Senator North

G >> Gertrude Atherton >> Senator North

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"I never thought about it," said Betty, humbly. "I am not very timid."

"I never doubted that you would be heroic in any conditions, but that
is not the question. You must not take such risks. I shall return with
you tonight--"

"And Harriet!" exclaimed Betty, in sudden alarm. "Perhaps we should
not leave her."

"She will be with the crowd. Besides, it is her husband's place to
look after her. I am concerned about you only. And I certainly shall
not permit you to go to a camp-meeting, nor shall I leave you to take
care of her. So put her out of your mind for the present."

And Betty Madison, who had been pleased to regard the world as her
football, surrendered herself to the new delight of the heavy hand. He
re-entered the long water lane in the cleft of the mountain, and she
did not speak for some moments, but his eyes held hers and he knew of
what she was thinking.

"I wonder if you always will do what I tell you," he said at length.
She recovered herself as soon as he spoke.

"Too much power is not good for any man! Nothing would induce me to
assure you that you held my destiny in your hands, even did you!"

His face did not fall. "You are the most spirited woman in America,
and nothing becomes you so much as obedience."

"Nevertheless--"

"Nevertheless, you always will do exactly what I tell you."

"Even if you told me to marry another man?"

"Ah! I never shall tell you to do that. On your head be that
responsibility." He did not attempt to speak lightly. His face
hardened, and his eyes, which could change in spite of their
impenetrable quality, let go their fires for a moment.

"Of course, if you wanted to go, I should make no protest. But so long
as you love me I shall hold you--should, if we ceased to meet. And
whatever you do, don't marry some man suddenly in self-defence. No man
ever loved a woman more than I love you, but you can trust me."

"Ah!" she said with her first moment of bitterness, "you _are_ strong.
And you believe that if you held out your arms to me now, in the
depths of this forest, I would spring to them. I might not stay. I
believe, I hope I never should see you alone again; but-"

"You are deliberately missing the point," he said gravely. "I am not
willing to pay the price of a moment's incomplete happiness. I have
lived too long for that. And I should not have ventured even so far on
dangerous ground," he added more lightly, "if it were not quite
probable that five hundred people are ranging the forest this minute.
We are later than we were yesterday, and they are not at their hymns.
This evening when we return I shall discuss with you the possible age
of the Adirondacks, or tell you one of Cooper's yarns." She leaned
toward him, her breath coming so short for a moment that she could
not speak. Finally, with what voice she could command she said,--

"Then, as we are safe here and you have broken down the reserve for a
moment, let me ask you this: Do you know how much I love you? Do you
guess? Or do you think it merely a girl's romantic fancy--"

"No!" he exclaimed. "No! No!" This time she did not cower before the
passion in his face. She looked at him steadily, although her eyes
were heavy. "Ah!" she said at last. "I am glad you know. It seemed to
me a wicked waste of myself that you should not. And if you do--the
rest does not matter so much. For the matter of that, life is always
making sport of its ultimates. The most perfect dream is the dream
that never comes true."

He did not answer for a moment, but when he did he had recovered
himself completely.

"That is true enough," he said. "We who have lived and thought know
that. But there never was a man so strong as to choose the dream when
Reality cast off her shackles and beckoned. Imagination we regard as a
compensation, not as the supreme gift. The wise never hate it,
however, as the failures so often do. For what it gives let us be as
thankful as the poet in his garret. If we awake in the morning to find
rain when we vividly had anticipated sunshine, it is only the common
mind who would regret the compensation of the dream."

XXI

Jack had almost finished his breakfast when Betty entered the dining-
room. He looked beyond her with the surprised and sulky frown of the
neglected husband.

"Where on earth is Harriet?" he asked. "Her natural inclination is to
lie in bed all day. What induced her--"

"She wanted to go to the camp-meeting," said Betty, not without
apprehension. "You know she always went with her adopted father, who
was a Methodist clergyman--"

"Great heaven!" Her apprehension was justified. His face was convulsed
with disgust. "My wife at a camp-meeting! And you let her go?"

"Harriet is not sixteen. And when a person has been brought up to a
thing, you cannot expect her to change completely in a few months.
Poor Harriet lived in a forsaken village where she had no sort of
society; I suppose the camp-meeting was her only excitement. And you
know how emotionally religious the--the Methodists are--You glare at
me so I scalded my throat."

