proved to be quite as intractable as Thorndyke had been, and with
less excuse--for Thorndyke had never been asked to little dinners
at the Secretary’s house. The Secretary’s widowed daughter, Mrs.
Hill-Smith, the beautiful, well-gowned, soft-voiced granddaughter of
Cap’n Josh Slater, of Ohio River fame, murmured once or twice when
Crane was under discussion that he was “so very Western,” and assumed
a rather apologetic tone for having been seen at the play with him.
The Secretary himself, despairing of making the chairman of the House
Committee on Foreign Affairs a handy tool for the State Department,
returned to his legitimate business. This business consisted of
labouring and slaving, in conjunction with foreign chancelleries, to
make elaborate treaties, which the House and Senate treated as college
football teams treat the pigskin on hard-fought fields. The Secretary
felt peculiarly aggrieved over the Brazilian affair, in which the State
Department made a ridiculously small figure, in spite of innumerable
letters, memoranda, protocols, treaties, and what not. When the time
came for action the Congress had quietly taken the whole matter in
charge, and had not even censured the Secretary if it could not praise
him. Could he have been attacked and denounced, as Mr. Balfour and M.
Combes and Chancellor von Buelow, and the Prime Ministers of Europe
were, it would have been a consolation. But even this was cruelly
denied him. He had gone through all the strenuous forms of diplomacy
which meant something a hundred years ago, when there was neither cable
nor telegraph, and when diplomats were not merely clerks and auditors
of their respective foreign offices. The Secretary had practised all
the diplomatic expedients he knew. When he had not made up his mind
what to say to an ambassador, he had gone to bed with lumbago. When he
wished to impress one of the great Powers of Europe with the notion
that it had in him a Bismarck to deal with, he had lighted a cigar in
the presence of five full-fledged ambassadors. Remembering how eagerly
the world always waited for the speech of the Prime Minister of England
at the annual Lord Mayor’s banquet, the Secretary had spent a whole
month composing and revising his remarks at a great banquet in New York
on Decoration Day, and the reporters had got his speech all wrong, and
a disrespectful New York newspaper had made game of his trousers, had
compared them to Uncle Josh Whitcomb’s in “The Old Homestead,” and had
asked pertinently--or impertinently--where the Secretary had hired
them. In Congress he fared little better. The Senate had taken some
small notice of him. In the House he had been practically ignored,
except once when a member alluded to having “an interview with the
Secretary of State.” A member of his own party, the same Honourable
Mark Antony Hudgins, of Texas, who had guyed Crane, had sternly rebuked
his colleague for his phraseology, and declared that what he should
have said was “an audience with the Prime Minister”--and the House
laughed at the unseemly joke. The Secretary had in secret a low opinion
of the collective wisdom of Congress, and in this he was at one with
the whole diplomatic body in Washington.
Crane, like everybody else, had really forgotten the Secretary in the
press of affairs. He was amazed at not receiving an answer to his
letter to Governor Sanders, and so told Thorndyke one night a few days
after their meeting at Constance Maitland’s house. Crane had a great
esteem for Thorndyke’s sincerity, which was justified, and Thorndyke,
in his heart, was forced to admire Crane’s force and to expect great
things of him. He did not entertain any doubt of Crane’s loyalty, but
he watched curiously the development of the character of a man exposed
to Crane’s peculiar temptations. That Crane had both good and bad
qualities in great vigour he saw easily enough, but he could not tell
which were the fundamentals. Crane was desperately poor, was foolishly
proud, was rash and vainglorious, and was destined to shine brilliantly
in the world of politics. What was to become of such a man? What
usually became of such men? It was with these thoughts that Thorndyke,
at his lodgings, on a warm May night, listened to Crane’s account of
what had happened to him in the last few days.
He assured Crane that his conduct regarding Governor Sanders and the
senatorship seemed eminently sensible, after deducting the initial
folly of it. And his making his first serious attempt to save
money at the very time when it might be expected he would become
extravagant inclined Thorndyke to the belief that Crane was, after all,
fundamentally honest.
Crane at that very moment suffered from a feeling of conscious guilt.
He had begun to practise more than the one virtue of economy. He was
practising several others, but all with a view to his own advantage.
One of them was that his wife should come on and visit him during the
remainder of the session. She had not been in Washington for five
years--not since that first unlucky venture in the Eleventh Street
boarding-house.
