Senator North

G >> Gertrude Atherton >> Senator North

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On Friday, very late, Senator Burleigh arrived. He was on the Finance
Committee, but had written that he should break his chains for this
brief holiday if he never had another. He had sent her two boxes of
flowers since her return, and had written her a large number of brief,
emphatic, but impersonal letters during her sojourn in California.

He looked big and breezy and triumphant as he entered the living-room,
and he sprinkled magnetism like a huge watering-pot. Betty knew by
this time that all men successful in American politics had this
qualification, and had come in contact with it so often since her
introduction to the Senate that it had ceased to have any effect on
her except when emanating from one man.

"Are you not frightfully tired?" she asked. "What a journey!"

"Anything, even a fourteen hours' train journey, is heaven after
Washington in hot weather. The asphalt pavements are reeking, and your
heels go in when you forget to walk on your toes--and stick. But it is
enchanting up here."

His eyes dwelt with frank delight on her fresh blue organdie. "Oh,
Washington does not exist," he exclaimed. "I thought constantly of you
when we were struggling over that Tariff Bill in Committee, and I
wanted to put all the fabrics you like on the free list, as a special
compliment to you."

"The unwritten history of a Committee Room! Law does not seem like law
at all when one knows the makers of it. But you must be starved. If
you will follow me blindly down the hall, I promise that you will
really be glad you came."

Miss Trumbull had attended personally to the supper, and he did it
justice, although he continued to talk to Betty and to let his eyes
express a more fervent admiration than had been their previous habit.

"There's no hope for me," thought Betty, when Emory had taken him to
his room. "He has made up his mind to propose during this visit. If I
can only stave it off till the last minute!"

As she went up the stair, she met Miss Trumbull, who was coming down.

"Your supper was very good," she said kindly. "Thank you for sitting
up."

That was enough for the housekeeper, who appeared to have conceived a
worship of the hand that had smitten her. It had seemed to Betty in
the last few days that she met her admiring eyes whichever way she
turned. Miss Trumbull put out her hand and fumbled at the lace on Miss
Madison's gown.

"Tell me," she drawled wheedlingly, "that's your beau, ain't it? I
guessed he was when those flowers come, and the minute I set eyes on
him, I said to myself, 'That's the gentleman for Miss Madison. My! but
you'll make a handsome couple."

"Oh!" exclaimed Betty. "Oh!" Then she laughed. The woman was too
ridiculous for further anger. "Good-night," she said, and went on to
her room.

X

Betty had organized a picnic for the following day, inviting several
acquaintances from the hotel; and they all drove to a favourite spot
in the forest. Mrs. Madison's maid had charge of many cushions, and
disposed her tiny mistress--who looked like a wood fairy in lilac
mull--comfortably on a bed of pine needles. Major Carter felt young
once more as he grilled steaks at a camp-fire, and Harriet enchanted
him with her rapt attention while his memory rioted in deeds of war.

Senator Burleigh had never appeared so well, Betty thought. There was
an out-of-door atmosphere about him at any time; no doubt he had been
a mighty wind in the Senate more than once during the stormy passage
of the Tariff Bill; but with all out-doors around him he looked
nothing less than a mountain king. His large well-knit frame, full of
strength and energy, was at its triumphant best in outing tweeds and
Scotch stockings; his fair handsome face was boyish, despite its
almost fierce determination, as he pranced about, intoxicated with the
mountain air.

"If you ever had spent one summer in Washington, you would
understand," he said to Betty. "This is where I'd like to spend the
rest of my life. I'd like to think I'd never see a city or the inside
of a house again."

"Then you'd probably hew down the forest, which would be a loss to the
State: you would have to do something with your superfluous energy.
And what would you do with your brain? Mere reading, when your arm
ached from chopping, never would content you."

"No, that is the worst of civilization. It either produces
discontented savages like myself or goes too far and turns the whole
body into brain. I have managed to get a sort of steam-engine into my
head which gives me little rest and would wear out my body if I didn't
happen to have the constitution of a buffalo. But I doubt if I shall
be what North is, sixteen years hence. That man is the best example of
equilibrium I have ever seen. His mental activity is enormous, but
his control over himself is so absolute that he never wastes an ounce
of force. I've seen him look as fresh at the end of a long day of
debate as he was when he got on his feet. He never lets go of himself
for a moment."

