wife’s accomplishments. “I have a great deal of religion, when I am not
annoyed by anything, and I beg all of the gentlemen to observe that
even if I were clever enough to make a gown like Mrs. Crane’s, I could
not wear it. It is too well adapted to Mrs. Crane’s style for any one
else to venture on it.”
“I could have worn it thirty years ago,” said Mrs. Willoughby, with
dangerous candour. “But the fact is, Miss Maitland, all of these men
are so absurdly prejudiced in favour of the gown, that they overrate
it. After all, the rest of us are fairly well-dressed.”
Annette took all this in the spirit of playful compliment in which
it was meant, and was flattered by it. Not so Crane. He thought that
Annette had, at first, let an ugly cat out of the bag, and secondly,
that Mrs. Willoughby was insolent in saying the gown was overrated.
But before the dinner was over, his eyes were opened to the fact that
Annette had made a most agreeable impression, and every man present
admired her, and every woman present liked her.
As soon as the rather short dinner was through, the carriages were
called to take the party to the White House. When Crane and Annette
were alone in their cab, he said to her:
“It seems to me you made a bad break in saying you made your gown
yourself.”
“Far from it,” replied Annette, pleasantly. “It seems to have made them
all like me better. Mrs. Willoughby and Miss Beekman both said they
would be glad to call to see me, and so did the Admiral. I think I was
a success.”
Crane felt like rubbing his eyes and pulling his ears. Was this his
submissive Annette, who never questioned his word on any subject? He
half expected her to call attention to the fact that he had been rather
dull at the dinner, but although Annette knew it quite as well as he
did, she forbore to mention it.
When they reached the White House, there was the usual crowd of
carriages, their lamps twinkling like myriads of stars in the soft
spring night, the roar of horses’ hoofs upon the asphalt, the crowds of
gaily dressed women in evening-gowns disembarking at the north portico,
the blare of music from the red-coated band within the corridors.
Constance Maitland, on Sir Mark le Poer’s arm, and followed by her
dinner-guests, presently found herself shaking hands with the President
and bowing to the line of ladies of the Administration, which extended
across the oval reception-room. Next the President’s wife stood the
wife of the Secretary of State. She was a small, thin woman, with a
determined nose and the general aspect of a mediæval battle-axe. She
was simply though splendidly attired in black velvet, with lace and
diamonds, and was as faultlessly correct as the Secretary himself, in
language and deportment, except in one small particular--she could not
pronounce the word “Something.” She invariably called it “su’thin”--a
souvenir of her early bringing up on the banks of Lake Michigan. She
greeted Constance coolly, remembering the meeting at her house for the
Guild of Superannuated Governesses, but she was effusive toward Sir
Mark le Poer.
Constance, however, blandly unconscious, passed on, and when she
reached the point whence ingress is had to that select region known as
“behind the line,” she was invited, with Sir Mark, to join the elect.
Directly behind her was Thorndyke with Mary Beekman, followed by the
Admiral with Mrs. Willoughby, and they, too, were invited within the
holy precincts. The President himself had stopped Crane for a word with
him, and, on having Mrs. Crane presented, had promptly invited her
behind the line. This was partly due to the white crêpe gown.
In the general mix-up that followed in the hallowed spot, Constance
found herself one of a group near Mrs. Hill-Smith, on the arm of the
British Ambassador, and Eleanor Baldwin and the Honourable Edward
George Francis Castlestuart-Stuart. Close by were Mrs. James Brentwood
Baldwin and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, and Mr. James Brentwood
Baldwin was gravitating toward the Secretary of State, who loomed
large at hand. The Secretary was in a very bad humour for so amiable
a man, but diplomatically concealed it. After eighteen months spent
in labouring over a couple of treaties, they had been knocked out in
three weeks by the Senate. The chief of the gang who perpetrated this
nefarious act was a Southern Senator--the wildest, woolliest, and
weirdest of all the wild and woolly and weird Senators to be found in
the north wing of the Capitol. But he happened to be a lawyer, and he
had punched the treaties so full of holes that they were literally
laughed out of court. This injured the Secretary’s feelings very much,
but he remembered that Beaconsfield and Gortschakoff and Bismarck used
to be ruffled the same way, so he concluded to bear it like a statesman
and a Christian.