He mentioned to Thorndyke his intention to send for his wife, and had
the grace to say that it was because he was lonely without her--and
in saying so he was conscious of uttering a colossal lie. But being
inexpert as a liar he did badly, and felt ashamed of doing badly even
in lying.
Thorndyke, on whom Annette Crane’s simple and natural charm had made a
strong impression, was pleased at the thought that Crane would pay her
the compliment of having her with him and pleased at the thought of
seeing her again.
“I shall be going West next week,” he said, “and if Mrs. Crane is ready
to come to Washington I shall be proud to escort her back.”
“Thank you,” answered Crane, “it would be a kindness to me as well as
to Mrs. Crane. She is not an experienced traveller.”
Both Thorndyke and Crane when they were together desired to keep
Constance Maitland out of their conversation, but by one of those
contradictory and involuntary impulses which cannot be accounted for,
her name always came up between them. This time it was by Crane’s
saying, after a while:
“Have you seen Miss Maitland lately?”
“I dined there night before last,” answered Thorndyke.
Crane knew that Constance Maitland’s favourite form of entertaining
was at little dinners, which were perfection in the way of guests and
service. He had never been asked to one of them, and thought gloomily
that after Constance’s very plain speaking to him at their last
interview his chance of being invited was thin to attenuation.
“Was that the night that fellow Hudgins from Texas dined there?”
asked Crane, who had not taken Constance’s sound advice to cultivate
reticence.
“Yes, and I never saw a better dinner-man than Hudgins, nor was ever at
a more agreeable dinner.”
“Bosh! Hudgins?”
“Yes, Hudgins. The fellow has a quiet manner, a soft voice, and the
most delightful and archaic reverence for ‘the ladies,’ as he calls
them. It is like what history tells us of General Sam Houston. Hudgins
was a screaming success at the dinner.”
Seeing that the account of Hudgins’s triumph gave Crane acute
discomfort, Thomdyke, lighting a fresh cigar, kept on remorselessly:
“Miss Maitland wanted to ask some really representative man to meet
Sir Mark le Poer, a very agreeable and considerable Englishman, one
of the permanent under-secretaries in the British Foreign Office--it
seems he is a great friend of hers. He had been gorgeously entertained
by all the retired trades-people who are in the smart set here, but
complained that he hadn’t met any Americans--they _would_ ask all the
diplomats to meet him, fellows that bored him to death in Europe and
still more so here. It seems that Miss Maitland had heard that the
long, thin, soft-voiced Texan was delightful at dinner--so she asked
me to bring him to call, and the dinner invitation followed. Besides
Sir Mark and Hudgins and myself, there was Cathcart--a navy man--good
old New England family, four generations in the navy, travelled man
of the world, and flower of civilisation. But Hudgins was easily the
star of the occasion. There were three other women present besides Miss
Maitland, all of them charming women, who know the world and command
it; and the way they, as well as the Englishman and the naval officer,
fell in love with Hudgins and his soft Texas accent, and his stupendous
Texas yarns, and his way of looking at things--well, it was a show.”
“Oh, come, Thorndyke--Hudgins!”
“Yes, Hudgins, I tell you. When the time came for the ladies to leave
the table none of them wanted to go, and they said so. Then Hudgins
rose and said in that inimitable manner of his, which catches the women
every time, ‘If Miss Maitland would kindly permit it, I’d rather a
million times go into the parlour with her and the other ladies than
stay out here with these fellows. I can get the society of men and a
cigar any day, but it isn’t often that I can bask in the presence of
ladies like these present.’ And the presumptuous dog actually walked
off and left us in the lurch--and you can depend upon it, the women
liked him better than any of us.”
“If women are won by compliments like that, any man can win their
favour,” said Crane, crossly.
“My dear fellow, women know vastly more than we do. It wasn’t Hudgins’s
compliments in words that won the women--it was his giving up his
cigar and the extra glass of champagne and the society of men that
fetched ’em--it was the sincerity of the thing. When we went into the
drawing-room Hudgins was sitting on the piano-stool telling them some
sentimental story about his mother down in Texas when he started out
in life, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a six-shooter
in his pocket. The women were nearly in tears. As for the rest of us,
including Sir Mark le Poer, we simply weren’t in it with Hudgins. We
stayed until nearly midnight; then the men adjourned to the club, where
Hudgins kept us until three o’clock in the morning telling us more
yarns about Texas. Sir Mark would hardly let him out of sight, and
Hudgins has engaged to spend August with him in Scotland at a splendid
place he has near Inverness. That’s the way a man with great natural
gifts of entertaining and being entertained can get on, if he has a
chance.”
