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Senator North

G >> Gertrude Atherton >> Senator North




The colour rushed over her face, but she continued steadily: "There's
something else I must tell you before I can sleep to-night. I've read
his letter to you. I knew he'd written it, and down there while you
were asleep I took it out of your pocket and read it. It was I who
suggested going over to Virginia, for I was afraid some newspaper
would get hold of it if we were married in Washington, where he was so
well known. I didn't know there was such a law in Virginia. So,
you see, the Lord was on his side a little. I don't bear his name. I'm
as much of an outcast as the vengeance of a wronged man could wish--"

"I am sure he thought of you kindly at the last, and I never shall
think of you in that--that other way. You must go to Europe and begin
life over again."

Harriet rose and kissed Betty affectionately. "Good-night," she said.
"You are just worn out, and I have kept you up. But I felt I wanted to
tell you--and that no matter how ungrateful I sometimes appear I
always love you; and I'd rather be you than any one in the world,
because you're so unlike myself."

Betty went with her to the door. "Go to sleep," she said. "Don't lie
awake and think."

"Oh, I will sleep," she said. "Don't worry about that."




XXV



Betty slept late on the following morning, but arose as soon as she
awoke and dressed herself hurriedly. Senator North was an early
visitor. Doubtless he was waiting for her on the veranda.

She ran downstairs, feeling that she could hum a tune. The morning was
radiant, and for the last five days it had seemed to her that the
atmosphere was as black as Harriet's veil. She wanted the fresh air
and the sunshine, the lake and the forest again. She wanted to talk
for long hours with the one man who she was sure could never do a weak
or cowardly act. She wanted to feel that her heavy responsibilities
were pushed out of sight, and that she could live her own life for a
little.

She almost had reached the front door when a man sprang up the steps
and through it, closing it behind him. It was John, the butler, and
his face was white.

"What is it?" she managed to ask him. "What on earth has happened
now?" "It's Miss Walker, Miss. They found her three hours ago--on the
lake. The coroner's been here. They're bringing her in. I told them to
take her in the side door. I hoped we'd get her to her room before you
come down. I'll attend to everything, Miss."

Betty heard the slow tramp of feet on the side veranda. It was the
most horrid sound she ever had heard, and she wondered if she should
cease to hear it as long as she lived. She went into the living-room
and covered her face with her hands. She had not cried for Jack Emory,
but she cried passionately now. She felt utterly miserable, and
crushed with a sense of failure; as if all the wretchedness and
tragedy of the past fortnight were her own making. Two lives had
almost been given into her keeping, and in spite of her daring and
will the unseen forces had conquered. And then she wondered if the
water had been very cold, and shivered and drew herself together. And
it must have been horribly dark. Harriet was afraid of the dark, and
always had burned a taper at night.

She heard Senator North come up the front steps and knock. As no one
responded, he opened the door and came into the living-room.

"I have just heard that she has drowned herself," he said; and if
there was a note of relief in his voice, Betty did not hear it. She
ran to him and threw herself into his arms and clung to him.

"You said you would," she sobbed. "And I never shall be in greater
grief than this. I feel as if it were my entire fault, as if I were a
terrible failure, as if I had let two lives slip through my hands. Oh,
poor poor Harriet! Why are some women ever born? What terrible purpose
was she made to live twenty-four wretched years for? You wanted me to
become serious. I feel as if I never could smile again."

He held her closely, and in that strong warm embrace she was comforted
long before she would admit; but he soothed her as if she were a
child, and he did not kiss her.





_Part III_

_The Political Sea Turns Red_




I



Betty Madison arrived in Washington two days before Christmas, with
the sensation of having lived through several life-times since Lady
Mary's car had left the Pennsylvania station on the fourteenth of
March; she half expected to see several new public buildings, and she
found herself wondering if her old friends were much changed.

People capable of the deepest and most enduring impressions often
receive these impressions upon apparently shallow waters. They feel
the blow, but it skims the surface at the moment, to choose its place
and sink slowly, surely, into the thinking brain.

Betty's immediate attitude toward the tragic fact of Harriet's death
was almost spectacular. She felt herself the central figure in a
thrilling and awful drama, its horror stifling for a moment the hope
that the man whose footsteps followed closely upon that tramping of
heavy feet would fulfil his promise and take her in his arms. And when
he did her sense of personal responsibility left her, as well as her
clearer comprehension of what had happened to bring about this climax
so long and so ardently desired.

