long I’ll be in these parts, I said to myself, ‘Faith, I’ll pay Miss
Maitland a visit this very afternoon.’ And here I am with this ould
cruelty cart, when I’ve got a stable full of horses at home, and a
Panhard red devil that cost me six thousand dollars to buy and a
thousand a year to keep--but, like the butterfly, I get there just the
same.”
Constance, being a clever woman, looked into Michael Mulligan’s soul
and saw that it was honest, according to his lights, and that his
bragging was not bragging at all, but an innocent way of mentioning
what the pie business had brought him.
“I am very glad to see you, Senator,” she replied, smiling, and then
gravely introduced this member of the august Senate of the United
States to the group sitting about the tea-table.
Nobody but Thorndyke and Cathcart took in the situation. The Virginia
cousins, to whom political preferment means that the object of it
belongs to one of the first families in his own home, supposed that
Mr. Mulligan, although certainly very odd-looking, had a long line
of distinguished ancestors, and it was with much cordiality that an
ex-Confederate Colonel, grave and suave, with a snow-white moustache
and imperial, shook Mike Mulligan’s hand, saying:
“I am pleased, sir, to make your acquaintance, and to bid you welcome
upon the soil of old Virginia.”
The Frenchman, a retired army officer, and his wife, a thorough-bred
French gentlewoman, were equally polite, but they arrived at a much
more correct estimate of Senator Mulligan’s social status than the
ex-Confederate Colonel. As for the Honourable Mike, he started in
to enjoy himself in a whole-souled manner, which would commend him
to all sincere persons. He drank three glasses of iced tea running,
complimented the late President Davis and General Lee, declared that
he meant to buy up a good part of the State of Virginia, and worked
himself up into a whirlwind of enthusiasm over everything he saw. This
completely captivated all the ex-Confederates present, amazed the
French strangers, and amused Thorndyke and Cathcart beyond words. On
leaving, Senator Mulligan told Constance nothing but the truth when he
said that he had never enjoyed an afternoon more, or had found himself
among more “conjaynial company.”
Then began for Thorndyke a week of rapture, mixed with agonising
jealousy; for let no man suppose that his passions have no more power
to trouble him after his hair grows scanty and his moustache grows
grey. In all those years of separation from Constance, the edge of
Thorndyke’s pain had been dulled, but the ache was still there; and
from the April night he had first seen her, until then, he felt himself
being steadily and securely mastered by that great love of his life--as
steadily and securely as if he could have offered her his honest and
devoted heart. And to be thrown with her daily--to spend the bright
summer mornings in the cool, old drawing-room with Constance, listening
to the pleasant, languid talk of people in a country house, the shady
afternoons in driving over the rich, green, placid country, sometimes
with Constance by his side--the deep, blue nights, sitting on the
great stone porch, watching the silver moon rise over the distant
pine-crowned mountain-peaks, and looking at Constance, in a thin white
gown, seeming as young by night as in those sweet Italian nights long
past--it would have been bliss but for two things. One was that she was
as kind to Cathcart as to himself, and the other was that she was so
very kind to him. For since she could not possibly think of marrying
him, she could only be amusing herself at his expense.
Thorndyke was nearly forty-five years old, he was a member of
Congress, and reckoned a peculiarly cool-headed and long-headed man,
but he was thereby exempt from the agonies of love.
As for Senator Mulligan, Thorndyke did not need to recall the frank
confession made on the train to know that Mince Pie had speedily made
up his mind that Constance was worth the winning, and to go about it
with promptness and energy. On the very last afternoon, Thorndyke,
disgusted with the goodwill which Constance had shown Cathcart,
retired to a rustic summer-house on the lawn, to writhe in secret with
jealousy, and incidentally to read the New York newspapers. Presently
he saw Constance and Senator Mulligan walking across the sward toward
the house. Constance’s face was flushed, and she was walking rapidly.
Senator Mulligan was talking earnestly to her, and his brogue was more
evident than usual, under the stress of emotion. Immediately in front
of the summer-house Constance stopped and faced the Senator.
“I must beg of you,” she said, in a clear voice, with a faint ring of
indignation in it, “to say no more on this subject to me now, or at
any other time.”
