DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY

DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY

A STUDY IN WASHINGTON
SOCIETY AND POLITICS

NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS
AND COMPANY
MCMIII

Copyright, 1903, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS AND CO.
Copyright, 1903, by Curtis Publishing Co.
Published, June, 1903, R

CONTENTS

DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY

Chapter One
MEN AND WOMEN

Certain aspects of Washington, both outward and inward, are like Paris. Especially is this true of the outward aspect on a wet night, when the circles of yellow-flaring gas lamps are reflected in the shining expanse of asphalt, when the keen-flashing electric lights blaze upon the white façades of great buildings and the numerous groups of statuary against a black background of shrubbery, and when some convention or other brings crowds of people to swarm upon the usually dull Washington streets. The Honourable Geoffrey Thorndyke, M.C., spoke of this Parisian resemblance to his colleague, the Honourable Julian Crane, M.C., as they sat together on a warm, rainy April night in the bay-window of Thorndyke’s apartment. The rooms were lofty, wide, and dark, according to the style of forty years ago, and overlooked one of those circular parks in Washington which fashion seemed only to have patronised briefly in order to desert permanently. But the rooms and the situation suited Thorndyke perfectly, and he had spent there all of the five terms of Congress which he had served. Thorndyke’s remaining in that locality secretly surprised Crane, a man from the Middle West. He himself had an apartment in a modish hotel, which cost him more than he could afford and was not half so comfortable as Thorndyke’s. But then Thorndyke was born to that which Crane was toilsomely achieving—for this vigorous product of the Middle West was sent into the world with enormous ambitions of all sorts, and not the least of these was social ambition. And combined with this social ambition was a primitive enjoyment of society such as the Indian gets out of his pow-wows with unlimited tobacco and fire-water. Crane, although bred on the prairie, cared nothing for fields and woods and the skies of night and the skies of morning. Men, women, and their affairs alone interested him. Thorndyke, on the contrary, although town-bred, cared for the God-made things, and at that very moment was studying with interest the great tulip-tree, dark and dank before his window. When he made the remark about Washington having sometimes a look of Paris, he added:

“And I expected to be in Paris at this very moment but for this”—here he interjected an impolite adjective—“extra session. However,” he continued, good-humouredly, “I hardly expect you to agree with me, considering your late streak of luck—or, rather, your well-deserved promotion, as I shall call it on the floor of the House.”

Crane acknowledged this with a smile and a request for another cigar, if possible, not so bad as the last. He was tall and well made, and had a head and face like the bust of the young Augustus in the Vatican gallery. He was elaborately groomed, manicured and all, judging that time spent on beauty like his was not thrown away. In contrast to this classic beauty was Thorndyke—below, rather than above, the middle height, with scanty hair and light-blue eyes, and who could not be called handsome by the mother that bore him. But when women were about, Geoffrey Thorndyke could always put the handsomest man in the room behind the door.

And he had a peculiarly soft and musical voice which made everything he said sound pleasant, even when he proceeded to make uncomfortable remarks about the late turn in national affairs which had sent Crane’s political fortunes upward with a bound.

“For my part,” he said, knocking the ash off his cigar, “I have lived long enough and read enough to know that such a stupendous opportunity as your party has now is generally fatal to that party before the next Presidential election. See—in the middle of a Presidential term, you carry the Congressional elections by a close shave. The new Congress is not expected to meet for thirteen months afterward. The Brazilian matter reaches an acute stage, and the President is forced to call an extra session in April instead of the regular meeting in December. Of course, the Brazilian matter will come out all right. Any party, at any time, in any civilised country, is capable of managing a foreign affair in which all the people think the same way. But when it comes to domestic affairs—my dear fellow, when the President saw how things were going and that he really could invite you to make fools of yourselves for the next fourteen months before the Presidential convention, it was beer and skittles to him.”

Crane turned in his chair and sighed. The intricacies of national politics, the wheels within wheels, the way of putting out a pawn to be taken, puzzled and confused him. It had seemed to him the most unmixed political good to him when his party had secured control of the House at an international crisis. It could vote supplies with splendid profusion, it could shout for the flag, it could claim the credit for everything done, while the Senate and the Administration being in opposition, very little real responsibility attached to anything the House might leave undone. And when the man who was certain to be the caucus nominee for Speaker had sent for Crane at one o’clock in the morning and had offered him the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Affairs to succeed Thorndyke, Crane had felt his cup of joy to be overflowing. Everything was in his favour. Without the least doubt about his powers, which were considerable, he had some diffidence on the score of experience; but Thorndyke, who would be the ranking member of the minority on the committee, would help him out, quietly and generously. In the midst of his elation Crane remembered that Thorndyke had not been wholly satisfied with the chairmanship of that great committee—and Thorndyke had been suffered to exercise a degree of power far greater than Crane felt would be permitted him for some time to come. On most Congressional committees there are two or three men who have come into the world booted and spurred, while the remainder were born saddled and bridled. Thorndyke was one of those who got into the saddle early, and yet, the saddle or the steed had not seemed to suit his taste exactly. Crane spoke of this, and bluntly asked the reason.

“Because,” replied Thorndyke, coolly, “there was no more promotion for me—and I was made to accept it, whether I wanted it or not. You see, although the Constitution guarantees every State a republican form of government, all the States don’t have it. Mine hasn’t, nor has yours. My boss, however, is a good deal more astute than your boss. Mine never lets any man have what he wants. Unluckily, when I was a Congressional tenderfoot I wanted the earth and the fulness thereof, and I worked for it as well as I knew how. When the next nominating convention was held I was left out in the cold world. I waited two years. Then, being still green, with all the courage of inexperience, I went to my boss. I said to him that I wished to get back in public life, and to stay there—and he said——”

Thorndyke paused and blushed a little.

“Out with it,” said Crane, encouragingly.

“My boss has some extraordinary virtues—all real bosses have—among them a very engaging frankness. He said, without beating about the bush a moment, that it wasn’t his policy to promote men who might—who might one day get a little too big for him. That was about what he said. He told me if I would be satisfied with a seat in Congress and the chairmanship of a good committee, I could have it as long as I kept out of State politics, and didn’t make myself offensively prominent at national conventions. Then he proceeded to advise me as Cardinal Wolsey advised Thomas Cromwell. He charged me to fling away ambition, and reminded me that by that sin the angels fell, and likewise a number of very imprudent young politicians—I don’t use the word statesman any more—all over the State. I squirmed, and the old fellow grinned and told me if at any time I hankered after a foreign mission I could get it. I thanked him and told him I had no fancy to be buried until I was dead, and at last we compromised on his first proposition. I like the life—God knows why. The salary is enough for me to live on and support an invalid sister—all I have in the world. I have sense enough to see that I am better off than if I gave a loose rein to my ambition and was forever chasing rainbows. A man without fortune, who lives upon the hopes of an office which will beggar him if he gets it——”

“That’s it!” cried Crane, suddenly interrupting, his eyes lighting up with anxiety. “That’s it, Thorndyke. I know all about it. I’ll tell you the whole story—the story I never even told my wife——”

There is something touching and appealing when a man lays bare his wounds and bruises. Thorndyke, without saying a word, gave a look, a slight movement of the head that brought out Crane’s story. He told it readily enough—he had the mobile mouth and quick imagination of the orator, and he was always eloquent when he was talking about himself.

“You see, when I got the nomination to Congress it was that or bankruptcy. For two months before the convention was held I’d walk the floor half the night, and the other half I’d pretend to be asleep, to keep my wife from breaking her heart with anxiety. Annette is a good woman—too good for me. I had neglected my law practice for politics until I had no practice left, and then I was transported to Congress and Heaven and five thousand dollars a year. I determined to do two things—cut a wide swath in Washington and save one-third of my salary.”

“Great fool—you,” murmured Thorndyke, sympathetically.

“But—I didn’t know what a wide swath was. I didn’t know anything about it. I came to Washington and brought my wife and three children. We went to a boarding-house on Eleventh Street—you called to see us there.”

“Yes. I remember thinking Mrs. Crane the prettiest, sweetest woman I had seen that season.”

This was true, for Annette Crane had the beauty of form, of colour, of sweetness and gentleness to an extraordinary degree. She was no Perdita—no one would have taken her for a princess stolen in infancy. But not Ruth in the harvest-field was more natural, more sweetly graceful than this lady from Circleville, somewhere in the Middle West.

“Annette admired you tremendously,” continued Crane, in the easy tone of a man who knows his wife is desperately in love with him, and thinks her fully justified. “She said it was kind of you to call. Like me, she thought we were going to do wonderful things—I believe she used to pray that our hearts might not be hardened by our social triumphs. Well, you know all about it. We were asked to the President’s receptions, and my wife called on the Cabinet officers’ families, and at the houses of the Senators and the Representatives from our own State. We were asked to dinner at our junior Senator’s house. I thought it would be grand. It was, in a way—the old man is pretty well heeled—but it was exactly like one of those banquets a Chamber of Commerce gives to a distinguished citizen. Annette was the prettiest woman there, but she didn’t wear a low-necked gown like the other women, and that embarrassed her. In the end she found out more things than I did. She said to me before the season was over:

“‘Julian, it’s not being rich that makes people in Washington. If it were, we shouldn’t mind not being in it. But there are plenty of people, like the Senator, who have the money and the wish to make a stir socially—but they can’t, while a plenty of poor ones do. Look at Mr. Thorndyke’—she hit upon you the first man—‘he’s asked everywhere, and he says he is as poor as a church-mouse. No, Julian, to be as you would wish to be here, needs not only the money we haven’t got, but something else we haven’t got and can’t acquire, so let’s give it up. Another winter I’ll stay in Circleville—it will be better for the children, better for me, better for you’—for I own up to having been deuced surly all that winter. So we adopted that plan, and Annette has never been to Washington since. But—I’ll confess this, too—I had from the beginning a fancy to see the inside of those houses where the people live who make up this world of Washington. It wasn’t merely idle curiosity. I was convinced, and I am so still, that the number and variety of people in Washington must make these Washington parlours—drawing-rooms, you call them—the most interesting of their kind in the world. Well—I’ve got into some of them. It’s a good deal easier for a man without his wife than a man with her; and Thorndyke, I own up, I am bewitched. Oh, it’s not so much to you; you’ve known it too long, and seen too much of it all over the world to know how it strikes a man born and brought up until he is thirty-five years old in Circleville. I swear when I get a dinner invitation I am like the girls out our way, who will drive twenty miles in a sleigh to go to a dance. The mere look of the table—the glass, the silver, the flowers—goes to my head. The terrapin intoxicates me. Those quick, soft-moving servants fascinate me. And the conversation! They let me talk all I want.”

“You are a vastly entertaining fellow in your own mental bailiwick,” interjected Thorndyke.

“And the women! So unaffected—so unconscious of their clothes! And such listeners! I have never been to a stupid dinner in Washington. And the club—I never knew a man of leisure in my life until I came to Washington. I daresay you think me a fool.” Crane paused, with a feeling rare to him that he could not express half what was in him, but Thorndyke’s knowledge supplied the rest.

“No, I don’t. It is quite as you say, but you are taking it all too seriously.”

“Circleville,” murmured Crane.

“Well, three-fourths of these people you so admire came from Circlevilles. Forty years ago, how many of them, do you think, had a servant to answer the door-bell? Just consider, my dear young friend, that, except at the South, servants were unknown to a large proportion of the American people until a short time ago. The parents of these people you see here, with eighteen-horse-power automobiles, and with crests upon their writing-paper, their carriages, their footmen’s buttons, thought themselves in clover when they could afford a maid-of-all-work. So far, they are merely at the imitative stage. Their grandparents were pioneers and lived mostly in log cabins, and although the three generations are divided by only fifty years, it is as if æons of time existed between them! By Jove! It is one of the most astounding things in American life!”

