was convened in extra session. Thorndyke’s apprehensions had been
confirmed. Few legislative follies had been committed--the House had
gone with the people, leaving to the Senate and the Administration the
disagreeable task of stemming the popular tide as far as possible, when
it rushed on too fast. No reputations had been damaged in either House,
and several had been made--but none to equal Julian Crane’s. As for
Thorndyke, the newspapers seemed to have forgotten his existence.
By the time adjournment was reached, Washington was deserted. The
class which is designated as “everybody” was either going or gone. The
outgoing steamers carried half the town across the ocean. Thorndyke had
promised himself a treat--a trip to Europe that year--the first since
that long-remembered one which had settled his fate in some particulars
for him. It was the first time in years that he felt he could afford
it, for he was a free-handed man, generous to his invalid sister, not
averse to lending money when he had it, and fond of giving presents.
To do this on his Congressional salary did not leave much surplus.
This summer, however, he concluded he could take a three months’ trip.
Constance Maitland’s return had not changed his determination, because
he felt that he could not, in decency, follow her wherever her summer
wanderings might take her; and if he could not be with her, he would
rather, just then, be in Europe.
But one word from Constance, on the afternoon when he went to bid her
farewell, changed all this in the twinkling of an eye.
He found that she had just returned from a near-by place in Virginia,
where her family had been established many generations before the
Louisiana Purchase had sent them toward the Gulf of Mexico. Constance
was full of her Virginia trip, and told Thorndyke that she meant to
take, for the summer, the old family place, Malvern Court, at the
foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where many generations of dead and
gone Maitlands had lived and flourished, after their migration from
their first American home on the shores of the Chesapeake. She showed
him a photograph of the place. It was an old brick manor-house, very
tumble-down, but picturesque, with noble old trees around it, and even
in the picture it conveyed a delicious look of repose. It was the
sort of a place where nothing startling had ever happened except the
Civil War, and nothing ever could happen again. The present owner of
the place, an elderly maiden lady, “Cousin Phillis,” was the last of
her race. She had taken up the notion that, she would like to spend
the summer at “the Springs,” as she had done “in papa’s time, and
grandpapa’s time;” and Constance, meaning to confer a benefit on her,
had offered to rent Malvern for the summer at a price which would have
been dear for a Newport cottage. The old lady, after a long struggle,
had agreed. Constance did not tell all of this, but Thorndyke shrewdly
suspected that the arrangement was designed to help Cousin Phillis far
more than she imagined.
“And Cousin Phillis thinks she is doing me the greatest favour in the
world, and that she is giving me the place for nothing,” Constance
explained, smiling, to Thorndyke.
Then she went on to tell of her battles with Cousin Phillis regarding
what was necessary for the house. Cousin Phillis could not conceive
that anything should be wanting at Malvern Court, which stood exactly
as it was at the beginning of the war, minus forty odd years of wear
and tear; and Constance had only got the old lady’s consent to fit up
the house somewhat, according to modern ideas, by promising to remove
every one of the new-fangled fallals and gewgaws when she should give
up the place. By hard fighting she had got Cousin Phillis to agree
to have some painting and papering done, and hoped when once Cousin
Phillis was out of the way, that the house could be made as comfortable
as it was picturesque.
It was two hours by train from Washington and six miles from the
nearest railway-station.
“Will it not be very lonely for you up there?” asked Thorndyke, smiling
at Constance’s description of her efforts to benefit Cousin Phillis
against her will.
“Ah, you do not know Virginia cousins,” answered Constance. “Nobody
yet was ever known to want for company in Virginia. The two days I
was at Malvern it rained cousins. Each one had to be treated with
distinguished consideration, and after I had worn myself out with
civility to them--for they were coming all day and half the night to
call on me--Cousin Phillis gently intimated to me that if I wasn’t more
attentive to my relations I might find myself very unpopular with them;
and I find that in Virginia to be unpopular with one’s relations is to
be an outcast. They regard me with great suspicion; my Louisiana ways
and my Louisiana accent only half please them; and they seem to think
me a very forgetful person because I do not remember every birth and
death in the family which occurred during the seventy or eighty years
that the Maitlands have been established in Louisiana. I hope,” she
continued, smiling, “that you will have the opportunity to meet some of
my Virginia cousins. I shall have a great many house-parties during the
summer, and you are among those I shall invite. I hope you may accept.”