Drifting toward the Secretary and Mr. Baldwin was a very odd-looking
object, whom Thorndyke whispered to Constance was Senator Mince Pie
Mulligan. These three got into conversation, very languid on the part
of the Secretary and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, but very strenuous on
the part of Senator Mince Pie Mulligan. A part of Mr. James Brentwood
Baldwin’s coyness came from the fact that he and Senator Mulligan were
old acquaintances--a fact which Mr. Baldwin had no disposition to brag
about.
The new Senator had a head of blazing red hair which was as good as
a stove on a cold night. He might have stepped bodily from the pages
of _Life_ as regarded his contours, but his small, light-blue eye
glittered with humour and shrewdness, while his great, slit of a
mouth, which divided his face fairly in the middle, had lines of both
sense and kindliness. He was enjoying himself hugely, and was not
afraid to let anybody see it. Not so Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, or
the Secretary of State, but a Senator is a Senator to the Secretary
of State, and Secretary Slater had in mind other treaties to be laid
before the Senate, and so was fairly civil to Senator Mulligan. Mince
Pie, himself, was much struck by the appearance of Eleanor Baldwin,
who was easily the handsomest woman present, except her mother, but
although Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin owned up that Eleanor was his
daughter, he made no move to introduce Senator Mulligan to her.
Eleanor Baldwin was a patriot. It was her sense of patriotic duty alone
which took her to a White House reception. White House receptions,
in every particular, including the cabinet people and those behind
the line, were “mixed.” This word “mixed” meant, to Eleanor, a social
Gehenna, while the word “exclusive” spelled, for her, the very joy of
living. There were some “nice people”--by whom she meant the diplomatic
corps and those who were intimate with them, and some people from
the smart sets of near-by cities--but still it was “mixed.” There
was Letty Standiford, whose father, had Eleanor but known it, was
personally responsible for the present occupant of the White House
being there. Then she noticed, quite close to her, the daughter of a
Senator who lived in a very unfashionable part of the town--a girl
whom she would never have known, except that paying calls one day,
with Mrs. Hill-Smith, she happened to go to the Senator’s house. It
had contained for her the one unattainable thing in life--some fine
old furniture and portraits, and a beautiful old grandfather’s clock,
which had been inherited, and by which the Senator’s daughter had not
seemed to set any special store. Eleanor would have given all of their
costly bric-à-brac for one single piece of old silver or furniture
or lace that had belonged even so far back as to her grandparents;
but neither the Baldwins nor the Hogans had inherited any silver,
furniture, or lace, or anything except good, strong legs and arms, and
the capacity to use them. The sight of family treasures always produced
a vague discomfort in Eleanor Baldwin’s mind, and gave her a kind of
pique toward those who possessed them. At that very moment she felt a
secret dislike toward the Senator’s daughter, who had on a beautiful
antique lace bertha, which had been worn by many generations of ladies
before the Brentwood Baldwins had “arrived,” as the French say. There
had been a fire in the Baldwin family, and likewise one in the Hogan
family, and Eleanor had persuaded herself that the frame houses burnt
down in these two fires were stately mansions, and priceless family
treasures had perished in the flames--and she had hinted at this so
often that she had really come to believe it. She was surprised to see
that her father and also the Secretary of State were talking with that
curious-looking object, Senator Mulligan, whose name she had heard.
But seeing the British Ambassador approach with Mrs. Hill-Smith on
his arm, and Constance Maitland with Sir Mark le Poer, Eleanor turned
her whole attention to them. She, too, had brought dinner-guests with
her. She had been the hostess at one of those extraordinary dinners
introduced within the last few years by hostesses whose experience of
dinner-giving is rudimentary. At these dinners, which are considered by
their innocent perpetrators as being the acme of elegance, all the men
are foreigners. When Eleanor Baldwin had achieved one of these dinners,
she felt that she had accomplished a social triumph. Mrs. Hill-Smith
had chaperoned the dinner; and the diplomats invited had refrained from
laughing in the face of their hostess, although they had chuckled with
amusement when in the dressing-room.
Mrs. Baldwin, who stood in the background, wore more than her usual
expression of icy pride, which meant that she was more than usually
frightened. Eleanor’s lovely face relaxed into a smile as she turned
to the British Ambassador, who was a widower. He was a tall, handsome,
high-bred-looking, elderly man, with a clean-shaven face, and a
thin-lipped mouth, which had contorted itself into a grin on his first
arrival in Washington, and the grin had become fixed and perpetual. He
had no fortune beyond his salary and pension, he had rheumatism, liver
complaint, nervous dyspepsia, chronic bronchitis, and a family of six
unmarried daughters and four sons, ranging from thirty-six to sixteen
years of age--yet Eleanor Baldwin would have jumped down his throat,
and Mrs. Hill-Smith was going for him with the stealthy energy of a cat
after the cream-jug.