“That’s so,” replied Crane. “It is said that one-half the world doesn’t know how the other half lives, but in these United States about nine-tenths of the society people have no more notion how their grandparents lived than they have of life on Mars or Saturn. I went to a wedding the other day. It was magnificent beyond words. The two young people had been brought up in——”

“Barbaric luxury,” Thorndyke interrupted. “It’s barbarous to bring children up as those two were—I know whom you mean. The girl had her own suite of rooms almost from her birth, her own maid, her own trap. Even when there was an affectation of simplicity it cost enough to have swamped her grandfather’s general store at Meekins’s Cross Roads, where he laid the foundation of his fortune. When she came out in society it simply meant more of everything. No daughter of the Cæsars was ever more conscious of the gulf between her and the common people—I say common people with the deepest respect for the term—than this girl is conscious of the gulf between herself and the class to which her grandparents belonged. The young man’s story was the same da capo, except that he was given a boy’s luxuries instead of a girl’s. It has been carefully concealed from them by their parents that their grandparents swept, dusted, chopped wood, traded at country stores, and did all those plain but useful and respectable things which made their fortune. To hear them talk about ‘grandmamma’ and ‘grandpapa’ is the very essence of simplicity.”

“And yet those people constitute the most exclusive set in Washington,” said Crane, angrily, as if thereby some wrong was inflicted on him.

“Naturally,” replied Thorndyke. “Don’t you see that the first result of their prosperity in their own community was to segregate them from their less fortunate friends and neighbours? Don’t you see how inevitably it came about that their children were separated from their neighbours’ children? And in the end they were drawn from the Circlevilles and the Meekins’s Cross Roads by sheer necessity? They became fugitives, as it were, from their own class, and how natural it was for them to be afraid of their own and every other class except the recognised few, and to build up a wall around themselves and their children.”

“I wonder if you would dare to use that word class on the floor of the House?” asked Crane.

“I would dare to but I shouldn’t care to,” answered Thorndyke. “One reason why I have so little to say on the floor of the House is because it involves many explanations to men who know just as well what you mean as you do, and agree with you thoroughly. But there’s Buncombe County to be considered.”

“At all events,” said Crane, returning to himself as a subject of consideration, “this social side of life appeals to me powerfully—too powerfully, I am afraid. I feel an odd sort of kinship with those old ladies of seventy that I see going the rounds in Paris gowns and high-heeled shoes, with their scanty white hair crimped and curled within an inch of their lives. It’s serious business with them; and, by George, it’s serious with me, too. Of course I am a blamed fool for acknowledging so much.”

“Not in the least. But you must know that it can only be a pastime with you. There is Circleville, and Annette, and the babies——”

Thorndyke saw Crane’s face grow a little pale, and he fell silent for a minute or two, and while Thorndyke was watching the current of his thought, as revealed by a singularly expressive and untrained countenance, Crane burst out:

“The best in the way of women I’ve seen yet is Constance Maitland—I wonder why she never married. She’s nearer forty than thirty; that she told me herself.”

It was now Thorndyke’s turn to grow pale. Constance Maitland was responsible to a great degree for most that had happened to him for the last eighteen years, and in all that time he had not seen her once; but the mere mention of her name was enough to agitate him; and she was in Washington and he had not known it——

It was a minute or two before he recovered himself and began to pull at the cigar in his mouth. Then he saw by Crane’s face that Constance Maitland was something to him, too. Had the poor devil fallen in love with her as he had with Washington dinners? Thorndyke was disgusted with his friend, and showed it by saying, coldly:

“I knew Miss Maitland well some years ago. She is very charming. But, Crane, it’s bad manners to call ladies by their first names.” Thorndyke used the old-fashioned word “ladies” where the moderns say “women.”

Crane coloured furiously. He did not mind in the least being coached in legislative affairs, but he winced at being taught manners. However, he had the highest admiration for Thorndyke’s manners, so he replied, carelessly:

“I accept the amendment. As you say, Con—Miss Maitland is very charming, and has been charming men for the past twenty years. Now, in Circleville she would have been called an old maid ten years ago.”

Yes, of course, she had always had a train of men after her, and the fact that she remained unmarried showed either that she had no heart—or—sometimes a wild thought had crossed Thorndyke’s mind—suppose Constance Maitland still remembered him? This thought, coming into his head, set his heart to pounding like a steam-engine while Crane talked on.

“That woman epitomises the charm of Washington life to me. First, she is unlike any woman I ever saw before; that is in itself a charm. Then, she has an environment; that, too, is new to me. I went to see her four times last winter.” Then he mentioned where she lived. “Her parlour—I mean drawing-room—was nothing compared with the others I’d been in here, but it was distinctive. It wasn’t furnished from bric-à-brac shops and art-sale catalogues. All the antiques came from her own family—all the miniatures and portraits were her own kinsfolk. And, after having lived in Europe for twenty years, as she told me—because she doesn’t mind mentioning dates—and having seen more of European society than one American woman in ten thousand, she loves and admires her own country, and came back here to live the first minute she was free. That struck me all of a heap, because, though you wouldn’t judge so from my Fourth of July speeches at Circleville, I should think that Europe would be something between Washington and Paradise.”

“You haven’t been there yet,” was Thorndyke’s response to this. And then Crane proceeded to tell a story which Thorndyke knew by heart.

“It seems, so I heard from other people, she was brought up by an old crank of an aunt, who had married a Baron Somebody-or-other in Germany. This old feminine party tried to make Constance marry some foreign guy, and when she wouldn’t, the old lady, in a rage, made a will, giving all she had to Constance on condition that she did not marry an American. It was thought the old lady wasn’t exactly in earnest, but unluckily she died the week after, and so the will stands—and that’s why Con—Miss Maitland never married, I guess.”

Just then a band came blaring down the street, followed by the usual crowd of negroes, dancing, shouting, and grimacing along the sidewalk, and looking weird in the high lights and black shadows of the night. Crane, to whom the negroes had never ceased to be a raree show, got up and went to the window, whistling the air the band played; meanwhile Thorndyke lay back in his chair trying to get used to the knowledge that Constance Maitland had been in Washington months and he had not known it. There was a prologue to the story just told by Crane—and Crane had no suspicion of this prologue. A young American of good birth but slender fortune—himself, in fact—was the primary cause of the old Baroness von Hesselt’s remarkable will. It was he whom the old lady held responsible for Constance Maitland’s flat refusal to marry the son of an imperial privy councillor with seven points to his coronet. Oh, those days at the Villa Flora on Lake Como—those days that come only in youth, when the whole world seems young! When, from the terrace, Constance and himself watched the sunset trembling in the blue lake and making another heaven there! And those starlit nights when Constance and himself were in a boat alone together, and she sang to her guitar for him, and he repeated verses from Childe Harold to her! They were both young and singularly innocent, and were deeply in love—of that Thorndyke could never doubt; and because they were young and innocent and in love with each other the old Baroness thought them the wickedest and most designing creatures on earth. She had spent all her life in Europe, had frankly married for a title, and wished Constance to do the same. The old Baron, a helpless invalid, was not reckoned in the equation.

The Baroness von Hesselt had acquired what many Americans who live abroad acquire—a spite against her own country. This was accentuated by the fact that she was a Southerner of the old régime, who hated liberty, equality, and fraternity from the bottom of her heart, and who instinctively realised her unfitness for America. She had also forgotten a good deal about it, and thought a very effective way to keep Constance from marrying Thorndyke or any other American was to cut her off from a fortune in that event. The will was made, and the old Baroness proclaimed it loudly for a week. At the end of that time the gentleman on the pale horse unexpectedly summoned her. There was but one thing for any man to do in Geoffrey Thorndyke’s circumstances, and that was, to go far away from Constance Maitland. No definite words or promises had passed between them, but unless eyes and tones of the voice, and all sweet, unutterable things are liars, they were pledged to one another.

Thorndyke, being in those days a very human youngster, hoped that Constance would send him a line—a word—and doubted not for a moment that his love would make up to her for a fortune. But no line or word ever came. As years went on Thorndyke reached the sad knowledge that modern life requires something more than bread and cheese and kisses, and felt a sense of relief that it had not been in his power to take Constance Maitland’s fortune from her with only love to give in return. But this knowledge did not make him content. On the contrary, year by year had her memory become more poignant to him. It was that which had made him throw himself with all his being and equipment into public life. It was that which made him tender to all innocent, sweet women like Annette Crane—innocent, sweet women brought back to him something of his lost love. He knew she had never married, but all else concerning her was a blank to him. He was consumed with a desire to ask Crane something about her—all about her—but he had noted instantly that in Crane’s eye and voice was a manner which revealed a dangerous interest in Constance Maitland; and Thorndyke was held back and urged forward to speak of her.

The band passed on, the street once more grew quiet, and Crane returned to his seat. Thorndyke smoked savagely to keep from mentioning Constance Maitland’s name. Crane did likewise with the same motive, but having less self-control than Thorndyke he could not but hark back to the ticklish subject.

“So you say you knew Miss Maitland?”

“Yes. A long time ago.”

“She’s very old-fashioned; enough so to stay out of society when she is wearing mourning. She’s been in mourning for her uncle by marriage ever since she’s been in Washington—six months. The exclusives don’t stay in mourning more than six months for husbands, wives, or children. Parents and aunts and uncles don’t count.”

“The exclusives don’t have any aunts and uncles,” Thorndyke put in shortly. “They have nieces and nephews who are presentable after they have been washed and combed—but they can’t go back as far as uncles and aunts.”

“So they can’t. Their uncles and aunts are just like my uncles and aunts. Well, I gather that the old Baron for whom Miss Maitland has worn mourning wasn’t a bad old party—better, perhaps, than his American wife.”

“He was,” said Thorndyke.

Crane looked at him suspiciously and then kept on.

“Miss Maitland is going out this spring. She says I’m quite right in thinking there is a delightful society attainable here in Washington, but she’s so pleased to be back in her own country that she praises everything right and left. She doesn’t even mind the Dupont statue, and won’t discuss the Pension building. To see her flow of spirits you would think her the happiest woman in the world. Yet she told me once that she wasn’t really happy.”

“All women tell you that before you get through with them,” growled Thorndyke.

“Annette never has,” said Crane, rising and throwing away his cigar. “Some time, if you wish to call on Miss Maitland, I’ll take you round.”

Thorndyke restrained the temptation to brain Crane with the carafe on the table by him, partly out of regard for himself, partly out of regard to Crane, and partly from the fact that Crane was a much bigger man than he was. But his colleague was evidently quite unconscious of Thorndyke’s bloody inclinations, and thought himself the best fellow in the world to be willing to give Thorndyke a view into the paradise of Constance Maitland’s company.

“And as for my streak of luck, as you call it, I intend to devote all my powers to my work, so that no matter what other committee makes a fool of itself, the Committee on Foreign Affairs won’t—at least through its chairman,” Crane continued.

“It’s easy enough to steer that committee when everything is peaceful,” answered Thorndyke, meaning to take the new chairman down a peg. “And it’s a great deal easier when we get into a continental mess as we are now. Wait until you get on the Ways and Means, or Committee on Elections, or Banking and Currency, if you want to have a little Gehenna of your own on earth. Good-night.”

Thorndyke sat up smoking until after two o’clock. His thoughts were not concerned with Crane’s political future, nor with his own either, nor with the continental mess. He was thinking about that dead-and-gone time, and how far away it was; the moderns did not make love through the medium of sentimental songs to the guitar and to stanzas from Childe Harold. They preferred ragtime on the mandolin and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám; and they no longer seemed to fall in love in the painful and whole-souled manner which had befallen him; and then he wandered off into thinking how a man’s will could go so far and no farther, and how he should feel when he saw Constance Maitland, as he must eventually, and how she would look and speak. He concluded, before he went to bed, that he had experienced that unlucky accident, the breaking of heart, which would not mend, do what he could; for he was one of those rare and unfortunate men who can love but once.