“I accept now,” replied Thorndyke, and in a breath his trip to Europe
melted away and was as if it had never been. Then Thorndyke very
artfully found out the hour of her departure, which was to be three
days later.
When Constance, on a warm June morning, arrived at the station, with
her five negro servants and her household and personal paraphernalia,
to start for her summer in Virginia, she found Thorndyke waiting for
her. In the station he had met Annette Crane, who had just seen a
constituent off on the train. At the same moment they caught sight of
Constance.
“Come,” said Thorndyke, “go with me and say good-bye to Miss Maitland.
She is a real friend of yours, and I know she will be glad to see you
before she goes.”
“I feel that she is a real friend,” answered Annette. “I never knew a
woman in whom I felt greater confidence.”
“Constance is a very loyal and a very large-minded woman,” replied
Thorndyke, absently. He had used her first name inadvertently, and only
became conscious of it when Annette began laughing softly. Then he
coloured violently, and explained that he had lost his mind, or lost
his manners, or something of the sort, to account for his calling Miss
Maitland by her first name.
They came upon Constance very smartly dressed, as always, and looking
young and animated. She was superintending the tickets and luggage of
herself and her five servants. There were innumerable boxes and trunks
to be seen to, besides a couple of traps and a pair of horses, and
Constance was doing it vigorously, with Scipio Africanus, her young
butler, and Charles Sumner Pickup, her coachman, acting as purely
ornamental adjuncts, giving her frequent and disinterested advice about
the horses, the trunks, and other impedimenta, but in reality being
waited on by their mistress. Whenever negroes go on a journey, they at
once become children, and are treated as such by those who understand
them. In a group stood the cook, an elderly, respectable negro woman,
dressed in black, with the stamp of “fo’ de war” written all over her
honest black face, and a housemaid and a lady’s maid, both chocolate
coloured.
Whenever Thorndyke had observed Constance’s servants before, they
had been dressed with entire correctness--but on this occasion they
had evidently been allowed complete latitude. The two maids wore the
shortest of short skirts, with violent-coloured shirtwaists. They had
on hats exactly alike--large picture-hats of white, with wreaths of
red roses. The same riot of colour had broken out on Scipio Africanus
and Charles Sumner Pickup. Scipio sported a scarf-pin composed of two
United States flags crossed, while Charles Sumner Pickup carried a
cane from the handle of which fluttered red, white, and blue ribbons.
The cook, who was plainly an ante-bellum product, had donned, for
the journey, an immense crape veil, which dangled to the ground, and
implied that she was in the first stages of widowhood. As a fact, she
had “planted her ole man,” in the Afro-American vernacular, about
thirty years before, but at intervals since, she had adorned herself
with the crape veil, as a dissipation in dress akin to the maids’
wreaths of red roses, and the butler and coachman’s assumption of the
national colours.
Thorndyke, on reaching Constance’s side, proffered his assistance, but
his offer was promptly repulsed.
“How on earth would you manage five negroes?” she asked. “You would
lose your patience in five minutes--you do not know what they know or
what they do not know. I think I have everything straight now--I will
keep the tickets myself”--and then, escorted by Thorndyke, she saw her
five charges and the horses, the traps, and the trunks in their proper
cars, and, sending Thorndyke after Annette Crane, herself took her
place in the drawing-room car for her two hours’ trip.
When Annette stepped in the car to spend ten minutes with her,
Constance was sincerely glad. She felt a strong and strange sympathy
with Annette Crane. Never were women more dissimilar in type, in
environment, in ideas, than those two women; but both were gentlewomen
of sense and right feeling, and on that common ground they met and
became friends.
Constance expressed a wish that Mrs. Crane might be in Washington the
next winter, and Annette quietly replied that she expected to be.