"I am sorry, and I am afraid I have been rude. But you must--you must
know how distasteful it is for me to think of my wife at a camp-
meeting. Great heaven!"

"It is even worse than my going over to politics, isn't it? Don't take
it so tragically, my dear. The truth is, I suspect, Harriet worries
about having deceived Molly and me, and the camp-meeting is probably
to the Methodist what the confessional is to the Catholic. Both must
ease one's mind a lot."

"Harriet will have to ease her mind in some other way in the future.
And it will be some time before I can forget this." "Thank heaven I am
not married. Are you going after her? Shall you march her home by the
ear?"

"I certainly shall not go after her--that is, if she is in no danger.
Where is this camp-meeting?"

"Oh, there are five hundred or so of them, and it is near a
farmhouse." It was evident that he had forgotten the colour of the
camp. "Seriously, I would let her alone for to-day. That form of
hysteria has to wear itself out. I did not like the idea of her going,
and told her so, but I saw what it meant to her, and took her. When
you get her over to Europe, settle in some old town with a beautiful
cathedral and a dozen churches, where the choir boys are ducky little
things in scarlet habits and white lace capes, and there are mediaeval
religious processions with gorgeous costumes and solemn chants, and
the bells ring all day long, and there is a service every five minutes
with music, and a blessed relic to kiss in every church. She will be a
Catholic in less than no time, and look back upon the camp-meeting
with a shudder of aristocratic disgust."

"I hope so. If you will excuse me I will go out and smoke a
cigarette."

She said to Senator North as they approached the head of the lake that
evening, "A tempest is brewing in our matrimonial teapot. He looked
ready to divorce her when I told him where she had gone."

"I hope he won't divorce her when she gets home. Keep them apart if
you can. She has developed more than one characteristic of the race to
which she is as surely forged as if her fetters were visible. If she
has all its religious fanaticism in her, she is quite likely to work
up to that point of hysteria where she will proclaim the truth to the
world."

"Ah!" cried Betty, sharply. "Why did I not think of that? What a poor
guardian I am! If I had warned her, she never would have gone--but
probably she won't, as we have thought of it. The expected so seldom
happens."

"Don't count too much on that when great crises threaten," he said
grimly. "The law of cause and effect does not hide in the realm of the
unexpected when intelligent beings go looking for it. To tell you the
truth, I have been apprehensive ever since I saw her face this
morning. All the intelligence had gone out of it. With her race,
religion means the periodical necessity to relapse into barbarism, to
act like shouting savages after the year of civilized restraints. I
will venture to guess that Harriet has forgotten to-day everything
she has learned since she entered your family. Within that sad, calm,
high-bred envelope is--I am afraid--a mind which has the taint of the
blood that feeds it."

"I have thought that for a long while. Poor thing, why was she ever
born?"

"Because sin has a habit of persisting, and is remorseless in its
choice of vehicles. I do not see anything of her."

They waited almost an hour before she came hurrying down the path. She
barely recognized them, but dropped on her seat in the bow and
crouched there, sobbing and groaning.

It was a cheerless journey through the forest and down the lake, and
the element of the grotesque did nothing to relieve it. Betty,
distracted at first, soon realized that upon her lay the
responsibility of averting a tragedy, and she ordered her brain to
action. She leaned forward finally and whispered to Senator North:

"Row me to my boat-house and I will ask Jack to row you home. He is
too courteous to suggest sending a servant if I make a point of his
taking you."

He nodded. She saw the confidence in his eyes, and even in that hour
of supreme anxiety her mind leapt forward to the winning of his
approval as the ultimate of her struggle to save the happiness of two
human beings who were almost at her mercy.

Jack was walking on the terrace. Betty called to him, and he consented
with no marked grace to be boatman. He had taken the oars before he
noticed that his wife, whom he was not yet ready to forgive, was being
hurried off by his cousin.

"Mrs. Emory is very tired and her head aches," said Senator North.
"Miss Madison is anxious to get her into bed. Can't you dine with me
to-night? It would give me great pleasure, and men are superfluous, I
have observed, when women have headaches."

And Jack, who was not sorry to punish his wife, accepted the
invitation and did not return home till midnight.

