Senator North

G >> Gertrude Atherton >> Senator North

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The historic building shed an added lustre upon Senator Burleigh; but
it was of Senator North that she thought most as she half rose in the
Victoria and scanned the long sweep. The cleverest of women cannot
class with anything like precision the man who has stamped himself
into her imagination. Betty knew that there were six men in the Senate
who ranked as equals; their quiet epoch gave them little chance to
discover latent genius other than for constructive legislation;
nevertheless she arbitrarily conceived the Capitol to-day as the great
setting for one man only; and the building and the man became one in
her imagination henceforth. The truth was that Betty, being greatly
endowed for loving and finding that all men fell short of her high
standard, was forced to seek companionship in an ideal. She had had
several loves in history, but had come to the conclusion some years
since that dead men were unsatisfactory. Since then she had fancied
mightily one or two public men on the other side, whom she had never
met; but in time they had bored or disappointed her. But here was a
conspicuous figure in her own country, appealing to her through the
powerful medium of patriotic pride; a man so much alive that he might
at any moment hold the destinies of the United States in his hands,
and who, owing to his years and impenetrable dignity, was not to be
considered from the ordinary view-point of woman. She would coquet
with Senator Burleigh; it was on the cards that she would love him,
for he was brilliant, ambitious, and honourable; but Senator North was
exalted to the vacant pedestal reserved for ideals, and Betty settled
herself comfortably to his worship; not guessing that he would be
under her memory's dust-heap in ten days if Senator Burleigh captured
her heart.

The coachman was directed by a policeman to the covered portico of the
Senate wing. Betty had a bare glimpse of corridors apparently
interminable, before another policeman put her into the elevator and
told her to get off when the boy said "Gallery."

Senator Burleigh was waiting for her, and she thought him even manlier
and more imposing in his gray tweed than in evening dress. He shook
her hand heartily, and assured her in his abrupt dictatorial way that
it gave him the greatest pleasure to meet her again.

"I'm sorry I haven't time to take you all over the building," he
said," but I have two Committee meetings this afternoon. You must come
down some morning."

His manner was very businesslike, and he seemed a trifle absent as he
paused a moment and called her attention to the daub illustrating the
Electoral Commission; but this, Betty assumed, was the senatorial
manner by day. In a moment he led her to one of the doors in the wall
that encloses the Senate Gallery.

"You see this lady," he said peremptorily to the doorkeeper, who rose
hastily from his chair. "She is always to be admitted to this gallery.
Take a good look at her."

"Yes, sir; member of your family, I presume?"

"You can assume that she is my sister. Only see that you admit her."

"The rules are very strict in regard to this gallery," he added, as he
closed the door behind them. "It is only for the families of the
Senators, but you will like it better than the reserved gallery. Send
for me if there should be trouble at any time about admittance."

"I usually get where I wish! I sha'n't trouble you."

"Don't you ever think twice about troubling me," he said. "Let us go
down to the front row."

The galleries surrounding the great Chamber were almost dark under the
flat roof, but the space below was full of light. It looked very
sumptuous with its ninety desks and easy-chairs, and a big fire beyond
an open door; and very legislative with its president elevated above
the Senators and the row of clerks beneath him. There were perhaps
thirty Senators in the room, and they were talking in groups or
couples, reading newspapers, or writing letters. One Senator was
making a speech.

"I don't think they are very polite," said Betty. "Why don't they
listen? He seems to be in earnest and speaks very nicely." "Oh, he is
talking to his constituents, not to the Senate--although he would be
quite pleased if it would listen to him. He does not amount to much.
We listen to each other when it is worth while; but this is a Club,
Miss Madison, the most delightful Club in the United States. Just
beyond are the cloakrooms, where we can lounge before the fire and
smoke, or lie down and go to sleep. The hard work is in the Committee
rooms, and it is hard enough to justify all the pleasure we can get
out of the other side of the life. Now, I'll tell you who these are
and something about them."

He pointed out one after the other in his quick businesslike way,
rattling off biographical details; but Betty, feeling that she was
getting but a mass of impressions with many heads, interrupted him.

"I don't see Senator North," she said. "I thought he was going to
speak."

