It’s a good deal
easier for a man without his wife than a man with her; and Thorndyke,
I own up, I am bewitched. Oh, it’s not so much to you; you’ve known it
too long, and seen too much of it all over the world to know how it
strikes a man born and brought up until he is thirty-five years old in
Circleville. I swear when I get a dinner invitation I am like the girls
out our way, who will drive twenty miles in a sleigh to go to a dance.
The mere look of the table--the glass, the silver, the flowers--goes to
my head. The terrapin intoxicates me. Those quick, soft-moving servants
fascinate me. And the conversation! They let me talk all I want.”
“You are a vastly entertaining fellow in your own mental bailiwick,”
interjected Thorndyke.
“And the women! So unaffected--so unconscious of their clothes! And
such listeners! I have never been to a stupid dinner in Washington.
And the club--I never knew a man of leisure in my life until I came
to Washington. I daresay you think me a fool.” Crane paused, with a
feeling rare to him that he could not express half what was in him, but
Thorndyke’s knowledge supplied the rest.
“No, I don’t. It is quite as you say, but you are taking it all too
seriously.”
“Circleville,” murmured Crane.
“Well, three-fourths of these people you so admire came from
Circlevilles. Forty years ago, how many of them, do you think, had a
servant to answer the door-bell? Just consider, my dear young friend,
that, except at the South, servants were unknown to a large proportion
of the American people until a short time ago. The parents of these
people you see here, with eighteen-horse-power automobiles, and with
crests upon their writing-paper, their carriages, their footmen’s
buttons, thought themselves in clover when they could afford a
maid-of-all-work. So far, they are merely at the imitative stage. Their
grandparents were pioneers and lived mostly in log cabins, and although
the three generations are divided by only fifty years, it is as if
æons of time existed between them! By Jove! It is one of the most
astounding things in American life!”
“That’s so,” replied Crane. “It is said that one-half the world
doesn’t know how the other half lives, but in these United States
about nine-tenths of the society people have no more notion how their
grandparents lived than they have of life on Mars or Saturn. I went to
a wedding the other day. It was magnificent beyond words. The two young
people had been brought up in----”
“Barbaric luxury,” Thorndyke interrupted. “It’s barbarous to bring
children up as those two were--I know whom you mean. The girl had her
own suite of rooms almost from her birth, her own maid, her own trap.
Even when there was an affectation of simplicity it cost enough to have
swamped her grandfather’s general store at Meekins’s Cross Roads, where
he laid the foundation of his fortune. When she came out in society it
simply meant more of everything. No daughter of the Cæsars was ever
more conscious of the gulf between her and the common people--I say
common people with the deepest respect for the term--than this girl
is conscious of the gulf between herself and the class to which her
grandparents belonged. The young man’s story was the same _da capo_,
except that he was given a boy’s luxuries instead of a girl’s. It
has been carefully concealed from them by their parents that their
grandparents swept, dusted, chopped wood, traded at country stores, and
did all those plain but useful and respectable things which made their
fortune. To hear them talk about ‘grandmamma’ and ‘grandpapa’ is the
very essence of simplicity.”
“And yet those people constitute the most exclusive set in Washington,”
said Crane, angrily, as if thereby some wrong was inflicted on him.
“Naturally,” replied Thorndyke. “Don’t you see that the first result
of their prosperity in their own community was to segregate them
from their less fortunate friends and neighbours? Don’t you see how
inevitably it came about that their children were separated from
their neighbours’ children? And in the end they were drawn from the
Circlevilles and the Meekins’s Cross Roads by sheer necessity? They
became fugitives, as it were, from their own class, and how natural it
was for them to be afraid of their own and every other class except
the recognised few, and to build up a wall around themselves and their
children.”
“I wonder if you would dare to use that word class on the floor of the
House?” asked Crane.
“I would dare to but I shouldn’t care to,” answered Thorndyke. “One
reason why I have so little to say on the floor of the House is because
it involves many explanations to men who know just as well what you
mean as you do, and agree with you thoroughly. But there’s Buncombe
County to be considered.”