XXII

Betty took Harriet to her own room and put her to bed. She had dinner
for both sent upstairs, but Harriet would not eat; neither would she
speak. She lay in the bed, half on her face, as limp as the newly
dead. Occasionally she sighed or groaned. Betty tried several times to
rouse her, but she would not respond. Finally she shook her.

"You shall listen," she said sternly. "As you seem to have left your
common-sense up there with those negroes, you are not to leave this
room until you have recovered it--until I give you permission. Do you
understand?" She had calculated upon striking the slavish chord in the
demoralized creature, and her intelligence had acted unerringly.
Harriet bent her head humbly, and muttered that she would do what she
was told.

When Betty heard Jack return, she went out to meet him, locking the
door behind her.

"Harriet is with me for to-night," she said. "She needs constant care,
for she is both excited and worn out; and as you still are angry with
her--"

"Oh, I am sorry if she is really ill, and I will do anything I can--"

"Then leave her with me for to-night. You know nothing about taking
care of women."

Jack, who was sleepy and still sulky, thanked her and went off to his
room. She returned to Harriet, who finally appeared to sleep.

Betty took the key from the door and put it in her pocket, then lay
down on the sofa to sleep while she could: she anticipated a long and
difficult day with Harriet. She was awakened suddenly by the noise of
a door violently slammed. Immediately, she heard the sound of running
feet.

She looked at the bed. Harriet was not there. A draught of cold air
struck her, and she saw a curtain flutter. She ran to the window. It
was open. She stepped out upon the roof of the veranda, and went
rapidly round the corner to Emory's room. One of the windows was open.
Betty looked up at the dark forest behind the lonely house and caught
her breath. What should she see? But she went on. A candle burned in
the room. Harriet sat on a chair in her nightgown, her black hair
hanging about her.

"I told him," she said, in a hollow but even voice. "I was drunk with
religion, and I told him. I didn't come to my senses till I looked up
--I was on the floor--and saw his face. He has gone away."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing. Not a word."

She drew a long sigh. "I'm so tired," she said. "I reckon I'll go to
bed."

XXIII

For four days they had no word from Jack Emory. Harriet slept late on
the first day. When she awoke she was an intelligent being again, and
strove for the controlled demeanor which she always had seemed to feel
was necessary to her self-respect. But more than once she let Betty
see how nervous and terrified she was.

"I am sure he will come back," she said, with the emphasis of
unadmitted doubt. "Sure! He adores me. Of course he would not have
married me if he had known, but that is done and cannot be undone.
When he realizes that, he will come back, for he loves me. We are
bound together and he will return in time."

Betty, who scarcely left her, gave her what encouragement she could.
Men were contradictory beings. Jack had the fanatical pride and
prejudices of his race, but he was in love. It was possible that after
a few months of loneliness in his old house he would give way to an
uncontrollable longing and send for his wife. She had made inquiries
at the railroad station, and ascertained that he had taken a ticket
for New York. Undoubtedly he had gone on to Washington.

She reproached herself bitterly for having slept and allowed Harriet
to escape; but Harriet, to whom she did not hesitate to express
herself, shook her head.

"You could not have stayed awake for twenty-four hours, and I should
have found a chance sooner or later. The idea came to me up there
while I was shouting and nearly crazy with excitement and the
excitement of all those half-mad negroes in that wild forest,--the
idea came to me that I must tell him, and I believed that it came
straight from the Lord. It seemed to me that He was there and told me
that was my only hope,--to tell him myself before he found it out from
your mother or Miss Trumbull. The idea never left me for a minute; it
possessed me. I was so afraid you wouldn't have waited when I found
out I was late,--that they would tell him before I got home. But I
wanted to tell him alone. When you ordered me not to leave the room, I
felt like I wanted to do anything you told me, but when I found you'd
gone to sleep, I felt like I couldn't wait another minute. I crawled
out of the window and went to him. And perhaps I did right. I can't
think it wasn't an inspiration to confess and be forgiven before he
found out for himself."

