Democracy An American Novel

by Henry Adams

First published anonymously, March 1880, and soon in various

unauthorized editions. It wasn't until the 1925 edition that Adams

was listed as author. Henry Adams remarked (ironically as usual),

"The wholesale piracy of  Democracy was the single real triumph

of my life."--it was very popular, as readers tried to guess who the

author was and who the characters really were.

Chapter I

FOR reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs.

Lightfoot Lee  decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was

in excellent health, but she said that the climate would do her

good. In New York she had troops of friends, but she suddenly

became eager to see again the very small number of those who

lived on the Potomac. It was only to her closest intimates that she

honestly acknowledged herself to be tortured by ennui. Since her

husband's death, five years before, she had lost her taste for New

York society; she had felt no interest in the price of stocks, and

very little in the men who dealt in them; she had become serious.

What was it all worth, this wilderness of men and women as

monotonous as the brown stone houses they lived in? In her

despair she had resorted to desperate measures. She had read

philosophy in the original German, and the more she read, the

more she was disheartened that so much culture should lead to

nothing--nothing.

After talking of Herbert Spencer for an entire evening with a very

literary transcendental commission-merchant, she could not see

that her time had been better employed than when in former days

she had passed it in flirting with a very agreeable young

stock-broker; indeed, there was an evident proof to the contrary,

for the flirtation might lead to something--had, in fact, led to

marriage; while the philosophy could lead to nothing, unless it

were perhaps to another evening of the same kind, because

transcendental philosophers are mostly elderly men, usually

married, and, when engaged in business, somewhat apt to be

sleepy towards evening. Nevertheless Mrs. Lee did her best to turn

her study to practical use. She plunged into philanthropy, visited

prisons, inspected hospitals, read the literature of pauperism and

crime, saturated herself with the statistics of vice, until her mind

had nearly lost sight of virtue. At last it rose in rebellion against

her, and she came to the limit of her strength. This path, too,

seemed to lead nowhere. She declared that she had lost the sense

of duty, and that, so far as concerned her, all the paupers and

criminals in New York might henceforward rise in their majesty

and manage every railway on the continent. Why should she care?

What was the city to her? She could find nothing in it that seemed

to demand salvation. What gave peculiar sanctity to numbers?

Why were a million people, who all resembled each other, any way

more interesting than one person? What aspiration could she help

to put into the mind of this great million-armed monster that

would make it worth her love or respect? Religion? A thousand

powerful churches were doing their best, and she could see no

chance for a new faith of which she was to be the inspired prophet.

Ambition? High popular ideals? Passion for whatever is lofty and

pure? The very words irritated her. Was she not herself devoured

by ambition, and was she not now eating her heart out because she

could find no one object worth a sacrifice?

Was it ambition--real ambition--or was it mere restlessness that

made Mrs. Lightfoot Lee so bitter against New York and

Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston, American life in general and

all life in particular? What did she want? Not social position, for

she herself was an eminently respectable Philadelphian by birth;

her father a famous clergyman; and her husband had been equally

irreproachable, a descendant of one branch of the Virginia Lees,

which had drifted to New York in search of fortune, and had found

it, or enough of it to keep the young man there. His widow had her

own place in society which no one disputed. Though not brighter

than her neighbours, the world persisted in classing her among

clever women; she had wealth, or at least enough of itto give her

all that money can give by way of pleasure to a sensible woman in

an American city; she had her house and her carriage; she dressed

well; her table was good, and her furniture was never allowed to

fall behind the latest standard of decorative art. She had travelled

in Europe, and after several visits, covering some years of time,

had retumed home, carrying in one hand, as it were, a green-grey

landscape, a remarkably pleasing specimen of Corot, and in the

other some bales of Persian and Syrian rugs and embroideries,

Japanese bronzes and porcelain. With this she declared Europe to

be exhausted, and she frankly avowed that she was American to

the tips of her fingers; she neither knew nor greatly cared whether

America or Europe were best to live in; she had no violent love for

either, and she had no objection to abusing both; but she meant to

get all that American life had to offer, good or bad, and to drink it

down to the dregs, fully determined that whatever there was in it

she would have, and that whatever could be made out of it she

would manufacture. "I know," said she, "that America produces

petroleum and pigs; I have seen both on the steamers; and I am

told it produces silver and gold. There is choice enough for any

woman."

Yet, as has been already said, Mrs. Lee's first experience was not a

success. She soon declared that New York might represent the

petroleum or the pigs, but the gold of life was not to be discovered

there by her eyes.

Not but that there was variety enough; a variety of people,

occupations, aims, and thoughts; but that all these, after growing to

a certain height, stopped short. They found nothing to hold them

up. She knew, more or less intimately, a dozen men whose

fortunes ranged between one million and forty millions. What did

they do with their money? What could they do with it that was

different from what other men did? After all, it is absurd to spend

more money than is enough to satisfy all one's wants; it is vulgar to

live in two houses in the same street, and to drive six horses

abreast. Yet, after setting aside a certain income sufficient for all

one's wants, what was to be done with the rest? To let it

accumulate was to own one's failure; Mrs. Lee's great grievance

was that it did accumulate, without changing or improving the

quality of its owners. To spend it in charity and public works was

doubtless praiseworthy, but was it wise? Mrs. Lee had read enough

political economy and pauper reports to be nearly convinced that

public work should be public duty, and that great benefactions do

harm as well as good.

And even supposing it spent on these objects, how could it do

more than increase and perpetuate that same kind of human nature

which was her great grievance? Her New York friends could not

meet this question except by falling back upon their native

commonplaces, which she recklessly trampled upon, averring that,

much as she admired the genius of the famous traveller, Mr.