Chapter Two
THE RISE OF A PREMIER AND SOMETHING ABOUT TWO HEARTS

On the fifteenth of April Congress met for one of the most exciting sessions in the history of the country. There was excitement both for the members and for the public. Usually, when great economic questions have to be disposed of, which rack the intelligence of the strongest men in the House and Senate, which make and unmake Presidents and policies, at which men work like slaves toiling at the oar, by night as well as by day, and of which the harvest of death is grimly reckoned beforehand, the people go on quietly, reading with calm indifference the proceedings of Congress in the newspapers or skipping them because of their dulness. When questions affecting the honour and prestige of the country arise, the American people, justly described as “strong, resolute, and ofttimes violent,” become deeply agitated, are swayed all one way by the same mighty impulse, and force Congress to act as the people wish. The Congress at these times is calm. There is nothing to do but comply with the mandates of the people. One party is as willing to vote supplies as another. All march together. The march would become a wild storming party but for a few cool heads and obstructives, who act as a brake, and keep the pace down to something reasonable and the policies in the middle of the road. But the brake is powerless to stop the march onward.

At this session, though, there were to be things to agitate both the people and the Congress. The question of peace or war had to be decided; and if it were peace, as the cooler heads foresaw, it would be peace on such stupendous terms of power and prestige to this country that it might be impossible to deal sanely with the great economic problems which were like the rumblings of an earthquake, and were liable to produce vast convulsions. For the present, however, economic questions were in the background, the Committee on Foreign Affairs was the most prominent one in the House.

It almost cured Crane of his infatuation for Washington society to see how little it was impressed by the large events waiting to burst from under the great white dome on the hill. Himself, in a fever heat of suppressed excitement, he felt aggrieved that dinners still went on unflaggingly, that the first long season of grand opera Washington had ever known was about to begin, and claimed much attention. None of these smart people seemed to care in the least that he was to present the report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in an unprecedentedly short time—a report which might mean war or peace. He expressed his sense of personal injury to Thorndyke as the two sat hard at work in their committee-room one night a week after the meeting of Congress.

They were quite alone, and it might be said that the report was theirs alone. There were other strong men on the committee, but they had got used to the autocratic rule of Thorndyke, and rather liked it. He consulted them attentively, but he was always the man who acted. The new chairman recognised this, and being ambitious to rule as Thorndyke had ruled, he consulted his predecessor somewhat ostentatiously—at which his colleagues smiled and let him alone. Crane had just experienced an instance of Thorndyke’s goodwill, who was in the act of saving his chairman from making a ridiculous blunder which would have hindered his prospects very much as Oliver Goldsmith’s unlucky red coat did for him with the Bishop. The Secretary of State, a very long-headed person in a small way, had previously got the length of the Honourable Julian Crane’s foot, as the vulgar express it. He had asked Crane to play golf with him; he had invited the member from Circleville to little dinners with him. The Secretary’s wife had requested Crane as a great favour to assist her widowed daughter in chaperoning a party of débutantes and college youths to the theatre, and when a scurrilous journal had reflected grossly upon himself, a married man, and the young widow, Crane was in secret hugely flattered. To be linked, even remotely, in a scandal with the daughter of the Secretary of State was a social rise—although he happened to know that Cap’n Josh Slater, the father of the Secretary of State, had been engaged in steam-boating on the Ohio River in the wild forties with his own grandfather, Cap’n Ebenezer Crane. The Secretary’s father had made money, and his daughters were replicas of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Of his sons, one, the present Secretary of State, had left the banks of the Ohio never to return, and by a steady evolution had passed from the Western Reserve College to Harvard, thence to Oxford for a post-graduate course, to Berlin as attaché to the then Legation, thence home to exercise a gift the politicians had found in him, viz., the power to form a silk-stocking contingent in the party to offset the silk stockings in the opposition. Being a man of some brains and much perseverance, he had reached the most highly ornamental position in the Government of the United States—the Secretaryship of State. He maintained it with dignity. He had, of course, long since, abjured the Methodist faith, in which he was reared, and was as uncompromising a Churchman as his brother, the Episcopal Bishop—for such had been the career of the steam-boat captain’s other son. Both had been brought up in an auriferous atmosphere totally denied the descendants of Cap’n Ebenezer Crane, who had lost his all in the steam-boat business, and spent his last years keeping the Circleville tavern. Crane knew all about this, one of his grandfather’s standing quarrels with Fate being that Josh Slater, a durned fool, and a rascal besides, in Cap’n Ebenezer’s opinion, had made so much, where a better man—that is, himself—couldn’t make a living. But Crane knew better than to refer to any of these matters before the Secretary, who was indeed only dimly acquainted with his father’s profession. The Secretary, a polished, scholarly man, was a very good imitation of a statesman. He liked to be called the Premier, prided himself on his resemblance to Lord Salisbury, and dressed the part to perfection. During Thorndyke’s chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, when the present international complication had been brewing, the Secretary had been a good deal annoyed by being sent for to the Capitol on what he considered flimsy pretexts. He determined when Crane succeeded Thorndyke to make a bold stroke, and have the chairman come to him occasionally, on the sly, as it were. To this end he had written Crane a little note beginning, “My Dear Crane.” In it the Secretary spoke pathetically of his lumbago, also of his age—sixty-one—and would Crane, on the score of old friendship and the Secretary’s many infirmities, come to see him at a certain hour at the Department, and perhaps the necessity might be avoided of the Secretary taking a trip in the changeable weather to the Capitol, which otherwise would be inevitable.

Crane showed this note with ill-concealed pride, and was about to fall into the Secretary’s little trap through the telephone when Thorndyke hastily interposed:

“My dear fellow,” said he, grinning, “you had better wait until the Secretary’s lumbago gets better, rather than inaugurate the policy of running up to the State Department to see him, when it is his business to come here to see you. The old fellow tried that game on me, but, in return, I used to get the committee to invite him down here about once a week to give his views on something or other for which we didn’t give a tinker’s damn, as the Duke of Wellington used to say. But it cured him. He stopped inviting me cordially and informally to come to the State Department to see him.”

Crane’s face flushed.

“The d——d old sneak!” he yelled—and then dashed off a curt note to the Secretary. Thorndyke promptly confiscated this note, and dictated another, which was, if anything, more affectionate in tone than the Secretary’s. Crane would wish, above all things, to oblige the Secretary, but was himself under the weather, and so forth, and so forth.

“But I played golf with him at seven o’clock this morning!” cried Crane, throwing down his pen.

“So much the better,” replied Thorndyke. “You are returning his own lie to him with interest. Go on—‘Possibly by to-morrow you may be well enough to comply with the wish of the committee, and come to the Capitol. In any event, before a formal request is made for your attendance, your convenience will be consulted with regard to the hours and the weather.’ And when you get him up here put him in the sweat-box and give him all that’s coming to him—that’s the way to get on with him.”

“I see,” said Crane, light breaking upon him, “and when you had the old fellow up here, and I thought you were so friendly and polite to him, you were just ‘sweating’ him.”

“That’s what I was doing. However, I reckon the present Secretary to be the ideal man for the place. He is highly ornamental, perfectly honest, and satisfied with the shadow of power. Occasionally he reaches out for something in the way of etiquette or attention, as in the present case, but when he doesn’t get it he subsides quietly. The State Department has been steadily losing power and prestige from the foundation of the government until now, when it is recognised as a mere clerical bureau and a useful social adjunct to the Administration. Do you think if Daniel Webster were alive to-day he would take the portfolio of State? He would see the Administration at the demnition bow-wows first. Mr. Blaine took it twice under compulsion, and was the most wretched and restless man on earth while he had it. Both times he was so much too big for the place that he became exceedingly dangerous, and had to be forced out each time to save the Administration from total wreck. The lesson has not been lost on succeeding Presidents, and there will be no more Blaines and Websters in the State Department. The trouble is, however, that foreign Chancelleries persist in taking the State Department seriously. They can’t take in that you, as chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, are of a good deal more consequence at present than the Secretary of State. You can send for him, but he can’t send for you. You can call for information from him and practically force him to give it to you, but he can’t make you tell the day of the week unless you want to.”

Crane, who had signed and sealed his note while Thorndyke was speaking, glowed with pleasure at the last words. But he returned to his grievance about none of the smart set taking any particular interest in what was going to happen on the morrow.

“The diplomatic people are taking the deepest interest in it,” replied Thorndyke, grimly, “and when this report is read to-morrow they will be up against a fierce proposition.” Thorndyke was not above using slang when in the company of men alone.

They fell to work again at some last details, and it was not far from midnight when they left the great white building on the hill. In spite of the engrossing matters which had employed them, both men had been haunted by the recollection of their conversation the night before, about Constance Maitland—but neither had spoken her name. Thorndyke said, as they came out on the deserted moonlit plaza:

“It’s a pity Mrs. Crane can’t be here to listen to you speak to-morrow.”

“Yes,” replied Crane, promptly. “But I have written her about it, and I shall send her a despatch as soon as I get through to-morrow. By the way, I sent Miss Maitland a ticket to the reserved gallery. I shall probably see her at the French Embassy, where I am going to take a look at the ball.”

It was Crane’s first invitation to the French Embassy, and he was slightly elated at it, and being unable to conceal anything, Thorndyke saw his elation. His only reply to Crane’s important communication was, “Good-night—here’s my car.” And he jumped aboard the trailer just passing.

When he reached his own door he turned away from it. The night was growing more enchantingly lovely every hour. A great white April moon was riding high in the heavens, and the soft freshness of the spring night was in the air. Thorndyke made the beauty of the night an excuse to himself for remaining out of doors. In truth, he had felt a yearning, ever since Crane had first told him that Constance Maitland was in Washington, to see her habitation—it was next to seeing her. He struggled against it for an hour or two, walking away from the street wherein she dwelt. He soon found himself in the poorer part of Washington, a long way from the gay quarters; a part of narrow brick or frame houses, cheap churches, and many small shops. He was reminded of that saying, as old as Plato, who did not himself say it first: “In all cities there are two cities—the city of the poor and the city of the rich.” The city of the poor in Washington, however, is the least disheartening of its sort in the world—for even the poorest house has air and space and sunlight about it and green trees to shelter it.

After having wandered about until he felt certain the West End was asleep, Thorndyke yielded to the overmastering impulse and set out for his goal at the other end of the town. He soon entered Massachusetts Avenue—that long and beautiful avenue, shaded with double rows of lindens, their pale green buds breaking out into their first delicate leaf, the vista broken by open spaces with statues, and closing with the rich foliage of Dupont Circle. All was quiet, silent, and more and more brightly moonlit. No glaring gas lamps marred the light or darkness of the perfect night—for in Washington when the moon shines the gas lamps don’t shine.

Thorndyke’s soul, dragging his unwilling feet, brought him to one of the pretty side streets opening upon the splendid avenue. It was here that Constance Maitland’s house was.

Thorndyke believed—such is the folly of love—he would have known the house even if Crane had not mentioned the number. But the number was conclusive. It was an old-fashioned house, broad and low for a city house. It had been the advance guard of fashion. There was a little strip of garden and shrubbery at the side, where clipped cedars were formally set, and three great lilac-bushes were hastening into a bloom of purple splendour. The scent of the lilacs brought back the terrace on Lake Como, where lilacs also grew, and where he and Constance had spent those glowing and unforgotten hours—and by moonlight they had often sung together the old duet from Don Pasquale, “Oh, April Night!” Thorndyke, entranced and lost in visions, began to hum the old, old air. What strange power of restoring the past have old songs and the perfume of flowers long remembered! Thorndyke felt as in a dream; all the intervening years melted away; it was once more Como, with its moonlight, its flower-scents, its songs, its loves—and then he looked up and saw Constance Maitland standing before him.

