Senator North
G >>
Gertrude Atherton >> Senator North
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 Cedric Vonck, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online
SENATOR NORTH
BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
_"When, Mr. President, a man, however eminent in other pursuits and
whatever claims he may have to public confidence, becomes a member of
this body, he has much to learn and much to endure. Little does he
know of what he will have to encounter. He may be well read in public
affairs, but he is unaware of the difficulties which must attend and
embarrass every effort to render what he may know available and
useful. He may be upright in purpose and strong in the belief of his
own integrity, but he cannot even dream of the ordeal to which he
cannot fail to be exposed; of how much courage he must possess to
resist the temptations which must daily beset him; of that sensitive
shrinking from undeserved censure which he must learn to control; of
the ever recurring contest between a natural desire for public
approbation and a sense of public duty; of the load of injustice he
must be content to bear even from those who should be his friends; the
imputations on his motives; the sneers and sarcasms of ignorance and
malice; all the manifold injuries which partisan or private malignity,
disappointed of its object, may shower upon his unprotected head. All
this, if he would retain his integrity, he must learn to ear unmoved
and walk steadily onward in the path of public duty, sustained only by
the reflection that time may do him justice; or if not, that his
individual hopes and aspirations and even his name among men should be
of little account to him when weighed in the balance of a people of
whose destiny he is a constituted guardian and defender."_
--WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN
_In memorial address before the Senate, 1866._
_Miss Betty Madison embarks on the Political Sea. Her Discoveries,
Surprises, and Triumphs._
SENATOR NORTH
I
"If we receive this Lady Mary Montgomery, we shall also have to
receive her dreadful husband."
"He is said to be quite charming."
"He is a Representative!"
"Of course they are all wild animals to you, but one or two have been
pointed out to me that looked quite like ordinary gentlemen--really."
"Possibly. But no person in official life has ever entered my house. I
do not feel inclined to break the rule merely because the wife of one
of the most objectionable class is an Englishwoman with a title. I
think it very inconsiderate of Lady Barnstaple to have given her a
letter to us."
"Lee, never having lived in Washington, doubtless fancies, like the
rest of the benighted world, that its officials are its aristocracy.
The Senate of the United States is regarded abroad as a sort of House
of Peers. One has to come and live in Washington to hear of the 'Old
Washingtonians,' the 'cave-dwellers,' as Sally calls us; I expected to
see a coat of blue mould on each of them when I returned."
"Really, Betty, I do not understand you this morning." Mrs. Madison
moved uneasily and took out her handkerchief. When her daughter's rich
Southern voice hardened itself to sarcasm, and her brilliant hazel
eyes expressed the brain in a state of cold analysis, Mrs. Madison
braced herself for a contest in which she inevitably must surrender
with what slow dignity she could command. Betty had called her Molly
since she was fourteen months old, and, sweet and gracious in small
matters, invariably pursued her own way when sufficiently roused by
the strength of a desire. Mrs. Madison, however, kept up the fiction
of an authority which she thought was due to herself and her
ancestors. She continued impatiently,--
"You have been standing before that fireplace for ten minutes with
your shoulders thrown back as if you were going to make a speech. It
is not a nice attitude for a girl at all, and I wish you would sit
down. I hope you don't think that because Sally Carter crosses her
knees and cultivates a brutal frankness of expression you must do the
same now that you have dropped all your friends of your own age and
become intimate with her. I suppose she is old enough to do as she
chooses, and she always was eccentric."
"She is only eight years older than I. You forget that I shall be
twenty-seven in three months."
"Well, that is no reason why you should stand before the fireplace
like a man. Do sit down."
"I'd rather stand here till I've said what is necessary--if you don't
mind. I am sorry to be obliged to say it, and I can assure you that I
have not made up my mind in a moment."
"What is it, for heaven's sake?"
Mrs. Madison drew a short breath and readjusted her cushions. In spite
of her wealth and exalted position she had known much trouble and
grief. Her first six children had died in their early youth. Her
husband, brilliant and charming, had possessed a set of affections too
restless and ardent to confine themselves within the domestic limits.