“Well, I’ve said about all I had to say,” replied Senator Mulligan,
warmly. “I asked you to marry me, I did, and I tould you, I did, if
you had to lose what money you had because I’m an American, thank God,
that I’d make it up to you a dozen times over. I said that, I did,
and I didn’t desaive you about the senatorship.” The brogue by this
time was rampant. “The thing was going a-beggin’, and the Governor, he
sends for me, and he says to me, ‘Mike,’ says he, ‘you’ll be nothin’
but a stop-gap, and don’t get any other notion into your red head but
that--and ye’ll step down and out the first of January,’ says he; ‘and
don’t monkey with the buzz saw,’ says he. And I says, says I, ‘I won’t,
Governor, and I’ll have my fling at Washington, and I’ll take down my
Panhard red devil, and go a-scorchin’ over the Washington streets, and
have the time of my life,’ and bedad, I have. And I had no more thought
of falling in love and getting married than I have of trying to get up
a diligation to present my name to the next Prisidential convention.
But then I met you, Miss Maitland, and I came up here after you, and
you’ve bowled me over, senatorship and all, and I’ve tould the truth,
and not a lie in the bunch, and I’ve offered to give up your money, and
I don’t see that I’ve done anything for you to look at me like Lady
Macbeth, and I beg your pardon if I’ve offinded you.”
During this speech Constance Maitland’s heart softened toward Mince Pie
Mike. He had only claimed a man’s inalienable right, and he had behaved
as honourably as in him lay. So she said, with a softening of the voice
as well as the heart:
“I feel sure that all you say is true and I am sorry if I have wounded
you--but what you ask is not to be thought of for a moment.”
“Well,” remarked the Senator, resignedly, “it’s a disappointment,
it’s a great disappointment, but there are other things in life, Miss
Maitland. There’s the pleasure of helping widows and orphans, and I
swear to you I have done that as well as I could iver since I was a
clerk in good ould Danny Hogan’s corner store, and there’s the pleasure
of managing the primaries and handing over the biggest batch of votes
for the money of any man in the State----”
“Mr. Mulligan!” cried Constance, in horror.
“Yes, there’s no denying of it in some States--and there’s automobiling
and plenty of other clean, dacent pleasures to make up for love. But
I tell you, Miss Maitland, there never can be the time, if I’m still
single, that you can’t be Mrs. Michael Patrick Mulligan, and your money
may go to the bow-wows for all I care, and I honour and admire you
above all the women I iver knew, I do that. Good-bye. Don’t snub the
life out of me in Washington if I meet you next winter.”
“I shall not, I promise you--good-bye,” said Constance, and walking
briskly into the summer-house, while Senator Mulligan turned away, she
almost walked into Geoffrey Thorndyke’s arms.
“I couldn’t help hearing,” said Thorndyke, with a burning face. “I
couldn’t get out--it would have been beastly to the poor devil----”
And then both of them suddenly burst into a gale of laughter, nor could
they, all that day and evening, meet each other’s eyes without laughing
mysteriously.
Thorndyke’s visit lasted a week. It was a week of heaven and hell to
him. When he went away, Constance Maitland realised that, to accomplish
her heart’s desire, she would have to do the proposing herself, as
Queen Victoria did on a similar occasion.
_Chapter Twelve_
WHAT IS IT TO BE HONEST IN POLITICS AND TRUE IN LOVE?
On the first Monday in December--a gloriously bright winter day--the
flags were run up over the Senate and House wings of the Capitol
building. Congress had met once more.
There were the usual thronging multitudes in the corridors, the usual
pleasant buzz of meeting and greeting in cloak and committee rooms, and
the cheerfulness and exhilaration of the last session was flamboyant in
the present one.
Among the last members of the House to arrive was Julian Crane. He
had come late because he wished to put off as long as possible the
meeting with Senator Bicknell. Of course, they must meet early and
often, but that did not make Crane take any less pains to postpone, if
even for a day, the sight of the man he had betrayed. But almost the
first acquaintance he ran across was the Senator in a group of brother
senators who had strolled over to the House side.