Eleanor, putting on a roguish expression of countenance, said to the
Ambassador:
“Ah, Mrs. Hill-Smith and I are becoming factors in diplomacy! At our
dinner to-night, every man present was a diplomat, and you may imagine
what state secrets were disclosed!”
“The results may be serious,” replied the Ambassador, laughing a
little. “We shall have to keep our eyes upon the American diplomats who
were present so as to find out how our secrets were betrayed.”
“There weren’t any Americans present,” answered Eleanor, gaily.
“Eh?” said the Ambassador, pretending to be deaf.
Eleanor repeated her words a little louder. There was Constance
Maitland near enough to hear, and like Mrs. Hill-Smith, Eleanor was a
little afraid of Constance Maitland, and also of Mr. Thorndyke, who had
an uncomfortable way of laughing at very serious matters; and just at
her elbow was that queer Castlestuart-Stuart, who blurted out things,
such as not liking books, which other people kept to themselves; and
it was this British bull which now proceeded to play havoc in the
china-shop.
“Yes,” he said, with an air of infantine innocence, and addressing
his chief boldly. “It’s positively true. Not a blessed American man
there. Never saw such a thing anywhere in my life before. Fancy giving
a dinner in London to foreign diplomats and not having an Englishman
there--haw! haw!”
Both Eleanor and Mrs. Hill-Smith turned pale. Constance Maitland
laughed outright; the Ambassador and Sir Mark le Poer looked gravely
into each other’s eyes, and telegraphed, without winking, their
amusement. Castlestuart-Stuart kept on.
“And Hachette, the new French third secretary, told us in the
dressing-room about a letter he had got from his mother in
Paris--terribly strict old lady. She said, ‘You have written me about
going to dinners where no American men are present. You are deceiving
your old mother. It is impossible that persons such as you describe
us giving those dinners should not know any respectable American men.
At all events, do not bring me back a daughter-in-law who has no
acquaintance among respectable men in her own country’--haw! haw! haw!”
A flood of colour poured into the faces of Eleanor Baldwin and Mrs.
Hill-Smith. The Ambassador’s chronic grin had become a little broader;
Sir Mark le Poer was tugging at his moustache. That impossible person,
Castlestuart-Stuart, was haw-hawing with the keenest enjoyment.
Constance Maitland felt that it was time to come to the rescue of her
country even at the sacrifice of her country-women--so, smiling openly,
she said to the too truthful Castlestuart-Stuart:
“I can’t blame you for laughing--it makes all the initiated laugh. But
you must see for yourself that it is only the newest of the new who do
such things. All people new to society do strange things.”
“Never saw it done anywhere before, ’pon my soul,” replied this
incorrigible Briton. “We have our new people at home--tea, whiskey,
drapery, and furniture shops--and rawer than you can think--but they
wouldn’t dare--haw, haw! to give a dinner without an Englishman at it!”
Constance bit her lip--Castlestuart-Stuart was telling the truth, and
there was no gainsaying it; nor could she offer any fuller explanation
than she had already given. Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin were
glaring at her, but Constance remained calm and unmoved. Then from
a most unexpected quarter came a terrible complication. Mince Pie
Mulligan, having been frozen out by the Secretary of State and by Mr.
James Brentwood Baldwin, had been jammed by the crowd almost in Eleanor
Baldwin’s arms, without the least resistance on his part, and had been
an open-mouthed and delighted listener to Castlestuart-Stuart’s candid
words. At the first break he proceeded to improve his opportunities
by hurling himself into the conversation, and looking straight into
Eleanor’s eyes the Senator bawled to Castlestuart-Stuart:
“To give such heathenish dinners as you say, people have got not only
to be new, but they have got to be blamed fools besides!”
There was a moment’s awful pause, and then an involuntary burst of
laughter from all except Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin. The
functions of society with them meant deadly serious things, such as
baking and washing days had been to their grandmothers, and they
thought one about as little a subject of a joke as the other. Eleanor
Baldwin drew herself up, and looked coldly at the British Ambassador,
whose mouth had certainly grown wider. Mrs. Hill-Smith, who was really
timid, felt frightened to death. Like Eleanor Baldwin, she had thought
it the acme of elegance to have a dinner where every man present was
a foreigner and a diplomat, and secretly regretted that, from motives
of state, there always had to be Americans at a cabinet house. And
here were the diplomats themselves laughing at her! It was exquisitely
painful.