But she had not seen Senator North since the day following the
funeral. Mrs. Madison had announced with emphasis that she had had as
much as she could stand and would not remain another day in the
Adirondacks; she wanted Narragansett and the light and agreeable
society of many Southern friends who did not have frequent tragedies
in their families. Betty telegraphed for rooms at one of the
large hotels at the Pier, and thereafter had the satisfaction of
seeing her mother gossip contentedly for hours with other ladies of
lineage and ante-bellum reminiscences, or sit with even deeper
contentment for intermediate hours upon the veranda of the Casino.
When she herself was bored beyond endurance, she crossed the bay and
lunched or dined in Newport, where she had many friends; and she spent
much time on horseback. When the season was over, they paid a round of
visits to country houses, and finished with the few weeks in New York
necessary for the replenishment of Miss Madison's wardrobe. She had
hoped to reach Washington for the opening of Congress, but her mother
had been ill, prolonging the last visit a fortnight, and gowns must be
consulted upon, fitted and altered did the world itself stand still.
And this was the one period of mental rest that Betty had experienced
since her parting from Senator North.

She had been much with people during these five months, seeking and
finding little solitude, and few had found any change in her beyond a
deeper shade of indifference and more infrequent flashes of humour.
She permitted men to amuse her if she did not amuse them, to all out-
door sports she was faithful, and she read the new books and talked
intelligently of the fashions. When the conversation swung with the
precision of a pendulum from clothes and love to war with Spain, her
mind leapt at once to action, and she argued every advocate of war
into a state of fury. She had responded heavily to the President's
appeal in behalf of the reconcentrados, but her mind was no longer
divided. The failure of the belligerency resolutions to reach the
attention of the House during the Extra Session of Congress had
rekindled the war fever in the country; and the constant chatter about
the suffering Cuban and the duty of the United States, the black
iniquity of the Speaker and the timidity of the President, were
wearying to the more evenly balanced members of the community. "You
say that we need a war," said Betty contemptuously one day, "that it
will shake us up and do us good. If we had fallen as low as that, no
war could lift us, certainly not the act of bullying a small country,
of rushing into a war with the absolute certainty of success. But we
need no war. American manhood is where it always has been and always
will be until we reach that pitch of universal luxury and sloth and
vice which extinguished Rome. Those commercial and financial pursuits
should make a man less a man is the very acme of absurdity. If our men
were drawn into a righteous war to-morrow or a hundred years hence,
they would fight to the glory of their country and their own honour.
But if they swagger out to whip a decrepit and wheezy old man, when
the excitement is over they will wish that the whole episode could be
buried in oblivion. And I would be willing to wager anything you like
that if this war does come off, so false is its sentiment that it will
not inspire one great patriotic poem, nor even one of merit, and that
the only thing you will accomplish will be to drag Cuba from the
relaxing clutches of one tyrant and fling her to a horde of
politicians and greedy capitalists."

But, except when politics possessed it, her brain seldom ceased, no
matter how crowded her environment, from pondering on the events of
the summer, and pondering, it sobered and grew older. She had engaged
in a conflict with the Unseen Forces of life and been conquered. She
had been obliged to stand by and see these forces work their will upon
a helpless being, who carried in solution the vices of civilizations
and men persisting to their logical climax, almost demanding aloud the
sacrifice of the victim to death that this portion of themselves might
be buried with her. Despite her intelligence, nothing else could have
given her so clear a realization of the eternal persistence of all
acts, of the sequential symmetrical links they forge in the great
chain of Circumstance. It was this that made her hope more eager that
the United States would be guided by its statesmen and not by
hysteria, and it was this that made her think deeply and constantly
upon her future relation with Senator North.