That was the only time Betty heard Senator North's name mentioned
during Burleigh's visit, for the younger man was much more interested
in himself and the object of his holiday.

"I think if it hadn't been for this Extra Session I should have
followed you to California," he said abruptly. "I didn't know how much
I depended for my entire happiness upon my frequent visits to your
house until I came back after the short vacation and found you gone."

"It would have been jolly to have had you in California. But you must
feel that your time has not been thrown away. Are you satisfied with
the Tariff Bill?"

"I liked it fairly well as we re-wrote it, but I don't expect to care
much about it after it comes out of conference. But there are no
politics in the Adirondacks, and when a weary Senator is looking at a
woman in a pale green muslin--"

"You look anything but weary. I expect you will tramp over half the
Adirondacks before you go back. And I am sure you will eat one of
those beefsteaks. Come, they are ready."

But although she managed to seat him between Sally Carter and an
extremely pretty girl, he was at her side again the moment the gay
party began to split into couples.

"Will you come for a walk?" he asked. "I do want to roam about on the
old trails the Indians made, and to get away from these hideous
emblems of modern civilization--sailor hats. Thank heaven you don't
wear a sailor hat."

Betty shot a peremptory glance at Sally Carter, who nodded and started
to follow with a small dark attache who had pursued herself and her
million for five determined years. He was titled if not noble, a
clever operator of a small brain, and a high-priest of teas. He knew
the personnel of Washington Society so thoroughly that he never had
been known to waste a solitary moment on a portion-less girl, and he
had successfully cultivated every art that could commend him to the
imperious favourites of fortune. Betty Madison had disposed of him in
short order, but Miss Carter, although she refused him periodically,
allowed him to hang on, for he amused her and read her favourite
authors. They had not walked far when he seized the picturesque
opportunity to press his suit, and Miss Carter, while scolding him
soundly, forgot the rapid walkers in front.

Betty, as she tramped along beside the large swinging presence the
forest seemed to embrace as its own, wondered why she did not love
him, wondered if she should, had she never met the other man.
Doubtless, for he possessed all the attributes of the conquering hero,
and she would have excavated the ideals of her romantic girlhood,
brushed and re-cut their garments, and then deliberately set fire to
her imagination. If the responsive spark had held sullenly aloof,
awaiting its time, she, knowing nothing of its existence, would soon
have ceased to remember the half-conscious labours of the initial
stage of her affections, and doubtless would have married this fine
specimen of American manhood, and been happy enough. But the
responsive spark had struck, and illumined the deepest recesses of her
heart in time to burn contempt into any effort of her brain, now or
hereafter. The question did assail her--as Burleigh talked of his
summer outings among the stupendous mountains of his chosen State--
could she turn to him in time were she suddenly and permanently
separated from the other? She shook her head in resentment at the
treasonable thought; but her brain had received every advantage of the
higher civilization for twenty-seven years, and worked by itself. She
was young and she had much to give; in consequence, much to receive.
She could find the highest with one man only, for with him alone
would her imagination do its final work. But Nature is inexorable. She
commands union; and as the years went by and one memory grew dimmer--
who knew? But the thought gave her a moment of sadness so profound
that she ceased to hear the voice of the man beside her. She had had
moments of deep insight before, and again she stared down into the
depths where so many women's agonized memories lie buried. She
suddenly felt a warm clasp round her hand, and for a second responded
to it gratefully, for hers had turned cold. Then she realized that she
was in the present, and withdrew her hand hurriedly.

"Forgive me," he said. "I simply couldn't help it. I could in
Washington, and I felt that I must wait. But up here--I want to marry
you. You know that, do you not?"

Betty glanced over her shoulder. There was to be no interruption. She
was mistress of herself at once.

"I cannot marry you," she said. "I almost wish I could, but I cannot."

He swung into the middle of the path and stood still, looking down
upon her squarely. There was nothing of the suppliant in his attitude.
He looked unconquerable.