Thorndyke then began telling her of his amusement at watching
Constance, with five servants, working like a Trojan for them.
“Of course, you, with your cool Northern temperament, cannot understand
the negro,” replied Constance, good-humouredly. “You would expect a
negro to work when he could help it. What a delusion! Suppose I had
trusted Scipio or Charles to buy those tickets and get those horses
aboard, and meanwhile a street-band had come along?”
“I suppose Scipio or Charles would have got the tickets and attended to
the horses just the same,” answered Thorndyke.
“Do you? That shows your utter density regarding Scipio and Charles. I
daresay you thought it very amusing that I should work for my servants.”
“I did.”
“They work for me when I want them and make them--that is, they work in
a certain way--_their_ way. And I suppose you would have that United
States flag pin off Scipio’s bosom and that cane with the red, white,
and blue ribbons out of Charles’s hand if you were travelling to
Newport with them.”
“I am afraid I should.”
“And you could not stand the wreaths of red roses on the hats of my two
maids?”
“I am quite sure I couldn’t.”
“Then, Mr. Thorndyke, stop legislating for the negroes, because you
know nothing about them.”
“I admit,” said Thorndyke, “that the patience and indulgence of
Southerners toward negroes has always amazed and charmed me. But I
believe the negro would be better off if he were made to assume greater
responsibilities.”
“Go to. Can the Ethiopian change his skin?”
Just then, Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin and Eleanor sauntered into
the state-room of the car. They were to join a yachting party at Old
Point Comfort. They spoke distantly and coolly to both Constance and
Thorndyke--the memory of Senator Mince Pie Mulligan’s candid praise of
“ould Danny Hogan at th’ corner grocery” was still a green and smarting
wound in their breasts.
Mr. Baldwin’s English valet and Eleanor’s French maid were doing
everything possible for the comfort of their master and mistress and
with perfect intelligence. Thorndyke smilingly indicated it, but
Constance shook her head.
“I am always hearing complaints about French and English servants
in this country, but we who are accustomed to negro servants never
complain of them.”
“Because you never require anything of them; however,” added Thorndyke,
“I’ll admit there seems to be a comfortable sort of arrangement between
you. It would drive any but Southern people mad, but you don’t seem to
mind it.”
Then Constance, turning to Annette, said she would be so glad if she
and Mr. Crane would pay her a visit during the summer. Annette’s
eyes sparkled; it was a distinct triumph for her, because she knew,
and knew that Crane knew, that he never would have been asked but
for her. She thanked Constance warmly, but said she was afraid it
was impossible--she never went away from Circleville in summer; and
Constance, seeing longing in Thorndyke’s eye, repeated her invitation
to him, and made his middle-aged heart beat fast by doing it; and then
it was time to go, and the train pulled out, and Constance was gone.
Thorndyke put Annette on her suburban car, and walked back to his
lodgings, through the hot, bright streets--hot and bright in spite of
the lush greenness of the shade. But the day had turned lead coloured
to him; and although there were still plenty of persons in town, and
the capital was seething, for it was yet some days before adjournment,
Thorndyke felt as if the whole town were silent and deserted.