The danger was as great as ever. Her brain had sobered, but her heart
had not. Separation and the absence of all communication--they had
agreed not to correspond--had strengthened and intensified a love that
had been half quiescent so long as its superficial wants were
gratified. Troubled times were coming when he would need her, would
seek her whenever he could, and yet when their meetings must be short
and unsatisfactory. When hours are no longer possible, minutes become
precious, and the more precious the more dangerous. If she were older,
if tragedy and thought had sobered and matured her character, if she
were deprived of the protection of the lighter moods of her mind,
would not the danger be greater still? The childish remnant upon which
she had instinctively relied had gone out of her, she had a deeper and
grimmer knowledge of what life would be without the man who had
conquered her through her highest ideals and most imperious needs; and
of what it would be with him.

She had no intention of making a problem out of the matter, constantly
as her mind dwelt upon the future. Senator North had told her once
that problems fled when the time for action began. She supposed that
one of two things would happen after her return to Washington: great
events would absorb his mind and leave him with neither the desire nor
the time for more than an occasional friendly hour with her; or after
a conscientious attempt to take up their relationship on the old lines
and give each other the companionship both needed, all intercourse
would abruptly cease.




II



"I am going to have my _salon,_ or at all events the beginning of it,
at once," said Betty to Sally Carter on the afternoon of her arrival,
"and I want you to help me."

"I am ready for any change," said Miss Carter. Her appearance was
unaltered, and she had spoken of Emory's death without emotion.
Whether she had put the past behind her with the philosophy of her
nature, or whether his marriage with a woman for whose breed she had a
bitter and fastidious contempt had killed her love before his death,
Betty could only guess. She made no attempt to learn the truth.
Sally's inner life was her own; that her outer was unchanged was
enough for her friends.

"I am going to give a dinner to thirty people on the sixth of January.
Here is the list. You will see that every man is in official life.
There are eight Senators, five members of the House, the British
Ambassador, and the Librarian of Congress. Some of them know my desire
for a _salon_ and are ready to help me. I shall talk about it quite
freely. In these days you must come out plainly and say what you want.
If you wait to be too subtle, the world runs by you. I am determined
to have a _salon,_ and a famous one at that. This is an ambitious
list, but half-way methods don't appeal to me."

"Nobody ever accused you of an affinity for the second best, my dear;
but you may thank your three stars of luck for providing you with the
fortune and position to achieve your ambitions: beauty and brains
alone wouldn't do it. Senator North," she continued from the list in
her hand: "Mrs. North is wonderfully improved, by the way; has not
been so well in twenty years. Senator Burleigh: he is out flat-footed
against free silver since the failure of the bi-metallic envoys, and
his State is furious. Senator Shattuc is for it, so they probably
don't speak. Senator Ward might be induced to fall in love with Lady
Mary and turn his eloquence on the Senate in behalf of a marriage
between Uncle Sam and Britannia. There is no knowing what your
_salon_ may accomplish, and that would be a sight for the gods.
Senator Maxwell will inveigh in twelve languages against recognizing
the belligerency of the Cubans. Senator French will supply the
distinguished literary element. Senator March represents the
conservative Democrat who is too good for the present depraved
condition of his State. If you want to immortalize yourself, invent a
political broom. Senator Eustis: he thinks the only fault with the
Senate is that it is too good-natured and does not say No often
enough. Who are the Representatives? The only Speaker, the immortal
Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means--don't place me near
him, for I've just paid a hideous bill at the Custom House and I'd
scratch his eyes out. Mr. Montgomery: he and Lady Mary are getting
almost devoted. Trust a clever woman to pinch the memory of any other
woman to death. The redoubtable Mr. Legrand, also of Maine, upon whom
the shafts of an embittered minority seem to fall so harmlessly; and
Mr. Armstrong--who is he? I thought I knew as much about politics as
you, by this time, but I don't recall his name."

"I met him at Narragansett, and had several talks with him. He is a
Bryanite, but very gentlemanly, and his convictions were so strong and
so unquestionably genuine that he interested me. I want the best of
all parties. We can't sit up and agree with each other."

"Don't let that worry you, darling. Mr. North has been contradicting
everybody in the Senate for twenty years. Your devoted Burleigh
quarrels with everybody but yourself. Mr. Maxwell snubs everybody who
presumes to disagree with him, and French is so superior that I long
for some naughty little boys to give him a coat of pink paint. Your
_salon_ will probably fight like cats. If the war cloud gets any
bigger, your mother will go to bed early on _salon_ nights and send
for a policeman. I look forward to it with an almost painful joy.
I want to go in to dinner with Mr. March, by the way. He is the
noblest-looking man in Congress--looks like what the statues of the
founders of the Republic would look like if they were decently done.
I'll paint the menu cards for you, and I'll wear a new gown I've just
paid ninety-three dollars duty on--I certainly shall tear out the eyes
of 'the honourable gentleman from Maine.'"