She had just returned from the ball—the carriage from which she had alighted was rolling off. As she met Thorndyke face to face on the sidewalk she started slightly, and her long white mantle slipped from her delicate bare shoulders to the ground. Her eyes met Thorndyke’s—everything was in that gaze except surprise. When two persons think of each other daily for many years, the strangeness is not in their meeting but in their separation. They had seen each other last on a moonlit night, and the sweet scent of lilacs was in the air—and now, after eighteen years, it was so alike!

The moonlight was merciful to them both. Neither saw all of Time’s earmarks—Thorndyke saw none at all in Constance. Her girlish figure was quite unchanged. Her pale yellow ball-gown, the pearls around her throat, were youthfulness itself. She had never been remarkable for beauty, but her face showed no lines, her silky black hair, simply arranged, revealed none of the silver strands that were visible by daylight. Thorndyke received a distinct shock at her youthfulness. It was his lost Constance of the Villa Flora.

She held her hand out to him without a word, and he clasped it. In that clasp Constance realised that she had all and more of her old power over him. Thorndyke could not have said a word at first to save his life, but Constance, with equal feeling, had a woman’s glibness, and could have plunged into commonplaces on the spot. But she refrained, knowing that her silence was eloquent. She withdrew her hand lingeringly. Then Thorndyke saw the white cloak lying on the ground. He picked it up and held it wide for Constance, and when he enfolded her in the cloak she was enfolded for one thrilling, perilous instant in his arms. Another moment and she would be at his mercy. Constance, knowing this, and suddenly remembering the maid waiting for her, and possibly belated neighbours looking out of their windows, withdrew a little. This restored Thorndyke’s vagrant senses, and after a moment or two he said:

“It does not seem—now—so long since we parted.”

“It is very long; it is nearly eighteen years,” Constance replied. Her voice was the sweet voice of the far South, for her young eyes had first opened upon the blue waters of another lake than Como—Lake Pontchartrain. In her speech there were continual traces of her Louisiana birth—Thorndyke had ever thought her voice and her little mannerisms of language among her greatest charms—and he was confirmed in his belief at the first word she uttered. He said to her:

“I did not know until yesterday that you were in Washington.”

“I did not like to send you a card,” Constance replied.

“You might have done so much.”

“I do not know which of us is in the wrong,” she said—said it so deliberately that it might convey a thousand meanings. “But if you are waiting for me to ask you—come. Of course, I cannot ask you in now; if we were as young as we once were, it would be quite dreadful for us to be standing and talking as we are—but both being old enough to take care of ourselves, we have our liberty.”

Love and hate are closely allied, and often reason alike from the same premises. As Thorndyke realised more and more that Constance Maitland still had power to disturb him powerfully he resented her ease and tranquillity—and aware of the lines in his face, conscious that he was growing bald, he felt injured at her continuing youth. Evidently, the recollections which had made him forswear love, forego wealth, and had turned him into a Congressional drudge, had left no mark on her. He took, at once, her hint to leave her, and said stiffly:

“If you will give me your key——”

Constance handed it to him; he went up the steps and opened the door. The gaslight fell full upon her, and it was as if with every glance they became more infatuated with each other and found it harder to part.

“To-morrow,” said Thorndyke.

“Yes; to-morrow,” Constance echoed, dreamily.

Thorndyke banged the door to and literally ran down the street.

When he came to himself, as it were, he was in his own room, smoking. He kept on saying to himself, “To-morrow—to-morrow,” and then called himself a fool—a purely academic proceeding, however, which never really influences any issue between a man and his will. When at last he went to bed the sky was opalescent with the coming dawn.

Chapter Three
DOWN AMONG THE CAPTAINS AND THE SHOUTING

After four hours of sleep Thorndyke waked with the uncomfortable feeling which waits on excess in everything, especially excess in the emotions after one is forty years of age. The tumults of youth are killing after forty.

He got through with his breakfast and his mail under the disadvantages of seeing visions of Constance Maitland floating all about him—visions of Constance offering to give up her fortune and live with him on what he could save of his Congressional salary after supplying the wants of his crippled sister, Elizabeth. And in case he should lose the nomination at the hands of his boss, as he had once done, there would be nothing at all for Constance or Elizabeth, either, nor for himself that he could then foresee. What a strange infatuation was Congressional life! It was almost as strange as the infatuation for a woman forever barred from him—and by the worst luck in the world, he, Geoffrey Thorndyke, was the victim of both!

These unpleasant thoughts walked every step of the way with him to the Capitol on that bright April morning. When he reached the great white building, sitting majestically on the hill, he was one of a vast multitude of people surging toward the south wing. It still lacked half an hour of twelve, and the flag was not yet hoisted. Crowds were disembarking from the street-cars, the plaza was black with carriages, and over all was that tension of feeling which communicates itself to thousands and tens of thousands of persons at once. Something was about to happen that day in the House of Representatives. As Crane said, the smart set cared nothing for it, but their majesties, the people, were deeply interested in it, and had every reason to be, and assembled in great crowds to see the first act. Thorndyke made his way to his committee-room. No one was there except Crane. The gentleman from Circleville was dressed for his first appearance as a star. Thorndyke, being in rather a savage humour, thought he had never seen Crane so over-dressed, so full of elation and vain simplicity, and, in short, so nearly a fool. In this he did Crane great injustice, for Crane never was, at any time, in the category of fools, although he often did foolish things.

He spoke to Thorndyke affably, although with a slight air of superiority, holding in his hand the report of which Thorndyke had supplied the most effective part—the close reasoning, the conclusive logic, the historical precedents, and the invincible moderation. Thorndyke might indeed have said of that report, as Cæsar said of the Gallic wars, “All of this I saw—most of this I was.” And in the debate that would follow, Thorndyke would be obliged to take care of Crane—for Crane, although a powerful and attractive speaker, was easily disconcerted when on his feet, and had a tendency to panic under the enfilading fire of debate. Thorndyke was not an orator in the popular sense, but when it came to having all his wits about him, to defending his position, to bold incursions into the enemy’s territory, he was not surpassed by any man in the House. As his colleagues said of him, he always went documented, and carried concealed parliamentary weapons about his person.

By way of revenge, Thorndyke began to chaff his colleague on the subject of his dress. Crane’s shirt-bosom snapped like giant crackers, his cuffs rattled, his collar creaked. He was conscious of this, and glowered darkly at Thorndyke’s jokes. Thorndyke’s clothes, in contradistinction to Crane’s, were the clothes of a clothes-wearing man. They were neither old nor new, neither out of the fashion nor conspicuously in the fashion—they were, in short, the clothes of a man whose father before him had worn clothes.

Both men were in their seats, which were near together, when the Speaker’s gavel fell. The galleries were packed, the corridors jammed. In the diplomatic gallery every seat was occupied. The bright costumes of the Orientals and the flower-decked spring hats of the ladies made it gay. The gallery reserved for the President’s family and the Cabinet families was also full. So great was the pressure that the motion was at once made to admit ladies to the floor of the House. They came fluttering in like a flock of pigeons, and soon filled all the space back of the desks. They were not, in general, of the smart set, who, as Crane complained, were like Gallio, and cared for none of these things—but were chiefly of official families.

As soon as the prayer and some routine business was over, the report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs was called for. The calling of the roll had been waived—it was easy enough to see that every member was present who could get there, as well as many Senators. When the report was handed to the reading-clerk there was a deep pause. Thorndyke looked at Crane. He was very pale, but the veins in his neck were pulsating strongly. He glanced up at the reserved gallery at the side, and his face flushed deeply. Thorndyke followed his eye. It fell upon Constance Maitland sitting in the front row. She was dressed in a rich black toilette which contrasted strongly with the brilliant colours around her. A delicate black tulle hat sat upon her graceful head, and she fanned herself slowly with a large black fan.

Her distinction of appearance was extreme, and she showed her perfect knowledge of it by the simple but effective trick of wearing black when there was a riot of colour around her. By means of a good figure and perfect dressing this seduced the world into thinking her far handsomer than she really was. Thorndyke recognised that when he saw how much more attention she attracted than much younger and more beautiful women.

But then the silence was broken by the great, bell-like voice of the reading-clerk reading the report. As the clerk proceeded, Thorndyke perceived that the tone and manner of the report were making a strong impression. The matter of it could not be wholly digested, but the manner of presentation commanded attention. Nearly every one of the three hundred and fifty members present saw Thorndyke’s fine Italian hand in the business—but the crowd gazed in admiration at the tall and handsome member from Circleville, who was reaping the glory of the present occasion. The reading over, Crane arose, with a few notes in his hand, prepared to defend the report. He was a born speaker, and as soon as he began to talk he forgot his clothes and also made his audience forget them, too. Thorndyke listened with enforced admiration. Crane spoke lucidly, strongly, yet temperately—Thorndyke had taught him the enormous power of moderation. Thorndyke, quite unobserved, watched the faces of the European diplomats in the diplomatic gallery, who were listening intently. One man, whom Thorndyke reckoned the ablest diplomat among those representing Western Europe, stealthily took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. An Ambassadress dropped her card-case at his feet and he did not see it. Another, a round, red-faced, sensible, guileless man, looked about him with a frankly puzzled air, which said as plainly as words, “God bless my soul—what are we to do about this?” The younger men unconsciously assumed expressions of contempt, indifference, and displeasure. They had every reason to be displeased at the turn international affairs were taking—and there was no alternative but war.

Thorndyke, being experienced in legislation, could very readily estimate the effect on his colleagues of what Crane was saying. It was tremendous. The vast hall was stilled, and the stillness grew intense. By some communicable psychic force all knew that here was a great issue met and disposed of for a hundred years to come. To the Americans present it was a source of pride and of relief. The mellow, unchanging sunlight that glowed softly through the iridescent glass roof of the hall fell upon their faces, serious indeed, but steady and cheerful. The Congress was back of that report, and the people were behind the Congress. There was no hysteria among the Congress or the people, but a fixed and resolute determination which was, in effect, the registering of a decree of fate.

Crane spoke for half an hour, his rich, full voice growing richer and fuller, without becoming louder, as he proceeded. At the very end he had allowed himself a little leeway, rightly judging that by that time the audience would be wrought up to the pitch which would permit what is called eloquence. When the last sentences, ringing with terse Americanism, rolled out, the effect was magical. A great storm of feeling had been evoked and had responded. The applause was long and loud and deep and steady, like the breaking of ocean waves upon granite rocks. Crane’s words had pierced the heart of every American present, and a common impulse brought all of them to their feet. Even the Speaker, not knowing what he was doing, rose from his chair, then sat down again shamefacedly. None escaped the tumult outwardly except the European occupants of the diplomatic gallery. They were ostentatiously cool, and talked and laughed during the tempest of applause, while secretly they were more agitated than any of the cheering multitude. They had heard that which meant surrender to each and all of them.

The Speaker’s gavel descended presently, and quiet was partially restored. Crane was surrounded by members of both parties congratulating him, and he received their praise with a modesty more sincere than was generally believed. But to him had it been brought home that the crisis was bigger than the man, and the people were bigger than the crisis. Thorndyke, sitting near him, had shared in the tempest of feeling, but a sickening disappointment possessed him when he saw Crane’s personal triumph. In all of Thorndyke’s years of labour Fate had never given him any such a chance as this. But it was his years of labour which made Crane’s success possible. He could imagine the turgid, strained spread-eagleism, the powerful but ill-reasoned speech, which Crane, but for him, would have made. His eyes, in his cold fit of chagrin, wandered toward the place where Constance Maitland sat. A slender black figure, gracefully holding up the train of the black gown, was just disappearing through the door. Thorndyke’s impulse to follow Constance was accentuated by a strong desire, if there should be any debate, to leave Crane to his fate, but he soon found out that the whole matter would go over until the next day, and by that time his better self would assert itself, and he would do his part—not for Crane’s sake, but for the sake of that overmastering sense of public duty which he cherished religiously and never alluded to. So, finding himself free and superfluous, he left the chamber, partly to avoid the sight of Crane’s triumph and partly drawn by Constance Maitland. Before leaving, however, he went up like a gentleman and congratulated Crane, who, moved by an honest and generous impulse, expressed the utmost gratitude to him.

