Senator North

G >> Gertrude Atherton >> Senator North

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"She spoke very convincingly," said Betty, who would not admit doubt.

"Anything with a drop of negro blood in it will lie. It can't help it.
I wish the race were exterminated."

"I wish the English had left it in Africa. They certainly saddled us
with an everlasting curse."

She was tempted to wish that Mr. Walker had never discovered her
address; but although she did not love Harriet, she was grateful still
for the opportunity to rescue her from the usual fate of her breed.
But assuredly she did not wish her old friend to be sacrificed.

Again she observed him closely, and came to the conclusion that
Harriet had spoken the truth. He was gayer than of old, but his health
was better and he was in cheerful company, not living his days and
nights in his lonely damp old house on the Potomac River. He appeared
to enjoy talking to Harriet, but there was nothing lover-like in his
attitude, and he was almost her guardian. True, he was occasionally
moody and absent, but a man must retain a few of his old spots; and
if he avoided somewhat the cousin whom he had once loved to
melancholy, it was doubtless because she found him as uninteresting as
she found all men but one, and was not at sufficient pains to conceal
her indifference. And then she admitted with a laugh that in the back
of her mind she had never acknowledged the possibility of his loving
another woman.

She but half admitted that she wished to believe no storm was
gathering under her roof. She had no desire to handle a tragedy.

VII

It was Saturday morning. Betty arose at four, brewed herself a cup of
coffee over a spirit lamp, and ate several biscuit with it. She hoped
Senator North would take the same precaution. Healthy animals when
hungry cannot take much interest in each other.

She dressed herself in airy white with a blue ribbon in her hair.
There was no necessity for a hat at that hour in the morning, but she
took a white organdie one down to the boat and put it under a seat,
lest she be late in returning and the sun freckling.

It was faintly dawn as she pulled out into the middle of the lake and
rowed toward its northern end. Even the trailing thickets on the
water's edge looked black, and the dark forest rising on every side
seemed to whisper of old deeds of war and heroism, the bravery and the
treachery of Indian tribes, the mortal jealousies of French and
English. Every inch of ground about her was historical. These forests
had resounded for years with the ugly sounds of battle, and more
than once with the shrieks of women and children. To-day the
woodpecker tapped, the bluejay cried in those depths unaffrighted; the
singing of a mountain stream, the roar of a distant waterfall alone
lifted a louder voice to the eternal whisper of the pines. The forest
looked calmly down upon this flower of a civilization which no man in
its first experience of man would have ventured to forecast, skimming
the water to keep tryst with one whose ancestors had hewn a rougher
wilderness than this down to a market-place that their inheritor might
win the higher honours of the great Republic to come.

But Betty was not thinking of the honours he had won. She was
wondering if by so much as a glance he would betray that he cared a
little for her. Or did he care? In her thought he had been as full of
love as herself. But reality was waiting for her there in the forest,
--reality after three months of uninterrupted imaginings. Perhaps he
merely found her agreeable and amusing. But the idea did not start a
tear. The uncertainty of his affections and the certainty that she
was about to see him again were alike thrilling and gladdening.
Pleasurable excitement possessed her, and her hands would have
trembled but for their tight grip on the oars.

He stood watching her as she rowed toward him, and she was sure that
she made a charming picture out on that great dark lake below the
pines. The forest rose almost straight behind him, but she knew the
winding paths which made ascent easy, and many a dry leafy platform
where one might sit. A hundred times she had imagined herself in that
forest with him; its dim vast solitude had become almost his permanent
setting in her fancy. But as the boat grazed the shore, she said
hurriedly,--

"Get in and let us float about. I am sure it is cold in there. I am so
glad to see you again." As her hands were occupied, he took the seat
in the stern at once, and she pulled out a few yards, then crossed her
oars.

"You see, I have obeyed orders," he said, smiling. "Fortunately, I am
an early riser, particularly in the country."

"I thought the change would do you good. It must be hot in
Washington."

"It is frightful."

He looked as well as usual, however, and his thin grey clothes became
his spare though thickset figure. He was smiling humorously into
Betty's eyes, but his own were impenetrable. They might harbour the
delight of a lover at a precious opportunity, or the amusement of a
man of the world. But there was no doubt that he was glad to see her
and that he appreciated the picture she made.