The presence of Constance Maitland made any place full for Geoffrey
Thorndyke, and her absence made a desert to him. He contrasted in his
own mind his feelings of to-day and of a year ago. Then, he had reached
a kind of dull acquiescence in fate, or thought he had. Despairing of
forgetting Constance, he had learned to endure quietly the poignant
pain of remembering her, and in default of all else in life to interest
him he had thrown his whole soul and being into politics. Now, the
sound of Constance Maitland’s voice, the touch of her hand, was always
with him, and had turned an otherwise dull and prosaic world into a
region of splendid tumult and delicious agitations, for he would not
have gone back to his past state for anything on earth. Constance had a
deep regard for him--of that there could be no doubt. She commanded his
society whenever she could; she exerted herself to please and flatter
him; and he accepted it as a man drinks water in the desert, not
analysing it, but exulting in it. Even those frequent seasons when he
called himself a blankety-blank fool were not devoid of enjoyment--at
least, it was not stagnation. He yearned after a million or so of
money, that he might lay at Constance’s feet, and ask her to throw
away the fortune that stood between them, but he was too sound and
sane a man to imagine that he would ever be a rich man. Politics had
by no means lost its interest for him, but rather had it gained--that
at least was something to give him value in Constance’s eyes. As for
that bare possibility of the senatorship two years hence, in the event
that Senator Standiford should retire, Thorndyke regarded it as an
iridescent dream. He did not believe that Senator Standiford would
retire. He heard no more of Letty Standiford’s delicate health, or the
Senator’s, either. Letty was rushing about Washington in an automobile,
helloing at young gentlemen on the street, and doing many loud,
unnecessary, and innocent things which require much nervous energy and
lung-power. The Senator himself gave no indications of ill-health and
fatigue. In Washington he led a life as regular and temperate as that
of a boarding-school miss, but when local elections were impending,
or a national convention was on hand, Thorndyke had known the old
gentleman to go for a fortnight at a time almost without eating or
sleeping, and then come out looking as fresh as a daisy. So Thorndyke
was a little sceptical about his boss’s possible retirement from the
field, and took it that the Senator had been trying some sort of an
intellectual bunco game upon him.
When the adjournment of Congress was reached, Thorndyke took the first
train to his northern home. It was a comfortable old place, on the
skirts of an old colonial town left high and dry among more progressive
places; but shady, serene, and comfortable in the extreme. Here, in the
house where he and his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather
were born, Thorndyke’s summers were spent with his sister Elizabeth, a
gentle, sweet-faced creature, who had not walked for many years, but
whose mind and hands were busy doing such good as lay in their reach.
Down in the town before a wooden one-story office with a porch, hung
a battered tin sign, which had been repaired and repainted twenty
times since first, in Geoffrey Thorndyke’s grandfather’s time, it had
borne the legend, “Geoffrey Thorndyke, Counsellor at Law.” Thorndyke
still kept the dingy little office which had been his grandfather’s
and his father’s before him. He had given up the best of his law
practice at the time that he had been thrown down and securely roped
for Congress by Senator Standiford and his trusty cowboys, the State
Committeemen, but had always clung to the old law-office as a refuge in
case Senator Standiford should relegate him to private life. Although
he had been compelled to abandon the active and continuous practice of
his profession--for according to the old axiom, “The law is a jealous
mistress”--Thorndyke remained a student of law. He was by nature and
training a very considerable lawyer, and his legal acquirements had
helped to win for him the high and steady position he held in the House
of Representatives. He was not a leader of men, but rather a thinker
and adviser, and was proud of the somewhat scornful appellation of “the
scholar in politics.”
In his quiet summer home, among his few shabby books--which, unlike
Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, he read diligently, and never thought to
mention that he lived among them--Thorndyke spent his placid summers.
He read much, and observed a great deal. He was close to the border of
Crane’s State, and their congressional districts were contiguous, and
naturally Thorndyke knew the political happenings across the border.
In all his experience of men, Thorndyke had never watched with the
same interest the development of a man in his public and private life
as he watched Julian Crane’s. He saw the good and the evil struggling
together in Crane, and had not yet found out which was fundamental.
Crane, with Annette and the two children, had returned to Circleville
immediately after the adjournment of Congress, and immediately, on
reaching home, he had been beset with a temptation, against which he
had made a short, hard fight, and then was conquered, and gave up all
the honesty of his soul as regards politics. One week after his return
to Circleville, he had received overtures for peace from Governor
Sanders, and a meeting between them had been arranged.
It took place in a neighbouring city, in the private parlour of a
hotel. The two men were entirely alone. Sanders, a bull-dog of a man,
came out frankly and told Crane that, by the cutthroat policy they
were pursuing, they were simply playing into Senator Bicknell’s hands,
and depriving the State of its just weight with the National Committee
in the year of a Presidential convention. His proposition was a large
one, but was put in a few words. The Governor began by freely admitting
that Crane had got the best of him in the matter of the senatorial
appointment--the politicians were agreed on that. But all men make
blunders, and Governor Sanders proposed to atone for the blunder he
had made about the senatorship by joining forces with Crane instead
of opposing him further. It was plain that there was a strong revolt
against Senator Bicknell, and a split was inevitable among the chiefs
as soon as the Legislature met, which would elect a senator. When this
break came, new alignments must be made, and Governor Sanders believed
and said that if he and Crane should join forces they could oust
Senator Bicknell and get control of the machine.