"He will, later. He is in his Committee room now, but he'll go down as
soon as a page takes him word that the clerk is about to read the bill
whose Committee amendments he is sure to object to. Now I must go. I
shall give myself the pleasure of calling a week from Sunday. You must
come often, and always come here. And let me give you two pieces of
advice: never bow to any Senator from up here, and never go to the
Marble Room and send in a card. Then you can come every day without
attracting attention. Good-bye."

Betty thanked him, and he departed. For the next hour she found the
proceedings very dull. The unregarded Senator finished his speech and
retired behind a newspaper. Other members clapped their hands, and the
pages scampered down the gangways and carried back documents to the
clerk below the Vice-President's chair, while their senders made a few
remarks meaningless to Betty. Two or three delivered brief speeches
which were equally unintelligible to one not acquainted with current
legislation. During one of them a man of imposing appearance entered
and was apparently congratulated by almost every one in the room, the
Senators leaving their seats and coming to the middle aisle, where he
stood, to shake him by the hand. Betty felt sorry for Leontine, who
was on the verge of tears, but determined to remain until Senator
North appeared if she did not leave until it should be time to dress
for dinner.

He entered finally and went straight to his desk. He looked
preoccupied, and began writing at once. In a few moments the clerk
commenced to read from a document, and Senator North laid aside his
pen and listened attentively. So did several other Senators. It was a
very long document, and Betty, who could not understand one word in
ten as delivered by the clerk's rumbling monotonous voice, was
desperately bored, and was glad her Senators had the solace of the
cloak-rooms. Several did in fact retire to them, but when the clerk
sat down and Senator North rose, they returned; and Betty felt a
personal pride in the fact that they were about to listen to the
Senator whom herself had elected to honour.

She had to lean forward and strain her ears to hear him. It was
evident that he did not recognize the existence of the gallery, for he
did not raise his voice from beginning to end; and yet it was of that
strong rich quality that might have carried far. But it neither "rang
out like a clarion," nor "thundered imprecation." Neither did he utter
an impassioned phrase nor waste a word, but he denounced the bill as a
party measure, exposed its weak points, riddled it with sarcasm, and
piled up damaging evidence of partisan zeal. "This is an honourable
body," he concluded, "and few measures go out of it that are open to
serious criticism by the self-constituted guardians of legislative
virtue, but if this bill goes through the Senate we shall invite from
the thinking people of the country the same sort of criticism which we
now receive from the ignorant. If the high standard of this body is to
be maintained, it must be by sound and conservative legislation, not
by grovelling to future legislatures."

Having administered this final slap, he sat down and began writing
again, apparently paying no attention to the Chairman of the bill, who
defended his measure with eloquence and vigour. It was a good speech,
but it contained more words than the one that had provoked it and
fewer points. Senator North replied briefly that the only chance for
the bill was for its father to refrain from calling attention to its
weak points, then went into the Republican cloak-room, presumably to
smoke a cigar. Betty, whose head ached, went home.

VII

That evening, as Betty was rummaging through a cupboard in the library
looking for a seal, she came upon a box of Cuban cigars. They could
have been her father's only and of his special importation: he had
smoked the choicest tobacco that Havana had been able to furnish.

She knew that many men would prize that box of cigars, carefully
packed in lead and ripened by time, and she suddenly determined to
send it to Senator North. She felt that it would be an acute pleasure
to give him something, and as for the cigars they were too good for
any one else. She took the box to her room and wrapped it up carefully
and badly; but when she came to the note which must accompany it, she
paused before the difficulties which mechanically presented
themselves. Senator North might naturally feel surprise to receive a
present from a young woman with whom he had talked exactly six
minutes. If she wrote playfully, offering a small tribute at the
shrine of statesmanship, he might wonder if she worked slippers for
handsome young clergymen and burned candles before the photograph of a
popular tenor. She might send them anonymously, but that would not
give her the least satisfaction. Finally, she reluctantly decided
to wait until she met him again and could lead the conversation up to
cigars. "Perhaps he will see me in the gallery to-morrow," she
thought.