Gulliver, she never had been able, since she became a widow, to

accept the Brobdingnagian doctrine that he who made two blades

of grass grow where only one grew before deserved better of

mankind than the whole race of politicians. She would not find

fault with the philosopher had he required that the grass should be

of an improved quality; "but," said she, "I cannot honestly pretend

that I should be pleased to see two New York men where I now see

one; the idea is too ridiculous; more than one and a half would be

fatal to me."

Then came her Boston friends, who suggested that higher

education was precisely what she wanted; she should throw herself

into a crusade for universities and art-schools. Mrs. Lee turned

upon them with a sweet smile; "Do you know," said she, "that we

have in New York already the richest university in America, and

that its only trouble has always been that it can get no scholars

even by paying for them? Do you want me to go out into the streets

and waylay boys? If the heathen refuse to be converted, can you

give me power over the stake and the sword to compel them to

come in? And suppose you can? Suppose I march all the boys in

Fifth Avenue down to the university and have them all properly

taught Greek and Latin, English literature, ethics, and German

philosophy. What then? You do it in Boston. Now tell me honestly

what comes of it. I suppose you have there a brilliant society;

numbers of poets, scholars, philosophers, statesmen, all up and

down Beacon Street. Your evenings must be sparkling. Your press

must scintillate. How is it that we New Yorkers never hear of it?

We don't go much into your society; but when we do, it doesn't

seem so very much better than our own. You are just like the rest

of us. You grow six inches high, and then you stop. Why will not

somebody grow to be a tree and cast a shadow?"

The average member of New York society, although not unused to

this contemptuous kind of treatment from his leaders, retaliated in

his blind, common-sense way. "What does the woman want?" he

said. "Is her head turned with the Tulieries and Marlborough

House? Does she think herself made for a throne? Why does she

not lecture for women's rights? Why not go on the stage? If she

cannot be contented like other people, what need is there for

abusing us just because she feels herself no taller than we are?

What does she expect to get from her sharp tongue? What does she

know, any way?"

Mrs. Lee certainly knew very little. She had read voraciously and

promiscuously one subject after another. Ruskin and Taine had

danced merrily through her mind, hand in hand with Darwin and

Stuart Mill, Gustave Droz and Algernon Swinburne. She had even

laboured over the literature of her own country. She was perhaps,

the only woman in New York who knew something of American

history. Certainly she could not have repeated the list of Presidents

in their order, but she knew that the Constitution divided the

goverument into Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary; she was

aware that the President, the Speaker, and the Chief Justice were

important personages, and instinctively she wondered whether they

might not solve her problem; whether they were the shade trees

which she saw in her dreams.

Here, then, was the explanation of her restlessness, discontent,

ambition,--call it what you will. It was the feeling of a passenger

on an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he

has been in the engine-room and talked with the engineer. She

wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to

touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to

measure with her own mind the capacity of the motive power. She

was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery

of democracy and government. She cared little where her pursuit

might lead her, for she put no extravagant value upon life, having

already, as she said, exhausted at least two lives, and being fairly

hardened to insensibility in the process. "To lose a husband and a

baby," said she, "and keep one's courage and reason, one must

become very hard or very soft. I am now pure steel. You may beat

my heart with a trip-hammer and it will beat the trip-hammer back

again."

Perhaps after exhausting the political world she might try again

elsewhere; she did not pretend to say where she might then go, or

what she should do; but at present she meant to see what

amusement there might be in politics.

Her friends asked what kind of amusement she expected to find

among the illiterate swarm of ordinary people who in Washington

represented constituencies so dreary that in comparison New York

was a New Jerusalem, and Broad Street a grove of Academe. She

replied that if Washington society were so bad as this, she should

have gained all she wanted, for it would be a pleasure to

return,--precisely the feeling she longed for. In her own mind,

however, she frowned on the idea of seeking for men. What she

wished to see, she thought, was the clash of interests, the interests

of forty millions of people and a whole continent, centering at

Washington; guided, restrained, controlled, or unrestrained and

uncontrollable, by men of ordinary mould; the tremendous forces

of government, and the machinery of society, at work. What she

wanted, was POWER.

Perhaps the force of the engine was a little confused in her mind

with that of the engineer, the power with the men who wielded it.

Perhaps the human interest of politics was after all what really

attracted her, and, however strongly she might deny it, the passion

for exercising power, for its own sake, might dazzle and mislead a

woman who had exhausted all the ordinary feminine resources.

But why speculate about her motives? The stage was before her,

the curtain was rising, the actors were ready to enter; she had only

to go quietly on among the supernumeraries and see how the play

was acted and the stage effects were produced; how the great

tragedians mouthed, and the stage-manager swore.

Chapter II

ON the first of December, Mrs. Lee took the train for Washington,

and before five o'clock that evening she was entering her newly

hired house on Lafayette Square. She shrugged her shoulders with

a mingled expression of contempt and grief at the curious

barbarism of the curtains and the wall-papers, and her next two

days were occupied with a life-and-death struggle to get the

mastery over her surroundings. In this awful contest the interior of

the doomed house suffered as though a demon were in it; not a

chair, not a mirror, not a carpet, was left untouched, and in the

midst of the worst confusion the new mistress sat, calm as the

statue of Andrew Jackson in the square under her eyes, and issued

her orders with as much decision as that hero had ever shown.