At the mention of Senator Bicknell’s name, Crane changed countenance,
and mumbled something about his political obligations to the Senator.
Sanders met this by saying that it was his opinion, if Senator
Bicknell were not ousted, there would be grave danger that the party
would lose the State at the next election; and, in any event, there
must be a new arrangement of forces, and he was simply proposing to
take advantage of the inevitable. He then went on to explain briefly
his plan. The protocols must provide that Governor Sanders should
throw all his strength toward getting Crane the party nomination for
the short senatorial term in January, and second Crane’s efforts to
succeed himself. In return, Crane was to devote all his energies toward
securing the Governor’s election two years hence to succeed Senator
Bicknell. Meanwhile, Senator Bicknell was nursing a very robust and
promising Vice-presidential boom, which must, of course, be strangled
in the cradle. Nothing must be heard of it at the next Presidential
convention a year hence; but four years hence, when both Crane and
Sanders would be in the Senate, it would be time enough to decide which
one would strive for it. The geographical position of the State and
the uncertainty of the elections for many years past would put them in
a very good strategic position either to capture the Vice-presidential
nomination or to dictate it to the convention; and that was a prize
which could be held in reserve.
The success of the whole, however, depended upon keeping Senator
Bicknell in the dark, for although he had not displayed the qualities
of a truly great boss, like Senator Standiford, yet he was a man of
considerable force, well liked, a gentleman, and a favourite in his
party. If he suspected the plotting of an insurrection against him,
he might in two years’ time overthrow it completely; but he was an
unsuspicious man--a bad thing in a boss--and could be easily deluded
into believing that no effort was necessary on his part to hold his
own. For that reason, the warfare between Sanders and Crane should
be ostensibly kept up. Especially must this be the case in selecting
delegates to the National Convention. Senator Bicknell’s aspirations
for the Vice-presidential nomination must be frosted on the apparent
ground of dissensions among the leaders in the State--but as soon as
the election was over they could come together and have four years’
amicable struggle to prove whether Sanders or Crane should be seriously
put forward for the Vice-presidential nomination five years hence.
Crane listened to this nefarious scheme with disgust--a disgust in
which a great longing was strangely and violently mingled. Every
word that Sanders said was true; Crane knew that perfectly well. The
machine was going to pieces--there could be no doubt of that--and
Crane, with accurate knowledge of conditions, saw that the Governor’s
plan, although far-reaching, was quite practicable. The whole thing,
however, hinged upon keeping Senator Bicknell in the dark. If it had
been a free, fair fight, the Governor and himself might be worsted.
Senator Bicknell might be considered the founder of Crane’s political
fortunes, and had certainly treated him with great kindness, and had
procured his advancement; but then, it was a question whether the great
law of necessity would not compel Crane to go with Sanders. Senator
Bicknell would not, if he could, ruin Crane, but Governor Sanders was
fully capable of it, and would, if he could. Indeed, Sanders conveyed
as much.
“Of course,” he said, carelessly, as he lighted a cigar, “you would
have to be very circumspect in every way from now on. Voters, you know,
are easily offended. As a matter of business, purely, I shall mention
to you that there has been some talk about your leaving your wife at
home during your time spent in Washington. I have heard that, except
for the short visit she paid you during the extra session, she has not
been there since the first session at which you took your seat. Of
course, everybody knows that it is all straight between you, but it
was a mistake on your part, just the same. It will give your enemies a
handle against you.”
Crane grew pale. How strange it was that in all those years he had
never been conscious of the supreme folly of his behaviour! It had not
once occurred to him until that evening in Washington, hardly more than
a month ago!