Senator North

G >> Gertrude Atherton >> Senator North

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She never had permitted her mind to linger on the practical aspect of
a different relationship, to admit that such a chapter was possible
outside of her imagination, but she did so now, deliberately. She knew
that what her mother had intimated was true, that the happiness to be
got out of it would amount to very little, and that the day would come
when she would say that it was not worth the price. There were many
times when she was not capable of reasoning coldly on this question,
but she had been listening for two hours to Senator French on the
restriction of immigration, and felt all intellect.

Her mind turned to Harriet. There was a creature foredoomed to
destruction by the forces within her, struggling in vain, assisted and
guarded in vain. Should she, with her inheritance of kindly forces
within and without, deliberately readjust her manifest lines into a
likeness of Harriet Walker's? And she knew that even if she hoodwinked
the world, the miserable deception of it all, the nervous terrors, not
only would wear love down, but shatter her ideals of herself and him.
She would be infinitely more miserable than now.

It relieved her to have thought that phase out, and she put it aside.
But the other? Must she give him up? What pleasure could she find in
sitting here with him if her mother's apprehensive mind did not leave
the room for a moment? What pleasure if a vulgar world were
whispering? She reflected with some bitterness that one danger was
receding. He had not entered this room since the day of her return.
Although he had called several times, he had come in the evening, when
she always sat with her mother, or in the morning, when Mrs. Madison
again was sure to be present. She knew that he dared not come here,
and that it was more than likely he never would call at the old hour
again.

She realized these two facts suddenly and vividly; her mind worked
with a brutal frankness at times. She began to cry heavily, the tears
raining on her intellectual mood and obliterating it. If she were not
to see him alone again, she might as well ask him to come to the house
on Thursday evenings only, and to show her no attention in public; if
she could not have the old hours again, she wanted nothing less. And
she wanted them passionately; those hours came back to her with a
poignancy of happiness in memory that the present had not revealed,
and the thought that they had gone for ever filled her with a
suffocating anguish that was as complete as it was sudden. She
implored him under her breath to come to her, then prayed that he
would not....

She became conscious that she was in a mood to take any step, were he
here, rather than lose him; and the mood terrified her. Would the time
come when this intolerable pain would kill every inheritance in her
brain, its empire the more absolute because it made passion itself
insignificant in the more terrible want of the heart? If it did, she
would marry Burleigh. She made up her mind instantly. She would fight
as long as she could, for she passionately desired to live her life
alone with the idea of this man; but if she were not strong enough,
she would marry and bury herself in the West. Nothing but an
irrevocable step would affect a permanent mental attitude, and
Burleigh would give her little time for thought.

VII

Betty went very often to the Senate Gallery in these days, for it was
the only place where one might have relief from the eternal subject of
Cuba. Although the House broke loose under cover of the Diplomatic and
Consular Appropriation Bill when it was in the Committee of the Whole
and free of the Speaker's iron hand, and raged for two days with the
vehemence of long-repressed passion, the Senate permitted only an
occasional spurt from its warlike members, and pursued its even way
with the important bills before it. But at teas, dinners, luncheons,
and receptions people chattered with amiability or in suavity about
the hostile demonstrations at Havana against Americans, the Spanish
Minister's letter, Spain's demand for the recall of Consul-General
Lee, the dying reconcentrados, the exploits of the insurgents, and the
general possibilities of war. The old Madison house, which had ignored
politics for half a century, vibrated with polite excitement on
Thursday evenings. About a hundred people came to these receptions,
which finished with a supper, and it was understood that the free
expression of opinion should be the rule; consequently several
repressed members of both Houses delivered impromptu speeches, in the
guise of toasts, before that select audience; much to the amusement of
Senator North and the Speaker of the House. Burleigh's was really
impassioned and brilliant; and Armstrong's, if woolly in its phrasing
and Populistic in its length, was sufficiently entertaining.

As for Mrs. Madison, she became imbued with the fear that war would be
declared in her house. Two Cabinet ministers had been added to the
_salon_, and what they in conjunction with the colossal Speaker and
Senators North and Ward might accomplish if they cared to try, was
appalling to contemplate. She begged Betty to adjourn the _salon_ till
peace had come again.