Senator Bicknell greeted Crane with unusual cordiality. In the first
place, he really wished to attach Crane to the Bicknell chariot, but
he had such agreeable recollections of his August day in Circleville,
of Annette and her spotless table, her roast chicken and boiled corn,
her sweet, fresh spare bedroom, where he had enjoyed one of the best
naps of his life, and her impromptu reception in the afternoon, that he
felt an increased kindliness for Crane. He showed this by button-holing
Crane in the midst of the group of senators, and telling the story of
his day in Circleville. He paid Annette many sincere compliments, and
declared that if Crane should enter the senatorial contest a year and a
half hence, and should defeat him, it would simply be on account of the
charming Mrs. Crane. It was not fair to pit a man with such a lovely
wife against a hopeless and incurable bachelor like himself.
Under other circumstances Crane would have been highly gratified, but
now it tortured him. He heard once more ringing in his ears Governor
Sanders’s words, “It is absolutely necessary that Senator Bicknell be
not taken into our confidence.” To cap the climax, Senator Bicknell
said:
“Be sure and give my warmest regards to Mrs. Crane, and tell her
I shall take the first opportunity to call on her--she is here, I
suppose? She mentioned last summer that she was coming on with you.”
“Yes,” replied Crane, “we are established for the season”--and he gave
the name of a comfortable, but not expensive or fashionable, apartment
house where they had quarters.
“And say to her that, although I can’t give her a dinner half so good
as what she gave me, I shall expect her and you to arrange to dine with
me at my house at a very early day. Good morning.”
Crane escaped and went to his seat in the House. While he was
contemplating the baseness of his own conduct, Thorndyke came over and
spoke to him.
Thorndyke’s first impression of Crane was that he looked haggard and
worn, and Crane’s impression of Thorndyke was that he had grown about
ten years younger. His greeting to Thorndyke was very cordial, but he
was conscious of a strange thing--that ever since his bargain with
Sanders, the meeting with former friends, men of sterling probity,
gave him a vague uneasiness. It seemed to him as if, in duping Senator
Bicknell, he was duping every honest man he knew. Thorndyke, too, asked
after Mrs. Crane, and it began to dawn upon Crane’s mind that Annette
had the power, in a remarkable degree, of pleasing men of the world.
Still, he thought her not quite good enough for himself, particularly
if the brilliant future he planned should materialise--as it must and
should.
The proceedings of the day were perfunctory, and it was but little
after three o’clock when Thorndyke left the House. The afternoon was
briskly cold, and the sun glittered from a heaven as blue as June. Just
as Thorndyke came out on the plaza he encountered Crane, who would have
avoided him, but it was scarcely possible.
The two men walked down the hill, and toward Thorndyke’s old quarters.
They talked amicably and even intimately, but Thorndyke got a curious
impression of reserve from Crane--and reserve was the last thing in the
world to develop in Julian Crane. As they walked along the streets in
the dazzling sun of December in Washington, they were speaking of the
great economic questions with which the Congress would have to deal.
Thorndyke, as an accomplished lawyer, saw certain difficulties in the
way of regulating these matters which Crane did not at first perceive.
“After all,” said Thorndyke, “it comes down to whether either political
party will deal honestly with these questions. If they do, a solution
will be found, and the whole matter can, in the course of a few years,
be properly adjusted.”
“What do you call perfect honesty in politics?” asked Crane, after a
moment.
“That’s rather a large proposition,” replied Thorndyke, laughing.
“I should say, if called upon to give an immediate definition, that
perfect honesty in politics means keeping one’s hands clean in money
matters, and being an outspoken friend or enemy.”
Crane’s heart sank at this. He did not know why he should have asked
such a question, and he was hard hit by Thorndyke’s reply.
“There must be a good, wide margin allowed for offensive partisanship,”
Thorndyke continued. “That’s the trouble with the professors of
political economy in colleges--they leave human nature out of the
equation. There’s my boss, Senator Standiford. He is as honest as
the day as far as money goes, and honest in using his enormous power
for the good of the party, and he was born with the notion that his
party and the country are interchangeable terms. He uses dishonest
men sometimes, but not dishonest methods. It is both shameful and
ridiculous that a great State like ours should hand over such vast
power to one man as it has to Senator Standiford, but that’s not his
fault. It is rather to his credit that he has not misused his power.
The trouble is, that the people will get accustomed to the system of
one-man government, and when Senator Standiford goes hence, the party
will choose another dictator, probably neither as honest or as able as
he.”