Towards the close of the second day, victory crowned her

forehead. A new era, a nobler conception of duty and existence,

had dawned upon that benighted and heathen residence. The

wealth of Syria and Persia was poured out upon the melancholy

Wilton carpets; embroidered comets and woven gold from Japan

and Teheran depended from and covered over every sad

stuff-curtain; a strange medley of sketches, paintings, fans,

embroideries, and porcelain was hung, nailed, pinned, or stuck

against the wall; finally the domestic altarpiece, the mystical Corot

landscape, was hoisted to its place over the parlour fire, and then

all was over. The setting sun streamed softly in at the windows,

and peace reigned in that redeemed house and in the heart of its

mistress.

"I think it will do now, Sybil," said she, surveying the scene.

"It must," replied Sybil. "You haven't a plate or a fan or coloured

scarf left. You must send out and buy some of these old

negro-women's bandannas if you are going to cover anything else.

What is the use? Do you suppose any human being in Washington

will like it? They will think you demented."

"There is such a thing as self-respect," replied her sister, calmly.

Sybil--Miss Sybil Ross--was Madeleine Lee's sister. The keenest

psychologist could not have detected a single feature quality which

they had in common, and for that reason they were devoted

friends. Madeleine was thirty, Sybil twenty-four. Madeleine was

indescribable; Sybil was transparent. Madeleine was of medium

height with a graceful figure, a well-set head, and enough

golden-brown hair to frame a face full of varying expression. Her

eyes were never for two consecutive hours of the same shade, but

were more often blue than grey. People who envied her smile said

that she cultivated a sense of humour in order to show her teeth.

Perhaps they were right; but there was no doubt that her habit of

talking with gesticulation would never have grown upon her unless

she had known that her hands were not only beautiful but

expressive. She dressed as skilfully as New York women do, but in

growing older she began to show symptoms of dangerous

unconventionality. She had been heard to express a low opinion of

her countrywomen who blindly fell down before the golden calf of

Mr. Worth, and she had even fought a battle of great severity,

while it lasted, with one of her best-dressed friends who had been

invited--and had gone--to Mr. Worth's afternoon tea-parties. The

secret was that Mrs. Lee had artistic tendencies, and unless they

were checked in time, there was no knowing what might be the

consequence. But as yet they had done no harm; indeed, they

rather helped to give her that sort of atmosphere which belongs

only to certain women; as indescribable as the afterglow; as

impalpable as an Indian summer mist; and non-existent except to

people who feel rather than reason. Sybil had none of it. The

imagination gave up all attempts to soar where she came. A more

straightforward, downright, gay, sympathetic, shallow,

warm-hearted, sternly practical young woman has rarely touched

this planet. Her mind had room for neither grave-stones nor

guide-books; she could not have lived in the past or the future if

she had spent her days in churches and her nights in tombs. "She

was not clever, like Madeleine, thank Heaven." Madeleine was not

an orthodox member of the church; sermons bored her, and

clergymen never failed to irritate every nerve in her excitable

system. Sybil was a simple and devout worshipper at the ritualistic

altar; she bent humbly before the Paulist fathers. When she went to

a ball she always had the best partner in the room, and took it as a

matter of course; but then, she always prayed for one; somehow it

strengthened her faith. Her sister took care never to laugh at her on

this score, or to shock her religious opinions. "Time enough," said

she, "for her to forget religion when religion fails her." As for

regular attendance at church, Madeleine was able to reconcile their

habits without trouble. She herself had not entered a church for

years; she said it gave her unchristian feelings; but Sybil had a

voice of excellent quality, well trained and cultivated: Madeleine

insisted that she should sing in the choir, and by this little

manoeuvre, the divergence of their paths was made less evident.

Madeleine did not sing, and therefore could not go to church with

Sybil. This outrageous fallacy seemed perfectly to answer its

purpose, and Sybil accepted it, in good faith, as a fair working

principle which explained itself.

Madeleine was sober in her tastes. She wasted no money. She

made no display.

She walked rather than drove, and wore neither diamonds nor

brocades. But the general impression she made was nevertheless

one of luxury. On the other hand, her sister had her dresses from

Paris, and wore them and her ornaments according to all the

formulas; she was good-naturedly correct, and bent her round

white shoulders to whatever burden the Parisian autocrat chose to

put upon them. Madeleine never interfered, and always paid the

bills.

Before they had been ten days in Washington, they fell gently into

their place and were carried along without an effort on the stream

of social life.

Society was kind; there was no reason for its being otherwise. Mrs.

Lee and her sister had no enemies, held no offices, and did their

best to make themselves popular. Sybil had not passed summers at

Newport and winters in New York in vain; and neither her face nor

her figure, her voice nor her dancing, needed apology. Politics

were not her strong point. She was induced to go once to the

Capitol and to sit ten minutes in the gallery of the Senate. No one

ever knew what her impressions were; with feminine tact she

managed not to betray herself But, in truth, her notion of

legislative bodies was vague, floating between her experience at

church and at the opera, so that the idea of a performance of some

kind was never out of her head. To her mind the Senate was a

place where people went to recite speeches, and she naively

assumed that the speeches were useful and had a purpose, but as

they did not interest her she never went again. This is a very

common conception of Congress; many Congressmen share it.

Her sister was more patient and bolder. She went to the Capitol

nearly every day for at least two weeks. At the end of that time her

interest began to flag, and she thought it better to read the debates

every morning in the Congressional Record. Finding this a

laborious and not always an instructive task, she began to skip the

dull parts; and in the absence of any exciting question, she at last

resigned herself to skipping the whole. Nevertheless she still had

energy to visit the Senate gallery occasionally when she was told

that a splendid orator was about to speak on a question of deep

interest to his country. She listened with a little disposition to

admire, if she could; and, whenever she could, she did admire. She

said nothing, but she listened sharply. She wanted to learn how the

machinery of government worked, and what was the quality of the

men who controlled it. One by one, she passed them through her

crucibles, and tested them by acids and by fire.