III



When Sally had gone, after an hour of consultation on the various
phases of the dinner, Betty sat for some moments striving to call up
something from the depths of her brain, something that had smitten it
disagreeably as it fell, but sunk too quickly, under a torrent of
words, to be analyzed at the moment. It had made an extremely
unpleasant impression;--painful perhaps would be a better word.

In the course of ten minutes she found the sentence which had made the
impression: "Mrs. North is wonderfully improved, by the way; has not
been so well in twenty years."

The words seemed to hang themselves up in a row in her mind; they
turned scarlet and rattled loudly. Betty made no attempt to veil her
mental vision; she stared hard at the words and at the impression they
had produced. Mrs. North was out of danger, and the fact was a bitter
disappointment to her. In spite of the resolute expulsion of the very
shadow of Mrs. North from her thought, her sub-consciousness had
conceived and brought forth and nurtured hope. What had made her
content to drift, what had made her look with an almost philosophical
eye on the future, was the unadmitted certainty that in the natural
course of events a woman with a shattered constitution must go her way
and leave her husband free. Had he thought of this? He must have, she
concluded. She was beginning to look facts squarely in the face; it
was an old habit with him, older than herself. There never was a more
practical brain.

For the first time in her life she almost hated herself. She had done
and felt many things which she sincerely regretted, but this seemed
incomparably the worst. And despite her protest, her bitter self-
contempt, the sting of disappointment remained; she could not extract
it.

She went out and walked several miles, as she always did when nervous
and troubled. She came to the conclusion that she was glad to have
heard this news to-day. She and Senator North were to meet in the
evening for the first time in five months. She had looked forward to
this meeting with such a mingling of delight and terror that several
times she had been on the point of sending him word not to come. But
the impression Sally's information had made had hardened her. She was
so disappointed in herself, so humiliated to find that a mortal may
fancy himself treading the upper altitudes, only to discover that the
baser forces in the brain are working independently of the will, that
she felt in anything but a melting mood. She knew that this mood would
pass; she had watched the workings of the brain, its abrupt
transitions and its reactions, too long to hope that she suddenly had
acquired great and enduring strength. The future had not expelled one
jot of its dangers, perhaps had supplemented them, but for the hour
she not only was safe from herself, but the necessity to turn him from
her door had receded one step.

She had intended to receive him in the large and formal environment of
the parlor, but in her present mood the boudoir was safe, and she was
glad not to disappoint him; she knew that he loved the room. And if
her brain had sobered, her femininity would endure unaltered for ever.
She wore a charming new gown of white crepe de chine flowing over a
blue petticoat, and a twist of blue in her hair. She had written to
him from New York when to call, and he had sent a large box of lilies
of the valley to greet her. She had arranged them in a bowl, and
wore only a spray at her throat. Women with beautiful figures seldom
care for the erratic lines and curves of the floral decoration. She
heard him coming down the corridor and caught her breath, but that was
all. She did not tremble nor change colour.

When he came in, he took both her hands and looked at her steadily for
a moment. They made no attempt at formal greeting, and there was no
need of subterfuge of any sort between them. No two mortals ever
understood each other better.

"I see the change in you," he said. "I expected it. You have given me
a great deal, and your last survival of childhood was not the least.
The serious element has developed itself, and you look the embodiment
of an Ideal." He dropped her hands and walked to the end of the room.
When he returned and threw himself into a chair, she knew that his
face had changed, then been ordered under control.