But to this Betty would not hearken. It was the sun of her week,
through whose heavy clouds flickered the pale stars of distractions
for which she was beginning to care little. One of life's
compensations is that there is always something ahead, some trifling
event of interest or pleasure upon which one may fix one's eye and
endeavour to forget the dreary tissue of monotony and commonplace
between. Betty found herself acquiring the habit of casting her eye
over the day as soon as she awoke in the morning, and if nothing
distracting presented itself, she planned for something as well as she
could.

She endeavoured to introduce the pleasant English custom of asking a
few congenial spirits to come for a cup of afternoon tea. These little
informal reunions are among the most delightful episodes of London
life, and if established as a custom in Washington would be like the
greenest of oases in the whirling breathless sandstorms of that social
Sahara. But even Betty Madison, strong as she was both in position and
personality, met with but a moderate success. When women have from six
to twenty-five calls to pay every afternoon of the season, with at
least one tea a day besides, they have little time or inclination for
pleasant informalities. Doubtless Miss Madison's friends felt that
they should be relieved of the additional tax. Even the women of the
fashionable set, which includes some of the Old Washingtonians and
many newer comers of equally high degree, and which ignores the
official set, preserve the same ridiculous fashion of calling in
person six days in the week instead of merely leaving cards as in
older and more civilized communities. In London, society has learned
to combine the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of work.
Washington society is its antithesis; and although many of the most
brilliant men in America are in its official set, and the brightest
and most charming women in its fashionable as well as political set,
they are, through the exigencies of the old social structure, of
little use to each other. Betty occasionally managed to capture three
or four people who talked delightfully when they felt they had time to
indulge in consecutive sentences, but as a rule people came on her
reception day only, and many of them walked in at one door of her
drawing-room and out at the other.

The debate in the Senate on the payment of bonds interested her
deeply, for she knew that it meant days of uneasiness for Senator
North, who rarely was absent from his seat. His brief speech on the
subject was the finest she had heard him make, and although it was
bitter and sarcastic while he was arraigning the adherents of the
resolution to pay the government debt in silver, he became impersonal
and almost impassioned as he argued in behalf of national honesty.

Betty never had seen him so close to excitement, and she wondered if
he found it a relief to speak out on any subject. But if he ever
thought of her down there he made no sign, for he neither raised his
eyes to the gallery nor did he pay her a second visit in her select
but conspicuous precinct.

The resolution passed the Senate, and on that evening Senator North
called at the Madison house. It was two weeks since he had called
before, and although he had come to her evenings and they had met at
several dinners, they had not attempted conversation.

The Montgomery's and Carters had dined at the house, and all were in
the parlour when he arrived. After a few minutes he was able to talk
apart with Betty. They moved gradually toward the end of the room and
sat down on a small sofa.

"I am glad you came to-night," she said. "It was my impulse to go to
you when I heard how the vote had gone."

"I knew it," he replied, "and if I could have come straight up here to
the old room, I should have hung up the vote with my overcoat in the
hall."

He looked harassed, and his eyes, while they had lost nothing of their
magnetic power, were less calmly penetrating than usual. They looked
as if their fires had been unloosed more than once of late and were
under indifferent control.

"You will not come to that room again!"

"No. And I soon shall cease to come here at all except on Thursdays."

"You almost have done that now. I think I get more satisfaction
watching you from the gallery than anything else. You look very calm
and senatorial, and you always are standing some one in a corner who
is trying to make a speech."

"I am relieved to know that I do not inspire the amazement of my
colleagues. It is a long while since I have felt calm and senatorial,
however. But these are days for alertness of mind, and even the most
distracting of women must be shut up in her cupboard and forgotten for
a few hours every day."

"I think I rather like that."

"Of course you do. A woman always likes a strong lover. And you have
plenty of revenge, if you did but know."

"I know," she said; and as she raised her eyes and looked at him
steadily, he believed her.

"Tell me at least that you miss coming to that room--I want to hear
you say it."

"Good God!"

Betty caught her breath. But when women feel fire between their
fingers and are reckless before the swift approach of a greater
wretchedness than that possessing them, they are merciless to
themselves and the man.