"I hope I never may see you in anything but white again," he said.
"You are a gracious vision to conjure up on stifling afternoons in the
Senate."

Betty did not want to talk about herself. "Tell me the news," she
said. "How is that Tariff Bill going?"

"A story has just leaked out that a stormy scene occurred in the Ways
and Means Committee Room between our friend Montgomery and two members
of the Committee whose names I won't mention. He openly accused them
of accepting bribes from certain Trusts. It even is reported that they
came to blows, but that is probably an exaggeration. We have had our
sensation also. One of our fire-eaters accused--- at the top of his
voice--the entire Senate of bribery and corruption. He is new and will
think better of us in time. Meanwhile he would amuse us if such things
did not affect the dignity of the Senate with the outside world.
Unfortunately we are obliged to accept whomsoever the people select to
represent them, and can only possess our souls in patience till time
and the Senate tone the raw ones down."

"Is he representative, that man? And those hysterical members of the
House, whose speeches make me wonder if humour is really a national
quality?"

"They are only too representative, unfortunately, but they are more
hysterical than the average because they have the opportunity their
constituents lack, of shouting in public. The House is America let
loose. When a former private citizen belonging to the party out of
power gets on his feet in it, he develops a species of hysteria for
which there is no parallel in history. He seems to think that the
louder he shouts and the more bad rhetoric he uses, the less will
his party feel the stings of defeat. Some of them tone down and become
conscientious and admirable legislators, but these are the few of
natural largeness of mind. Party spirit, a magnificent thing at its
best, warps and withers the little brain in the party out of power.
But politics are out of place in this wilderness. There should be
redskins and bows and arrows on all sides of us. I used to revel in
Cooper's yarns, but I suppose you never have read them."

Betty shook her head. "When can you come up here to stay?"

"Probably not for a month yet. There will be a good deal more
wrangling before the bill goes through. I don't like it in its present
shape and don't expect to in its ultimate; neither do a good many of
us. But I shall vote for it, because the country needs a high tariff,
and anything will be better than nothing for the present. Later, the
whole matter will be reopened and war waged on the Trusts."

"Sally says they have bought up the atmosphere."

"They may be said to have bought up several climates. I have spent a
great many hours puzzling over that question, for they have put an end
to the old days when young men could go into business with the hope of
a progressive future. Now they are swallowed up at once,
depersonalized, and the whole matter is one of the great questions
affecting the future development of the Republic."

He was not looking at Betty; he was staring out on the lake. His eyes
and mouth were hard again; he looked like a mere intellect, nothing
more.

As Betty watched him, she experienced a sudden desire to put him back
on the pedestal he had occupied in the first days of their
acquaintance, and to worship him as an ideal and forget him as a man.
That had been a period of intellectual days and quiet nights. And as
he looked now, he seemed to ask no more of any woman.

But in a moment he had turned to her again with the smile and the
peculiar concentration of gaze which made women forget he was a
statesman.

"Not another word of politics," he said. "I did not get up at four in
the morning to meet the most charming woman in America and talk
politics. Do you know that it is over three months since I saw you
last?"

"You left Washington, so, naturally, I left it too."

"I wonder, how much you mean? If I were to judge you by myself--Your
few notes were very interesting. Did you enjoy California?"

"California was made to enjoy, but I felt very much alone in it."

"Of course you did. Nature is a wicked old matchmaker. You have felt
quite as lonely up here since your return."

"Yes, I have! But I have had a good deal to occupy my mind. Sally
terrified me by asserting that Harriet and my cousin Jack Emory were
in love with each other."

"Who is Harriet?"

"Oh, you have forgotten! And you made me take her into the bosom of my
family."

"Oh--yes; I had forgotten her name. I hope she is not making trouble
for you."

"She admitted that she loves him, but insists that he does not love
her, and I don't think he does."

"Probably not. I should as soon think of falling in love with a
weeping figure on a tombstone."

"What kind of women do you fall in love with?" asked Betty,
irresistibly. She was sure of herself now. The passions of women are
often calmed by the presence of their lover. Passion is so largely
mental in them that it reaches heights in the imagination that reality
seldom justifies and mere propinquity quells. For this reason they
often are recklessly unfair to men, who are made on simpler lines.