Out in the spring sunshine that flooded the plaza and the parklike gardens and blazed upon the golden dome of the fair white National Library, visible beyond the fringe of great green trees, Thorndyke looked about him for Constance Maitland. She was just stepping into a smart little brougham with a good-looking pair of brown cobs, and drove away toward the quiet, shady, beautiful but unfashionable part of the town on the east.

The carriage went slowly, and Thorndyke, pursuing it, saw it stop a few blocks from the Capitol, by one of those parks large enough for one to wander in and feel alone as if in the woods. Constance descended from the carriage holding her skirts daintily, and walked into the park. Thorndyke boldly followed her—she had said to-morrow—and this was to-morrow.

He came upon her in a few minutes in a little open space, shut in, except for the pathway, by shrubbery on every side. The grass was full of daisies which had just put on their little white shirts and yellow caps, and a pair of robins hopped about with as much gayety and freedom as if they were country robins instead of town robins.

Constance was sitting on a rusty iron bench, a little in the shade. She had taken off her gloves, and her hands, small and innocent of rings, lay in her lap. She seemed to be day-dreaming, as if she were eighteen instead of thirty-eight years of age. Thorndyke was pleased to see that by the searching light of day she did not look nearly so young as in the mysterious night. But she was not the less charming on that account—she had simply reached the fulness of her development in mind, in feeling, and even in beauty, such as hers was.

As Thorndyke took off his hat and bowed to her he received a distinct invitation, by means of her eyes and smile, to remain, so he seated himself on the bench by her side. She began the conversation by saying:

“I have just come from the House. It was very exciting. I do not see how any one can call life in America dull. It is Europe which is dull—it is stagnation compared with this, our country.”

Thorndyke again noted, with delight, in her speech that slight trace of her Creole blood which years had not changed. She said “do not” and “can not” in place of “don’t” and “can’t;” she took extraordinary pains to pronounce the th, and had a way of accenting last syllables in a manner not recommended by the dictionaries. The result was piquant and charming. Constance herself was quite unconscious of it, and Thorndyke remembered that in the old days he could bring her to pique and pouts at any time by asking her to pronounce certain words and phrases which were a perpetual stumbling-block to her. He did not venture now to laugh at her about this pretty idiosyncrasy, but gravely took up the thread of conversation where she dropped it.

“What did you think of Crane’s speech?”

“It was quite extraordinary. But it was not like him. It seemed to me us if he were making somebody else’s speech. Was it yours?”

If Constance had searched the realms of thought to find out the words that would most soothe and satisfy Thorndyke at that moment she could not have found any better than those she uttered. Smarting under the sense of having sown for another to reap, Thorndyke needed consolation. He had the defects of his qualities, and along with his passionate devotion to parliamentary life was the natural desire for popular applause. But he had never had it. He fondly believed that had this superb opportunity been awarded him he should have proved equal to it. Had it but occurred two months earlier! He and not Crane would have been enveloped in trailing clouds of glory. But Constance—Constance, with her woman’s wit, had seen that some one else besides Crane deserved the credit for that effort. He made no reply to her questions beyond a slight smile, but he let it be seen that she had hit the bull’s eye.

“Mr. Crane tells me he knows you,” he said, presently.

“Yes,” answered Constance. “He has been a few times to see me. Last night I met him at the ball at the French Embassy. I danced with him.”

“He owned up to me some time ago that he was taking dancing-lessons—at forty-two, with a wife and children in Circleville. I fancy his performance answers the description that Herodotus gives of the dancing of Hippocleides—it is diverting to himself, but disgusting to others.”

“On the contrary, he dances very well—when he is not trying to do his best. Perhaps you are surprised that I should still care to dance—but remember, pray, my mother was Creole French.”

And to this Thorndyke made a speech which brought the blood into Constance Maitland’s cheeks, knocking ten years off her age at once.

“I remember everything,” he said.

After a moment’s pause Constance, still with a heightened colour, continued:

“I have seen Mr. Crane several times this winter—not only in my own house, but in others. Whenever I am with him I am consumed with pity for him.”

“He does not need your pity now,” said Thorndyke, grimly. “It is more needed by his senior Senator, who is the fly-wheel of the political machine in his State. The old gentleman, I know, is at this minute walking the floor in his committee-room and gnashing his teeth over Crane’s success. The senior Senator took Crane up, sent him to Congress, and thought he had secured a really efficient understrapper. I don’t think Crane will fill that place after to-day’s triumph, and the senior Senator knows it, and has got to discover means, if possible, to garrote Crane politically before the next Congressional campaign.”

“I see,” replied Constance, who was only interested in the subject because she saw Thorndyke was. “Mr. Crane, by virtue of making your speech, has got beyond the control of his master. By the way—I am so ignorant of Congressional matters—how can I get the Congressional Record sent me every day?”

“You have already got it—by mentioning to me that you wished it. It is one of my few privileges. I am glad to do at least that much for you.”

Thorndyke heard himself saying these things without his own volition in the least. If Constance Maitland were willing at this moment to give up a fortune for poverty with him, would he accept the sacrifice? Never. How could a woman of her mature age, nurtured in luxury, descend to poverty—for poverty is the lot of every member of Congress who wishes to live in something more than mere decency on his salary. And yet Thorndyke, at every opportunity, had assured Constance Maitland of his unforgetting, of his tender, recollections—in short, of his love. Nor had she showed any unwillingness to listen. It is not a woman’s first love for which she wrecks her life; it is her last love—that final struggle for supremacy. There can be no more after that. Sappho, on the great white rock of Mitylene, knew this and perished.

Some thoughts like this came into Constance Maitland’s mind, and, driving away her colour, restored to her the lately vanished years. Silence fell between them for a while, until Constance roused herself, and, affecting cheerfulness, said:

“I shall study the Congressional Record with interest. Everything in one’s own country is of interest after a long and painful exile.”

“You should read Lord Bolingbroke’s defence of exile,” replied Thomdyke, moving a little nearer to her, and resting his elbow on the back of the bench so that he could look into her pensive, changing face.

“And yet, I daresay, Lord Bolingbroke pined in his exile. Nobody believed him when he said he did not mind. Mine, however, was complete. My uncle, von Hesselt, who was an honourable man in his way, thought he was carrying out my aunt’s wishes by keeping me wholly away from all Americans and wholly with foreigners.”

“But you could have left him after you were of age.”

“Ah, you do not know! He was the most terrible sufferer you can imagine, for fifteen years. And what was worse, he was surrounded by people, his own relatives, who, I truly believe, would have shortened his life if they could. He knew this, and feared it even more than was reasonable. Once, my longing for my country grew such that it overcame me, and I told my uncle I must, I must come to America. He pleaded with me—imagine an old man, whose life was one long stretch of pain and fear, pleading with you until he fell prone in a paroxysm of despair! I, too, was in despair, and I promised him I would remain with him during his life.—I hardly knew what I was saying—I was not twenty-one at the time—but I knew well enough after it was said. I kept my word, and I nursed him through his last illness and closed his eyes in death. Then, as soon as all was over, I sailed for America. I feel now as if I never wished to see Europe again.”

“And did Baron von Hesselt realise the enormous sacrifice you made for him?”

“Yes—that is, partly.”

“Your aunt certainly was most unjust to you,” said Thorndyke, coolly. “I mean, that provision robbing you of all your fortune in case you marry an American.”

“Yes, very unjust,” replied Constance, with equal coolness, although the flush returned to her cheeks.

“And I—I was to blame for that,” cried Thorndyke, venturing farther upon ticklish ground.

“Not altogether,” replied Constance, maintaining the steadiness of her voice. “My aunt hated our country; she could not forget the Civil War; and she meant—poor soul, I forgive her now—that I should never return to America permanently. It was a strange thing to do, but I must admit my aunt to have been in some respects both a strange and a foolish woman. Let us not speak of her again. I am back, and if I feel as I do now I shall never live in Europe again. It is time for me to prepare to grow old.”

She said this with a wan little smile, and all at once thought with terror of her age; there was but four or five years’ difference between Thorndyke and herself, and that difference, at a certain point, becomes transferred to the gentleman’s side of the ledger. Suddenly the spring afternoon seemed to become melancholy and overcast. A sharp wind sprang up from the near-by river; the world turned from gold to gray. At the same moment Thorndyke and Constance rose and walked away from the spot that had been only a little while ago so sweet and sunny.

“Why is it,” asked Constance, as they followed the pathway leading out of the park, “a spring morning is the merriest thing in life, and a spring evening the saddest?”

“Why should anything be sad to you, spring evenings or any other times?” asked Thorndyke, quietly and with perfect sincerity.

“Why should any one be sad at all? Because we are human, I suppose,” was Constance’s answer to this.

As they came out upon the streets, which were less deserted than usual, Thorndyke looked toward the south wing of the Capitol. The flag was fluttering down from its flag-staff.

“The House has adjourned,” he said, “and some history has been made to-day—likewise a great reputation for our friend Crane.”

The brougham was driving up and down, and the coachman, perceiving the graceful black figure on the sidewalk, drove toward them. Thorndyke noted, with disgust, the elegance of the turnout—the two perfectly matched cobs, the silver-mounted harness of Spanish leather, the miniature brougham with “C. M.” in cipher on the panels—the whole must have cost about half his yearly income. This, together with Crane’s remarkable triumph, made him surly, and he said, stiffly, as he assisted Constance into the brougham:

“You gave me permission to call to-day.”

“Yes, but I withdraw it. It is now nearly three o’clock. I have not had my luncheon, I am tired, and I must rest this afternoon, and I go out to dinner. To-morrow at five.”

Her tone and manner discounted her words. It was as if she were saying: “I must save something for to-morrow—I will not be a spendthrift of my joys.” Thorndyke, finding nothing to discompose him in her words, replied, in a very good humour:

“It is always to-morrow—but to-morrow is better than not at all. Good-bye.”

The brougham rolled off, and Thorndyke stepped aboard a street-car bound for the West End.

At the Capitol plaza a great crowd got on, among them the two gentlemen whom Thorndyke affectionately described as his boss and Crane’s boss. The two men stood together on the platform outside. Both of them revealed in their faces their mastery of men and affairs, for your true boss is necessarily a very considerable man. Senator Standiford, Thorndyke’s boss, had an iron jaw, which was emphasised by a low brow, but his face was not without a touch of ideality. Senator Bicknell, Crane’s boss, had likewise a determined face, but his forehead and eyes betrayed the human weakness which made him like clever men as his instruments. Both men were millionaires. Senator Standiford lived in three rooms at a hotel, rode in street-cars, and gave liberally of his money to campaign funds, charities, and his poor relations, but was never known to part with an atom of his power if he could help it. Senator Bicknell fared sumptuously every day, had a splendid house and gorgeous carriages, only rode in the street-cars for a lark, and was reported to be a skinflint in money matters, and somewhat foolishly lavish in giving away his power. The two men exchanged some words which Thorndyke, wedged inside as he was, could not but hear. Senator Standiford was saying to his colleague:

“S. M. & L. stock must be going down when you ride in a street-car.”

“I lost one of my coach-horses last night,” replied Senator Bicknell, “and can’t use my carriage to-day.”

“Misfortunes never come singly,” said Senator Standiford, enigmatically, then adding, “I suppose it’s in order to congratulate you on the success of your protégé, Crane, to-day?”