“At all events,” said Crane, returning to himself as a subject of
consideration, “this social side of life appeals to me powerfully--too
powerfully, I am afraid. I feel an odd sort of kinship with those
old ladies of seventy that I see going the rounds in Paris gowns and
high-heeled shoes, with their scanty white hair crimped and curled
within an inch of their lives. It’s serious business with them; and,
by George, it’s serious with me, too. Of course I am a blamed fool for
acknowledging so much.”
“Not in the least. But you must know that it can only be a pastime with
you. There is Circleville, and Annette, and the babies----”
Thorndyke saw Crane’s face grow a little pale, and he fell silent
for a minute or two, and while Thorndyke was watching the current of
his thought, as revealed by a singularly expressive and untrained
countenance, Crane burst out:
“The best in the way of women I’ve seen yet is Constance Maitland--I
wonder why she never married. She’s nearer forty than thirty; that she
told me herself.”
It was now Thorndyke’s turn to grow pale. Constance Maitland was
responsible to a great degree for most that had happened to him for the
last eighteen years, and in all that time he had not seen her once; but
the mere mention of her name was enough to agitate him; and she was in
Washington and he had not known it----
It was a minute or two before he recovered himself and began to pull
at the cigar in his mouth. Then he saw by Crane’s face that Constance
Maitland was something to him, too. Had the poor devil fallen in love
with her as he had with Washington dinners? Thorndyke was disgusted
with his friend, and showed it by saying, coldly:
“I knew Miss Maitland well some years ago. She is very charming. But,
Crane, it’s bad manners to call ladies by their first names.” Thorndyke
used the old-fashioned word “ladies” where the moderns say “women.”
Crane coloured furiously. He did not mind in the least being coached in
legislative affairs, but he winced at being taught manners. However,
he had the highest admiration for Thorndyke’s manners, so he replied,
carelessly:
“I accept the amendment. As you say, Con--Miss Maitland is very
charming, and has been charming men for the past twenty years. Now, in
Circleville she would have been called an old maid ten years ago.”
Yes, of course, she had always had a train of men after her, and
the fact that she remained unmarried showed either that she had
no heart--or--sometimes a wild thought had crossed Thorndyke’s
mind--suppose Constance Maitland still remembered him? This thought,
coming into his head, set his heart to pounding like a steam-engine
while Crane talked on.
“That woman epitomises the charm of Washington life to me. First, she
is unlike any woman I ever saw before; that is in itself a charm.
Then, she has an environment; that, too, is new to me. I went to see
her four times last winter.” Then he mentioned where she lived. “Her
parlour--I mean drawing-room--was nothing compared with the others
I’d been in here, but it was distinctive. It wasn’t furnished from
bric-à-brac shops and art-sale catalogues. All the antiques came
from her own family--all the miniatures and portraits were her own
kinsfolk. And, after having lived in Europe for twenty years, as she
told me--because she doesn’t mind mentioning dates--and having seen
more of European society than one American woman in ten thousand, she
loves and admires her own country, and came back here to live the first
minute she was free. That struck me all of a heap, because, though
you wouldn’t judge so from my Fourth of July speeches at Circleville,
I should think that Europe would be something between Washington and
Paradise.”
“You haven’t been there yet,” was Thorndyke’s response to this. And
then Crane proceeded to tell a story which Thorndyke knew by heart.
“It seems, so I heard from other people, she was brought up by an old
crank of an aunt, who had married a Baron Somebody-or-other in Germany.
This old feminine party tried to make Constance marry some foreign
guy, and when she wouldn’t, the old lady, in a rage, made a will,
giving all she had to Constance on condition that she did not marry an
American. It was thought the old lady wasn’t exactly in earnest, but
unluckily she died the week after, and so the will stands--and that’s
why Con--Miss Maitland never married, I guess.”
Just then a band came blaring down the street, followed by the usual
crowd of negroes, dancing, shouting, and grimacing along the sidewalk,
and looking weird in the high lights and black shadows of the night.