"What shall I talk to you about?" he asked with an almost nervous
laugh. "Politics? Comparatively little happened in the Senate before
the holidays. The President's message was of peculiar interest to me,
inasmuch as it indicated that he is approaching Spain in the right way
and will succeed in both relieving the Cubans and averting war if the
fire-eaters will let him alone. The Cubans probably will not listen to
the offer of autonomy, for it comes several years too late and their
confidence in Spain has gone forever; but I am hoping that while this
country is waiting to see the result, it will come to its senses. The
pressure upon us has been intolerable. Both Houses have been flooded
with petitions and memorials by the thousands: from Legislatures,
Chambers of Commerce, Societies, Churches, from associations of every
sort, and from perhaps a million citizens. The Capitol looks like a
paper factory. If autonomy fails soon enough, or if some new chapter
of horrors can be concocted by the Yellow Press, or if the unforeseen
happens, war will come. The average Congressman and even Senator does
not resist the determined pressure of his constituents, and to do them
justice they have talked themselves into believing that they are as
excited as the idle minds at home who are feeling dramatic and calling
it sympathy. And the average mind hates to be on the unpopular side.

"Forgive me if I am bitter," he said, standing up suddenly and looking
down on her with a smile, "but a good many of us are, just now. We
can't help it. A great and just war would be met unflinchingly and
with all pride; but the prospect of this hysterical row between a bull
pup and a senile terrier fills us with impatience and disgust. The
President must feel that he is expiating all the sins of the human
race. The only man in the United States to be envied, so far, is the
Speaker of the House; it is almost a satisfaction to think that he
looks like the monument he is; and for the time being his importance
overshadows the President's. If the President can hold on, however, he
will negotiate Spain out of this hemisphere in less than a year."

"I knew you were worried about it," she said softly. "I felt that so
keenly that I never lost an opportunity to war against the war. I made
enemies right and left, and acquired a reputation for heartlessness."

"Our minds are much alike," he said, staring down at her and dropping
his voice for a moment. "You may have done it for me, but you are as
sincere as I am. I have stimulated your mind, that is all. How much
you can do here in Washington--among the men who legislate--I cannot
say. A woman who takes a high and definite stand is always an
influence for good; but the women who influence men's votes are not of
your type. They are women who sacrifice anything to gain their ends,
or those who have educated themselves to play upon the vanity and
other petty qualities of men; every peg in their brain is hung with a
political trick. The only men who attract you are too strong to vote
under the influence of any woman, even if they loved her. If Shattuc
were not as obstinate as a mule," he added more lightly, "I should ask
you to convert him to the principles of sound currency. That is
another ugly cloud ahead: there is going to be an attempt made to pass
through both Houses a concurrent resolution advocating the free and
unlimited coinage of silver and to pay the public debt with it. As far
as our honour goes, the passing of such a resolution would affect us
as deeply as if it were to become a law. We should stand before the
world as willing and ready to violate the national honour, ignore our
pledges and recklessly impair our credit. I don't think the resolution
will pass the House, the Republican majority is too strong there, but
I am afraid it will pass the Senate; although we are in the majority,
a good many Republicans are Western men and Silverites. A certain
number on both sides of the Chamber are voting merely to please their
constituents, feeling reasonably sure that the resolution will fail in
the House. They appear to care little for the honour of the Senate;
they certainly have not the backbone to defy their constituents if
they do care for it. To the outside world the Senate is a unit; every
resolution that passes it might come out of one gigantic skull at
peace with itself. This one will be passed by a small majority who
have not imagination enough to read the works of future historians,
nor even to grasp public opinion as unexpressed by their constituents.

"There is one fact that the second-rate politician never grasps," he
said, walking impatiently up and down; Betty had never seen him so
restless. "That is, that the true American respects convictions; no
matter how many fads he may conceive nor how loud he may clamour for
their indulgence, when his mind begins to balance methodically again,
he respects the man who told him he was wrong and imperilled his own
re-election rather than vote against his convictions. Many a Senator
has lost re-election through yielding to pressure, for elections do
not always occur at the height of a popular agitation; and when men
have had time to cool off and think, they despise and distrust the
waverer. If you will read the biographies in the Congressional
Directory, you will see that with a very few exceptions the New
Englanders are the only men who come back here--to both Houses--term
after term. They practically are here for life; and the reason is
that they belong to the same hard-headed, clear-thinking, unyielding,
and puritanically upright race as the men who elect them to office.
They have their faults, but they represent the iron backbone of this
country, and in spite of fads and aberrations, and gales in general on
the political sea, they will remain the prevailing influence. If I
speak seldom in the Senate, I certainly make a good many speeches to
you. But I want you to understand all I can teach you and to do what
you can."

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