Thorndyke could scarcely keep from laughing at the look of chagrin which came over Senator Bicknell’s countenance at this.

“Y-yes,” he answered, dubiously.

“Don’t get in a panic,” kept on Senator Standiford, with rude good humour; “I know how it is with those fellows. Crane thinks from this day forth that you are a back number, an old fogy, and a dead cock in the pit. He will go into what he considers a grooming process for the next four years—oh, I know those fellows! He will kick up a lot of dust in the gubernatorial convention, will make a great display of not wanting the nomination, and will bide his time until your term expires. Then he will find it is a grueling and not a grooming he has had, and he will get a small bunch of votes, but I don’t think you need take the fellow seriously just now.”

At this last sentence Senator Bicknell’s face shone like the sun. It shone the more when Senator Standiford kept on:

“There’s no reason to fear a man who makes a good speech——”

“I am in no fear of any one,” gravely replied Senator Bicknell, who thought it essential to his dignity to say so much.

“It’s the strong debater who is likely to become formidable. There’s Thorndyke now—Crane has made the speech—largely Thorndyke’s—but he is totally unequal to the running fire of debate. Thorndyke could do him up inside of ten minutes. Luckily for him, the debate will not be fierce, and Thorndyke will really conduct it.”

“Mr. Thorndyke is a very able man,” said Senator Bicknell, as if thinking aloud.

“Yes, but totally without ambition,” replied Senator Standiford, gravely, and Thorndyke, within the car, laughed silently.

It was, however, no laughing matter, but Thorndyke, having chosen his rôle for better or for worse, could only cleave to it, forsaking all others. However, he would see Constance Maitland the next day at five o’clock. There was balm in Gilead, or hasheesh in the pipe, he knew not exactly which.

Chapter Four
GOVERNMENT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED

Life is a battle and a march—especially public life. Thorndyke waked the next morning prepared for both a battle and a march. A glance at the morning newspapers showed that the country was entirely with the Congress, and the people, having given their orders, would see to it that these orders were promptly obeyed. The Continental press of Europe with few exceptions barked furiously. The French newspapers alone retained dignity and good sense, pointing out the inevitable trend of events, and advised that, instead of abusing the United States, they should be copied in that system which had made them great, not by war, but by peace. The English newspapers were fair, but in some of them bitterness was expressed at England being shouldered out of her place as the greatest of the world-powers by the young giant of the West. There was in all of them, however, a note of triumph, that this first place had been lost only to an offshoot of the sturdy parent stock. This sentiment is often ridiculed as a peculiarly absurd form of national self-love, but there is, in reality, nothing ridiculous about it. As long as self-love is a part of nations and individuals, so long will each nation and each individual strive to share in the general stock of glory, achievement, and success.

In the American newspapers the man most prominent was Crane. He was compared to Henry Clay, to Stephen A. Douglas, to any and every American public man who had early in life made a meteoric rise in Congress. He was represented as the embodiment of youth with the wisdom of age. One newspaper reckoned him to be a political Chatterton, and called him “the Wondrous Boy.” His beauty was lauded, his voice, his delivery, the fit of his trousers; and one enthusiastic journal in Indianapolis promptly nominated him for the Presidency. Thorndyke searched the newspapers carefully, and did not find his own name once mentioned. He reflected upon Horace Greely’s remark that fame is a vapour.

Disappointing as it was to him to feel that another had reaped his harvest, it did not give him acute pain; for he had waked that morning with the agreeable consciousness which comes occasionally to every human being, that the world is more interesting to-day than it was yesterday; that consciousness which illuminates the cold, gray stage of life, and indicates that the lights are about to be turned up and the play to begin. The kind tones of Constance Maitland’s voice were still in Thorndyke’s ears, and the unmistakable look of interest in her soft eyes had visited him in dreams. He was no nearer marrying her than he had been at any time during the past eighteen years; the same obstacle was there—a very large, real, terrifying, and obvious obstacle—but there was also a sweet and comforting suspicion in his mind that Constance, as well as himself, had cherished the idyl of their youth. And then, by daylight, she did not look so preposterously girlish as she had looked by moonlight and in ball-dress. This gave Thorndyke considerable pleasure as he brushed the remnants of his hair into positions where they would do the most good. Her apparent advantage of him in the matter of youth and good looks had been disturbing to him at first. She still had much of youth and great good looks, but yet, a man with scanty hair and a grayish moustache would not look like an old fool beside her, as he had feared.

Thorndyke, according to his custom, walked to the Capitol. The morning, like most spring mornings in Washington, was as beautiful as the first morning in the garden of Eden. He chose unfrequented streets, and, passing under the long green arcades, had only the trees for his companionship on his walk.

Instead of reaching the building by way of the plaza, Thorndyke chose rather to ascend the long flights of steps leading upward from terrace to terrace on the west front. It is a way little used, but singularly beautiful, with its marble balustrades, its lush greenness of shrubbery, and the noble view both of the building and the fair white city embosomed in trees, spread out like a dream-city before the eye. Half-way up Thorndyke saw Senator Standiford sitting on one of the iron benches placed on the falls of the terrace. Thorndyke was surprised to see him there, and it occurred to him at once that it was a premeditated meeting on the Senator’s part.

He was a tall, ugly old man with chin-whiskers, but his appearance was redeemed by the power which spoke from his strongly marked face, and by his punctilious, old-fashioned dress and extreme neatness. He wore a silk hat made from a block he had used for thirty years. His coat, gray and wide-skirted, seemed of the same vintage, and his spotless collar of antique pattern, and his large black silk necktie might have been worn by Daniel Webster himself. A big pair of gold spectacles and a gold-headed cane completed a costume which was admirably harmonious, and produced the effect of an old lady in 1903 with the side curls and cap of 1853.

The Senator had a newspaper spread out before him, but as Thorndyke approached folded it up, pushed his gold spectacles up on his forehead, and called out:

“Hello! Have you read about the ‘Wondrous Boy’ this morning?”

“I have,” replied Thorndyke, smiling pleasantly as he lifted his hat, and in response to a silent invitation he seated himself on the bench by Standiford’s side.

“Great speech, that,” continued the Senator. “At first I was disposed to give you the credit for all of it—but there’s something in that fellow Crane. You couldn’t have coached him so well if he hadn’t been capable of learning.”

“You do me too much honour,” replied Thorndyke, laughing, but with something like bitterness.

Senator Standiford continued with a dry contortion of the lips which was meant for a smile:

“But you’ll see, my son, that your friend Crane won’t grow quite so fast as he thinks he will. In our times public men require the seasoning of experience before they amount to anything. There’ll be no more Henry Clays elected to the House of Representatives before they are thirty. The world was young, then, but we have matured rapidly. It is true that we have relaxed the rule of the Senate a little, and allow the new senators to speak in the Senate Chamber at a much earlier period in their senatorial service than formerly. But speech-making is a dangerous pastime. Much of the small success I have achieved”—here Senator Standiford’s face assumed a peculiar expression of solemnity which made him look like a deacon handing around the church plate—“I lay to the fact that I never could make a speech in my life, and I found it out at an early stage in my career. I’m a Presbyterian, as you know, but in my town I’m classed as a heretic and an iconoclast, because when they want to call a new preacher and to have him preach a specimen sermon I always tell the elders, ‘Why do you want to judge the fellow by the way he talks? It’s the poorest test in the world to apply to a man. Find out what he can do.’ But they won’t listen to me, of course, and the Fourth Presbyterian Church is perennially filled by a human wind-bag, who snorts and puffs and blows dust about until the congregation get tired of him and try another wind-bag. In Congress wind-bags don’t last.”

“All the same, I wish from the bottom of my heart that I had had Crane’s chance yesterday and had used it as well,” replied Thorndyke.

“If you had you would have given our junior Senator a bad quarter of an hour,” replied Senator Standiford, gravely.

Now, in common with all true Senatorial bosses, Standiford had seen to it that his junior Senator was a man of straw, put in the place in order that the boss might have two votes in the Senate. Never had the junior Senator yet voted or acted in opposition to his master; but had Thorndyke been the junior it would have been another story, and both men knew it. This caused Thorndyke to remark, coolly:

“He would have no reason to disturb himself—the ass! You have been kind enough to give me to understand that I am ineligible for promotion, not being made of putty, as our junior Senator is.”

“Now, now!” remonstrated Senator Standiford, again assuming his air of a seventeenth-century Puritan. “To hear you anybody would think that our State organisation didn’t want every first-class man it can get! We have the highest regard for your services, and we do what we can to keep you in your present place because we see your usefulness there.”

Senator Standiford punctiliously used the euphemism “we” just as he gravely consulted all the pothouse politicians and heelers in “the organisation,” but it did not materially affect the fact that he was the whole proposition in his own State.

Thorndyke looked full into the deep, calm eyes of the rugged old man before him, and could not forbear laughing; but there was not the glimmer of a twinkle in them. Presently the old man said, coolly:

“Suppose I should tell you that I may retire at the end of my term, two years from now?”

“I should wish to believe anything you say, my dear Senator, but I am afraid I couldn’t believe that.”

“What a fellow you are! But let me tell you—mind, this is a confidence between gentlemen—my retirement is not impossible. You know my daughter, my little Letty——”

As Senator Standiford spoke the name his face softened, and a passion of parental love shone in his deep-set eyes.

“She is a very remarkable girl, Mr. Thorndyke, very remarkable; and she loves her old father better than he deserves. I have as good sons as any man ever had—but that daughter left me by my dead wife is worth to me everything else on God’s earth. The doctors have been frightening her about me lately. They tell her I work too hard for my time of life—that I ought to take a rest, and if I will do it I can add ten years to my life. Now, you know, the State organisation will never let me take a rest”—Senator Standiford said this quite seriously—“and Letty as good as told me six months ago that if I should be re-elected to the Senate”—the Senator uttered this “if” in a tone of the most modest deprecation—“if I should be re-elected for another term—as she wishes me to be—then she wants me to resign. I don’t mind admitting that if any other human being had said this to me except my daughter Letty, I should have reckoned myself drunk or crazy to have listened to it. But my daughter, as I mentioned to you, is a remarkable girl. Besides, the child is not strong herself, and if she gets to worrying about me—well, you can see, Mr. Thorndyke, how it is with me. The world credits me with loving place and power above everything on earth, but there is something dearer to me than the office of President of the United States: it is my daughter. And the sweetness and the tenderness of that child for her old father——”

Here Senator Standiford took out a large red silk handkerchief and blew a blast like the blast of Roncesvalles.

Being an accomplished judge of men, Senator Standiford, while speaking, had watched Thorndyke closely. Had he shown any undue elation over the political prospects indicated by Senator Standiford’s possible retirement, Thorndyke’s fortunes would have been ruined. But by the lucky accident of having a good heart he said the most judicious thing possible.

“I don’t see any indications of overwork in you, Senator. At the same time I know you do the work of ten men, and I also know the exercise of power is so dear to you that, from the pound-master in your own town up to the candidate for President, you give everything your personal supervision. But as for Miss Standiford’s not being strong—why, I took her in to dinner less than a month ago, and remarked on her freshness and beauty. She looked the picture of health and ate more dinner than I did.”

“Did she?” asked the Senator, anxiously. “What did she eat?”

Thorndyke did not feel in the least like laughing at Senator Standiford’s inquiry, and answered, promptly:

“Oh, everything. I remember chaffing her about her good appetite.”

“Thank God! The doctors say if she can only eat and live out in the fresh air and play golf and ride horseback she will be all right. But, Thorndyke, I swear to you, I am as soft as milk about that girl. If she goes out to golf I am unhappy for fear she will take cold. If she rides I am in terror for fear some accident will happen to her. Ah, Thorndyke, a man is no fit guardian for a girl like that—the sweetest—the most affectionate——”

Here Senator Standiford again blew his nose violently.