Crane, to whom the negroes had never ceased to be a raree show, got up
and went to the window, whistling the air the band played; meanwhile
Thorndyke lay back in his chair trying to get used to the knowledge
that Constance Maitland had been in Washington months and he had not
known it. There was a prologue to the story just told by Crane--and
Crane had no suspicion of this prologue. A young American of good
birth but slender fortune--himself, in fact--was the primary cause
of the old Baroness von Hesselt’s remarkable will. It was he whom the
old lady held responsible for Constance Maitland’s flat refusal to
marry the son of an imperial privy councillor with seven points to his
coronet. Oh, those days at the Villa Flora on Lake Como--those days
that come only in youth, when the whole world seems young! When, from
the terrace, Constance and himself watched the sunset trembling in the
blue lake and making another heaven there! And those starlit nights
when Constance and himself were in a boat alone together, and she sang
to her guitar for him, and he repeated verses from Childe Harold to
her! They were both young and singularly innocent, and were deeply in
love--of that Thorndyke could never doubt; and because they were young
and innocent and in love with each other the old Baroness thought them
the wickedest and most designing creatures on earth. She had spent
all her life in Europe, had frankly married for a title, and wished
Constance to do the same. The old Baron, a helpless invalid, was not
reckoned in the equation.
The Baroness von Hesselt had acquired what many Americans who live
abroad acquire--a spite against her own country. This was accentuated
by the fact that she was a Southerner of the old régime, who hated
liberty, equality, and fraternity from the bottom of her heart, and
who instinctively realised her unfitness for America. She had also
forgotten a good deal about it, and thought a very effective way to
keep Constance from marrying Thorndyke or any other American was to cut
her off from a fortune in that event. The will was made, and the old
Baroness proclaimed it loudly for a week. At the end of that time the
gentleman on the pale horse unexpectedly summoned her. There was but
one thing for any man to do in Geoffrey Thorndyke’s circumstances, and
that was, to go far away from Constance Maitland. No definite words
or promises had passed between them, but unless eyes and tones of the
voice, and all sweet, unutterable things are liars, they were pledged
to one another.
Thorndyke, being in those days a very human youngster, hoped that
Constance would send him a line--a word--and doubted not for a moment
that his love would make up to her for a fortune. But no line or
word ever came. As years went on Thorndyke reached the sad knowledge
that modern life requires something more than bread and cheese and
kisses, and felt a sense of relief that it had not been in his power to
take Constance Maitland’s fortune from her with only love to give in
return. But this knowledge did not make him content. On the contrary,
year by year had her memory become more poignant to him. It was that
which had made him throw himself with all his being and equipment into
public life. It was that which made him tender to all innocent, sweet
women like Annette Crane--innocent, sweet women brought back to him
something of his lost love. He knew she had never married, but all else
concerning her was a blank to him. He was consumed with a desire to ask
Crane something about her--all about her--but he had noted instantly
that in Crane’s eye and voice was a manner which revealed a dangerous
interest in Constance Maitland; and Thorndyke was held back and urged
forward to speak of her.
The band passed on, the street once more grew quiet, and Crane returned
to his seat. Thorndyke smoked savagely to keep from mentioning
Constance Maitland’s name. Crane did likewise with the same motive,
but having less self-control than Thorndyke he could not but hark back
to the ticklish subject.
“So you say you knew Miss Maitland?”
“Yes. A long time ago.”
“She’s very old-fashioned; enough so to stay out of society when she
is wearing mourning. She’s been in mourning for her uncle by marriage
ever since she’s been in Washington--six months. The exclusives don’t
stay in mourning more than six months for husbands, wives, or children.
Parents and aunts and uncles don’t count.”
“The exclusives don’t have any aunts and uncles,” Thorndyke put in
shortly. “They have nieces and nephews who are presentable after they
have been washed and combed--but they can’t go back as far as uncles
and aunts.”
“So they can’t. Their uncles and aunts are just like _my_ uncles
and aunts. Well, I gather that the old Baron for whom Miss Maitland
has worn mourning wasn’t a bad old party--better, perhaps, than his
American wife.”
“He was,” said Thorndyke.
Crane looked at him suspiciously and then kept on.
“Miss Maitland is going out this spring. She says I’m quite right in
thinking there is a delightful society attainable here in Washington,
but she’s so pleased to be back in her own country that she praises
everything right and left. She doesn’t even mind the Dupont statue,
and won’t discuss the Pension building. To see her flow of spirits you
would think her the happiest woman in the world. Yet she told me once
that she wasn’t really happy.”
“All women tell you that before you get through with them,” growled
Thorndyke.
“Annette never has,” said Crane, rising and throwing away his cigar.
“Some time, if you wish to call on Miss Maitland, I’ll take you round.”
