Senator North
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Gertrude Atherton >> Senator North
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They were,--even the upper servants, who were English,--but they
scuttled away as their mistress appeared. She crossed the hall to
Harriet's room, rapped loudly, and entered. Her new sister, still in
her nightgown, was enjoying the deep motion of a rocking-chair, hymn-
book in hand. She brought her song to a halt as Betty appeared, but it
was some seconds before the inspired expression in her eyes gave place
to human greeting. Her face happened to be in shadow, and for the
moment Betty saw her black. Her finely cut features were indistinct,
and the ignorant fanaticism of a not remote grandmother looked from
her eyes. "Harriet!" exclaimed Betty. "I don't want to be unkind, but
you must not do that again. If you want to keep your secret, never
sing a hymn again as long as you live."
"Ah!" Harriet gave a gasp, then a half-sob. "Ah! But I love to sing
them, honey. I have sung them every Sunday all my life, and _he_ loved
them. He said I could sing with anybody, he wouldn't except angels. I
'most felt he was listening."
"You have a magnificent voice, and you must have it cultivated. But
never sing another hymn."
"When I go to church I know I'll just shout--without knowing what I'm
doing."
"Then don't go to church," said Betty, desperately.
"I must! I must! What'll the Lode say to me? Oh, my po' old uncle!"
She was weeping like a passionate child. Betty sat down beside her and
took her hand.
"Come," she said, "listen to me. The first time I saw you the deepest
impression I received of you was one of fine self-control. Doubtless
you wept and stormed a good deal before you acquired it--at all the
different stages of what was both renunciation and acquisition. The
last few days have unsettled you a little because you have found
yourself in a new world, minus all your old responsibilities and
trials, and the experience has made you feel younger, robbed you of
some of your hold on yourself. But that habit of self-control is
in your brain,--it is the last to leave us,--and all you have to do is
to sit down and think hard and adjust yourself. It is even more
important that you make no mistakes now than it was before. Fate
seldom gives any one two chances to begin life over again. Think hard
and keep a tight rein on yourself."
Betty had more than negro hymns in her mind, but she did not care to
be explicit. The generalities of the subject were disagreeable enough.
Harriet had ceased her sobbing and was listening intently. She dried
her eyes as Betty finished speaking.
"You are right, honey," she said. "And I reckon you haven't spoken any
too soon, for I was likely to get my head turned. I'll go to church
and I _won't_ sing. First I'll tie a string round my neck to remember,
and after that it'll be easy. I'm afraid I'm just naturally lazy, and
if I didn't watch myself I'd soon forget all the hard lessons I've
learned and get to be like some fat ornary old nigger who's got an
easy job."
Betty shuddered. "The white race is not devoid of laziness. If you
want a reason for yours, just remember that the Southern sun has
prevented many a man from becoming great. Keep your mind as far away
from the other thing as possible."
"Oh, I think I'll forget it. I felt that way yesterday. But perhaps
I'd better not," she added anxiously, as her glance fell on the hymn-
book. "No cross, no crown."
"You will find crosses enough as you go through life," said Betty,
dryly. She rose to go, and Harriet rose also and drew herself up to
her full height. For the moment she looked again the tragic figure of
the first day of their acquaintance.
"You must have seen by this time how ignorant I am," she said
mournfully. "Poor old uncle gave me all the schooling he had himself,
but I knew even then it wasn't what they have nowadays. And I've had
so few books to read. Once I found a five-dollar bill, and as he
wouldn't take it--the most I could do--I tramped all the way to the
nearest town and back, twenty miles, and bought a big basket full of
cheap reprints of English standard novels. Those and the few old Latin
books and the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress are about all I've ever
read. I felt like writing you that when I read his letter, and also
telling you that I was afraid you wouldn't find me a lady in your
sense of the word--"
"You are my sister," interrupted Betty; "of course you are a lady.
Dismiss any other idea from your mind. And in a year you will know so
much that I shall be afraid of you. I have neglected my books for
several years."
"You are mighty good, and I'll humbly take all the advice you'll give
me."
Betty went back to her room and sought the warm nest she had left.
"She makes me feel old," she thought. "Am I to be responsible for the
development of her character? I can't send her off to Europe yet.