“Senator Standiford is a rich man. Suppose he were poor? What
percentage would you allow a poor man in political life in his efforts
to be honest?”
“I can’t figure it out that way,” answered Thorndyke, “although I
ought to know public life from the viewpoint of the poor but honest
Congressman. I am not worth ten thousand dollars in the world outside
of my Congressional salary. But as the Kentucky colonel said on the
stump, ‘I am as honest as the times will allow.’”
“Don’t you think,” persisted Crane, for whom this discussion of honesty
in public life had a powerful fascination, “that the same man in
certain political circumstances would remain honest, while in different
circumstances he might succumb to temptation? Take the case of a poor
man in politics.”
“I admit that the most desperate venture on earth is for a man to
attempt to live by politics. Some men have done it, like Patrick Henry,
for example. But those men are quite beyond comparison with every-day
men. However, Marcus Aurelius says, ‘A man should _be_ upright, he
should not be made to be upright.’”
This saying of Marcus Aurelius troubled Crane. He did not fully
believe it. He thought that Marcus Aurelius, like the professors of
political economy in colleges and universities, left out of account the
great factor of human nature, which makes a bad man to do good acts,
and a good man to do bad acts, and makes a man good at one time, bad at
another, and both good and bad together. Presently he roused himself
and said:
“It would be a great thing for any public man if he could lead such a
life that every word he said or wrote could be printed.”
“Why, have you been writing letters lately?”
“God knows, no! I have always had sense enough for that--to write as
few letters as possible.”
At that moment Crane felt a thrill of satisfaction--not one line did
Governor Sanders have of his.
The two men then began to talk about the political situation generally,
and Thorndyke noticed in Crane an exultant spirit, a disposition to
brag which had been absent in him at the time of his first rise into
prominence, when it might have been expected to develop. The truth
was that Crane found the only solace for his moral lapses lay in
contemplating the splendid prizes which Sanders had dangled before his
eyes. He had come to believe that some of these splendid prizes must be
his; it was incredible that he should not receive the price for which
he had sold his honour. And as the case always is, whether a man is or
is not wholly bad, Crane promised himself at some future time, when
he had garnered all the fruits of his wrong-doing, to lead a life of
perfect rectitude.
Then they came to the street corner where their paths diverged, and
Thorndyke said at parting:
“Please give my warmest regards to Mrs. Crane, and tell her I mean
to presume upon her past kindness to me and call to see her in the
evening.”
“Have you seen Miss Maitland?” asked Crane.
“No,” replied Thorndyke, who had just proclaimed himself a man of
truth. He had not, indeed, seen Constance to speak to her, but the
night before, within two hours of his arrival, when he had gone out to
smoke his after-dinner cigar, he had sneaked up to her house, and had
watched her as she passed to and fro before the lighted windows of the
drawing-room.
Crane went upon his way gloomily, turning over in his mind his
conversation with Thorndyke, and all the difficulties of his situation,
which were accentuated by his being in Washington. The strong fancy
which Senator Bicknell had taken to Annette made everything harder. It
seemed as if all those things which might be reckoned an unmixed good
for an honest man were a burden and a perplexity to him, Julian Crane.
Thinking these uncomfortable thoughts, he found himself at the entrance
to the big apartment house, and went to his own quarters.
They were small and cramped, but the locality was good and the outlook
pleasant. Annette and the two children met him with smiles. The
children had grown acquainted with him and had become fairly fond of
him. As for Annette, she had never, in all her married life, so striven
to help her husband as in the last few months, when she had seen that
he was troubled and suspected that he was engaged in wrong-doing. All
her pity, all her loyalty as a wife, had risen within her. She had
gradually abandoned the attitude of reserve which she had maintained
toward him ever since that first unfortunate experience in Washington
so long ago. She reproached herself, as the good always do, for not
having been better. Had she given him more of her confidence and sought
his more, she might now be in a position to help him, or at least to
sympathise with his trouble, whatever it might be. But her conscience
should never upbraid her again for want of sympathy and tenderness to
him. He might tell her of his perplexities, or he might keep them to
himself, she would be all tenderness and softness to him. And then
the hope was born and lived in her heart, which every neglected wife
has, that calamities of the soul as well as the heart might bring her
husband once more to her side. For Annette had never ceased to love her
husband--and loving spells forgiveness with a woman.