Thorndyke restrained the temptation to brain Crane with the carafe
on the table by him, partly out of regard for himself, partly out of
regard to Crane, and partly from the fact that Crane was a much bigger
man than he was. But his colleague was evidently quite unconscious of
Thorndyke’s bloody inclinations, and thought himself the best fellow in
the world to be willing to give Thorndyke a view into the paradise of
Constance Maitland’s company.
“And as for my streak of luck, as you call it, I intend to devote all
my powers to my work, so that no matter what other committee makes
a fool of itself, the Committee on Foreign Affairs won’t--at least
through its chairman,” Crane continued.
“It’s easy enough to steer that committee when everything is peaceful,”
answered Thorndyke, meaning to take the new chairman down a peg.
“And it’s a great deal easier when we get into a continental mess as
we are now. Wait until you get on the Ways and Means, or Committee
on Elections, or Banking and Currency, if you want to have a little
Gehenna of your own on earth. Good-night.”
Thorndyke sat up smoking until after two o’clock. His thoughts were not
concerned with Crane’s political future, nor with his own either, nor
with the continental mess. He was thinking about that dead-and-gone
time, and how far away it was; the moderns did not make love through
the medium of sentimental songs to the guitar and to stanzas from
Childe Harold. They preferred ragtime on the mandolin and the Rubáiyát
of Omar Khayyám; and they no longer seemed to fall in love in the
painful and whole-souled manner which had befallen him; and then he
wandered off into thinking how a man’s will could go so far and no
farther, and how he should feel when he saw Constance Maitland, as he
must eventually, and how she would look and speak. He concluded, before
he went to bed, that he had experienced that unlucky accident, the
breaking of heart, which would not mend, do what he could; for he was
one of those rare and unfortunate men who can love but once.
_Chapter Two_
THE RISE OF A PREMIER AND SOMETHING ABOUT TWO HEARTS
On the fifteenth of April Congress met for one of the most exciting
sessions in the history of the country. There was excitement both for
the members and for the public. Usually, when great economic questions
have to be disposed of, which rack the intelligence of the strongest
men in the House and Senate, which make and unmake Presidents and
policies, at which men work like slaves toiling at the oar, by night as
well as by day, and of which the harvest of death is grimly reckoned
beforehand, the people go on quietly, reading with calm indifference
the proceedings of Congress in the newspapers or skipping them because
of their dulness. When questions affecting the honour and prestige of
the country arise, the American people, justly described as “strong,
resolute, and ofttimes violent,” become deeply agitated, are swayed all
one way by the same mighty impulse, and force Congress to act as the
people wish. The Congress at these times is calm. There is nothing to
do but comply with the mandates of the people. One party is as willing
to vote supplies as another. All march together. The march would become
a wild storming party but for a few cool heads and obstructives, who
act as a brake, and keep the pace down to something reasonable and the
policies in the middle of the road. But the brake is powerless to stop
the march onward.
At this session, though, there were to be things to agitate both
the people and the Congress. The question of peace or war had to be
decided; and if it were peace, as the cooler heads foresaw, it would be
peace on such stupendous terms of power and prestige to this country
that it might be impossible to deal sanely with the great economic
problems which were like the rumblings of an earthquake, and were
liable to produce vast convulsions. For the present, however, economic
questions were in the background, the Committee on Foreign Affairs was
the most prominent one in the House.
It almost cured Crane of his infatuation for Washington society to
see how little it was impressed by the large events waiting to burst
from under the great white dome on the hill. Himself, in a fever heat
of suppressed excitement, he felt aggrieved that dinners still went
on unflaggingly, that the first long season of grand opera Washington
had ever known was about to begin, and claimed much attention. None of
these smart people seemed to care in the least that he was to present
the report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in an unprecedentedly
short time--a report which might mean war or peace. He expressed his
sense of personal injury to Thorndyke as the two sat hard at work in
their committee-room one night a week after the meeting of Congress.