There's nothing to do but keep her for at least a year, until she
knows something of the world and feels at home in it. Meanwhile I
suppose I must be her guide and philosopher! I believe that my
acquaintance with Senator North has made me feel like a child. He is
so much wiser in a minute than I could be in a lifetime; and as I have
made him the pivot on which the world revolves, no wonder I feel small
by contrast.
"But after all, I am twenty-seven, and what is more, I have seen a
good deal of men," she added abruptly. And in a moment she admitted
that she had allowed her heart, full of the youth of unrealities and
dreams, to act independently of her more mature intelligence.
"And that is the reason I have been so happy," she mused. "There is a
facer for the intelligence. As long as I have exercised it I have
never felt as if I were walking on air and song."
But still her imagination did not wander beyond today's meeting and
many like it. He was married, and, independent as she was, she had
received that sound training in the conventions from which the mind
never wholly recovers. She registered a vow then and there that she
would become his friend of friends, the woman to whom he came for all
his pleasant hours, in time his confidante. She would devote her
thought to the making of herself into the companion he most needed and
desired; and she would conceal her love lest he conceive it his duty
to avoid her. She wondered if she had betrayed herself, and concluded
that she had not. Even he could not guess how much of her admiration
emanated from frankness and how much from coquetry. She would be
careful in the future.
"That point settled," she thought, curling down deeper into her bed
and preparing for a nap, "I'll anticipate his coming and think about
him with all the youthful exuberance I please."
XVIII
Betty had invited Senator Burleigh to dinner on Saturday, that he
might feel free to call elsewhere on Sunday. At four o'clock, when
Mrs. Madison had retired for her nap, she commanded Jack Emory to take
Harriet for a long walk and a long ride on the cable cars, and to stop
for Sally Carter. No one else was likely to call, and she retired to
her boudoir, a three-cornered room in an angle between the parlor and
library, to await Senator North.
The boudoir was a room that any man might look forward to after a hard
day on Capitol Hill. Its easychairs were very soft and deep, its rugs
were rosy and delicate, and the walls and windows and doors were hung
with one of those old French silk stuffs with a design of royal
conventionality and uniformly old rose in colour. All of Betty's own
books were there, her piano, several handsome pieces of carved oak,
and a unique collection of ivory. Betty had banished the former
girlish simplicity of this room a few days after her introduction to
the Montgomery house. She had imagined herself greeting Senator North
in it many times, and had received no other man within its now sacred
walls.
She wore a white cloth gown today and a blue ribbon in her hair. There
was also a touch of blue at the neck, to make her throat look the
whiter. Otherwise, the long closely fitting gown was without ornament
as far down as the hem, which was lightly embroidered in white. She
looked tall and lithe, but her figure was round, and did not sway like
a reed that a strong wind would beat to the ground, as Harriet's did.
Although that possible descendant of African kings possessed the black
splendour of eyes and hair and a marble regularity of feature, Betty
was the more beautiful woman of the two; for her colour filled and
warmed the eye, she seemed typical of womanhood in its highest
development, and she was a chosen receptacle of enchantment. Moreover,
she was more modern and original, and as healthy as had been the
fashion for the past generation, Harriet looked like an old Roman coin
come to life, with a blight on her soul and little blood in her thin
body. It was not in Betty's nature to fear any woman, much less to
experience petty jealousy, but it was not without satisfaction she
reflected that she and Harriet would hardly attract the same sort of
man. Jack was doing his duty nobly, and he liked vivacious women who
amused him, poor soul! As for Senator Burleigh, he had said politely
that she was handsome but looked delicate, and then unquestionably
dismissed her from his mind. He and Betty had talked politics on the
previous evening until Mrs. Madison had slipped off to bed an hour
earlier than usual.
Betty dismissed them all from her mind and glanced at the clock. It
was half-past four. She thrust the poker between the glowing logs, and
the flames leaped and sent a quivering glow through the charming room.
Betty leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, almost holding her
breath that she might hear the advancing step of the butler the
sooner. In what seemed to her exactly thirty minutes she looked at the
clock again. It was twenty-five minutes to five. She nestled down,
assuring herself that nobody could be expected to come on the moment,
but this time she did not close her eyes; she watched the clock.