Crane dutifully delivered Senator Bicknell’s and Thorndyke’s messages,
and Annette’s eyes sparkled with pleasure. She felt an increase of
courage. She thought Crane must have seen that she had been a help, not
a hinderance to him, socially and personally, when she had been given
a chance, and she meant to show him that she could hold her own in
Washington as well as in Circleville.
A week or two passed in all the gay confusion of the beginning of the
season in Washington. Thorndyke had watched his chance to call on
Constance Maitland. Carefully avoiding her usual day at home, he had
called on a peculiarly raw and disagreeable afternoon, very late, when
he felt sure that she must have returned from her daily drive. He found
her in her drawing-room, which was dusky, although it was not yet six
o’clock, with a bright fire leaping high and making the charming room
bright with its ruddy glow.
Constance, wrapped in rich dark furs, her cheeks tingling with the
fresh cold air without, her eyes sparkling, was standing before the
blazing fire. She was unaffectedly glad to see Thorndyke, and he felt
that sense of quiet well-being which always came upon him when he was
with her in her own house. They had much to talk about. Constance took
off her furs and the long, rich cloak which enveloped her, and sat down
on the deep, inviting sofa, and motioned Thorndyke to her side.
Among the persons they spoke of were Julian Crane and Annette.
Thorndyke volunteered the suggestion that Crane was passing through
some sort of a crisis--he was so changed, so silent where he was
formerly talkative, so full of vague exultation and of equally vague
depression. Thorndyke had seen Annette and the children. Annette had
asked to be remembered to Miss Maitland, and Constance replied that
she should call at once to see Mrs. Crane. She was not particularly
interested in Julian Crane’s crises, except that she said, woman
fashion, that he ought to be more attentive to his wife.
Thorndyke then mentioned that Senator Mulligan was in town, at which
they both laughed. But soon the conversation got down to the you
and I--the books each had read, the thoughts each had pondered, the
places each had been. Constance had remained continuously at Malvern
Court from June until late in November. She had had a succession of
house-parties during the summer, but in the golden autumn she had been
quite alone.
“It was the sweetest, the most peaceful life you can imagine,” she
said, thoughtfully. “All the world was shut out, except Virginia
cousins, but I even escaped most of them. All day I was out in the
woods and lanes, riding or driving or walking, and in the evening,
with a wood fire, a book, a piano, and a lamp--it was company enough,
yet it was solitude itself. It was like Omar’s shady tree and loaf of
bread and jug of wine and book of verse.”
“And thou,” added Thorndyke, under his breath. He was watching her with
a silent rapture which possessed him on meeting her after an absence.
She surely had the softest and sweetest voice in the world, and those
charming tricks of pronunciation--she called solitude “solee-tude”
and piano “pe-arno,” and was quite unconscious of it, and bitterly
denied any difference between her speech and Thorndyke’s. Constance was
conscious of the adoring look in Thorndyke’s eyes; she had heard the
one suggestive word; perhaps it was that which caused a happy smile to
flicker for a moment on her lips, revealing the faint, elusive dimple
in her cheek, but she continued as if she had neither heard, nor seen,
nor understood.
“I have heard about the solitude there is in crowds, but I never could
find it so. I am so dreadfully sociable--Southern and Creole French,
you know--that I always find troops of friends and acquaintances in a
crowd. But in that solitary old country house in the autumn--that, if
you please, was to be alone.”
“You seem to have a passion for solitude,” said Thorndyke, rather
crossly.
“Oh, no, only a taste for it at times. I never contemplated with
pleasure a solitary life, and I have a horror of a lonely old age.”
What did she mean? Was she proposing to him? Thorndyke was a good deal
staggered by this speech from the lady of his secret love.
The time sped fast with them, and both of them started when a
neighbouring clock struck seven. Constance rose at once.
“I must go and dress for dinner--and you--you will remain?”
Such an idea had never entered Thorndyke’s brain before, but in half a
quarter of a second he had accepted.
“Of course,” said Constance, airily, picking up her muff, and putting
her bare hands in it, “it’s very improper for you and me to dine
together without others, but we have reached that comfortable age when
we can commit all sorts of improprieties in perfect safety. It is a
fine thing to grow old.”