But although he sat in his comfortable revolving-chair for two hours
the next afternoon, he never lifted his eyes to the gallery. She heard
several brief and excellent speeches, but went home dissatisfied. On
the day after her return from New York, whither she went to perform
the duty of bridesmaid; she had a similar experience, twice varied.
Senator Burleigh made a short speech in a voice that was truly
magnificent, and following up Senator North's attack on the bill
unpopular on the Republican side of the Chamber. He was answered by
"Blunderbuss" Pepper, the new Senator who had turned every aristocrat
out of office in his aristocratic Southern State and filled the
vacancies with men of his own humble origin. He was a burly untidy-
looking man, and frequently as uncouth in speech, a demagogue and
excitable. But the Senate, now that three years in that body had toned
him down, conceded his ability and took his abuse with the utmost
good-nature. Betty recalled his biography as sketched by Senator
Burleigh, and noted that almost every Senator wheeled about with an
expression of lively interest, as his reiterated "Mr. President, Mr.
President," secured him the floor. They were not disappointed, nor was
Betty. In a few moments he was roaring like a mad bull and hurling
invective upon the entire Republican Party, which "would deprive the
South of legitimate representation if it could." He was witty and
scored many points, provoking more than one laugh from both sides of
the Chamber; and when he finished with a parting yell of imprecation,
his audience returned to their correspondence and conversation with an
indulgent smile. Betty wondered what he had been like before the
Senate had "toned him down."

That night she addressed the cigars to Jack Emory and sent them off at
once. "I do believe I came very close to making a fool of myself," she
thought. "What on earth made me want to give those cigars to Senator
North?--to give him anything? What a little ninny he would have
thought me!" She puzzled long over this deflection from her usual
imperious course with men, but concluding that women having so many
silly twists in their brains, it was useless to try to understand
them all, dismissed the matter from her mind.

VIII

"How many politicians are coming this afternoon?" asked Mrs. Madison,
at the Sunday midday dinner. Her voice indicated that all protest had
not gone out of her.

"Senator Burleigh and Mr. Montgomery--and Lady Mary. Not a formidable
array."

"They are exactly two too many. I have written and asked Sally Carter
to come over and chaperon you in case I do not feel equal to the
ordeal at the last moment. I am surprised that she takes your course
so quietly, but on the whole am relieved; you need some one
respectable to keep you in countenance."

"This house reeks with respectability; no one would ever notice the
absence of a chaperon. Sally is not only quiescent, but sympathetic.
She knows that I have got to the end of teas and charities, and she
believes in people choosing their own lives. She says she would join a
travelling circus if her proclivities happened to point that way."

Mrs. Madison shuddered. "I do not pretend to understand the present
generation, and the more I hear of it the less I wish to. As for Sally
I love her, but I should detest her if I didn't, for she is the worst
form of snob: she is so rich and so well born that she thinks she can
dress like a servant-girl and affect the manners of a barmaid."
"Molly! So you were haunting 'pubs' when I supposed you were yawning
at home? I hope you did not tell the barmaids your real name."

"Well, I suppose I should not criticise people that I know nothing
about," said Mrs. Madison, colouring and serious. She changed the
subject hastily. "Jack, I hope you will stay this afternoon. It would
be the greatest comfort to have you in the house."

"I will stay, certainly," said Emory. He had taken his Sunday dinner
at the old house in I Street for almost a quarter of a century. To-day
he had been unusually silent, and had contracted his brows nervously
every time Betty looked at him. She understood perfectly, and amused
herself by turning round upon him several times with abrupt
significance. However, she spared him until they had taken Mrs.
Madison to the parlor and gone to the library, where he might smoke
his after-dinner cigar. He sat down in front of a window, and the
sunlight poured over him, glistening his handsome head and
illuminating his skin. Betty supposed that some women might fall quite
desperately in love with him; and in addition to his beauty he was a
noble and high-minded gentleman, whose narrowness was due to the
secluded life he chose to lead.

"Now!" she exclaimed, "come out with it! You've had eleven days, and
one can learn a good deal in that time."

He bit sharply at the end of his cigar, but answered without
hesitation.

"It is almost impossible to learn anything in Washington to the
detriment of the Senate. There seems to be a sort of _esprit de corps_
in the entire city. They look politely horrified if you suggest that a
Senator of the United States, honouring Washington with the society of
his wives and daughters, is anything that he should not be. I was
obliged to go to New York and Boston to get the information I wanted,
and even now it is far from complete. I don't believe it is possible
to arrive at anything like accurate knowledge on the subject."