A few survived her tests and came out alive, though more or less

disfigured, where she had found impurities. Of the whole number,

only one retained under this process enough character to interest

her.

In these early visits to Congress, Mrs. Lee sometimes had the

company of John Carrington, a Washington lawyer about forty

years old, who, by virtue of being a Virginian and a distant

connection of her husband, called himself a cousin, and took a

tone of semi-intimacy, which Mrs. Lee accepted because

Carrington was a man whom she liked, and because he was one

whom life had treated hardly. He was of that unfortunate

generation in the south which began existence with civil war, and

he was perhaps the more unfortunate because, like most educated

Virginians of the old Washington school, he had seen from the

first that, whatever issue the war took, Virginia and he must be

ruined. At twenty-two he had gone into the rebel army as a private

and carried his musket modestly through a campaign or two, after

which he slowly rose to the rank of senior captain in his regiment,

and closed his services on the staff of a major-general, always

doing scrupulously enough what he conceived to be his duty, and

never doing it with enthusiasm. When the rebel armies

surrendered, he rode away to his family plantation--not a difficult

thing to do, for it was only a few miles from Appomatox--and at

once began to study law; then, leaving his mother and sisters to do

what they could with the worn-out plantation, he began the

practice of law in Washington, hoping thus to support himself and

them. He had succeeded after a fashion, and for the first time the

future seemed not absolutely dark. Mrs. Lee's house was an oasis

to him, and he found himself, to his surprise, aimost gay in her

company. The gaiety was of a very qulet kind, and Sybil, while

friendly with him, averred that he was certainly dull; but this

dulness had a fascination for Madeleine, who, having tasted many

more kinds of the wine of life than Sybil, had learned to value

certain delicacies of age and flavour that were lost upon younger

and coarser palates. He talked rather slowly and almost with effort,

but he had something of the dignity--others call it stiffness--of the

old Virginia school, and twenty years of constant responsibility

and deferred hope had added a touch of care that bordered closely

on sadness. His great attraction was that he never talked or seemed

to think of himself. Mrs. Lee trusted in him by instinct. "He is a

type!" said she; "he is my idea of George Washington at thirty."

One morning in December, Carrington entered Mrs. Lee's parlour

towards noon, and asked if she cared to visit the Capitol.

"You will have a chance of hearing to-day what may be the last

great speech of our greatest statesman," said he; "you should

come."

"A splendid sample of our na-tive raw material, sir?" asked she,

fresh from a reading of Dickens, and his famous picture of

American statesmanship.

"Precisely so," said Carrington; "the Prairie Giant of Peonia, the

Favourite Son of Illinois; the man who came within three votes of

getting the party nomination for the Presidency last spring, and

was only defeated because ten small intriguers are sharper than

one big one. The Honourable Silas P.

Ratcliffe, Senator from Illinois; he will be run for the Presidency

yet."

"What does the P. stand for?" asked Sybil.

"I don't remember ever to have heard his middle name," said

Carrington.

"Perhaps it is Peonia or Prairie; I can't say."

"He is the man whose appearance struck me so much when we

were in the Senate last week, is he not? A great, ponderous man,

over six feet high, very senatorial and dignified, with a large head

and rather good features?" inquired Mrs. Lee.

"The same," replied Carrington. "By all means hear him speak. He

is the stumbling-block of the new President, who is to be allowed

no peace unless he makes terms with Ratcliffe; and so every one

thinks that the Prairie Giant of Peonia will have the choice of the

State or Treasury Department. If he takes either it will be the

Treasury, for he is a desperate political manager, and will want the

patronage for the next national convention."

Mrs. Lee was delighted to hear the debate, and Carrington was

delighted to sit through it by her side, and to exchange running

comments with her on the speeches and the speakers.

"Have you ever met the Senator?" asked she.

"I have acted several times as counsel before his committees. He is

an excellent chairman, always attentive and generally civil."

"Where was he born?"

"The family is a New England one, and I believe respectable. He

came, I think, from some place in the Connecticut Valley, but

whether Vermont, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts, I don't

know."

"Is he an educated man?"

"He got a kind of classical education at one of the country colleges

there.

I suspect he has as much education as is good for him. But he went

West very soon after leaving college, and being then young and

fresh from that hot-bed of abolition, he threw himself into the

anti-slavery movement m Illinois, and after a long struggle he rose

with the wave. He would not do the same thing now."

"Why not?"

"He is older, more experienced, and not so wise. Besides, he has

no longer the time to wait. Can you see his eyes from here? I call

them Yankee eyes."

"Don't abuse the Yankees," said Mrs. Lee; "I am half Yankee

myself."

"Is that abuse? Do you mean to deny that they have eyes?"

"I concede that there may be eyes among them; but Virginians are

not fair judges of their expression."

"Cold eyes," he continued; "steel grey, rather small, not unpleasant

in good-humour, diabolic in a passion, but worst when a little

suspicious; then they watch you as though you were a young

rattle-snake, to be killed when convenient."

"Does he not look you in the face?"

"Yes; but not as though he liked you. His eyes only seem to ask the

possible uses you might be put to. Ah, the vice-president has given

him the floor; now we shall have it. Hard voice, is it not? like his

eyes. Hard manner, like his voice. Hard all through."

"What a pity he is so dreadfully senatorial!" said Mrs. Lee;

"otherwise I rather admire him."