And the joy imperceptibly died out of her; the hands travelled
inexorably round to ten minutes to five; she remembered that she had
not seen Senator North since Wednesday, and that in four days a busy
legislator might easily forget the existence of every woman he knew,
except perhaps of the woman he loved. Within her seemed to rise a tide
of bitter memories, the memories of all those women who had sat and
waited through dreary hours for man's uncertain coming. She shivered
and drew close to the fire and covered her face with her hands. Her
heart ached for the helpless misery of her sex.
But she sprang suddenly to her feet. The butler was coming down the
hall. A moment later he had ushered in Senator North, and Betty forgot
the misery of the world, forgot it so completely that there was no
violent reaction; she was merely what she had been at half-past four,
full of pleasurable excitement held down and watched over by the
instinct of caution.
"I must apologize humbly for being late," he said, "but on Sunday I
always sit with my wife until she falls asleep, and to-day she was
nearly an hour later than usual. What a room to come into out of a
biting wind! Thank heaven I was able to get here."
Betty thought of the sister and cousin she had turned out into the
cruel afternoon, and then looked at Senator North deep in the chair
where she had so often imagined him, and forgot their existence. This
was her hour--her first, at least--and visions of pneumonia and
possible consumption should not mar it. She sat opposite him in a
straight dark high-backed chair, and she was quite aware that she made
a delightful picture.
"Well?" he asked. "What of your visit and its consequences?"
Betty told the story; and her description of the dilapidated parsonage
at the head of the miserable village, the group of silent women about
the coffin in the dark room, and her interview with her melancholy
relative was as dramatic as she had felt at the time.
"I thought I was running from a nightmare when I left the house," she
concluded, smiling at him as if to demonstrate that it had left no
shadow in her brain; "but now we both feel better. She wants a gown of
many colours, and this morning she roused the house at five o'clock
singing camp-meeting hymns. But I think she is quick and observant,
and will soon cease to be in any danger of betraying herself. But she
is a great responsibility, and I really felt old this morning."
Senator North laughed. "I hope she won't give you any real trouble. If
she does, I shall feel more than half responsible. But otherwise she
will be an interesting study for you. She is nearly all white; how
much of racial lying, and slothfulness, barbarism, and general
incapacity that black vein of hers contains will give you food for
thought, for she certainly will reveal herself in the course of a
year."
"You must admit that a nature like that is a great responsibility."
"Yes, but she alone can work through all the contradictions to the
light, and she will do it naturally, under pressure of new
experiences, within and without. Don't suggest even the word 'problem'
to her, and don't look upon her as one, yourself. You have put her in
the right conditions. Leave her alone and Time will do the rest. His
work is indubious; never forget that. Are you going to marry
Burleigh?" he added abruptly.
She answered vehemently, "No! No!" "I thought not. I know you very
little, so far, but I was willing to deny the report."
"I often wonder why I don't fall in love with him. He really has every
quality I admire. But much as I like him I should not mind if I knew I
never should see him again. I have thought a good deal about it and I
should like to understand it."
She looked at him coaxingly, and he smiled, for he understood women
very well; but he gave her the explanation she desired.
"The reason is simple enough. The admired qualities, even when they
are the component parts of a personality of one who more or less
resembles a cherished ideal, never yet inspired love. Love is the
result of two responsive sparks coming within each other's range of
action. Their owners may be in certain ways unfitted for one another,
but the responsive sparks, rising Nature only knows out of what
combination of elements, fly straight, and Reason sulks. To put it
in another way: Love is merely the intuitive faculty recognizing in
another being the power to give its own lord happiness. It is a
faculty that is very active in some people," he added with a laugh,
"and when it is overworked it often goes wrong, like any other
machinery. That is the reason why men who have loved many women make a
mistake in marrying; the intuitive faculty is both dulled and
coarsened by that time. They are still susceptible to charm, and that
is about all."
"Have you loved many women?" asked Betty, without preamble.
He stood up and turned his back to the fire. Betty noted again how
squarely he planted himself on his feet. "A few," he said bluntly.
"Not many. I have not overworked my intuitive faculty, if that is what
you mean. I was not thinking of myself when I spoke."