His wife had buried him with sorrow, but with a deep sigh of relief
that for the future she could mourn him without torment. He had
belonged to a collateral branch of a family of which her father had
been the heir; consequently the old Madison house in Washington was
hers, as well as a large fortune. Harold Madison had been free to
spend his own inheritance as he listed, and he had left but a
fragment. Mrs. Madison's nerves, never strong, had long since given
way to trouble and ill-health, and when her active strong-willed
daughter entered her twentieth year, she gladly permitted her to
become the mistress of the household and to think for both. Betty had
been educated by private tutors, then taken abroad for two years, to
France, Germany, and Italy, in order, as she subsequently observed, to
make the foreign attache. Feel more at ease when he proposed. Her
winters thereafter until the last two had been spent in Washington,
where she had been a belle and ranked as a beauty. In the fashionable
set it was believed that every attache, in the city had proposed to
her, as well as a large proportion of the old beaux and of the youths
who pursue the business of Society. Her summers she spent at her place
in the Adirondacks, at Northern watering-places, or in Europe; and the
last two years had been passed, with brief intervals of Paris and
Vienna, in England, where she had been presented with distinction and
seen much of country life. She had returned with her mother to
Washington but a month ago, and since then had spent most of her
time in her room or on horseback, breaking all her engagements after
the first ten days. Mrs. Madison had awaited the explanation with deep
uneasiness. Did her daughter, despite the health manifest in her
splendid young figure, feel the first chill of some mortal disease?
She had not been her gay self for months, and although her complexion
was of that magnolia tint which never harbours colour, it seemed to
the anxious maternal eye, looking back to six young graves, a shade
whiter than it should. Or had she fallen in love with an Englishman,
and hesitated to speak, knowing her mother's love for Washington and
bare tolerance of the British Isles? She looked askance at Betty, who
stood tapping the front of her habit with her crop and evidently
waiting for her mother to express some interest. Mrs. Madison closed
her eyes. Betty therefore continued,--
"I see you are afraid I am going to marry an Oriental minister or
something. I hear that one is looking for an American with a million.
Well, I am going to do something you will think even worse. I am going
in for politics."
"You are going to do what?" Mrs. Madison's voice was nearly inaudible
between relief and horrified surprise, but her eyes flew open. "Do you
mean that you are going to vote?--or run for Congress?--but women
don't sit in Congress, do they?"
"Of course not. Do you know I think it quite shocking that we have
lived here in the very brain of the United States all our lives and
know less of politics than if we were Indians in Alaska? I was ashamed
of myself, I can assure you, when Lord Barnstaple asked me so many
questions the first time I visited Maundrell Abbey. He took for
granted, as I lived in Washington, I must be thoroughly well up in
politics, and I was obliged to tell him that although I had
occasionally been in the room with one or two Senators and Cabinet
Ministers, who happened to be in Society first and politics afterward,
I didn't know the others by name, had never put my foot in the White
House or the Capitol, and that no one I knew ever thought of talking
politics. He asked me what I had done with myself during all the
winters I had spent in Washington, and I told him that I had had the
usual girls'-good-time,--teas, theatre, Germans, dinners, luncheons,
calls, calls, calls! I was glad to add that I belonged to several
charities and had read a great deal; but that did not seem to interest
him. Well, I met a good many men like Lord Barnstaple, men who were in
public life. Some of them were dull enough, judged by the feminine
standard, but even they occasionally said something to remember, and
others were delightful. This is the whole point--I can't and won't go
back to what I left here two years ago. My day for platitudes and
pouring tea for men, who are contemptible enough to make Society their
profession, is over. I am going to know the real men of my country. It
is incredible that there are not men in that Senate as well worth
talking to as any I met in England. The other day I picked up a bound
copy of the Congressional Record in a book-shop. It was frantically
interesting."
"It must have been! But, my dear--of course I understand, darling,
your desire for a new intellectual occupation; you always were so
clever--but you can't, you really can't know these men. They are--they
are--politicians. We never have known politicians. They are dreadful
people, who have come from low origins and would probably call me
'marm.'"
"You are all wrong, Molly. I bought a copy of the Congressional
Directory a day or two ago, and have read the biography of every
Senator. Nine-tenths of them are educated men; if only a few attended
the big Universities, the rest went to the colleges of their State.