Betty was in the living-room with Senator North when a letter from
Jack Emory was brought to her. With it, also bearing the Washington
postmark, was another, directed in an unfamiliar and illiterate hand.
Betty, cold with apprehension, tore open Emory's letter. It read:--

Dear Betty,--You know, of course, that my wife confessed to me the
terrible fact that she has negro blood in her veins. My one impulse
when she told me was to get back to my home like a beaten dog to its
kennel. I did little thinking on the train; whether I talked to people
or whether I was too stupefied to think, I cannot tell you. But here I
have done thinking enough. At first I hated, I loathed, I abhorred
her. I resolved merely never to see her again, to ask you to send her
to Europe as quickly as possible, to threaten her with exposure and
arrest if she ever returned. But, Betty, although I have not yet
forgiven her, although the thought of her awful hidden birthmark still
fills me with horror and disgust, I know the weakness of man. The
marriage is void according to the laws of Virginia, and I know that if
I returned to her she would insist upon remarriage in a Northern
State--and I might succumb. And rather than do that, rather than
dishonour my blood, rather than do that monstrous wrong, not only to
my family but to the South that has my heart's allegiance--as
passionate an allegiance as if I had fought and bled on her
battlefields--I am going to kill myself.

Do not for a moment imagine, Betty, that I hold you to account. I can
guess why you did not warn me in the beginning, why you did not tell
me when it was too late. Would that I had gone on to the end faithful
to my ideal of you! My lonely years in this old house were brightened
and made endurable with the mere thought of you. But man was not made
to live on shadows, and I loved again, so deeply that I dare not trust
myself to live.

I send her only one message--she must drop my name. She has no legal
title to it according to the laws of Virginia; the marriage would be
declared void were it known that she had black blood in her. I would
spare her shame and exposure, but she shall not bear my name, and it
is my dying request that you use any means to make her drop it. Good-
bye.
JACK EMORY.

Betty thrust the letter into Senator North's hand. "Read it!" she
said. "Read it! Oh, do you suppose he has--"

Her glance fell on the other letter and she opened it with heavy
fingers. It read:--

Mis Betty,--Marse Jack done shot himself. He tole me not to telegraf.
Yours truly,
JIM.

Betty stood staring at Senator North as he read Jack's letter. When he
had finished it, she handed him the other. He read it, then took her
cold hands in his.

"You must tell her," he said. "It is a terrible trial for you, but you
must do it."

"Ah!" she cried sharply. "I believe you are thinking of me only, not
of that poor girl."

"My dear," he said, "that poor creature was doomed the moment she
entered the world. No amount of sympathy, no amount of help that you
or I could give her would alter her fate one jot. For all the women of
that accursed cross of black and white there is absolutely no hope--so
long as they live in this country, at all events. They almost
invariably have intelligence. If they marry negroes, they are
humiliated. If they pin their faith to the white man, they become
outcasts among the respectable Blacks by their own act, as the act of
others has made them outcasts among the Whites, Their one compensation
is the inordinate conceit which most of them possess. Do not think I
am heartless. I have thought long and deeply on the subject. But no
legislation can reach them, and the American character will have to be
born again before there is any change in the social law. It is one of
those terrible facts of life that rise isolated above the so-called
problems. If Harriet lives through this, she will fall upon other
miseries incidental to her breed, as sure as there is life about us,
for she has the seeds of many crops within her. So it is true that all
my concern is for you. In a way I helped to bring this on you; but you
did what was right, and I have no regrets. And you must think of me as
always beside you, not only ready to help you, but thinking of you
constantly."

She forgot Harriet for the moment. "Oh, I do," she said, "I do! I
wonder what strength I would have had through this if you had not been
behind me."

"You are capable of a great deal, but no woman is strong enough to
stand alone long. Send for Harriet to come here. I don't wish you to
be alone with her when she hears this news."

Betty rang the bell, and sent a servant for Harriet. She put Emory's
letter in her pocket.

"I shall not give her that terrible message of his until she quite has
got over the shock of his death," she said. "Let her be his widow for
a little while. Then she can go to Europe and resume her own name. She
soon will be forgotten here."

Harriet came in a few moments. She barely had sat down since she had
risen after a restless night. But she had refused to talk even to
Betty. As she entered the room and was greeted by one of those
silences with which the mind tells its worst news, she fell back
against the door, her hands clutching at her gown. Betty handed her
the servant's letter.

She took it with twitching fingers, and read it as if it had been a
letter of many pages. Then she extended her rigid arms until she
looked like a cross.

"Oh!" she articulated. "Oh! Oh!"