Crane felt humiliated and disappointed. In all honesty, he could not
imagine why he, with his recognised talents, his extreme good looks,
his fondness for society, should have no such social triumphs as that
long, lean, lanky Texan. He had not grasped the truth that society is
a pure democracy, and until a man has abandoned all pretensions to
superiority he will not be acceptable in it.
Just then, along the dusky street a carriage came rolling. At
Thorndyke’s door it stopped, a footman descended from the box and
assisted Senator Bicknell to alight.
“The Senator has come hunting you up,” Thorndyke remarked to Crane.
“When a man is anxious enough to see you to come after you, it is
generally possible to make your own terms with him.”
Crane’s backbone was considerably stiffened by this remark of
Thorndyke’s, and then Senator Bicknell walked in the room and greeted
Thorndyke and Crane affably. He made an elaborate apology for seeking
Crane, but said frankly he wished to discuss some matters of State
politics with him.
Thorndyke at once rose to leave the room, but Crane, asking Senator
Bicknell if he had any objection to Thorndyke’s remaining and the
Senator feebly agreeing to it, Thorndyke sat down again to enjoy the
scrap. As it was not in his own party, he was a perfectly disinterested
listener.
“Mr. Crane,” began Senator Bicknell, in a dulcet voice, “I hardly
think you realise what it means to our State organisation to introduce
discord into it at this time.”
It was less than fourteen months before a national convention and the
rainbow of a Presidential nomination had arisen upon Senator Bicknell’s
political horizon. This had happened more than once, but the Senator
had never been able, heretofore, to catch the rainbow by the tail--yet,
hope springs eternal in the human breast.
To this Crane replied, firmly:
“I desire, Senator, to do everything I can to promote harmony in the
State organisation. It is Governor Sanders who is making trouble, and I
shall defend myself from him, and die in the last ditch, if necessary.”
Crane was by nature a gladiator, and the prospect of a fight by no
means discomposed him.
Senator Bicknell sighed. He had already on his hands nine bloody
fights in various parts of the State, and the prospect of a tenth
fight, of a triangular nature at that, with two such sluggers as Crane
and the Governor of the State, made the Senator’s head ache. He looked
sadly at Thorndyke and yearned after a knowledge of the secret by which
his friend, Senator Standiford, could get hold of a man like Thorndyke,
and keep him forever in a subordinate position, while he, Senator
Bicknell, was always engaged in a tussle with his lieutenants.
Crane improved the opportunity to explain fully his position; and there
could not be the slightest doubt that he had narrowly escaped from a
conspiracy meant to ruin him.
Senator Bicknell said little and was evidently impressed by Crane’s
statement. Thorndyke was mentally comparing his own boss with Crane’s
boss. All the pleas in the world would not have availed Crane had he
been dealing with Standiford. He would have been required to sacrifice
himself without a moment’s hesitation and accept the disastrous
honour of the senatorial appointment or be quietly put out of the
way. Politics with Senator Standiford was a warfare in which quarter
was neither asked nor given, and no time was permitted to succour the
wounded or bury the dead. Yet Thorndyke doubted if Senator Bicknell, or
any man then in public life, had ever known a tithe of the tremendous
parental passion which Senator Standiford had for his daughter. So
strange a thing is human nature.
A discussion followed Crane’s words which made a very important fact
clear: that Crane had suddenly become a factor in State politics.
Crane’s colour deepened as Senator Bicknell made a last effort with
him for peace with Sanders, and when it was met with a firm refusal
to accept the appointment, Senator Bicknell dropped some words which
indicated plainly that if forced to choose sides he might be with
Crane. For a man who a month before had been obscure this was a vast
though silent triumph.
After an hour’s talk Senator Bicknell got up and departed. It was well
on toward ten o’clock, and Crane, too, rose to go. Thorndyke went out
with him and they walked together as far as the foot of the hill at
Connecticut Avenue. Then Thorndyke turned back, to indulge in a folly
which had been his nightly, since that first afternoon with Constance
Maitland. It was, to pass within sight of her house, then to return
sick at heart to his own rooms and ask himself if he could be such a
fool as to wish her to give up that charming home for lodgings such as
he could afford.