"Now he is settling down to his work," continued Carrington. "See

how he dodges all the sharp issues. What a thing it is to be a

Yankee! What a genius the fellow has for leading a party! Do you

see how well it is all done? The new President flattered and

conciliated, the party united and given a strong lead. And now we

shall see how the President will deal with him. Ten to one on

Ratcliffe. Come, there is that stupid ass from Missouri getting up.

Let us go."

As they passed down the steps and out into the Avenue, Mrs. Lee

turned to Carrington as though she had been reflecting deeply and

had at length reached a decision.

"Mr. Carrington," said she, "I want to know Senator Ratcliffe."

"You will meet him to-morrow evening," replied Carrington, "at

your senatorial dinner."

The Senator from New York, the Honourable Schuyler Clinton,

was an old admirer of Mrs. Lee, and his wife was a cousin of hers,

more or less distant. They had lost no time in honouring the letter

of credit she thus had upon them, and invited her and her sister to a

solemn dinner, as imposing as political dignity could make it. Mr.

Carrington, as a connection of hers, was one of the party, and

almost the only one among the twenty persons at table who had

neither an office, nor a title, nor a constituency.

Senator Clinton received Mrs. Lee and her sister with tender

enthusiasm, for they were attractive specimens of his constituents.

He pressed their hands and evidently restrained himself only by an

effort from embracing them, for the Senator had a marked regard

for pretty women, and had made love to every girl with any

pretensions to beauty that had appeared in the State of New York

for fully half a century. At the same time he whispered an apology

in her ear; he regretted so much that he was obliged to forego the

pleasure of taking her to dinner; Washington was the only city in

America where this could have happened, but it was a fact that

ladies here were very great stickiers for etiquette; on the other

hand he had the sad consolation that she would be the gainer, for

he had allotted to her Lord Skye, the British Minister, "a most

agreeable man and not married, as I have the misfortune to be;"

and on the other side "I have ventured to place Senator Ratcliffe,

of Illinois, whose admirable speech I saw you listening to with

such rapt attention yesterday. I thought you might like to know

him. Did I do right?"

Madeleine assured him that he had divined her inmost wishes, and

he turned with even more warmth of affection to her sister: "As for

you, my dear--dear Sybil, what can I do to make your dinner

agreeable? If I give your sister a coronet, I am only sorry not to

have a diadem for you. But I have done everything in my power.

The first Secretary of the Russian Legation, Count Popoff, will

take you in; a charming young man, my dear Sybil; and on your

other side I have placed the Assistant Secretary of State, whom

you know."

And so, after the due delay, the party settled themselves at the

dinner-table, and Mrs. Lee found Senator Ratcliffe's grey eyes

resting on her face for a moment as they sat down.

Lord Skye was very agreeable, and, at almost any other moment of

her life, Mrs. Lee would have liked nothing better than to talk with

him from the beginning to the end of her dinner. Tall, slender,

bald-headed, awkward, and stammering with his elaborate British

stammer whenever it suited his convenience to do so; a sharp

observer who had wit which he commonly concealed; a humourist

who was satisfied to laugh silently at his own humour; a

diplomatist who used the mask of frankness with great effect; Lord

Skye was one of the most popular men in Washington. Every one

knew that he was a ruthless critic of American manners, but he had

the art to combine ridicule with good-humour, and he was all the

more popular accordingly. He was an outspoken admirer of

American women in everything except their voices, and he did not

even shrink from occasionally quizzing a little the national

peculiarities of his own countrywomen; a sure piece of flattery to

their American cousins. He would gladly have devoted himself to

Mrs. Lee, but decent civility required that he should pay some

attention to his hostess, and he was too good a diplomatist not to

be attentive to a hostess who was the wife of a Senator, and that

Senator the chairman of the committee of foreign relations.

The moment his head was turned, Mrs. Lee dashed at her Peonia

Giant, who was then consuming his fish, and wishing he

understood why the British Minister had worn no gloves, while he

himself had sacrificed his convictions by wearing the largest and

whitest pair of French kids that could be bought for money on

Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a little touch of mortification in

the idea that he was not quite at home among fashionable people,

and at this instant he felt that true happiness was only to be found

among the simple and honest sons and daughters of toil. A certain

secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in the

breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democratic; for

democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by

the people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger

that the British Minister may not understand this political principle

as he should. Lord Skye had run the risk of making two blunders;

of offending the Senator from New York by neglecting his wife,

and the Senator from Illinois by engrossing the attention of Mrs.

Lee. A young Englishman would have done both, but Lord Skye

had studied the American constitution. The wife of the Senator

from New York now thought him most agreeable, and at the same

moment the Senator from Illinois awoke to the conviction that

after all, even in frivolous and fashionable circles, true dignity is in

no danger of neglect; an American Senator represents a sovereign

state; the great state of Illinois is as big as England--with the

convenient omission of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, India,

Australia, and a few other continents and islands; and in short, it

was perfectly clear that Lord Skye was not formidable to him, even

in light society; had not Mrs. Lee herself as good as said that no

position equaHed that of an American Senator?

In ten minutes Mrs. Lee had this devoted statesman at her feet. She

had not studied the Senate without a purpose. She had read with

unerring instinct one general characteristic of all Senators, a

boundless and guileless thirst for flattery, engendered by daily

draughts from political friends or dependents, then becoming a

necessity like a dram, and swallowed with a heavy smile of

ineffable content. A single glance at Mr. Ratcliffe's face showed

Madeleine that she need not be afraid of flattering too grossly; her

own self-respect, not his, was the only restraint upon her use of

this feminine bait.

She opened upon him with an apparent simplicity and gravity, a

quiet repose of manner, and an evident consciousness of her own

strength, which meant that she was most dangerous.