However, something more painful still was in store for Eleanor Baldwin.
Mrs. Baldwin approached the group, and at sight of her Mr. Mulligan
held out his hand, and a broad smile carried the corners of his mouth
back to his ears.
“Why, Nora Hogan,” he cried, “it’s good for sore eyes to see you. I
haven’t seen you before for twenty-five years. Jim Baldwin didn’t tell
me, just now when I was talking with him, that you were here, and
didn’t introduce me to his daughter, though I gave him some pretty
broad hints. Sure, you know Mike Mulligan, who was clerk in your
father’s store thirty years ago.”
“Certainly I do, Mike,” responded Mrs. Baldwin, calmly and sweetly and
offering her hand. It was the first time Constance Maitland had ever
seen Mrs. Baldwin unbend from her cold stateliness.
The kindness of her greeting seemed to inspire Senator Mulligan with
the greatest enthusiasm.
“A better man than your father, Dan Hogan, never lived,” proclaimed Mr.
Mulligan, addressing the circle, “and it’s the training I got with him
that’s made my fortune. ‘Dale square, Mike,’ Dan Hogan would say--he
had a beautiful brogue on him--‘and give the widders and the orphans
the turn of the scale when you’re sellin’ ’em sugar and starch and
such.’ And I’ve done it, Nora, in memory of good old Dan Hogan--and if
any man says it’s impossible to keep a corner grocery and be honest, I
say to ’em--‘It’s Danny Hogan, it is, that was the honest man and kept
the corner grocery.’”
Mrs. Baldwin’s face grew softer and softer as Mr. Mulligan proceeded.
She was so great a lover of charity and had such beautiful humility
of spirit that the idea of her father’s example having moulded a man
into a like charity gave her the deepest gratitude and pleasure; and if
pride had owned a lodgment in her heart she would have been proud at
that moment.
But not so Eleanor, or Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, who now appeared
hovering on the edge of the group. Eleanor, her face very pale, fixed
her eyes on Senator Mulligan with a haughty stare, which he perfectly
understood, and resented. A gleam shot into his eye which showed that
he meant to pay her back for her insolence. Mr. Baldwin, in the most
acute misery, practised the goose-step and tried to stem the tide of
Senator Mulligan’s eloquence.
“Er--ah--eh--Mr. Mulligan, your compliments to the late Mr.
Daniel Hogan are very much appreciated by me, as well as
Mrs. Baldwin--especially as I recall with pleasure--what
an--er--important--er--factor you were in the commerce of our native
place. For myself, business has no real charm for me,” continued Mr.
Baldwin, turning to the British Ambassador. “I have been reasonably
successful, but my taste always lay in the way of books. I live among
my books.”
Up to this time Mr. Mulligan had spoken with a very fair Irish accent,
but now he chose to lapse into the most violent brogue that ever
grew on the green sod of Ireland. This was accompanied with a wink
to Constance, which gave her extreme enjoyment, and a nudge in the
Ambassador’s ribs, which he did not in the least resent.
“Faith, and it’s the way yez always was, Jim Baldwin,” cried Mince
Pie Mulligan. “Whin you an’ me was luggin’ the buckets of butter an’
jugs of the most iligant molasses to th’ cushtomers, it was you, Jim
Baldwin, as was always a-savin’ your tin cints to buy a book. An’ when
you was a-coortin’ Dan Hogan’s pretty daughter, ye’d actually mourn
over the ice-cream ye filled her up wid bekase it wasn’t books wid a
gilt bindin’!”
At this point Mr. Mulligan squared himself off, and distributed a
general wink around the circle, including Eleanor, who glared at him
like a basilisk. Mrs. Hill-Smith felt acutely for her dear Eleanor,
but, being secretly consumed with curiosity about antecedents as new to
her as they were to Constance Maitland, could not forbear remaining.
The Slaters were well established socially and financially at the
time of Mrs. Hill-Smith’s birth, and she was as innocent of the phase
of American life which Senator Mulligan was describing as if she had
been born and reared in the royal apartments of Windsor Castle.
Rochefoucauld has said there is something not unpleasant to us in the
misfortunes of our best friends--and it was certainly true of Mrs.