"Well, what did you get? Washington is a well-ordered community with a
high moral tone--it is said to have fewer scandals than any city in
the country--and there is no sordid commercial atmosphere to lower it.
It is the great city of leisure in everything but legislation and
paying calls; so it seems to me that it would be the last place to
fondle in its bosom ninety distinguished scoundrels. But go on. What
did you learn in Boston and New York?"

"That a little of everything is represented in the Senate,--that is
about what it amounts to. There are unquestionably men there who
bought their seats from legislatures, and there are men who are agents
for trusts, syndicates, and railroad corporations, as well as three
party bosses--"

"Ninety Senators leave a large margin for a number of loose fish. What
I want to know is, how do the big men stand--North, Maxwell, Ward,
March--and fifteen or twenty others, all the men who are the Chairmen
of the big Committees? The New England men seem to have charge of
everything of importance in the House and of a good deal in the
Senate."

"Some of the Southern and North-western and most of the New England
States seem to have honest enough legislatures," said Emory,
unwillingly. "But that leaves plenty of others. Only a few of the
Western States are above suspicion, and as for New York, Pennsylvania,
and Delaware, they would not waste time defending themselves; and as
no Senators are better than the people that elect them--"

"Oh, yes, they are sometimes--look at the Senator from Delaware. I too
have been asking questions for eleven days. It all comes to this:
there are millionaireism and corrupting influences in the Senate, but
that element is in the minority, and the greater number of leading, or
able Senators are above suspicion. And they seem to have things pretty
much all their own way. They could not if the majority in the Senate
were scoundrels. No corrupt body was ever led by its irreproachable
exceptions--"

"In another ten years there will be no exceptions. All that are making
a desperate stand for honesty to-day will be overwhelmed by the
unprincipled element--"

"Or have forced it to reform. The good in human nature predominates;
we are a healthy infant, and do not know the meaning of the word
'decadent;' and we are extraordinarily clever. Senator Burleigh says
that you can always bank on the American people going right in the
end. They may not bother for a long time, but when they do wake up
they make things hum."

"Senator Burleigh evidently has all the easy-going optimism of this
country. But, Betty, I am no more reconciled than I was before to your
having anything to do with these people. Politics have a bad name,
whatever the truth of the matter. I think myself our sensational press
is largely to blame--" "There is nothing so interesting as the pursuit
of truth," said Betty, lightly. "Reconcile yourself to the sight of me
in pursuit of it--"

"Ah, here you are!" exclaimed a staccato voice. Sally Carter entered
the room, kissed Betty, shook hands heartily with Emory, and threw
herself into a chair. Her fortune equalled Betty's, but it was her
pleasure to wear frocks so old and so dowdy that her friends wondered
where they had come from originally. She had been a handsome girl, and
her blue eyes were still full of fire, her fair hair abundant, but her
face was sallow and lined from many attacks of malarial fever. Her
manner was breezy and full of energy, and she was not only popular but
a very important person indeed. She lived alone with her father in the
old house in K Street and entertained rarely, but she had strawberry
leaves on her coronet, and it was currently reported that when she
arrived in England, clad in a rusty black serge and battered turban,--
which she certainly slept in at intervals during the day,--she was met
in state by the entire ducal family--including a prolific connection--
whose ancestor had founded the great house of Carter in the British
colonies of North America. What their private opinion was of this
representative of the American dukedom was never quite clear to the
Washington mind, but to know Sally Carter in her own city meant
complete social recognition, and not to know her an indifferent
success.

"Senator North tells me that he met you the other day and would like
to meet you again," she said to Betty, who lifted her head with
attention. "I dropped in on my way here for a little call on Mrs.
North, poor dear! There's a real invalid for you--something the matter
with her spine--is liable to paralysis any minute. It must be so
cheerful to sit round and anticipate that. Why on earth do women
let their nerves run away with them, in the first place? Nerves in
this country are a mixture of climate, selfishness, and stupidity. I
could be as nervous as a witch, but I won't. I walk miles every day
and don't think about myself. Well! I told Mr. North all about the
bold course of the young lady weary of frivolities, and he seemed much
interested, paid you some compliment or other, I've forgotten what. He
said he would look out for you in the Senate gallery and go up and
speak to you--"

Emory rose with an exclamation of disgust. "I hope you told him to do
nothing of the kind."