"I did not expect to win you in a moment," he said. "I should not have
expected it if I had waited another year. I knew from the beginning
that it would be hard work, for if a woman does not love at once it
takes a long time to teach her what love is. I have tried to make you
like me, and I think I have succeeded. That is all I can hope for now.
You have been surfeited and satiated with admiration, and you regard
all men as having been born to burn incense before you. I love you for
that too. I should hate a woman who even had it in her to love a man
out of gratitude. You have your world at your feet, and I want mine
at my feet. You have won yours without effort, for you were born with
the crown and sceptre of fascination, I have to fight for mine. But
the same instinct is in us both, the same possibilities on different
lines. I am not making you the broken passionate appeal of the usual
lover, because so long as I know you do not love me I could not place
myself at the mercy of emotion--I have no thought of making a fool of
myself. But when I do win you--then--ah! that will be another matter."

She shook her head, but smiling, for she never had liked and admired
him more. She knew of what passion he was capable, and how absurd he
would have looked if lashed by it while her cool eyes looked on. His
self-control made him magnificent.

"I never shall marry," she said, and then laughed, in spite of
herself, at the world-old formula. Burleigh laughed also.

"There isn't time enough left before chaos comes again to argue with a
woman a question which means absolutely nothing. I am going to marry
you. I have accomplished everything big I have ever strived for. I
never have wanted to marry any other woman, and I want to marry you
more than I wanted to become a Senator of the United States. Nothing
could discourage me unless I thought you loved another man, but so far
as I can see there is no other suitor in the field. You appear to have
refused every proposing man in Washington. Is there any one on the
other side?" he asked anxiously.

"No one. I have no suitor beside yourself; but--"

"I don't understand that word, any more than I understand the word
'fail,'" he said in his rapid truculent tones. Then he added more
gently: "I am afraid you think I should be a tyrant, but no one would
tyrannize over you, for you are any man's equal, and he never would
forget it. I could not love a fool. I want a mate. And I should love
you so much that I never should cease atoning for my fractious and
other unpleasant qualities--"

"You have none! I cannot do less than tell you I think you are one of
the finest men this country has produced, and that I am as proud of
you as she will be--"

"Let me interrupt you before you say 'but.' That I have won so high an
opinion from you gives me the deepest possible gratification. But I
want much more than that. Let us go on with our walk. I'll say no more
at present."

XI

He did not allude to the subject again by so much as a tender glance,
and Betty, who knew the power of man to exasperate, appreciated his
consideration. She wondered how deep his actual knowledge of women
went, how much of his success with them he owed to the strong manly
instincts springing from a subsoil of sound common-sense which had
carried him safely past so many of the pitfalls of life.

Nor did his high spirits wane. He stayed out of doors, in the forest
or on the lake, until midnight, and was up again at five in the
morning. Betty was fond of fresh air and exercise, but she had so much
of both during the two days of his visit that she went to bed on the
night of his departure with a sense of being drugged with ozone and
battered with energy. The next day she did not rise until ten, and was
still enjoying the dim seclusion of her room when Sally tapped and
entered. Miss Carter looked nervous, and her usually sallow cheeks
were flushed.

"I've come to say something I'm almost ashamed to say, but I can't
help it," she began abruptly. "I'm going away. I can't, I _can't _sit
down at the table any longer with _her,_ and treat her as an equal. I
writhe every time she calls me 'Sally.' I know it's a silly senseless
prejudice--no, it isn't. Black blood is loathsome, horrible!--and the
less there is of it the worse it is. I don't mind the out-and-out
negroes. I love the dear old darkies in the country; and even the
prosperous coloured people are tolerable so long as they don't
presume; but there is something so hideously unnatural, so repulsive,
so accursed, in an apparently white person with that hidden evidence
in him of slavery and lechery. Paugh! it is sickening. They are
walking shameless proclamations of lust and crime. I'm sorry for them.
If by any surgical process the taint could be extracted, I'd turn
philanthropic and devote half my fortune to it; but it can't be, and
I'm either not strong-minded enough, or have inherited too many
generations of fastidiousness and refinement to bring myself to
receive these outcasts as equals. I feel particularly sorry for
Harriet. She shows her cursed inheritance in more ways than one, but
without it, think what she would be,--a high-bred, intellectual,
charming woman. She just escapes being that now, but she does escape
it. The taint is all through her. And she knows it. In spite of all
you've done for her, of all you've made possible for her, she'll be
unhappy as long as she lives." "She certainly will be if everybody
discovers her secret and is as unjust as you are." Betty, like the
rest of the world, had no toleration for the weaknesses herself had
conquered. "We cannot undo great wrongs, but it is our duty to make
life a little less tragic for the victims, if we can."