That is enough for an American of brains. And most of them are
lawyers; others served in the war, and several have distinguished
records. They cannot be boors, whether they have blue blood in them or
not. I'm sick of blue blood, anyway. Vienna was the deadliest place I
ever visited. What makes London interesting is its red streak of
plebeianism;--well, I repeat, I think it really dreadful that we
should not know even by name the men who make our laws, who are making
history, who may be called upon at any moment to decide our fate among
nations. I feel a silly little fool."
"I suppose you mean that I am one too. But it always has been my
boast, Betty, that I never have had a politician in my house. Your
father knew some, but he never brought them here; he knew the
fastidious manner in which I had been brought up; and although I am
afraid he kept late hours with a good many of them at Chamberlin's and
other dreadful places, he always spared me. I suppose this is heredity
working out in you."
"Possibly. But you will admit, will you not, that I am old enough to
choose my own life?"
"You always have done every single thing you wanted, so I don't see
why you talk like that. But if you are going to bring a lot of men to
this house who will spit on my carpets and use toothpicks, I beg you
will not ask me to receive with you." "Of course you will receive with
me, Molly dear--when I know anybody worth receiving. Unfortunately I
am not the wife of the President and cannot send out a royal summons.
I am hoping that Lady Mary Montgomery will help me. But my first step
shall be to pay a daily visit to the Senate Gallery."
"What!" Mrs. Madison's weary voice flew to its upper register. "I
_do_ know something about politics--I remember now--the only women who
go to the Capitol are lobbyists--dreadful creatures who--who--do all
sorts of things. You can't go there; you'll be taken for one."
"We none of us are taken very long for what we are not. I shall take
Leontine with me, and those interested enough to notice me will soon
learn what I go for."
Mrs. Madison burst into tears. "You are your father all over again!
I've seen it developing for at least three years. At first you were
just a hard student, and then the loveliest young girl, only caring to
have a good time, and coquetting more bewitchingly than any girl I
ever saw. I don't see why you had to change."
"Time develops all of us, one way or another. I suppose you would like
me to be a charming girl flirting bewitchingly when I am forty-five. I
am finished with the meaningless things of life. I want to live now,
and I intend to."
"It will be wildly exciting--the Senate Gallery every day, and knowing
a lot of lank raw-boned Yankees with political beards." "I am not
expecting to fall in love with any of them. I merely discovered some
time since that I had a brain, and they happen to be the impulse that
possesses it. You always have prided yourself that I am intellectual,
and so I am in the flabby 'well-read' fashion. I feel as if my brain
had been a mausoleum for skeletons and mummies; it felt alive for the
first time when I began to read the newspapers in England. I want no
more memoirs and letters and biographies, nor even of the history that
is shut up in calf-skin. I want the life of to-day. I want to feel in
the midst of current history. All these men here in Washington must be
alive to their finger-tips. Sally Carter admires Senator North and
Senator Maxwell immensely."
"What does she say about politicians in general?" Mrs. Madison looked
almost distraught. "Of course the Norths and the Maxwells come of good
New England families--I never did look down on the North as much as
some of us did; after all, nearly three hundred years are very
respectable indeed--and if these two men had not been in politics I
should have been delighted to receive them. I met Senator North once--
at Bar Harbor, while you were with the Carters at Homburg--and thought
him charming; and I had some most interesting chats with his wife,
who is much the same sort of invalid that I am. But when I establish a
standard I am consistent enough to want to keep to it. I asked you
what Sally Carter says of the others."
"Oh, she admits that there may be others as _convenable_ as Senator
North and Senator Maxwell, and that there is no doubt about there
being many bright men in the Senate; but she 'does not care to know
any more people.' Being a good cave-dweller, she is true to her
traditions."
"People will say you are _passee,_" exclaimed Mrs. Madison, hopefully.
"They will be sure to."
Her daughter laughed, showing teeth as brilliant as her eyes. Then she
snatched off her riding-hat and shook down her mane of warm brown
hair. Her black brows and lashes, like her eyes and mouth, were vivid,
but her hair and complexion were soft, without lustre, but very warm.