They had floated under the spreading arms of a thicket on the water's
edge, and she was a brilliant white figure in the gloom.

"I have no recipe," he said, smiling. "Certainly not with the women
that weep, poor things!" Betty wondered what his personal attitude was
to the tears of twenty years. She knew from Sally that Mrs. North had
long attacks of depression. But his mind had been occupied; that meant
almost everything. And his heart?

"Do you love anybody now?" she broke out. "Is there a woman in your
life? Some one who makes you happy?"

The smile left his lips. It was too much to say that it had been in
his eyes, but they changed also.

"There is no woman in my life, as you put it. Why do you ask?"

"Because I want to know."

They regarded each other squarely. In a moment he said deliberately:
"The greatest happiness that I have had in the past few months has
been my friendship with you. If I were free, I should make love to
you. If you will have the truth, I can conceive of no happiness so
great as to be your husband. I have caught myself dreaming of it--and
over and over again. But as it is I am not going to make love to you.
When the strain becomes too great, I shall leave you. Until then--Ah,
don't!"

Betty, who had dropped her head when he began to speak, had raised it
slowly, and her face concealed nothing.

"I, too, love you," she said in a moment. "I love you, love you, love
you. If you knew what a relief it is to say it. That is the reason I
would not go up into the forest with you just now. I was afraid. I
have been with you there too often!"

For the first time she saw the muscles of his face relax, and she
covered her face with her hands. "I shouldn't have told you," she
whispered, "I shouldn't have told you. I have made it harder. You will
go away at once."

He did not speak for some minutes. Then he said,--

"Can you do without what we have?"

"Oh, no!" she said passionately. "Oh, no! No!"

"Nor can I--without the hope and the prospect of an occasional hour
with you, of the sympathy and understanding which has grown up between
us. I have conquered myself many times, relinquished many hopes, and I
think and believe that my self-control is as great as a man's can be.
I shall not let myself go with you unless you tempt me beyond
endurance; for as I said before, if I find that I am not strong
enough, I shall leave you. You are a beautiful and seductive woman,
and your power if you chose to exert it would madden any man. Will you
forget it? Will you help me?"

She dropped her hands. "Yes," she said, "I'd rather suffer anything;
I'd rather make myself over than do without you. And I couldn't! I
couldn't! Every least thing that happens, I want to go straight to you
about it. I know that trouble is ahead, although I haven't admitted it
before. I want you in every way! in every way! And I can't even have
you in that. I never will speak like this again, but I'd like you to
know. If you love me, you must know how terrible it is. I am not a
child. I am twenty-seven years old."

"I know," he replied; and for a few moments he said no more, but
looked down into the water. "I am not a believer in people parting
because they can't have everything," he continued finally. "It is only
the very young who do that. They take the thing tragically; passion
and disappointment trample down common-sense. If love is the very best
thing in life, it is not the only thing. Every time I have seen you I
have wanted to take you in my arms, and yet I have enjoyed every
moment spent in your presence. The thought of giving you up is
intolerable. We both are old enough to control ourselves. And I
believe that any habit can be acquired."

"And will you never take me in your arms? Have I got to go through
life without that? I must say everything to-day--I will row out into
the middle of the lake if you like, but I must know that."

"You can stay here. There are certain things that no man can say,
Betty, even to the most loved and trusted of women. The only answer
that I can make to your question is, that if I find I must leave you,
I certainly shall take you in my arms once."

"Are you sorry I told you I loved you? Would it be easier if I had
not?"

"Probably. But I am not sorry! Love can give happiness even when one
is denied the expression of it."

"I never intended to tell you. I was afraid if I did you would leave
me at once."

"So I should if you were not--you. But I should think myself a fool if
I did not make an attempt to achieve the second best. I may fail, but
I shall try. And life is made up of compromises."

"You are more certain of smashing the Trusts," she said with the
humour which never bore repression for long. "In dealing with
methodical scoundrels you know at least where you are. A man and woman
never can be too certain of what five minutes will bring forth. That
ends it. We never will discuss the question again until it comes up
for the last time--if it does. I do not mean that I shall not tell you
again that I love you, for I shall. I have no desire that you shall
forget it. I mean that we will not discuss possibilities again, nor
give expression to the passionate regret we both must feel. Is it a
compact?"