"I can't. I've tried, I've struggled with myself as I've never
struggled before, ever since I learned the truth. It sickens me. It
makes me feel the weak, contemptible, common clay of which we all are
made, and our only chance of happiness is to forget that. But I've
said all I've got to say about myself. I'm going, and that is the end
of it. I'll wear a mask till the last minute, for I wouldn't hurt the
poor thing's feelings for the world. And I'd die sixteen deaths before
I'd betray her. But, Betty, get rid of her. She wants to go to
Europe. Let her go. Keep her there. For as sure as fate her secret
will leak out in time. She _breathes_ it. If I felt it, others will,
and certainty soon follows suspicion. Jack would have felt it long
since if he were not blinded and intoxicated by her beauty; but you
can't count on men. He'll soon forget her if you send her away in
time, and for your own sake as well as his get rid of her. You don't
want people avoiding your house!"

"She is going. She has no desire to stay, poor thing! Of course, I
know how you feel. I felt that way myself at first, but I conquered
it. Others won't, I suppose, and it is best that she should go where
such prejudices don't exist. I spoke to her again a day or two ago
about it--for your idea that Jack loves her has made me nervous,
although I can see no evidence of it--and I suggested that she should
go at once; but she seems to have made up her mind to September, and
I cannot insist without wounding her feelings. I wish Jack would go
away, but he always is so much better up here than anywhere else that
I can't suggest that, either."

"Well, I'm going now to tell papa he must prepare his mind for Bar
Harbor. Say that you forgive me, Betty, for I love you."

"Oh, yes, I forgive you," said Betty, with a half laugh, "for a wise
man I know once said that our strongest prejudice is a part of us."

XII

After Major Carter and Sally left, Betty had less freedom, for her
mother was lonely; moreover, she dared not leave Emory and Harriet too
much together. The danger still might be averted if she did her duty
and stood guard. She never had seen Jack look so well as he looked
this summer. The very gold of his hair seemed brighter, and his blue
eyes were often radiant. His beauty was conventional, but Betty could
imagine its potent effect on a girl of Harriet Walker's temperament
and limited experience. But he had appeared to prefer Sally's society
to Harriet's, and his spirits dropped after her departure.

It was only when Harriet offered to read to Mrs. Madison and settled
down to three hours' steady work a day, that Betty allowed herself
liberty after the early morning. From five till eight in the evening
and for an hour or two before breakfast she roamed the forest or
pulled indolently about the lake. The hours suited her, for the hotel
people were little given to early rising; and although they boated
industriously by day, they preferred the lower and more fashionable
lake, and dined at half-past six.

Life with her no longer was a smooth sailing on a summer lake. There
was a roar below, as if the lake rested lightly on a subterranean
ocean; and the very pines seemed to have developed a warning note.

Harriet looked like a walking Fate, nothing less. Since Sally's abrupt
departure she had not smiled, and Betty knew that instinct divined and
explained the sudden aversion of a girl who did so much to add to the
cheerfulness of her friends. Emory also looked more like his
melancholy self, and wandered about with a volume of Pindar and an
expression of discontent. Did he love Harriet? and were her spirits
affecting his? Since Harriet's promise Betty felt that she had no
right to speak. He had weathered one love affair, he could weather
another. When Harriet was safe in Europe, she would turn matchmaker
and marry him to Sally Carter. Betty thought lightly of the
disappointments of men, having been the cause of many. So long as Jack
did not dishonour himself and his house by marriage with a proscribed
race, nothing less really mattered. But she played his favourite music
and strove to amuse him.

She rallied him one day about the change in his spirits since the
departure of Sally Carter, and he admitted that he missed her, that he
always felt his best when with her.