"On the contrary, I told him not to forget, for as Betty would sail
her little yacht on the political sea, I wanted her to be recognized
by the men-of-war, not by the trading-ships and pirates."

Emory threw away his cigar. "I think I will go in and see my aunt," he
said. "All this is most distasteful to me."

He left the room, followed by Betty's mocking laugh. But Miss Carter
said with a sigh,--

"He can't expect us all to live up to his ideals. It is better not to
have any, like my practical self. But I'm afraid he sits out there in
his damp old library and dreams of a world in which all the men are
Sir Galahads and all the women Madame Rolands. He is an ideal himself,
if he only knew it; I've always been half in love with him. Well,
Betty, how do you like your new toy? After all, what is even a Senate
but a toy for a pretty woman? That is really your attitude, only you
don't know it. Life is serious only for women with babies and bills.
As for charities, they were specially invented to give old maids like
myself an occupation in life. What--what--should I have done without
charities when Society palled?"

"Why did you never marry, Sally?" asked Betty, abruptly. The question
never had occurred to her before, but as she asked it her eyes
involuntarily moved to the empty chair before the window.

"What on earth should I do with a husband?" asked Miss Carter,
lightly. "I only love men when they are in bronze in the public parks.
Poor dear old General Lathom proposed to me four times, and the only
time I felt like accepting him was when I saw his statue unveiled. I
couldn't put a man on a pedestal to save my life, but when my grateful
country does it I'm all humble adoration. Could you idealize a live
thing in striped trousers and a frock coat?"

"Woolen is hopeless," said Betty, with an attempt at playfulness. "We
must do the best we can with the inner man."

"How on earth do you know what a man is like on the inside? Idealize
is the right word, though. Women make a god out of what they cannot
understand in a man. If he has a bad temper, they think of him as a
'dominant personality.' If he is unfaithful to his wife, he is
romantic in the eyes of a woman who has given no man a chance to be
unfaithful to her. If he comes to your dinner with an attack of
dyspepsia, you compare him sentimentally with the brutes that eat.
_You_ haven't married yet, I notice, and you are on the corner of
twenty-seven."

"American men don't give you a chance to idealize them," said Betty,
plaintively. "They tell you all about themselves at once. And although
Englishmen have more mystery and provoke your curiosity, they don't
understand women and don't want to; the women can do the adapting. I
never could stand that; and as I can't endure foreigners I'm afraid I
shall die an old maid. That's the reason I've gone into politics--"

The butler announced that Senator Burleigh was in the parlor.

"What of his inner man?" asked Sally.

"I never have given it two thoughts. But his outer is all that could
be desired."

"He would look well in bronze. I understand that his State thinks a
lot of him: as you know, I read the _Post_ and _Star_ through every
day to papa. I _have_ to know something of politics."

They found Senator Burleigh talking to Mrs. Madison, apparently
oblivious of her frigid attempt at tolerance and of Emory's sullen
silence. Sally Carter's eyes flashed with amusement, and she shook the
Senator warmly by the hand.

"Such a very great pleasure!" she announced in her staccato tones.
"Now the only time I really allow myself pride is when I meet the
statesmen of my country. I am sure that is the way you feel, dear
Cousin Molly--is it not? We are such oysters, the few of us who always
have lived here, that a whiff from the political world puts new life
into us."

Emory left the room. Burleigh looked surprised but gratified, and
assured her that it was the greatest possible pleasure as well as an
honour to meet Miss Carter. He appeared to have left his businesslike
manner on Capitol Hill, and he was even less abrupt than on the night
of the dinner. Only his exuberant vitality seemed out of place in that
dark old room, and it was an effort for him to keep his sonorous voice
in check.

"Mrs. Madison says she takes no interest in politics," he added, "and
fears to be a wet blanket on the conversation. I have been assuring
her that on one day of the week politics are non-existent so far as I
am concerned."

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