He stared down at her for a few moments, during which it seemed to
Betty that the air vibrated between them. Her breath began to shorten,
and she dropped her eyes, lest their depths reveal the spark which was
active enough in her.
"Will you play for me?" he asked. "I lost a little girl a few years
ago who played well, although she was only sixteen. I have disliked
the piano ever since, but I should like to hear you play."
She played to him for an hour, with tenderness, passion, and
brilliancy. A gift had been cultivated by the best masters and hours
of patient study.
When he thanked her and rose to go and she put her hand in his, her
face expressed all the bright earnestness of genuine friendship; there
was not a sparkle of coquetry in her eyes.
"Will you come in often on your way home when you are tired and would
like to forget bills and things, and let me play to you? I won't talk
--you must get so tired of voices!--and the practice will do me good."
"Of course I will come. The pleasantest thing in life is a charming
woman's face at the close of a busy day. Good-bye."
When he had gone, Betty got into the depths of a chair and covered her
eyes with her hand. For the first time she knew out of her own
experience that love means a greater want than the satisfaction of the
eye and mind. She would have given anything but her inherited ideals
of right and wrong if he had come back and taken her in his arms and
kissed her; and she loved him with adoration that he did not, that in
all probability he never would, that although he had the great
passions which stimulate all great brains, the inflexible honour which
his State had rewarded and never questioned for thirty-five years must
make short work of struggles with the ordinary temptations of man.
As soon as a man awakens a woman's passions she begins to idealize him
and there is no limit to the virtues he will be made to carry. But let
a man be endowed by Nature with every noble and elevated attribute she
has in her power to bestow, if he lacks sensuality a woman will see
him in the clear cold light of reason. Betty Madison, having something
of the intuitive faculty, in addition to that knowledge of man which
any girl of twenty-seven who has had much love offered her must
possess, made fewer mistakes even in the thick of a throbbing brain
than most women make; the great danger she did not foresee until time
had accustomed her somewhat to the wonder of being able to love at
last, and Reason had resumed her place in a singularly clear and
logical mind.
XIX
When Betty awoke next morning, she made up her mind that she would not
suffer so long as she could see him. Beyond the present she absolutely
refused to look. She had found more on the political sea than she had
gone in search of, but if she could have foreseen this tumult that
would have overwhelmed a weaker woman, she would not have clung to the
shore. For although the ultimate of love was forbidden her, she had
come into her kingdom, and was immeasurably happier than the millions
of women whose love had run its course and turned cold, or been cast
back at them. After all, there were so few people who were really
happy, why should she complain because her love could not come to rice
and old shoes, instead of being a beautiful secret thing, the more
perfect, perhaps, because Commonplace, that ogre whose girth increases
from year to year, and who sits remorseless in the dwellings of the
united, could not breathe upon it?
Harriet had returned without a cold, and the next morning Emory came
in and took her to the Congressional Library, where they had luncheon.
He also engaged her masters, and before the week was over she had
settled down to steady work.
"She has a wonderful mind, I am positive of that," he said to Betty.
"She has made so much out of so few advantages. I shall take the
greatest interest in watching a mind like that unfold. What relation
is she to us, anyway? I can't make out, for the life of me. There was
Cousin Amelia--"
"For heaven's sake, don't ask me to write up the genealogical tree.
Didn't I refuse to join the Colonial Dames because it meant raking
over the bones of all my ancestors--whom may the Saints rest! Most
Southern relationships amount to no relationship at all, and Harriet's
is too insignificant to mention."
"Well, I must say it is angelic in you to take her in and shower
blessings on her in this way--" "Her father had a great claim on us,
but that is a family secret, even from you. Mind you take her tomorrow
to see the 'Declaration of Independence' and the portrait of
Hamilton."
The days passed very quickly to the end of the session. It was the
short term; Congress would adjourn on the fourth of March. Although
the great official receptions were over, dinners and luncheons crowded
each other as closely as before, for Washington pays little attention
to Lent beyond releasing its weary hostesses from weekly reception
days, and their callers from an absurd and antiquated custom. Betty
went frequently to the gallery on Capitol Hill, and although she
sometimes was bored by "business," she seldom heard a dull speech,
for the intellectual average of the Senate is very high, and its
aptitude and the variety of its information unexcelled. Harriet
accompanied her two or three times, but her mind turned naturally to
the past and concerned itself little with the present. She found the
history of the Roman Empire vastly more entertaining than debates on
the Arbitration Treaty.