They were quite alone, and it might be said that the report was theirs
alone. There were other strong men on the committee, but they had got
used to the autocratic rule of Thorndyke, and rather liked it. He
consulted them attentively, but he was always the man who acted. The
new chairman recognised this, and being ambitious to rule as Thorndyke
had ruled, he consulted his predecessor somewhat ostentatiously--at
which his colleagues smiled and let him alone. Crane had just
experienced an instance of Thorndyke’s goodwill, who was in the act
of saving his chairman from making a ridiculous blunder which would
have hindered his prospects very much as Oliver Goldsmith’s unlucky
red coat did for him with the Bishop. The Secretary of State, a very
long-headed person in a small way, had previously got the length of
the Honourable Julian Crane’s foot, as the vulgar express it. He had
asked Crane to play golf with him; he had invited the member from
Circleville to little dinners with him. The Secretary’s wife had
requested Crane as a great favour to assist her widowed daughter in
chaperoning a party of débutantes and college youths to the theatre,
and when a scurrilous journal had reflected grossly upon himself, a
married man, and the young widow, Crane was in secret hugely flattered.
To be linked, even remotely, in a scandal with the daughter of the
Secretary of State was a social rise--although he happened to know
that Cap’n Josh Slater, the father of the Secretary of State, had been
engaged in steam-boating on the Ohio River in the wild forties with
his own grandfather, Cap’n Ebenezer Crane. The Secretary’s father
had made money, and his daughters were replicas of Lady Clara Vere
de Vere. Of his sons, one, the present Secretary of State, had left
the banks of the Ohio never to return, and by a steady evolution had
passed from the Western Reserve College to Harvard, thence to Oxford
for a post-graduate course, to Berlin as attaché to the then Legation,
thence home to exercise a gift the politicians had found in him, viz.,
the power to form a silk-stocking contingent in the party to offset
the silk stockings in the opposition. Being a man of some brains and
much perseverance, he had reached the most highly ornamental position
in the Government of the United States--the Secretaryship of State. He
maintained it with dignity. He had, of course, long since, abjured the
Methodist faith, in which he was reared, and was as uncompromising a
Churchman as his brother, the Episcopal Bishop--for such had been the
career of the steam-boat captain’s other son. Both had been brought up
in an auriferous atmosphere totally denied the descendants of Cap’n
Ebenezer Crane, who had lost his all in the steam-boat business,
and spent his last years keeping the Circleville tavern. Crane knew
all about this, one of his grandfather’s standing quarrels with Fate
being that Josh Slater, a durned fool, and a rascal besides, in Cap’n
Ebenezer’s opinion, had made so much, where a better man--that is,
himself--couldn’t make a living. But Crane knew better than to refer to
any of these matters before the Secretary, who was indeed only dimly
acquainted with his father’s profession. The Secretary, a polished,
scholarly man, was a very good imitation of a statesman. He liked
to be called the Premier, prided himself on his resemblance to Lord
Salisbury, and dressed the part to perfection. During Thorndyke’s
chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, when the present
international complication had been brewing, the Secretary had
been a good deal annoyed by being sent for to the Capitol on what
he considered flimsy pretexts. He determined when Crane succeeded
Thorndyke to make a bold stroke, and have the chairman come to him
occasionally, on the sly, as it were. To this end he had written
Crane a little note beginning, “My Dear Crane.” In it the Secretary
spoke pathetically of his lumbago, also of his age--sixty-one--and
would Crane, on the score of old friendship and the Secretary’s many
infirmities, come to see him at a certain hour at the Department, and
perhaps the necessity might be avoided of the Secretary taking a trip
in the changeable weather to the Capitol, which otherwise would be
inevitable.
Crane showed this note with ill-concealed pride, and was about to fall
into the Secretary’s little trap through the telephone when Thorndyke
hastily interposed:
“My dear fellow,” said he, grinning, “you had better wait until the
Secretary’s lumbago gets better, rather than inaugurate the policy of
running up to the State Department to see him, when it is his business
to come here to see you. The old fellow tried that game on me, but, in
return, I used to get the committee to invite him down here about once
a week to give his views on something or other for which we didn’t give
a tinker’s damn, as the Duke of Wellington used to say. But it cured
him. He stopped inviting me cordially and informally to come to the
State Department to see him.”
Crane’s face flushed.
“The d----d old sneak!” he yelled--and then dashed off a curt note to
the Secretary. Thorndyke promptly confiscated this note, and dictated
another, which was, if anything, more affectionate in tone than
the Secretary’s. Crane would wish, above all things, to oblige the
Secretary, but was himself under the weather, and so forth, and so
forth.