But in a moment she laughed. "I don't feel surprised, somehow," she
said sullenly. "I suppose I knew all along he'd do it. Every day that
I live I'll curse your unjust and murderous race while other people
are saying their prayers. May the black race overrun the world and
taint every vein of blood upon it. For me, I accept my destiny. I'm a
pariah, an outcast. I'll live to do evil, to square accounts with the
race that has made me what I am. I'll go back to that camp, and leave
it with whatever negro will have me, and when I'm so degraded I don't
care for anything, I'll go out and ruin every white man I can. I'll
keep the money you gave me, so that I'll be able to do more harm--"

"You can go," said Betty, "but not yet. You shall go with me first and
bury your husband. If you attempt to escape until I give you
permission, I shall have you locked up. I shall take two menservants
with us. Now come upstairs with me and pack your portmanteau."

She slipped her hand into Senator North's. "Good-bye," she said
hurriedly. "I shall return Friday night. Please come over Saturday
morning."

Harriet preceded Betty upstairs, and obeyed her orders sullenly. Betty
locked her in her room, and went to break the news to her mother. Mrs.
Madison received it without excitement, remarking among her tears that
it was one of the denouements she had imagined, and that on the whole
it was the best thing he could have done. She consented to go with her
maid to the hotel till Friday, and the party left for Washington that
evening.

XXIV

They returned late on Friday night. As Betty had anticipated,
Harriet's exhausted body had not harboured a violent spirit for long.
When they arrived in New York, she bought herself a crape veil
reaching to her toes, and when she entered the dilapidated old house
where her husband lay dead, she began to weep heavily. Her tears
scarcely ceased to flow until she had started on her way to the
mountains again, and, hot as it was, she never raised her veil during
the nine hours' train journey from New York to the lake, except to eat
the food that Betty forced upon her.

Mrs. Madison had returned, and Betty, after telling her those details
of the funeral which elderly people always wish to know, went to her
room, for she was tired and longed for sleep. But Harriet entered
almost immediately and sat down. She barely had spoken since Monday;
but it was evident that she was ready to talk at last, and Betty
stifled a yawn and sat upon the edge of her bed. Harriet was a
delicate subject and must be treated with vigilant consideration,
except at those times where an almost brutal firmness was necessary.
She looked sad and haggard, but very beautiful, and Betty reflected
that with her voice she might begin life over again, and in a public
career forget her brief attempt at happiness. If she failed, it would
be because there was so little grip in her; Nature had been lavish
only with the more brilliant endowments.

"Betty," she began, "I want to tell you that I'm sorry I said those
dreadful words when I learned he was dead. But suspense and the doubt
that had begun to work had nearly driven me crazy. I don't mind
saying, though, that I wish I had kept on meaning them, that I could
do what I said I'd do, for I meant them then--I reckon I did! But I
haven't any backbone, my will is a poor miserable weak thing that
takes a spurt and then fizzles out. And I'd rather be good than bad.
I reckon that has something to do with it. I'd have gone to the bad, I
suppose, if you hadn't taken hold of me; I'd have just drifted that
way, although I liked teaching Sunday-school, and I liked to feel I
was good and respectable and could look down on people that were no
better than they should be. And now that I've been living with such
respectable and high-toned people as you all are, I don't think I
could stand niggers and poor white trash again--"

"I am sure you will be good," interrupted Betty, encouragingly. "And
you owe him respect. Don't forget that, and make allowances for him."

"Ah, yes!" "Her face convulsed, but she calmed herself and went on.
"You will never know how I loved him. I was proud enough of the name,
but I worshipped him; and he killed himself to get rid of me! Oh, yes,
I'll make allowances, for I killed him as surely as if I had pulled
that trigger--" "Put the heavier blame on those that went before you,"
said Betty, with intent to soothe. "You did wrong in deceiving him,
but helpless women should be forgiven much that they do, in their
desperate battle with Circumstance. Think of it as a warning, but not
as a crime." Don't let _anything_ make you morbid. Life is full of
pleasure. Go and look for it, and put the past behind you."

Harriet shook her head. "I am not you," she said. "I am _I_. And I
feel as if there was a heavy hand on my neck pressing me down. If I
should live to be a toothless old woman, I should never feel that I
had any right to be happy again. Heaven knows what I might be tempted
to do, but I should laugh at myself for a fool, all the same."

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