"Can you stay away?" she whispered. "Can you?"

"It is the one thing I can do."

"Do you realize what you are saying?--that you have put me aside for
ever? Are you willing to admit that it is all over? How am I to live
on and on and on? Can you fancy me alone next summer in the
Adirondacks--"

"Hush! Hush! Do you wish me to come? Answer me honestly, without any
feminine subterfuge."

"No, I do not."
"And I should not come if you did, for I know the price we both should
pay better than you do, and only complete happiness could justify such
a step. You and I could find happiness in marriage only--we both
demand too much! But I also know that the higher faculties of the mind
do not always prevail, and I shall not see you alone again."

She pushed him further. "You take this philosophically because you
have loved before and recovered. You feel sure that no love lasts."

"When a man loves as I love you, he has no past. There are no
experiences alive in his memory to help him to philosophy. With the
entire world the last love is the only love. As for myself, I shall
not love again and I shall not recover."

"I wore white because I knew you would come tonight," she said softly.

"Yes, and you would torment me if I went down on my knees and begged
for mercy."

"Senator," said Montgomery, approaching them. "I suppose it is some
satisfaction to you to know that that resolution cannot pass the
House."

"I hope you will make a speech on the subject that will look well in
the Record," said North, with some sarcasm.

Montgomery laughed. "That is a good suggestion. I wonder if some of
our orators ever read themselves over in cold blood. The back numbers
of the Record ought to be a solemn warning."

"Unfortunately most people don't know when they have made fools of
themselves; that is one reason the world grows wise so slowly. I don't
doubt your speech will look well. You've been remarkably sane for a
young man of enthusiasms. Reserve some of your logic, however, for the
greater conflict that is coming. The pressure on the President is
becoming very severe, and the worst of it is that a great part of it
comes from Congressmen of his own party."

"One of our Populists has christened these 'kickers' 'the
reconcentrados;' which is not bad, as there is said to be a kickers'
caucus in process of organization. But if the pressure on the
President is severe, it is equally so on us, and I suppose the
'kickers' are those who have one knob too few in their backbones.
Some, however, have got the war bee inside their skulls instead of in
their hats, and will be fit subjects for a lunatic asylum if the thing
doesn't end soon, one way or another. And they reiterate and reiterate
that they don't want war, when they know that any determined step we
can take is bound to lead to it. I have no patience with them. They
either are fools or are trying to keep on both sides of the fence at
once."

"Politics are very complicated," said Senator North, dryly.

"How do you and Mary manage to live in the same house?" asked Betty.
"She is all for war."

"Oh, I think she rather likes the opportunity to argue. And she is so
divided between the desire for me to be a good American and the desire
that England shall have an excuse to hug us that she could not get
into a temper over it if she tried. She has made no attempt to
influence my course. Heaven knows how much money I've been made to
disburse in behalf of the reconcentrados, but I like women to be
tender-hearted and would not harden them for the sake of a few
dollars, even were they dumped in Havana Harbor--By the way, I wonder
if the _Maine_ is all right down there? She has the city under her
guns, and they know it--"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, don't suggest any new horrors," said Senator
North, rising. "Besides, the Spaniards are not in the final stages of
idiocy. It would be like the New York _Journal_ to blow up the
_Maine_, as it seems to have reached that stage of hysteria which
betokens desperation; but the ship is safe as far as the Spaniards are
concerned."

Lady Mary rose to go; and Betty, who was informal with her friends,
went out into the hall with her instead of ringing for a servant.
Senator North remained in the parlor for a few moments to say good-
night to Mrs. Madison and the Carters, and Betty, although the
Montgomerys did not linger, waited for him to come out. There was
nothing to reflect the light in the dark walls of the large square
hall, and it always was shadowy, and provocative to lovers at any
time.

When he entered it, he looked at her for a moment without speaking,
and did not approach her.

"You might be the ghost of another Betty Madison--in that white gown,"
he said. "Was there not a famous one in the days of 1812, and did she
not love a British officer--or something of that sort?"

"They parted here in this hall--and she lived on and died of old age.
Such is life. I sleep in her bed, where, I suppose, she suffered much
as I do."

She came forward and pushed her hand into his. "I am not a ghost," she
said.