Hill-Smith--for while she was eyeing Eleanor Baldwin with an expression
of the tenderest sympathy, she was inwardly rejoicing that there was
no blot of butter or molasses upon the escutcheon of the Slaters. But
a relentless fate seemed to direct Senator Mulligan’s tongue, and
turning to her the Senator said, cheerfully, and without the least
encouragement:
“And I’m tould ye are the granddaughter of Cap’n Josh Slater, that I
knew like me ould hat, when I was but la’ad, and he was Cap’n of the
River Queen, one o’ the floatin’ palaces of the day on the Ohio River.”
Mrs. Hill-Smith trembled a little, but answered, coldly:
“I think you must have been misinformed.”
“Well, hardly,” responded Senator Mulligan, blithely, “since it was
your own father as tould me, not half an hour ago. I knew th’ ould
man well--an’ he was an honest ould cuss, but for tobacco-chewin’ an’
bad whiskey ye’ll not find his match betune here and the lakes o’
Killarney. He knew how to turn th’ honest pinny though, did ould man
Slater. No givin’ of widders an’ orphans the turn of the scale, nor
the turn of a hair neither--he was out for the last rid cint. He was
a good-lookin’ ould chap, when he was washed up and had on a clean
shirt--and now, I’ll say, I think you’re like him--_raymarkably_ like
him--and it’s up to you to prove that he wasn’t your grandfather,
begorra!”
Had a bomb with a burning fuse dropped at Mrs. Hill-Smith’s feet,
she could not have been any more astounded. She looked from Mince
Pie Mulligan’s laughing face to Eleanor Baldwin’s, and then glanced
helplessly around the circle. It was impossible not to see that the
British Ambassador, Thorndyke, and the wretched Castlestuart-Stuart,
who was primarily responsible for the whole dreadful business, were all
enjoying themselves extremely. Constance Maitland alone seemed to feel
some sympathy for the unfortunates. It was, however, chiefly on account
of Mrs. Baldwin, who began to be painfully embarrassed, that Constance
said, smilingly, to Senator Mulligan:
“Your reminiscences are very interesting, and what you say of Mrs.
Baldwin’s father must give her cause for honest pride. You have
described a phase of American life of which nobody need be ashamed.”
“Except them as has been through it,” promptly responded Senator
Mulligan. “There’s some things human nature”--he called it
“natur”--“will always be ashamed of as long as it is human nature.
One of ’em is that more people blush for a rise in their family than
for a fall. And it ain’t so foolish as it seems; because, if you were
born on top of the pile, and all your people were, bedad, you don’t do
any of these outlandish things such as me young friend,” indicating
Castlestuart-Stuart, “has been tellin’ us about. By the way,” asked
Senator Mulligan, explosively, of the terrible Castlestuart-Stuart,
“who was it give the dinner anyhow?”
And what should that scion of aristocracy, the Honourable Edward George
Francis Castlestuart-Stuart, do but answer:
“Miss Baldwin’s was the last I went to--but there were plenty of
others!”
Ambassadors are not supposed to laugh--but at this, the British
Ambassador abandoned all hope of keeping serious. Constance
was laughing frankly, Thorndyke was in quiet convulsions,
Castlestuart-Stuart and Senator Mulligan were exchanging sympathetic
grins--and then Eleanor Baldwin said, with the air of an offended queen:
“Papa, give me your arm.”
This Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, with a heightened colour, did, but
not before Senator Mulligan genially remarked:
“Well, the best of frinds must part, so here’s good-bye and good-luck
to ye, Jim Baldwin, and I’ll say to you, Miss Baldwin, I hope ye’ll
live and die as honest as ould Danny Hogan, your grandfather, and a
better man never stepped in shoe-leather;” and then, turning to Mrs.
Hill-Smith, Senator Mulligan continued, “I commind to you the example
of your grandfather, Cap’n Josh Slater, that I had the honour of
knowin’ and who always got what he wanted, and was an agreeable man
enough barrin’ the bad tobacco and mean whiskey. But in the polite
society in which we find oursilves, in these dazzlin’ halls of light
an’ scenes of pothry an’ splendour, both Cap’n Josh Slater an’ good
ould Danny Hogan wud be about as much at home as a ham sandwich at a
Jew picnic!”
With these words, Senator Mince Pie Mulligan bowed himself off, leaving
a great trail of social devastation behind him.
_Chapter Ten_
THERE ARE MEN WHO CAN RESIST EVERYTHING EXCEPT TEMPTATION