"I heard your speech yesterday, Mr. Ratcliffe. I am glad to have a

chance of telling you how much I was impressed by it. It seemed

to me masterly. Do you not find that it has had a great effect?"

"I thank you, madam. I hope it will help to unite the party, but as

yet we have had no time to measure its results. That will require

several days more." The Senator spoke in his senatorial manner,

elaborate, condescending, and a little on his guard.

"Do you know," said Mrs. Lee, turning towards him as though he

were a valued friend, and looking deep into his eyes, "Do you

know that every one told me I should be shocked by the falling off

in political ability at Washington? I did not believe them, and since

hearing your speech I am sure they are mistaken. Do you yourself

think there is less ability in Congress than there used to be?"

"Well, madam, it is difficult to answer that question. Government

is not so easy now as it was formerly. There are different customs.

There are many men of fair abilities in public life; many more than

there used to be; and there is sharper criticism and more of it."

"Was I right in thinking that you have a strong resemblance to

Daniel Webster in your way of speaking? You come from the same

neighbourhood, do you not?"

Mrs. Lee here hit on Ratcliffe's weak point; the outline of his head

had, in fact, a certain resemblance to that of Webster, and he

prided himself upon it, and on a distant relationship to the

Expounder of the Constitution; he began to think that Mrs. Lee

was a very intelligent person. His modest admission of the

resemblance gave her the opportunity to talk of Webster 's oratory,

and the conversation soon spread to a discussion of the merits of

Clay and Calhoun. The Senator found that his neighbour--a

fashionable New York woman, exquisitely dressed, and with a

voice and manner seductively soft and gentle--had read the

speeches of Webster and Calhoun. She did not think it necessary to

tell him that she had persuaded the honest Carrington to bring her

the volumes and to mark such passages as were worth her reading;

but she took care to lead the conversation, and she criticised with

some skill and more humour the weak points in Websterian

oratory, saying with a little laugh and a glance into his delighted

eyes:

"My judgment may not be worth much, Mr. Senator, but it does

seem to me that our fathers thought too much of themselves, and

till you teach me better I shall continue to think that the passage in

your speech of yesterday which began with, 'Our strength lies in

this twisted and tangled mass of isolated principles, the hair of the

half-sleeping giant of Party,' is both for language and imagery

quite equal to anything of Webster's."

The Senator from Illinois rose to this gaudy fly like a huge,

two-hundred-pound salmon; his white waistcoat gave out a mild

silver reflection as he slowly came to the surface and gorged the

hook. He made not even a plunge, not one perceptible effort to tear

out the barbed weapon, but, floating gently to her feet, allowed

himself to be landed as though it were a pleasure. Only miserable

casuists will ask whether this was fair play on Madeleine's part;

whether flattery so gross cost her conscience no twinge, and

whether any woman can without self-abasement be guilty of such

shameless falsehood. She, however, scorned the idea of falsehood.

She would have defended herself by saying that she had not so

much praised Ratcliffe as depreciated Webster, and that she was

honest in her opinion of the old-fashioned American oratory. But

she could not deny that she had wilfully allowed the Senator to

draw conclusions very different from any she actually held. She

could not deny that she had intended to flatter him to the extent

necessary for her purpose, and that she was pleased at her success.

Before they rose from table the Senator had quite unbent himself;

he was talking naturally, shrewdly, and with some humour; he had

told her Illinois stories; spoken with extraordinary freedom about

his political situation; and expressed the wish to call upon Mrs.

Lee, if he could ever hope to find her at home.

"I am always at home on Sunday evenings," said she.

To her eyes he was the high-priest of American politics; he was

charged with the meaning of the mysteries, the clue to political

hieroglyphics. Through him she hoped to sound the depths of

statesmanship and to bring up from its oozy bed that pearl of

which she was in search; the mysterious gem which must lie

hidden somewhere in politics. She wanted to understand this man;

to turn him inside out; to experiment on him and use him as young

physiologists use frogs and kittens. If there was good or bad in

him, she meant to find its meaning.

And he was a western widower of fifty; his quarters in Washington

were in gaunt boarding-house rooms, furnished only with public

documents and enlivened by western politicians and

office-seekers. In the summer he retired to a solitary, white

framehouse with green blinds, surrounded by a few feet of

uncared-for grass and a white fence; its interior more dreary still,

with iron stoves, oil-cloth carpets, cold white walls, and one large

engraving of Abraham Lincoln in the parlour; all in Peonia,

Illinois! What equality was there between these two combatants?

what hope for him? what risk for her? And yet Madeleine Lee had

fully her match in Mr. Silas P. Ratcliffe.

Chapter III

MRS. Lee soon became popular. Her parlour was a favourite haunt

of certain men and women who had the art of finding its mistress

at home; an art which seemed not to be within the powers of

everybody. Carrington was apt to be there more often than any one

else, so that he was looked on as almost a part of the family, and if

Madeleine wanted a book from the library, or an extra man at her

dinner-table, Carrington was pretty certain to help her to the one or

the other. Old Baron Jacobi, the Bulgarian minister, fell madly in

love with both sisters, as he commonly did with every pretty face

and neat figure. He was a witty, cynical, broken-down Parisian

roué, kept in Washington for years past by his debts and his

salary; always grumbling because there was no opera, and

mysteriously disappearing on visits to New York; a voracious

devourer of French and German literature, especially of novels; a

man who seemed to have met every noted or notorious personage

of the century, and whose mmd was a magazine of amusing

information; an excellent musical critic, who was not afraid to

criticise Sybil's singing; a connoisseur in bric-à-brac, who laughed

at Madeleine's display of odds and ends, and occasionally brought

her a Persian plate or a bit of embroidery, which he said was good

and would do her credit. This old sinner believed in everything

that was perverse and wicked, but he accepted the prejudices of

Anglo-Saxon society, and was too clever to obtrude his opinions

upon others.