She looked like a flower set on so strongly sapped a stem that her
fullness would outlast many women's decline. She had inherited the
beauty of her father's branch of the family. Mrs. Madison was very
small and thin; but she carried herself erectly and her delicately cut
face was little wrinkled. Her eyes were blue, and her hair, which was
always carefully rolled, was as white as sea foam. Betty would not
permit her to wear black, but dressed her in delicate colours, and she
looked somewhat like an animated miniature. She dabbed impatiently at
her tears.
"Everybody will cut you--if you go into that dreadful political set."
"I am on the verge of cutting everybody myself, so it doesn't matter.
Positively--I shall not accept an invitation of the old sort this
winter. The sooner they drop me the better."
Mrs. Madison wept bitterly. "You will become a notorious woman," she
sobbed. "People will talk terribly about you. They will say--all sorts
of things I have heard come back to me--these politicians make love to
every pretty woman they meet. They are so tired of their old frumps
from Oshkosh and Kalamazoo." "They do not all come from Oshkosh and
Kalamazoo. There are six New England States whose three centuries you
have just admitted lift them into the mists of antiquity. There are
fourteen Southern States, and I need make no defence--"
"Their gentlemen don't go into politics any more."
"You have admitted that Senator North and Senator Maxwell are
gentlemen. There is no reason why there should not be many more."
"Count de Bellairs told me that there was a spittoon at every desk in
the Senate and that he counted eight toothpicks in one hour."
"Well, I'll reform them. That will be my holy mission. As for
spittoons and toothpicks, they are conspicuous in every hotel in the
United States. They should be on our coat-of-arms, and the Great
American Novel will be called 'The Great American Toothpick.'
Statesmen have cut their teeth on it, and it has been their solace in
the great crises of the nation's history. As for spittoons, they
were invented for our own Southern aristocrats who loved tobacco then
as now. They decorate our Capitol as a mere matter of form. I don't
pretend to hope that ninety representative Americans are Beau
Brummels, but there must be a respectable minority of gentlemen--
whether self-made or not I don't care. I am going to make a deliberate
attempt to know that minority, and shall call on Lady Mary Montgomery
this afternoon as the first step. So you are resigned, are you not,
Molly dear?"
"No, I am not! But what can I do? I have spoiled you, and you would be
just the same if I hadn't. You are more like the men of the family
than the women--they always would have their own way. Are they all
married?" she added anxiously.
"Do you mean the ninety Senators and the three hundred and fifty-six
Representatives? I am sure I do not know. Don't let that worry you. It
is my mind that is on the _qui vive_, not my heart."
"You'll hear some old fool make a Websterian speech full of periods
and rhetoric, and you'll straight-way imagine yourself in love with
him. Your head will be your worst enemy when you do fall in love."
"Webster is the greatest master of style this country has produced. I
should hate a man who used either 'periods' or rhetoric. I am the
concentrated essence of modernism and have no use for 'oratory' or
'eloquence.' Some of the little speeches in the Record are
masterpieces of brevity and pure English, particularly Senator
North's."
"You _are_ modern. If we had a Clay, I could understand you--I am
too exhausted to discuss the matter further; you _must_ drop it
for the present. What will Jack Emory say?"
"I have never given him the least right to say anything."
"I almost wish you were safely married to him. He has not made a great
success of his life, but he is your equal and his manners are perfect.
I shall live in constant fear now of your marrying a horror with a
twang and a toothpick."
"I promise you I won't do that--and that I never will marry Jack
Emory."
II
Betty Madison had exercised a great deal of self-control in resisting
the natural impulse to cultivate a fad and grapple with a problem.
Only her keen sense of humour saved her. On the Sunday following her
return, while sauntering home after a long restless tramp about the
city, she passed a church which many coloured people were entering.
Her newly awakened curiosity in all things pertaining to the political
life of her country prompted her to follow them and sit through the
service. The clergyman was light in colour, and prayed and preached in
simpler and better English than she had heard in more pretentious
pulpits, but there was nothing noteworthy, in his remarks beyond a
supplication to the Almighty to deliver the negro from the oppression
of the "Southern tyrant," followed by an admonition to the negro to
improve himself in mind and character if he would hope to compete with
the Whites; bitter words and violence but weakened his cause.