“But I played golf with him at seven o’clock this morning!” cried
Crane, throwing down his pen.
“So much the better,” replied Thorndyke. “You are returning his own
lie to him with interest. Go on--‘Possibly by to-morrow you may be
well enough to comply with the wish of the committee, and come to
the Capitol. In any event, before a formal request is made for your
attendance, your convenience will be consulted with regard to the hours
and the weather.’ And when you get him up here put him in the sweat-box
and give him all that’s coming to him--that’s the way to get on with
him.”
“I see,” said Crane, light breaking upon him, “and when you had the old
fellow up here, and I thought you were so friendly and polite to him,
you were just ‘sweating’ him.”
“That’s what I was doing. However, I reckon the present Secretary to be
the ideal man for the place. He is highly ornamental, perfectly honest,
and satisfied with the shadow of power. Occasionally he reaches out for
something in the way of etiquette or attention, as in the present case,
but when he doesn’t get it he subsides quietly. The State Department
has been steadily losing power and prestige from the foundation of the
government until now, when it is recognised as a mere clerical bureau
and a useful social adjunct to the Administration. Do you think if
Daniel Webster were alive to-day he would take the portfolio of State?
He would see the Administration at the demnition bow-wows first. Mr.
Blaine took it twice under compulsion, and was the most wretched and
restless man on earth while he had it. Both times he was so much too
big for the place that he became exceedingly dangerous, and had to be
forced out each time to save the Administration from total wreck. The
lesson has not been lost on succeeding Presidents, and there will be
no more Blaines and Websters in the State Department. The trouble
is, however, that foreign Chancelleries persist in taking the State
Department seriously. They can’t take in that you, as chairman of the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, are of a good deal more consequence
at present than the Secretary of State. You can send for him, but
he can’t send for you. You can call for information from him and
practically force him to give it to you, but he can’t make you tell the
day of the week unless you want to.”
Crane, who had signed and sealed his note while Thorndyke was speaking,
glowed with pleasure at the last words. But he returned to his
grievance about none of the smart set taking any particular interest in
what was going to happen on the morrow.
“The diplomatic people are taking the deepest interest in it,” replied
Thorndyke, grimly, “and when this report is read to-morrow they will be
up against a fierce proposition.” Thorndyke was not above using slang
when in the company of men alone.
They fell to work again at some last details, and it was not far from
midnight when they left the great white building on the hill. In spite
of the engrossing matters which had employed them, both men had been
haunted by the recollection of their conversation the night before,
about Constance Maitland--but neither had spoken her name. Thorndyke
said, as they came out on the deserted moonlit plaza:
“It’s a pity Mrs. Crane can’t be here to listen to you speak to-morrow.”
“Yes,” replied Crane, promptly. “But I have written her about it, and
I shall send her a despatch as soon as I get through to-morrow. By the
way, I sent Miss Maitland a ticket to the reserved gallery. I shall
probably see her at the French Embassy, where I am going to take a look
at the ball.”
It was Crane’s first invitation to the French Embassy, and he was
slightly elated at it, and being unable to conceal anything, Thorndyke
saw his elation. His only reply to Crane’s important communication was,
“Good-night--here’s my car.” And he jumped aboard the trailer just
passing.
When he reached his own door he turned away from it. The night was
growing more enchantingly lovely every hour. A great white April
moon was riding high in the heavens, and the soft freshness of the
spring night was in the air. Thorndyke made the beauty of the night an
excuse to himself for remaining out of doors. In truth, he had felt a
yearning, ever since Crane had first told him that Constance Maitland
was in Washington, to see her habitation--it was next to seeing her.
He struggled against it for an hour or two, walking away from the
street wherein she dwelt. He soon found himself in the poorer part of
Washington, a long way from the gay quarters; a part of narrow brick
or frame houses, cheap churches, and many small shops. He was reminded
of that saying, as old as Plato, who did not himself say it first: “In
all cities there are two cities--the city of the poor and the city of
the rich.” The city of the poor in Washington, however, is the least
disheartening of its sort in the world--for even the poorest house has
air and space and sunlight about it and green trees to shelter it.