"I will keep my part in it. I promise to be good. I have prided myself
on my intelligence. I am not going to disgrace it by ruining the only
happiness I ever shall have. I love you, and I will prove it by making
your part as easy as I can, and by giving you all the happiness I am
permitted to give you."

He leaned toward her for the first time, but he did not touch her.

"And I promise you this, my darling," he said softly: "if you ever
should be in great trouble and should send for me--as of course you
would do--I will take you in my arms then and forget myself. Now,
change seats with me and I will row you part of the way home; I shall
get out a half-mile from the hotel. There really was no reason why you
should have made me walk nearly the entire length of the lake."

"I had fancied you in this particular part of the forest, and I wanted
to find you here."

"That is so like a woman," he said humorously. "But all of us make an
occasional attempt to realize a dream, I suppose."

VIII

He came over to dinner that night, and Betty, who had walked about in
a vague dreamy state all day, dressed herself again in white. She woke
up suddenly as she came into his presence, and was the life of the
dinner. Harriet seemed absent of mind and nervous, but Emory's spirits
were normal, and he was more attentive to Sally Carter than she to
him. But Betty's interest in her friends' affairs had dropped to a
very low ebb. She was in a new mental world, stranger than that
entered by most women, for her hands were empty, but she was happy.
She had reflected again--in so far as she had been capable of
reflection--that most marriages were prosaic, and that her own high
romance, her inestimable happiness in loving and being loved by a man
in whom her pride was so great, was a lot to be envied of all women.
It was not all the destiny she herself would have chosen, but it
compassed a great deal. She would have made him wholly happy, been his
whole happiness; marriage between them never would have been prosaic,
and she would not have cared if it were; she would have made him
forget the deep trials and sorrows of his past and the worries and
annoyances of the present. But this was not to be, and there was much
she could do for him and would.

They talked politics through dinner, and Mrs. Madison noted with a
sigh that Betty's interest in the undesirable institution was
unabated. She admired Senator North, however, and felt pride in his
appreciation of her brilliant daughter. She expressed her regret
amiably at not being able to meet again Mrs. North, who would see none
but old friends in these days, and Senator North assured her of his
wife's agreeable remembrance of her brief acquaintance with Mrs.
Madison.

"How wonderfully well people behave whose common secret would set
their world by the ears," thought Betty. "Our worst enemies could
detect nothing; and on what there is heaven knows a huge scandal could
be built."

After dinner she played to him for an hour, while the others, with the
exception of Mrs. Madison, who went to sleep, became absorbed in
whist. But she did not see him for a moment alone, and Jack rowed him
across the lake.

She went to her bed, but not to sleep. She hardly cared if she never
slept again. Night in a measure gave him to her, and to sleep was to
forget the wonder that he loved her.

It was shortly after midnight that she heard a faint but unmistakable
creaking on the tin roof of the veranda. She sat up. Some one was
about to pass her window. She sprang out of bed, crossed the room
softly, and lifted the edge of the curtain. A figure was almost
crawling past. It was a woman's figure; the stars gave enough light to
define its outlines at close range. She had a shawl over her head, but
her angular body was unmistakable. She was Miss Trumbull.

Betty dropped the curtain and stared into the darkness. "Whom is she
watching?" she thought. "Whom is she watching?"

She went back to bed and listened intently. In half an hour she heard
the same sound again.

"She is going back to her room," thought Betty. "What has she seen?"

The next morning she sent for Miss Trumbull to come to her room. She
had no intention of asking her to sit down, but the woman did not wait
to be invited. She took a chair and fanned herself with a palm leaf
that she picked from the table.

"Lawsy, but it's hot," she said. "I had a long argument with Miss
Walker yesterday about New York State bein' hotter 'n down South, and
she wouldn't believe it. But I usually know what I'm talkin' about,
and hotter it is. I near lost my temper, for I guess I know when it's
hot--"

"What were you doing on the roof of the veranda last night?" asked
Betty, abruptly.

Miss Trumbull turned the dark ugly red of her embarrassed condition.

"I--" she stammered.

"I saw you. Whom were you watching?"

"I warn't watchin' anybody. I was takin' a walk. I couldn't sleep."