“She has always been very sweet to me,” answered Thorndyke, “although I believe she thinks me old enough to be her grandfather.”

“She is a very remarkable girl, sir; that I say without the least partiality,” replied Senator Standiford, earnestly. “She’s a little wild, having no mother, poor child—but her heart, sir, is in the right place. And the way she loves her old father is the most splendid, touching, exquisite thing ever imagined!”

Thorndyke listened attentively, deeply interested in the human side of a man who had seemed to him to have a very small amount of the purely human in him. The little story of Letty Standiford’s health and heart and nature did not strike him as puerile—there was nothing puerile about Silas Standiford, and his love for this child of his old age was, in truth, a Titanic passion, strong enough, as he said, to make him forego the chief object of his existence: power over other men. Thorndyke really liked and pitied Letty Standiford, living her young life without guidance, in a manner possible only in America and not desirable anywhere for a young girl. He had not suspected the delicacy of her constitution, and after Senator Standiford ceased speaking said:

“I wish, Senator, you could persuade Miss Standiford to be a little more prudent about her health. The night I dined out with her, when it came time to go home she was about to pick up her skirts and run two blocks to your hotel, in her satin slippers, with sleet coming down, and the streets like glass—this, for a lark. I took her by the arm and shoved her in a cab, got in myself, and took her home. I thought she would box my ears before I got there, but I carried my point.”

“She told me about it—she tells me everything; and I thank you for taking care of the child. You may imagine what I suffer on her account.”

Senator Standiford rose then, and, resting both hands on his old-fashioned gold-headed stick, he looked full into Thorndyke’s face, and said, slowly:

“I hope we understand each other, Mr. Thorndyke. We think you a very strong man, and strong men are liable to become dangerous. The State organisation wishes you to remain where you are. But in the event that I should be re-elected and should be forced to resign, I have no hesitation in saying that unless something unforeseen happens you would certainly have my personal good wishes toward getting you the party nomination for Senator.”

“I understand you perfectly, Senator,” replied Thorndyke, with equal coolness, “and though I admit I think it a shameful state of affairs that any organisation or any man should have the power to dispose of any man’s political future, yet it is a fixed fact in our State and can’t be helped for the present. So far as your personal kindness to me goes I have the deepest sense of it, and the chances are, on the strength of what you have just said, that I may one day be senator.”

“And when you are you won’t be as much down on the State organisation as you are now,” remarked Senator Standiford, beginning to climb the marble steps. “You will probably be called a boss yourself.”

“No, I shall not,” answered Thorndyke. “I shouldn’t have the heart to put men through the mill as I have seen you and Senator Bicknell and a few others do.”

Senator Standiford professed to regard this as a pleasantry, and so they entered the Capitol together.

The day was the regular one for the meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and there was a full attendance, every member being prompt except the chairman. Ten minutes after the hour struck, Crane entered. It was almost impossible for a man to have had the personal triumph he had enjoyed the day before, without showing some consciousness of it. Thorndyke had expected to see Crane crowing like chanticleer. Instead, he was remarkably quiet and subdued. He was greeted with the chaff which senators and representatives indulge in after the manner of collegians. Several members addressed him as the “Wondrous Boy,” and others, displaying copies of the Indianapolis editorial, presented their claims to him for cabinet places and embassies. One member—the Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins, a colleague of Crane’s, who posed as a greenhorn and was really a wit—solemnly engaged Thorndyke to write him a speech to deliver at the first seasonable opportunity, but warned him not to make it too much like the speech of the “Wondrous Boy.” Thorndyke laughed. He had taken no part in the joking and chaffing. Crane’s face flushed. He did not like to be reminded of Thorndyke’s share in his success, but he was too considerable a man to deny it.

The meeting was brief and devoted to routine matters. The debate would begin directly after the morning hour, and it was supposed it would go along smoothly. There was, it is true, an able and malevolent person from Massachusetts who would be likely to stick a knife between the joints of Crane’s armour, and two or three Southern members who would be certain to discover an infringement of the Constitution of the United States in something or other—but these were only the expected rough spots in an otherwise smooth road.

At two o’clock the debate began. Again were the galleries packed, though not to the same degree as on the day before. When Crane rose to defend the report he was loudly applauded. He was interrupted once or twice by the able and malevolent representative from Massachusetts, who never disappointed expectations in that particular. And there were some sly allusions to the Indianapolis newspaper and the “Wondrous Boy.” This bothered Crane obviously, who had a reasonable and wholesome fear of ridicule. He had his share of a certain crude humour—God never makes an American without putting humour of some sort into him—but Crane’s was not the rapid-fire, give-and-take humour which counts in debate. He was always afraid of committing some breach of taste and decorum when he wished to raise a laugh. He remembered certain men whose remarks had caused a tempest of mirth in the House, but those same remarks seen in cold type next day had seriously damaged their authors. It was here that Thorndyke came to Crane’s rescue. While he sat glowering and fuming and hesitating, Thorndyke stood in the breach with a good story, full of wit and pith. The House immediately went into convulsions of laughter. The able and malevolent member from Massachusetts in vain tried to bring the gentlemen back to a state of seriousness and disgust with affairs generally. But the turn injected by Thorndyke into the discussion put everybody into a good humour, the debate went swimmingly, as it was foreseen, and when the adjournment came it was plain that the report would be adopted substantially as it came from the committee.

Thorndyke watched the big clock over the main doorway, and precisely at four left the chamber, and likewise left Crane to his fate, which, however, proved to be easy enough. Thorndyke had other business on hand then.

Chapter Five
A RAPTUROUS HOUR WHICH WAS RUDELY INTERRUPTED

When Thorndyke got out of doors the bright morning had changed into a cold, determined downpour of rain. The gray mists hung over the city at the foot of the hill, and the summit of the monument was obscured by sullen driving clouds. Thorndyke’s spirits rose as he surveyed the gloomy prospect. It was not much of an afternoon for visiting—he should find Constance alone.

He went to his rooms, dressed, and before five was at Constance Maitland’s door. The afternoon had grown worse. A sad northeast wind had been added to the rain; the lilac-bushes in the little lawn at the side of the house drooped forlornly, and the dejected syringas looked like young ladies caught out in the rain in their ball-gowns.

The rain, the cold, and the wind outside was the best possible foil for the fire-lighted and flower-scented drawing-room, into which the young negro butler ushered Thorndyke. The walls were of the delicate pale green of the sea, the rug on the polished floor was of the green of the moss. A wood fire danced and sang in a white-tiled fireplace, and laughed at its reflection in the quaint mirrors about the room, and glowed upon family portraits and miniatures on the walls. There were many old-fashioned chairs and tables, and a deep, deep sofa drawn up to the fire. By its side was a tea-table gleaming with antique silver.

Like most men, Thorndyke was highly susceptible to the environment of women without being in the least able to analyse the feeling. It takes a woman to dissect an emotion thoroughly. He became at once conscious that this quaint, pretty, sparkling drawing-room was a home, and that what was in it had no connection whatever with shops for antiques and art-sale catalogues. He had often noticed with dislike the spurious antiquity of many modern drawing-rooms, which are really museums, and represent the desire of the new for the old. But Constance Maitland had inherited the furnishings which made her drawing-room beautiful and distinctive, and in process of use, especially by one family, chairs and tables and tea-kettles acquire a semi-humanity which creates that subtle and enduring thing called atmosphere. The portraits on the walls gave an inhabited look to the room—it was never without company.

While Thorndyke was considering the curious fact that all the mere money in the world could not create a drawing-room like Constance Maitland’s, she herself entered the room with her slow, graceful step. She wore a gown of a delicate gray colour, which trailed upon the floor, and at her breast was a knot of pale yellow cowslips. A bowl of the same old-fashioned flowers was on the tea-table.

Thorndyke had never been able to contemplate without agitation a meeting with Constance Maitland. But, as on the two previous occasions, so soon as he came face to face with her, nothing seemed easier, sweeter, more natural than that they should meet. He placed a chair for her, and they exchanged smilingly the commonplaces of meeting and greeting. At once Thorndyke felt that delicious sense of comfort, security, and well-being which some women can impart so exquisitely in their own homes. The quiet, fire-lighted room seemed a paradise of peace and rest, which was accentuated by the northeast storm without. The surety that he would have the room, the fire, the sweet company of Constance Maitland to himself made Thorndyke feel almost as if he had a place there. And Constance, by not taking too much notice of him, increased the dear illusion. She got into a spirited discussion with the negro butler, who rejoiced in the good old-time name of Scipio, to which Constance had added Africanus. Scipio had his notions of how tea should be made, which were at variance with his mistress’s. After the manner of his race, he proceeded to argue the point. Constance entered with spirit into the controversy, and only settled it by informing Scipio that where tea was concerned he was, and always would be, an idiot, at which Scipio grinned in a superior manner. Thorndyke thought Scipio in the right, and said so, as he drank a very good cup of tea brewed by Constance.

“But I can never let Scipio believe for a moment that I am in the wrong about anything,” replied Constance, with pensive determination. “You dear, good Northern people never can be made to understand that with a negro everything depends on the personal equation. He is not, and never can be made, a human machine. He is a personality, and his usefulness depends entirely on the recognition of that personality.”

“The commonly accepted idea of a servant is a human machine,” said Thorndyke, willing to champion Scipio’s cause for the purpose of having Constance Maitland’s soft eyes glow and sweet voice quicken in discussion. In the old days at Como they had many hot wrangles over the North and the South.

“Ah, if you had been served by human machines for eighteen years, as I was, you would understand how I longed to see an honest, laughing black face once more. My negro servants do much toward making this house a home for me. You would laugh at the way we get on together. When I am in an ill humour they must bear the brunt of it. I am a terrible scold when I am cross. But when the servants are lazy and neglectful, then I bear with them like an angel, and so we hit it off comfortably together. Even Scipio Africanus, who is altogether idle and irresponsible, becomes a hero when I am ill and a gentleman when I am angry.”

“Another cup of tea, please.”

“Already? You will become a tea-drinker like Doctor Johnson. However, my tea is so good that you are excused.”

The conversation went on fitfully, but to Thorndyke delightfully. Like all women who truly know the world, Constance had a charming and real simplicity about her. She made no effort to entertain him. She talked to him and he replied or was silent according to his mood. Every moment increased Thorndyke’s sense of exquisite comfort and quiet enjoyment. He had reached the inevitable stage of life when amusements are no longer warranted to amuse; when only a few things remained, such as certain books and certain conversations, which were a surety of pleasure. Nor had it been much in his way to enjoy those simple pleasures which are found only in quiet and seclusion. It was as much a feeling of gratitude as of enjoyment which made him say to Constance:

“I did not think there remained for me such an hour of rest and refreshment as you have given me.”

Constance turned toward him, her eyes pensive but not sad. There was something soothing in her very presence. She had known and suffered much, and had led a life far from quiet, and now, in her maturity, she had reached, it seemed to her, a haven of peace and quiet. She had acquired a knowledge worth almost as much as youth itself—the knowledge that never again could she suffer as she had once suffered. And the meeting with Thorndyke had confirmed her in a belief which had been her chief solace under the sorrows of her life of exile and disappointment. She knew he loved her well. For some years of her youth she had been haunted by the thought, cruel to her pride, that Thorndyke, after all, had been only playing at love. But as time went on, and she knew herself and others better, she had become convinced that Thorndyke had truly loved her, and his leaving her was only what any other man of honour, burdened with poverty, would have done. And he had remembered and suffered, too. As this thought came into her mind Thorndyke made some little remark that referred vaguely to their past, something about a song from one of the Italian operas, those simple love-stories told in lyrics which she had often sung in the old days. A blush swept over Constance’s cheek, and after a little pause of silence and hesitation she went to the piano and sang the quaint old song. She had a pleasing, although not a brilliant, voice, and her singing was full of sweetness and feeling, the only kind of singing which the normal man really understands.