Crane presently reached his quarters, a comfortable suburban house with
many verandas, and not unlike his own house at Circleville. On the
table in his room lay a parcel, evidently containing photographs. He
opened it and took out a photograph of his wife with her two children,
Roger and Elizabeth, by her side. The children were handsome--the boy
the sturdy, well-made replica of his father, the little girl her mother
in miniature; both of them children of whom any father might be proud.
As for Annette, the sweetness, the soft, appealing character of her
beauty, was singularly brought out in the photograph. Nor was there any
suspicion of weakness in the face, which most men would have fallen in
love with on the spot.
But Crane was dissatisfied. She was not a woman even to be talked
about. Crane would have liked a woman whose name would be in the
newspapers every day. True, Constance Maitland kept out of them all
she could, but she was too striking a personality not to attract the
attention of the society correspondents. If she had been the wife of a
public man, she would have been in print quite as often as he was.
Still Crane was glad he had sent for his wife. He had not realised
until this crisis in his fate had come upon him what a mistake he
had made in not having her with him sometimes. Not a man of his
acquaintance who owned a wife but had her occasionally in Washington.
He began to think with terror of what his enemies might have to say
concerning this, and then, going to his table, wrote Annette another
letter more urgent than his first, in his desire that she should come
to Washington. He mentioned the chance that Thorndyke, who had never
failed to show interest in her, had offered to escort her East. He felt
like a hero and a martyr while writing this. But after he had posted
his letter, and he had gone back to the balcony of his room and gazed
out into the solemn night, he had a return of that strange sense of
guilt. He felt like a hypocrite; and, as he was not a hypocrite by
nature, the feeling was uncomfortable. He put his request to Annette
on the same ground he had alleged to Thorndyke--his wish to see her.
And he ought to wish to see her--he _did_ wish to see her; but the
stillness of the night and the presence of the stars is disconcerting
sometimes to one’s conscience. The stars were very bright and it was
wonderfully clear, although the moon was just rising. Tall apartment
houses blazing with light made centres of radiance in the purple night.
The Washington monolith was like a pillar of cloud, and the dome of
the Capitol seemed suspended in mid-air. It was all very beautiful,
but Crane saw nothing of its beauty. He saw only before him a struggle
with stupendous forces--these he feared not--but also a struggle with
himself; and this he feared! He went to bed and slept uneasily.
_Chapter Seven_
HOW VARIOUS PERSONS SPENT A MAY SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON
Next morning Crane rose with the intention of going to church--a thing
he had not done for years. And in the practice of this virtue he
committed an act of the greatest hypocrisy. He knew the very hour when
Hardeman, the correspondent of his home paper, took his Sunday morning
stroll on Connecticut Avenue. Crane timed his own appearance so that he
met Hardeman directly in front of the Austrian Embassy.
In half a minute afterward Crane mentioned that he was on his way to
church.
As he spoke Hardeman took a newspaper out of his pocket, and opening
it, held it up before Crane. On the first page, with the most violent
display-head, was the official announcement of his appointment by
Governor Sanders to the unexpired time of the late Senator Brand’s
term.
Crane turned pale. He was ready for the fight, but the fight had come
unexpectedly soon. And that it was to be to the knife, and knife to the
hilt, was now perfectly plain.
“Come with me,” said he to Hardeman, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”
They turned back to Dupont Circle, seated themselves on a bench left
vacant by a coloured brother, and Crane told the whole story to
Hardeman to be printed next day.
As he talked, his course of action, simple, above-board, and effective,
at once took shape in his mind. He wrote out on a pocket-pad a letter
to the Governor, saying as the Governor had thought fit to make the
public aware of his action in the senatorship before communicating with
Crane himself, that he, Crane, should do likewise and make a public
declination of it. He then gave a brief statement of what had passed,
inserted a copy of his first letter to the Governor, and reiterated his
refusal to accept the senatorship. Hardeman, a keen-eyed man, was in
the seventh heaven of delight. The letter would, of course, be sent to
the Associated Press, but there was “a good story” for the home paper,
and a specific mention that Representative Crane was on his way to
church when the news was communicated to him.
Crane, still pale, rose and announced that he should keep on to
church--a fact also certain to be chronicled. Church was a very
good place to think out the problems which would come out of this
extraordinary and far-reaching fight.