Betty had recently met a Mrs. Fonda, a handsome widow in the vague
thirties, who had that fascination of manner and that brilliant talent
for politics which went to make up Miss Madison's ideal of the women
with whom tired statesmen spent their leisure hours. She was the
daughter of a former distinguished member of the House and the widow
of a naval officer, and her life may be said to have been passed in
Washington with intervals of Europe. Although the Old Washingtonians
knew her not, her position in the kaleidoscope of official society was
always brilliant. She professed to have no party politics, but to be
profoundly interested in all great questions affecting the nation.
During the early winter she had visited Cuba and had announced upon
her return that no other subject would command her attention until the
United States had exterminated Spanish rule in that unhappy island.
She occupied one of the smaller houses in Massachusetts Avenue, and
her dining-room seated only ten people with comfort. Betty had heard
that as many as nine of her country's chosen men had sat about that
board at the same time and decided upon matters of state; and she
envied her deeply. As Mrs. Fonda lived with no less than two
elderly aunts who wore caps, and was a devout member of St. John's
Church, Mrs. Madison, with a sigh, concluded that there was no reason
why Betty should not go to her house.
"I suppose she is no worse than the rest," she added. "I prefer people
with husbands, but the more you see of this new life the sooner you
may get tired of it."
Mrs. Fonda paid Betty marked attention whenever they happened to meet,
and upon the last occasion had offered playfully to tell her "all she
knew" about politics. "They are engrossing," she added with a sigh,
"so engrossing that they have taken the best of my years. A woman
should be married and happy, I think, but I have become quite
depersonalized. And I really think I have done a little good. You will
marry, of course; you are young and so beautiful; but let politics be
your second great interest. You will, indeed, never give them up if
you let them absorb you for one year, and I am more glad than I can
say that you already have gone so far." She then invited Betty to a
dinner she was giving, and even made an appointment for an hour's
"talk" beforehand; but this appointment Betty was unable to keep, as
her mother fell ill for a day or two, and Mrs. Fonda's hour occurred
while Mrs. Madison desired to have her hand held.
Betty went to the dinner, however, and expected brilliant and unusual
things. Mrs. Fonda, who was tall and dark and distinguished looking,
and too wise in her unprotected position to annul the attentions of
Time with those artifices which are rather a pity but quite condonable
in the married woman, was handsomely dressed in black net embroidered
with gold, and received with an aunt on either side of her. Her manner
was very fine, and, without any relaxation of the dignity which was an
integer of her personality, she made each comer feel the guest of the
evening. To Betty she was almost affectionate, and surrounded her
with the aunts, who looked at her with such kindly and cordial, albeit
sadly patient eyes, that Betty almost loved them.
The dining-room accommodated twelve tonight, and two were not the
aunts. Betty wondered if they were picking up crumbs in the pantry.
She suspected that Mrs. Fonda was more worldly than she would admit,
and that ambition and love of admiration had somewhat to do with her
patriotism.
There were four members of the Senate present, two wives of members
who had been unable to come, and three eminent Representatives. It was
seldom that Mrs. Fonda's invitations were declined, for no man went to
her house with the miserable conviction that he was about to eat his
twenty-seventh dinner by the same cook. Mrs. Fonda had picked up a
woman in Belgium who was a genius.
Betty went in with Senator Burleigh, and they examined the menu
together.
"By Jove," he said, "it's even more gorgeous than usual. And did you
ever see so many flowers outside of a conservatory?"
The room was a bower of violets and lilies of the valley. The
mantelpiece was obliterated, the table looked like a garden, and great
bunches of the flowers swung from the ceiling. As what could be seen
of the room was green and gold, the effect was very beautiful. The
lights were pink, and in this room Mrs. Fonda defied Time and looked
so wholly attractive that it was not difficult to fancy her the cause
of another war, albeit not its Helen.
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