He would have married both sisters at once more willingly than

either alone, but as he feelingly said, "If I were forty years

younger, mademoiselle, you should not sing to me so calmly." His

friend Popoff, an intelligent, vivacious Russian, with very

Calmuck features, susceptible as a girl, and passionately fond of

music, hung over Sybil's piano by the hour; he brought Russian

airs which he taught her to sing, and, if the truth were known, he

bored Madeleine desperately, for she undertook to act the part of

duenna to her younger sister.

A very different visitor was Mr. C. C. French, a young member of

Congress from Connecticut, who aspired to act the part of the

educated gentleman in politics, and to purify the public tone. He

had reform principles and an unfortunately conceited maimer; he

was rather wealthy, rather clever, rather well-educated, rather

honest, and rather vulgar. His allegiance was divided between Mrs.

Lee and her sister, whom he infuriated by addressing as "Miss

Sybil" with patronising familiarity. He was particularly strong in

what he called "badinaige," and his playful but ungainly attempts

at wit drove Mrs.

Lee beyond the bounds of patience. When in a solemn mood, he

talked as though he were practising for the ear of a college

debating society, and with a still worse effect on the patience; but

with all this he was useful, always bubbling with the latest

political gossip, and deeply interested in the fate of party stakes.

Quite another sort of person was Mr. Hartbeest Schneidekoupon, a

citizen of Philadelphia, though commonly resident in New York,

where he had fallen a victim to Sybil's charms, and made efforts to

win her young affections by instructing her in the mysteries of

currency and protection, to both which subjects he was devoted.

To forward these two interests and to watch over Miss Ross's

welfare, he made periodical visits to Washington, where he

closeted himself with committee-men and gave expensive dinners

to members of Congress. Mr. Schneidekoupon was rich, and about

thirty years old, tall and thin, with bright eyes and smooth face,

elaborate manners and much loquacity. He had the reputation of

turning rapid intellectual somersaults, partly to amuse himself and

partly to startle society. At one moment he was artistic, and

discoursed scientifically about his own paintings; at another he

was literary, and wrote a book on "Noble Living," with a

humanitarian purpose; at another he was devoted to sport, rode a

steeplechase, played polo, and set up a four-in-hand; his last

occupation was to establish in Philadelphia the Protective Review,

a periodical in the interests of American industry, which he edited

himself, as a stepping-stone to Congress, the Cabinet, and the

Presidency. At about the same time he bought a yacht, and heavy

bets were pending among his sporting friends whether he would

manage to sink first his Review or his yacht. But he was an

amiable and excellent fellow through all his eccentricities, and he

brought to Mrs. Lee the simple outpourings of the amateur

politician.

A much higher type of character was Mr. Nathan Gore, of

Massachusetts, a handsome man with a grey beard, a straight,

sharply cut nose, and a fine, penetrating eye; in his youth a

successful poet whose satires made a noise in their day, and are

still remembered for the pungency and wit of a few verses; then a

deep student in Europe for many years, until his famous "History

of Spain in America" placed him instantly at the head of American

historians, and made him minister at Madrid, where he remained

four years to his entire satisfaction, this being the nearest approach

to a patent of nobility and a government pension which the

American citizen can attain. A change of administration had

reduced him to private life again, and after some years of

retirement he was now in Washington, willing to be restored to his

old mission. Every President thinks it respectable to have at least

one literary man in his pay, and Mr. Gore's prospects were fair for

obtaining his object, as he had the active support of a majority of

the Massachusetts delegation. He was abominably selfish,

colossally egoistic, and not a little vain; but he was shrewd; he

knew how to hold his tongue; he could flatter dexterously, and he

had learned to eschew satire. Only in confidence and among

friends he would still talk freely, but Mrs. Lee was not yet on those

terms with him. These were all men, and there was no want of

women in Mrs.

Lee's parlour; but, after all, they are able to describe themselves

better than any poor novelist can describe them. Generally two

currents of conversation ran on together--one round Sybil, the

other about Madeleine.

"Mees Ross," said Count Popoff, leading in a handsome young

foreigner, "I have your permission to present to you my friend

Count Orsini, Secretary of the Italian Legation. Are you at home

this afternoon? Count Orsini sings also."

"We are charmed to see Count Orsini. It is well you came so late,

for I have this moment come in from making Cabinet calls. They

were so queer! I have been crying with laughter for an hour past."

"Do you find these calls amusing?" asked Popoff, gravely and

diplomatically. "Indeed I do! I went with Julia Schneidekoupon,

you know, Madeleine; the Schneidekoupons are descended from

all the Kings of Israel, and are prouder than Solomon in his glory.

And when we got into the house of some dreadful woman from

Heaven knows where, imagine my feelings at overhearing this

conversation: 'What may be your family name, ma'am?'

'Schneidekoupon is my name,' replies Julia, very tall and straight.

'Have you any friends whom I should likely know?' 'I think not,'

says Julia, severely. 'Wal! I don't seem to remember of ever having

heerd the name. But I s'pose it's all right. I like to know who calls.'

I almost had hysterics when we got into the street, but Julia could

not see the joke at all."