This was sound commonsense, but the reverse of the sensational
entertainment Betty had half expected, and her eyes wandered from the
preacher to his congregation. There were all shades of Afro-American
colour and all degrees of prosperity represented. Coal-black women
were there, attired in deep and expensive mourning. "Yellow girls"
wore smart little tailor costumes. Three young girls, evidently of the
lower middle class of coloured society, for they were cheaply dressed,
had all the little airs and graces and mannerisms of the typical
American girl. In one corner a sleek mulatto with a Semitic profile
sat in the recognized attitude of the banker in church; filling his
corner comfortably and setting a worthy example to the less favoured
of Mammon.
But Betty's attention suddenly was arrested and held by two men who
sat on the opposite side of the aisle, although not together, and
apparently were unrelated. There were no others quite like them in the
church, but the conviction slowly forced itself into her mind,
magnetic for new impressions, that there were many elsewhere. They
were men who were descending the fifties, tall, with straight gray
hair. One was very slender, and all but distinguished of carriage; the
other was heavier, and would have been imposing but for the listless
droop of his shoulders. The features of both were finely cut, and
their complexions far removed from the reproach of "yellow." They
looked like sun-burned gentlemen.
For nearly ten minutes Betty stared, fascinated, while her mind
grappled with the deep significance of all those two sad and patient
men expressed. They inherited the shell and the intellect, the
aspirations and the possibilities of the gay young planters whose
tragic folly had called into being a race of outcasts with all their
own capacity for shame and suffering.
Betty went home and for twenty-four hours fought with the desire to
champion the cause of the negro and make him her life-work. But not
only did she abominate women with missions; she looked at the subject
upon each of its many sides and asked a number of indirect questions
of her cousin, Jack Emory. Sincere reflection brought with it the
conclusion that her energies in behalf of the negro would be
superfluous. The careless planters were dead; she could not harangue
their dust. The Southerners of the present generation despised and
feared the coloured race in its enfranchised state too actively to
have more to do with it than they could help; if it was a legal
offence for Whites and Blacks to marry, there was an equally stringent
social law which protected the coloured girl from the lust of the
white man. Therefore, as she could not undo the harm already done, and
as a crusade in behalf of the next generation would be meaningless,
not to say indelicate, she dismissed the "problem" from her mind. But
the image of those two sad and stately reflections of the old school
sank indelibly into her memory, and rose to their part in one of the
most momentous decisions of her life.
III
The Montgomerys had come to Washington for the first time at the
beginning of the previous winter, while the Madisons were in England.
Lady Mary had left her note of introduction the day before Betty's
declaration of independence.
Betty was anxious to meet the young Englishwoman, not only because she
possessed the charmed key to political society, but her history as
related by certain gossips of authority commanded interest.
Randolph Montgomery, a young Californian millionaire, had followed his
mother's former ward, Lady Maundrell, to England, nursing an old and
hopeless passion. What passed between him and the beautiful young
countess the gossips did not attempt to state, but he left England two
days after the tragedy which shelved Cecil Maundrell into the House of
Lords, and returned to California accompanied by his mother and Lady
Barnstaple's friend, Lady Mary Montgomery. Bets were exchanged freely
as to the result of this bold move on the part of a girl too
fastidious to marry any of the English parvenus that addressed her,
too poor to marry in her own class. The wedding took place a few
months later, immediately after Mrs. Montgomery's death; an event
which left Lady Mary the guest in a foreign country of a young
bachelor.
From all accounts, the marriage, although a wide deflection from the
highest canons of romance, was a successful one, and the Montgomerys
were living in splendid state in Washington. Lady Mary was approved by
even the "Old Washingtonians"--a thoughtful Californian of lineage had
given her a letter to Miss Carter, who in turn had given her a tea--
and as her husband was brilliant, accomplished, and of the best blood
of Louisiana, the little set, tenaciously clinging to its traditional
exclusiveness amidst the whirling ever-changing particles of the
political maelstrom, found no fault in him beyond his calling. And as
he was a man of tact and never mentioned politics in its presence, and
as his wife was not at home to the public on the first Tuesday of the
month, reserving that day for such of her friends as shunned political
petticoats, the young couple were taken straight into the bosom of
that inner set which the ordinary outsider might search for a very
glimpse of in vain.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23