He too believed it to be their last meeting alone, and he raised her
hand to his lips and held it there.

"I wish we could have stayed on and on in the Adirondacks," she said
unsteadily. "Everything seemed to go well with us there."

"People in mid-ocean usually are happy and irresponsible. They would
not be if it were anything but an intermediate state. But it is enough
to know that on land our troubles are waiting for us."

She shivered and drew closer to him. The dangerous fire in her eyes
faded.

"Mine are becoming very great," she said. "All I can do is to distract
my mind, to fill up my time."

"And I can do nothing to help you! That is the tragedy of a love like
ours: the more a man loves a woman he cannot marry the more he must
make her suffer--either way; it is simply a choice of methods, and if
he really loves her he chooses the least complicated."

"It is bad enough."

Her eyes filled for the first time in his presence since the morning
of Harriet's death, but her mental temper was very different, and she
looked at him steadily through her tears.

"_I_ cannot help _you_," she said. "That is the hardest part. You are
harassed in many ways, and you are dreading the bitterness of a
greater defeat than today. I could be so much to you--so much. And I
can be nothing. By that time you will have ceased to come here. I know
that you mean not to come again after to-night, except when the house
is full of company."

He began to answer, but stopped. She felt his heart against her arm,
and his lips burnt her hand, his eyes her own.

"Listen," she said rapidly, "if war should be declared I shall be in
the gallery to hear it. I will come straight home and shut myself up
in my boudoir--for hours--to be with you in a way--Shall I? Will--
would it mean anything to you?"

"Of course it would!"

His face was fully unmasked, and she moved abruptly to it as to a
magnet. In another moment they were in the more certain seclusion of
the vestibule, and she was in his arms. They clung together with a
passion which despair with ironic compensation made perfect, and their
first kiss which was to be their last expressed for a moment the
longing of the year of their love and of the years that were to come.
That such a moment ever could end was so incredible that when Betty
suddenly found herself alone she looked about in every direction for
him, and then the blood rushed through her in a tide of impotent fury.

It was this blind rage that enabled her to go back to the parlor and
keep up until the Carters went home a few moments later, and her
mother had gone to bed. Then she went to her boudoir and locked
herself in.

How she got through that night without sending him an imperious
summons she never knew, unless it were that she found some measure of
relief in a letter she wrote to him. If she could not see him, he was
still her lover, her only intimate friend, and her confessor. She
promised not to write again, but she demanded what help he could give
her.

She sent the letter in the morning, and he replied at once:--

I know. Do you think it was necessary to tell me? Do you suppose my
mind left you for a moment last night, and that I know and love you so
little that I failed to imagine and understand in a single particular?
If I were less of a man and more of a god, I should go to you and give
you the help you need, but I am only strong enough to keep away from
you. Not in thought, however,--if that is any help.

We shall meet in public and speak together. I have no desire to forget
you nor that you should forget me. We neither of us shall forget, but
we shall live and endure, as the strongest of us always do. You tell
me that you are tormented by the thought that you have added to my
trials. Remember that all other trials sink into insignificance beside
this, and yet that this greatest that has come to me in a long life is
glorified by the fact of its existence. And if it is almost a relief
to know that I shall not see you alone again, it is a satisfaction and
a joy to remember that I have kissed you. R.N.

VIII

For a few days Betty was almost happy again. She had come so close to
the nucleus of love that it had warmed her veins and intoxicated her
brain. Imagination for a brief moment had given place to reality, and
if she felt wiser and older still than after her five months of
meditation on the events of the summer, she felt less sober. One great
desire of the past year had been fulfilled, and its memory sparkled in
her brain, and her heart was lighter. It had been hours before she had
ceased to feel the pressure of his arms.

She wondered how she could have been so weak as to think of marrying
Burleigh in self-defence, and she punished him by an indifference of
manner which approached frigidity; until one of the evening journals
copied a bitter attack upon him from the leading newspaper of his
State, when she relented and permitted him to console himself in her
presence. And although, as the weeks passed and she saw Senator North
from the gallery of the Senate only, or for a few impersonal moments
in the crowd, and the elixir in her veins lost its strength, still she
felt that life was sufferable once more. She had endeavoured to put
Mrs. North from her mind, but more than once she caught herself
wishing that some one would mention her name. Nobody did in those
excited days, and Betty had no means of learning whether her sudden
good health had been final or temporary. Sally Carter did not allude
to her again. When she and Betty met, it was to wrangle on the Cuban
question, for Miss Carter was all for war.