He went on, sat through a long sermon of which he heard not a word,
listened to the musical gymnastics of a high-priced quartette, and
gradually became himself, or, rather, more than himself, for the
fight at hand brought out in him all the thews and sinews of courage,
foresight, and judgment. At the very last, when the name of God was
mentioned in the final prayer, Crane had one moment of sincere piety.
Otherwise his thoughts were very far from pious, being absolutely those
of self-seeking and revenge. Like other men, he promised himself that
when Mammon had granted him all he wanted, then he would turn to God.
When he found himself on the street again it was a little past twelve
o’clock. He turned into the side streets to escape the throng of
people going home from church. As he walked under the arcade of the
sweet-smelling tulip-trees with the May sunshine filtering through, he
felt the ever-present longing for sympathy. He would have liked to go
to Constance Maitland, but something in her tone and manner at their
last meeting made him afraid.
On that former occasion he had scarcely been master of himself, he did
not know when he was offending her; but now he was far more composed.
Yet he dared not go.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind he looked up and
saw Constance coming down the street under the dappled shadows of the
tulip-trees. She was dressed simply in black, but Crane had never
been more struck by the distinction of her appearance. With her was a
fine-looking man whom Crane surmised was Cathcart, the naval man. Crane
intended to pass the pair without stopping, but when he raised his hat
Constance halted him. There was that ever-present feeling of pity for
him, and she was conscious of having said some hard things to him in
that last interview.
“I have glanced at the newspaper this morning,” she said, “and I fancy
your friend, Governor Sanders, has treated you rather shabbily.”
“Very shabbily,” replied Crane, smiling; “he has driven me to the wall,
but he will find me fighting with my back to the wall.”
Then Constance introduced her companion, and it was Cathcart, after all.
“You can’t expect much sympathy from me, Mr. Crane,” said Cathcart,
smiling. “If it had not been for you and your colleagues I might
have been in command of a ship at this moment, making a run for the
Caribbean Sea. You did us naval men a bad turn by forcing those beggars
to back down without striking a blow.”
Cathcart, like all naval men, was eager to play the great game of
war with the new implements lately acquired, and did not welcome the
exercise of peaceful power which had forced an amicable arrangement of
a dangerous question.
Just then a handsome victoria drew up at the sidewalk. In it sat Mrs.
Hill-Smith, the widowed daughter of the Secretary of State, and a
beautifully dressed, high-bred-looking girl, Eleanor Baldwin. Baldwin,
_père_, whose cards read, “Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin,” was the
successful inventor of a machine for stitching shoes, which had brought
him a great fortune early in life, and had enabled him to establish
himself in Washington and adopt the rôle of a gentleman of leisure
and of inherited fortune. His daughter looked like the younger sister
of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, as Mrs. Hill-Smith, Cap’n Josh Slater’s
granddaughter, looked like Lady Clara Vere de Vere herself.
Mrs. Hill-Smith beckoned to Constance, who approached, leaving the
two men a little distance away talking together under the overhanging
branches of the tulip-trees.
“My dear girl,” said Mrs. Hill-Smith, who had adopted the “dear girl”
mode of addressing all women like herself over thirty-five, “you must
come to the meeting of the Guild for Superannuated Governesses, which
is to be organised at my house to-morrow. It is a branch of the one
presided over in London by the Princess Christian”--and Mrs. Hill-Smith
ran over glibly a number of names of ladies of the diplomatic corps in
Washington who were interested in it, winding up with, “And we _can’t_
get on without you.”
Constance Maitland’s full gaze had in it power over women as well as
over men, and Mrs. Hill-Smith was not quite certain whether there was a
laugh or not in Constance’s deep, dark eyes, as turning them on her she
replied:
“Very well--but my first proposition will be revolutionary, I warn you.
I shall suggest that we pay governesses enough to enable them to save
something, and thus we can get hold of the economic problem by the head
instead of by the tail.”
Was she really in earnest? Mrs. Hill-Smith did not know, but there
was certainly a flippancy in Constance’s tone which shocked both Mrs.
Hill-Smith and Miss Baldwin. The serious, hard-working women by whom
they were mothered and grandmothered had given them a deadly soberness
and energy in the pursuit of social schemes and pleasures, just as
their forbears had industriously and seriously washed and baked and
brewed.