"You know perfectly well that the roof of a veranda is not intended to
be walked on. Your curiosity is insufferable. I suppose it has become
professional. Or are you hoping for blackmail? If so, the hotel is the
place for you."

This time Miss Trumbull turned purple.

"I like money as well as anybody, I guess," she stuttered; 'but I'd
never sell a secret to get it. I ain't low down and despicable if I am
poor." "Then you admit it is mere curiosity? I would rather you
stole."

"Well, I don't steal, thank heaven. And I don't see any harm in tryin'
to know what's goin' on in the world."

"Read the newspapers and let your neighbours alone, at all events the
people in this house. I have twice seen you reading over the addresses
of the letters of the outgoing mail. Don't you ever do it again. You
are a good housekeeper, but if I find you attending to anything but
your own business, once more, you go on the moment. That is all I have
to say."

The woman left the room hurriedly. An hour or two later Betty met
Harriet on the terrace.

"I am sorry to appear to be always admonishing you," she said, "but I
must ask you to have nothing more to do with Miss Trumbull."

"I don't want to have anything more to do with her, honey. She has
taken to arguing with me in that long self-satisfied drawl, and I have
'most got to hate her. I wouldn't mind so much if she was ever right,
but she is a downright fool, and I reckon all fools are pretty much
alike. And I have a horrible idea that she suspects something. I have
seen her staring at my finger-nails two or three times. And I am 'most
sure some one has gone through the little trunk I keep my letters in.
Of course the key is always in my purse, but she may have had one that
fits, and the things are not like I left them, I am 'most sure."

"She probably envies your finger-nails, and the trunk, doubtless, was
upset in travelling. Besides, I don't think she's malignant. Like most
underbred persons, she is curious, and she has cultivated the trait
until it has become a disease."

"But there's no knowing what she might do if she took a dislike to me.
She's not bad-hearted at all, but she could be spiteful, and I can't
and won't stand her any longer. I reckon I'd like to go to Europe,
anyhow. I feel as if every one was guessing my secret. Over there you
say they don't mind those things, and I'd enjoy being in that kind of
a place."

"Go, by all means. I'll write at once and inquire about a chaperon--"

"Oh, I don't want to go just yet. September will do. I reckon these
mountains are about as cool at this time of the year as anywhere, and
they make me feel strong." She added abruptly: "Does Sally suspect?"

Betty nodded. "Yes, she surprised the truth out of me. I am more
sorry--"

Harriet had gripped her arm with both hands. Her face was ghastly.
"She knows? She knows?" she gasped. "Then she will tell him. Oh! Why
was I ever born?"

Betty made her sit down and took her head in her arms. Harriet was
weeping with more passion than she ever had seen her display.

"You believe me always, don't you?" she said. "For Miss Trumbull I
cannot answer, but for Sally I can--positively. She never would do a
mean and ignoble thing."

"She loves him!"

That is the more reason for not telling him. Cannot you understand
high-mindedness?"

"Oh, yes. You are high-minded, and _he_--that is the reason I should
die if he found out; for he hates, he loathes deceit. Oh, I've grown
to hate this country. I love you, but I'd like to forget that it was
ever on the map. I wish I was coal black and had been born in Africa."

"Why don't you go there and live, set up a sort of court?" asked
Betty, seized with an inspiration.

"And live among niggers? I despise and abhor niggers! If one put his
dirty black paw on me, I'd 'most kill him!"

Betty turned away her head to conceal a smile; but Harriet, who was
wholly without humour, continued:

"Betty, honey, I want you to promise me that if I ever do anything to
disappoint you, you'll forgive me. I love you so I couldn't bear to
have you despise me."

"What have you been doing?" asked Betty, anxiously.

"Nothing, honey," replied Harriet, promptly. "I mean if I did."

"Don't do anything that requires forgiveness. It makes life so much
simpler not to. And remember the promise you made me."

"Oh, I don't reckon I'll ever forget that."

IX

Senator North started for Washington that afternoon. Betty did not see
him again. He did not write, but she hardly expected that he would. He
had remarked once that two-thirds of all the trouble in the world came
out of letters, and Betty, with Miss Trumbull in mind, was inclined to
agree with him. He would not return for a fortnight.

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