When she returned to her chair Thorndyke leaned toward her with eyes which told her he loved her, although he did not utter a word. Constance, in turn, resting her rounded chin on her hand, leaned toward him with a heavenly smile upon her face—the smile a woman only bestows on the man she loves. Even if he could never speak his love she was conscious of it, and that was enough for her woman’s heart. Under the spell of her eyes and smile Thorndyke felt himself losing his head—how could he refrain from touching the soft white hand which hung so temptingly near him!

“Mr. Crane,” announced Scipio Africanus, and Julian Crane walked in.

Every man receives a shock when he finds he has interrupted a tête-à-tête, and Crane’s shock was augmented by finding that Thorndyke was the victim in the present case. Thorndyke had not said a word about going to see Miss Maitland, and Crane had meant to do a magnanimous thing by taking him there! And while outside the door he had heard Constance singing to the piano. She had never mentioned to him that she had such an accomplishment.

Thorndyke behaved as men usually do under the circumstances. He spoke to Crane curtly, assumed an injured air, and took his leave promptly, as much as to say:

“It is impossible for me to stand this man a moment.”

Constance, womanlike, showed perfect composure and politeness, bade Thorndyke good-bye with a smile, and then, by an effort, brought herself to the contemplation of Julian Crane. She saw then that he was very pale, and the hand which he rested on the back of a chair was trembling. The first idea which occurred to her was that Crane had heard bad news; but she could not understand why he should come to her under the circumstances. Perhaps it was only nervousness, the relaxation after great tension. With this in mind, she said pleasantly, as they seated themselves:

“So you waked this morning and found yourself famous.”

“My speech appears to have been well received by the country,” replied Crane, in a strained voice, after a pause.

“It is a pity Mrs. Crane was not present to enjoy your triumph,” she said.

“Mrs. Crane does not care for politics,” replied Crane, still in a strange voice.

“I cannot say that I am especially interested in politics,” replied Constance, “but I am interested in contemporary history of all sorts.”

“And interested in your friends, Miss Maitland, when they are in public life.”

“Extremely. I was at the House yesterday to hear you speak, and read your speech over again this morning in the Congressional Record.”

“Which, no doubt, you received through Thorndyke,” Crane answered, pointedly, after a moment.

Constance felt an inclination, as she often did, to get up and leave the room when Crane was talking with her. He had no reserves or restraints, and said just what was in his mind—a dangerous and alarming practice. She controlled herself, however, and looked closer at Crane. He was evidently deeply agitated, and Constance forbore the rebuke that she was ready to speak. Like a true woman, to feel sorry for a man was to forgive him everything. Suddenly Crane burst out:

“Have you heard the news? Senator Brand—our junior Senator—was run over by a train at Baltimore this morning, and died within an hour.”

There is a way of announcing a death which shows that the speaker is contemplating the dead man’s shoes with particular interest. Without fully taking in what it meant to Crane and what he wished to convey, Constance at once saw that in Senator Brand’s death lay some possible great good for Crane. She remained silent a minute or two, her mind involuntarily reconstructing the horror and pity of the dead man’s taking off.

Crane rose and walked up and down the room, his face working.

“I have committed a great, a stupendous folly,” he said. “At the very outset of my real career I may have ruined it. I couldn’t describe to you what I have suffered this day—yet no one has suspected it. I felt the necessity for sympathy, the necessity to tell my story to some one, and I came to you. I know I have no right to do it—but it seems to me, Constance, that ever since the day I first saw you, you have had some strange power of sustaining and comforting me.”

As Crane spoke her name, Constance involuntarily rose and assumed an air of offended dignity. But Crane’s distress was so real, his offence so unconscious, that her indignation could not hold against him.

Without noticing her offended silence he came and sat down heavily in the chair that Thorndyke had just vacated.

“You know,” he said, “in cases like this of Senator Brand’s death, the Governor appoints a senator until the Legislature meets and can elect, which will not be until the first of next January. Just as I had heard the news about poor Brand at my hotel I ran into Sanders, our Governor. I didn’t know he was in Washington. Sanders is a brute—always thinking of himself first. He button-holed me, took me into his bedroom, locked the door, and closed the transom. There were three other men present—all of whom I would not wish to offend. One of them has indorsed two unpaid notes for me. Sanders told me he had been looking for me, and with these other fellows—practical politicians every one of them—had already formulated a plan of campaign. The Governor would appoint me to fill the vacancy until the Legislature met in January and elected a senator for the short term, provided I would give him a clear track then. In further recompense, he agreed to support me for the long term—the election is only two years off. Sanders has had the senatorial bee in his bonnet for a long time, but the State organisation is not over-kindly to him, and Senator Bicknell is a little bit afraid of him, and naturally wouldn’t encourage his aspirations. And do you know, after an hour’s talk I allowed Sanders and those three fellows to wheedle me into that arrangement—and, of course, I can’t, in two years, supplant Senator Bicknell. Sanders is a long-headed rascal, and he knew very well that I was under money obligations to those men, and among them, aided and abetted by my own folly, I was buncoed—yes, regularly buncoed.”

The rage and shame that possessed him seemed to overpower Crane for a moment, and he covered his face with his hands. Then he dashed them down and continued:

“Of course I could have made a good showing in the race in January, and after my success of yesterday I believe I could have won. Senator Bicknell is not by any means the czar in the State which he would wish people to believe. But because Sanders dangled before my eyes the bauble of the appointment to the Senate—a present mess of pottage—and because I owed money I could not pay, I gave up the finest prospect of success any man of my age has had for forty years!”

Crane struck the arm of his chair with his clinched fist. His furious and sombre eyes showed the agony of his disappointment.

“As soon as it was done I knew my folly, and since then I have been almost like a madman. I went to my room to recover myself before going to the Capitol, and managed not to betray myself while I was there. But I couldn’t stand the strain until adjournment; I had to come to you.”

Constance sat looking at him; pity, annoyance, and a kind of disgust struggled within her. This, then, was politics. Accomplished woman of the world that she was, this natural and untutored man thoroughly disconcerted her. If only she had not felt such pity for him! And while she was contemplating the spectacle of these elemental passions of hatred, disappointment, revenge, and self-seeking, Crane’s eyes, fixed on her, lost some of their fury, and became more melancholy than angry, and he continued, as if thinking aloud:

“Suddenly I felt the desire to see you. You would know how insane was my folly, but you would not despise me for it. That’s the greatest power in the world a woman has over a man: when he can show her all his heart, and she will pity him without scorn or contempt. Ah, if Fate had given me a wife like you, I could have reached the heights of greatness!”

At those words Constance Maitland moved a little closer to him so that she could bring him under the full effect of her large, clear gaze.

“I think,” she said, in a cool, soft voice, with a rebuke in it, but without contempt, “that you are forgetting yourself strangely. I have often noticed in you a want of reticence. You should begin now to cultivate reticence. What you have just said has in it something insulting to me as well as to your wife—a person you seem to have forgotten. As for the political arrangement which you regret so much, I can only say that it seems to me to have been cold-blooded and unfeeling on both sides to a remarkable degree. You have spoken plainly; I speak plainly.”

Constance leaned back quietly in her chair to watch the effect of what she had said. She felt then a hundred years older than Crane, who was older than she, and who knew both law and politics well, but was a child in the science of knowing the world and the people in it—a science in which Constance Maitland excelled. But even her rebuke had a fascination for him. No other woman had ever rebuked him—his wife least of all.

“Do you complain of me,” he said, “for telling you my weaknesses, my misfortunes? Don’t you see that what you have just told me is proof of all I have said? You see my faults, you tell me of them, you inspire me with a desire to correct them. No other woman ever did so much for me. Is it forbidden to any one to utter a regret?”

“Very often it is forbidden,” replied Constance, promptly. “Unavailing regrets are among the most undignified things on earth. Is it possible that you have lived past your fortieth birthday without getting rid of that school-boy idea that our environment makes us—that a man is made by his wife, or by any other human agent except himself? So long as self-love is the master passion, so long will we heed our own persuasions more than any one else’s.”

“I hardly think you understand how things are with me,” replied Crane, his eyes again growing sombre. “Yesterday was an epoch-making day with me. To-day, the first of the new epoch, I make a hideous mistake. It unmans me; it unnerves me. Not often do two such catastrophes befall a man together. I follow an impulse and come to you and you are angry with me. Bah! How narrow and conventional are women, after all! Nevertheless,” he kept on, rising to his feet and suddenly throwing aside his dejection, “no man ever yet rose to greatness without making vast mistakes and retrieving them. This moment the way of retrieving my mistake has come to me. I will go to Sanders—no, I will write and keep a certified copy of the letter—saying that I shall withdraw from my engagements with him. I will refuse to accept the appointment as Senator and will contest the election with him before the Legislature. But—but—if only the man who indorsed my notes hadn’t been in the combine!”

As suddenly as he had rallied, Crane again sank into dejection.

“You don’t know what it is to want money desperately—desperately, I say,” he added.

“N-no,” replied Constance, slowly. “I think I know the want of everything else almost which is necessary to happiness—except only the want of money.”

“Then you have escaped hell itself, Miss Maitland. This American Government, which you think so impeccable, is the most niggardly on the face of the globe. With untold wealth, it pays the men who conduct its affairs a miserable pittance—a bare living. How can a man give his whole mind to great governmental and economic problems when nine out of ten public men owe more than they can pay? I owe more than I can pay, and I owe, besides, a host of obligations of all sorts which the borrower of money, especially if he is a public man, cannot escape.”

Constance, at this, felt more real pity and sympathy for Crane than she had yet felt. Women being in the main intensely practical, and in their own singular way more material than men, the want of money always appeals to them. And Constance had an income much greater than her wants—that is, unless she happened to want an American husband. Every other luxury was within her reach. This idea occurred to her grotesquely enough at the moment. She said, after a moment’s pause:

“It seems to me that to make your disentanglement complete, you should, if possible, pay your debt to the man that you say helped to wheedle you into the arrangement. You might easily borrow the money; it is probably not a large sum. If—if—perhaps Mr. Thorndyke—might arrange——”

Crane instantly divined the generous thought in Constance Maitland’s heart.

“No,” he said. “I know what you would do—through Thorndyke. But it is not to be thought of. With all my shortcomings, I can’t think of borrowing money from a woman. But your suggestion is admirable—the payment of the money is necessary. It is not much.”

Crane named something under a thousand dollars—and then fell silent.

“Mr. Crane,” said Constance, after a while, “what advice do you think your wife would give you as to that money?”

Crane smiled a little.

“Annette is a regular Spartan when it comes to practical matters. She would advise me to give up my rooms at the expensive hotel and go into the country near-by for the balance of the session.”

“Could any advice be more judicious?” asked Constance. “And is it any disadvantage to a public man, who is known to be a poor man, to live plainly?”

“By Heaven!” exclaimed Crane. “You are right! It would show those fellows in the Legislature next January that I have clean hands. What an admirable suggestion! And I can save at least enough to pay half what I owe on that note before the end of the session!”

“You forget,” said Constance, gently, “that the suggestion really is your wife’s. Perhaps, if you had listened to her oftener, you would have found life easier. You are, perhaps, like many another man—he marries a pretty little thing, and she remains to him a pretty little thing. Meanwhile, she may have developed a capacity for affairs far superior to his.”

Crane did not like the hint that perhaps Annette’s head for affairs was better than his, but he had heard several home-truths that afternoon.

He rose to go, and his changed aspect confirmed his words when he said earnestly to Constance:

“I came in here with shame and despair in my heart. I go away enlightened and encouraged and comforted beyond words. You will at least let me say that it is to you I owe it.”