"Not that I love her more than I do you," he added, fearing that he
had been impolite. "But she strikes just that chord. She always makes
me laugh. She is a sort of sun and warms one up--"

"The truth of the matter is that she strikes more chords than you will
admit. She's just the one woman you ought to marry. If you'd make up
your mind to love her, you'd soon find it surprisingly easy, and
wonder why it never had occurred to you before." Betty thought she
might as well begin at once.

He shook his head, and his handsome face flushed. It was not a frank
face; he had lived too solitary and introspective a life for
frankness; but he met Betty's eyes unflinchingly.

"She is not in the least the woman for me. She lacks beauty, and I
could not stand a woman who was gay--and--and staccato all the time.
It is delightful to meet, but would be insufferable to live with."

"What is your ideal type?"

He rose and raised her hand to his lips with all his old elaborate
gallantry. "Oh, Betty Madison! Betty Madison!" he exclaimed. "That you
should live to ask me such a question as that?"

"I'd like to box his ears if he did not mean that," thought Betty. "I
particularly should dislike his attempting to blind me in that way."

And herself? She asked this question more than once as she rowed
toward the northern end of the lake in the dawn, or in the heavier
shadows at the close of the day. Could it last? And how long? And did
he believe that it could last? Or was he, with the practical instinct
of a man of the world, merely determined to quaff that fragrant mildly
intoxicating wine of mental love-making, until the gods began to grin?

She had many moods, but when a woman is sure that her love is returned
and is not denied the man's occasional presence, she cannot be unhappy
for long, perhaps never wholly so. For while there is love there is
hope, and while there is hope tears do not scald. Betty dared not let
her thought turn for a moment to Mrs. North. Her will was strong
enough to keep her mind on the high plane necessary to her self-
respect. She would not even ask herself if he knew how low the sands
had dropped in that unhappy life. The horizon of the future was thick
with flying mist. Only his figure stood there, immovable, always.

"And it is remarkable how things do go on and on and on," she thought
once. "They become a habit, then a commonplace. It is because they are
so mixed up with the other details of life. Nothing stands out long by
itself. The equilibrium is soon restored, and unless one deliberately
starts it into prominence again, it stays in its proper place and
swings with the rest."

She knew her greatest danger. She had it in her to be one of the most
intoxicating women alive. Was this man she loved so passionately to go
on to the end of his life only guessing what the Fates forbade him?
The years of the impersonal attitude to men which she had thought it
right to assume had made her anticipate the more keenly the freedom
which one man would bring her. She frankly admitted the strength of
her nature, she almost had admitted it to him; should she always be
able to control the strong womanly vanity which would give him
something more than a passing glimpse of the woman, making him forget
the girl? If she did anything so reprehensible, it would be the last
glimpse he would take of her, she reflected with a sigh, She wondered
that passion and the spiritual part of love should be so hopelessly
entangled. She was ready to live a life of celibacy for his sake; she
delighted in his mind, and knew that had it been commonplace she could
not have loved him did he have every other gift in the workshop of the
gods; she worshipped his strength of character, his independence, his
lofty yet practical devotion to an ideal; she loved him for his
attitude to his wife, the manly and uncomplaining manner with which he
accepted his broken and shadowed home life, when his temperament
demanded the very full of domestic happiness, and the heavy labours of
his days made its lack more bitter; and she sympathized keenly in his
love for and pride in his sons. There was nothing fine about him that
she did not appreciate and love him the more exaltedly for; and yet
she knew that had he been without strong passions she would have loved
him for none of these things. For of such is love between man and
woman when they are of the highest types that Nature has produced.
Betty hated the thought of sin as she hated vulgarity, and did not
contemplate it for a moment, but if she had roused but the calm
affection of this man she would have been as miserable as for the
hour, at least, she was happy.

XIII

Betty was determined that Saturday and Sunday should be her own, free
of care. She sent Emory to New York to talk over an investment with
her man of business, and she provided her mother with eight new
novels. As Harriet loved the novel only less than she loved the
studies which furnished her ambitious mind, Betty knew that she would
read aloud all day without complaint. Miss Trumbull, of whom she had
seen little of late, and who had looked sullen and haughty since
Harriet with untactful abruptness had placed her at arm's length, she
requested to superintend in person the cleaning of the lower rooms.

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