After having wandered about until he felt certain the West End was
asleep, Thorndyke yielded to the overmastering impulse and set out for
his goal at the other end of the town. He soon entered Massachusetts
Avenue--that long and beautiful avenue, shaded with double rows of
lindens, their pale green buds breaking out into their first delicate
leaf, the vista broken by open spaces with statues, and closing with
the rich foliage of Dupont Circle. All was quiet, silent, and more
and more brightly moonlit. No glaring gas lamps marred the light or
darkness of the perfect night--for in Washington when the moon shines
the gas lamps don’t shine.
Thorndyke’s soul, dragging his unwilling feet, brought him to one of
the pretty side streets opening upon the splendid avenue. It was here
that Constance Maitland’s house was.
Thorndyke believed--such is the folly of love--he would have known the
house even if Crane had not mentioned the number. But the number was
conclusive. It was an old-fashioned house, broad and low for a city
house. It had been the advance guard of fashion. There was a little
strip of garden and shrubbery at the side, where clipped cedars were
formally set, and three great lilac-bushes were hastening into a bloom
of purple splendour. The scent of the lilacs brought back the terrace
on Lake Como, where lilacs also grew, and where he and Constance had
spent those glowing and unforgotten hours--and by moonlight they had
often sung together the old duet from Don Pasquale, “Oh, April Night!”
Thorndyke, entranced and lost in visions, began to hum the old, old
air. What strange power of restoring the past have old songs and the
perfume of flowers long remembered! Thorndyke felt as in a dream; all
the intervening years melted away; it was once more Como, with its
moonlight, its flower-scents, its songs, its loves--and then he looked
up and saw Constance Maitland standing before him.
She had just returned from the ball--the carriage from which she
had alighted was rolling off. As she met Thorndyke face to face
on the sidewalk she started slightly, and her long white mantle
slipped from her delicate bare shoulders to the ground. Her eyes met
Thorndyke’s--everything was in that gaze except surprise. When two
persons think of each other daily for many years, the strangeness is
not in their meeting but in their separation. They had seen each other
last on a moonlit night, and the sweet scent of lilacs was in the
air--and now, after eighteen years, it was so alike!
The moonlight was merciful to them both. Neither saw all of Time’s
earmarks--Thorndyke saw none at all in Constance. Her girlish figure
was quite unchanged. Her pale yellow ball-gown, the pearls around her
throat, were youthfulness itself. She had never been remarkable for
beauty, but her face showed no lines, her silky black hair, simply
arranged, revealed none of the silver strands that were visible by
daylight. Thorndyke received a distinct shock at her youthfulness. It
was his lost Constance of the Villa Flora.
She held her hand out to him without a word, and he clasped it.
In that clasp Constance realised that she had all and more of her
old power over him. Thorndyke could not have said a word at first
to save his life, but Constance, with equal feeling, had a woman’s
glibness, and could have plunged into commonplaces on the spot. But she
refrained, knowing that her silence was eloquent. She withdrew her hand
lingeringly. Then Thorndyke saw the white cloak lying on the ground.
He picked it up and held it wide for Constance, and when he enfolded
her in the cloak she was enfolded for one thrilling, perilous instant
in his arms. Another moment and she would be at his mercy. Constance,
knowing this, and suddenly remembering the maid waiting for her, and
possibly belated neighbours looking out of their windows, withdrew a
little. This restored Thorndyke’s vagrant senses, and after a moment or
two he said:
“It does not seem--now--so long since we parted.”
“It is very long; it is nearly eighteen years,” Constance replied.
Her voice was the sweet voice of the far South, for her young eyes
had first opened upon the blue waters of another lake than Como--Lake
Pontchartrain. In her speech there were continual traces of her
Louisiana birth--Thorndyke had ever thought her voice and her little
mannerisms of language among her greatest charms--and he was confirmed
in his belief at the first word she uttered. He said to her:
“I did not know until yesterday that you were in Washington.”
“I did not like to send you a card,” Constance replied.
“You might have done so much.”
“I do not know which of us is in the wrong,” she said--said it so
deliberately that it might convey a thousand meanings. “But if you are
waiting for me to ask you--come. Of course, I cannot ask you in now; if
we were as young as we once were, it would be quite dreadful for us to
be standing and talking as we are--but both being old enough to take
care of ourselves, we have our liberty.”