And then one day the newsboys shrieked in the streets that the
_Maine_ had been blown up in Havana Harbor.

For a few days Congress held its peace, and the country showed a
praiseworthy attempt to believe in the theory of accident or to wait
for full proof of Spanish treachery. The _Maine_ was blown up on
Tuesday, and on Thursday night at the Madisons' the subject almost was
avoided; it was the most peaceful _salon_ Betty had held.

But it was merely the calm before the storm. The fever was still in
the country's blood, which began to flow freely to the brain again as
soon as the shock was over. The press could not let pass the most
glorious opportunity in its history for head-lines; there were more
mass meetings than even the press could grapple with, and all the
latent oratorical ability in the country burst into flower. It seemed
to Betty when she rose in the night and leaned out of her window that
she could hear the roar of the great national storm.

And it rose and swelled and left the old landmarks behind it. The
memory of the gales of the past year, with the intervals of doubt and
rest, was insignificant beside this volume of fury pouring out of
every State, to concentrate at last, fierce, unreasoning, and
irresistible, about the White House and Capitol Hill. It was not long
before the great quiet village on the Potomac seemed to epitomize the
terrible mood of the country it represented, and the country had
made up its mind long before the report of the Maine Court of Inquiry
came in. The cry no longer was for the suffering Cuban, but for
revenge. The Senate held down its "kickers" with an iron hand, but one
or two of the inferior men managed to shout across the Chamber to
their constituents. Senator North scarcely left his seat. Burleigh
told Betty that he should not allude to the subject in the Senate
until after the Court of Inquiry's report, but then, whatever the
result, he should speak and ask for war. Betty argued with him by the
hour, and although he discussed the matter from every side, it was
evident that he did it merely for the pleasure of talking to her and
that she could not shake his resolution for a moment. It was time for
the United States to put an end to the barbarous state of affairs a
few miles from her shores, and that was the end of it. He admitted the
patriotism of Senator North's attitude, but contended that the
United States would be more dishonoured if she disregarded this
terrible appeal to her humanity. When Betty accused him of short-
sightedness, he replied that a foretold result required a straight
line of succession, and that when great events thickened the line of
succession was anything but straight; therefore ultimates could not be
foretold. He admitted that Senator North had proved himself possessed
of the faculty of what Herbert Spencer calls representativeness more
than once, but men as wise and calm in their judgment had been
mistaken before. But he and others of his standing were preserving the
dignity of the Senate, and that was something.

IX

"If you have this war," said Lady Mary Montgomery to Betty, who had
come to receive with her on one of her Tuesdays, "it will be strictly
constitutional if you look at it in the right way. This is a
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and as
the people are practically a unit in their howl for war, they have a
right to it, and the responsibility is on their shoulders, not on your
few statesmen."

"That is a real gem of feminine logic, but not only is one wise man of
more account than ten thousand fools, but a unit is a unit and has no
comparative state. The serious men from one end of the country to the
other are doing all they can to quell the excitement; so are the few
decent newspapers that we possess. But they are dealing with a mob; an
excited mob is always mad, and in this case the keepers are not
numerous enough for the lunatics. But no one will question that the
intelligent keepers are right and the mob wrong. The average
intelligence is always shallow, and in electric climates very
excitable. We are dealing to-day no less with a huge mob, even if it
is not massed and marching, than were the few sane men of the French
Revolution. An exciting idea is like a venomous microbe; it bites into
the brain, and if circumstances do not occur to expel it, it produces
a form of mania. That is the only way I can account for Burleigh's
attitude; he is one of the few exceptions. There are thousands of men
in the United States whose brains could stand any strain, but there
are hundreds of thousands who were born to swell a mob. As for
'government by the people,' that phrase should be translated to-day
into 'tyranny of the people.' England under a constitutional monarchy
is far freer than we are."

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