Count Orsini was not quite sure that he himself saw the joke, so he

only smiled becomingly and showed his teeth. For simple,

childlike vanity and self-consciousness nothing equals an Italian

Secretary of Legation at twenty-five. Yet conscious that the effect

of his personal beauty would perhaps be diminished by permanent

silence, he ventured to murmur presently:

"Do you not find it very strange, this society in America?"

"Society!" laughed Sybil with gay contempt. "There are no snakes

in America, any more than in Norway."

"Snakes, mademoiselle!" repeated Orsini, with the doubtful

expression of one who is not quite certain whether he shall risk

walking on thin ice, and decides to go softly: "Snakes! Indeed they

would rather be doves I would call them."

A kind laugh from Sybil strengthened into conviction his hope that

he had made a joke in this unknown tongue. His face brightened,

his confidence returned; once or twice he softly repeated to

himself: "Not snakes; they would be doves!" But Mrs. Lee's

sensitive ear had caught Sybil's remark, and detected in it a certain

tone of condescension which was not to her taste.

The impassive countenances of these bland young Secretaries of

Legation seemed to acquiesce far too much as a matter of course in

the idea that there was no society except in the old world. She

broke into the conversation with an emphasis that fluttered the

dove-cote:

"Society in America? Indeed there is society in America, and very

good society too; but it has a code of its own, and new-comers

seldom understand it. I will tell you what it is, Mr. Orsini, and you

will never be in danger of making any mistake. 'Society' in

America means all the honest, kindly-mannered, pleasant-voiced

women, and all the good, brave, unassuming men, between the

Atlantic and the Pacific. Each of these has a free pass in every city

and village, 'good for this generation only,' and it depends on each

to make use of this pass or not as it may happen to suit his or her

fancy. To this rule there are no exceptions, and those who say

'Abraham is our father' will surely furnish food for that humour

which is the staple product of our country."

The alarmed youths, who did not in the least understand the

meaning of this demonstration, looked on with a feeble attempt at

acquiescence, while Mrs.

Lee brandished her sugar-tongs in the act of transferring a lump of

sugar to her cup, quite unconscious of the slight absurdity of the

gesture, while Sybil stared in amazement, for it was not often that

her sister waved the stars and stripes so energetically. Whatever

their silent criticisms might be, however, Mrs. Lee was too much

in earnest to be conscious of them, or, indeed, to care for anything

but what she was saying. There was a moment's pause when she

came to the end of her speech, and then the thread of talk was

quietly taken up again where Sybil's incipient sneer had broken it.

Carrington came in. "What have you been doing at the Capitol?"

asked Madeleine.

"Lobbying!" was the reply, given in the semi-serious tone of

Carrington's humour.

"So soon, and Congress only two days old?" exclaimed Mrs. Lee.

"Madam," rejoined Carrington, with his quietest malice,

"Congressmen are like birds of the air, which are caught only by

the early worm." "Good afternoon, Mrs. Lee. Miss Sybil, how do

you do again? Which of these gentlemen's hearts are you feeding

upon now?" This was the refined style of Mr. French, indulging in

what he was pleased to term "badinaige." He, too, was on his way

from the Capitol, and had come in for a cup of tea and a little

human society. Sybil made a face which plainly expressed a

longing to inflict on Mr. French some grievous personal wrong, but

she pretended not to hear. He sat down by Madeleine, and asked,

"Did you see Ratcliffe yesterday?"

"Yes," said Madeleine; "he was here last evening with Mr.

Carrington and one or two others."

"Did he say anything about politics?"

"Not a word. We talked mostly about books."

"Books! What does he know about books?"

"You must ask him."

"Well, this is the most ridiculous situation we are all in. No one

knows anything about the new President. You could take your oath

that everybody is in the dark. Ratcliffe says he knows as little as

the rest of us, but it can't be true; he is too old a politician not to

have wires in his hand; and only to-day one of the pages of the

Senate told my colleague Cutter that a letter sent off by him

yesterday was directed to Sam Grimes, of North Bend, who, as

every one knows, belongs to the President's particular crowd.

--Why, Mr. Schneidekoupon! How do you do? When did you come

on?"

"Thank you; this morning," replied Mr. Schneidekoupon, just

entering the room. "So glad to see you again, Mrs. Lee. How do

you and your sister like Washington? Do you know I have brought

Julia on for a visit? I thought I should find her here.

"She has just gone. She has been all the afternoon with Sybil,

making calls.

She says you want her here to lobby for you, Mr. Schneidekoupon.

Is it true?"

"So I did," replied he, with a laugh, "but she is precious little use.

So I've come to draft you into the service."

"Me!"

"Yes; you know we all expect Senator Ratcliffe to be Secretary of

the Treasury, and it is very important for us to keep him straight on

the currency and the tariff. So I have come on to establish more

intimate relations with him, as they say in diplomacy. I want to get

him to dine with me at Welckley's, but as I know he keeps very shy

of politics I thought my only chance was to make it a ladies'

dinner, so I brought on Julia. I shall try and get Mrs. Schuyler

Clinton, and I depend upon you and your sister to help Julia out."

"Me! at a lobby dinner! Is that proper?"

"Why not? You shall choose the guests."

"I never heard of such a thing; but it would certainly be amusing.

Sybil must not go, but I might." "Excuse me; Julia depends upon

Miss Ross, and will not go to table without her."

"Well," assented Mrs. Lee, hesitatingly, "perhaps if you get Mrs.

Clinton, and if your sister is there And who else?"

"Choose your own company."

"I know no one."

"Oh yes; here is French, not quite sound on the tariff, but good for

what we want just now. Then we can get Mr. Gore; he has his little

hatchet to grind too, and will be glad to help grind ours. We only

want two or three more, and I will have an extra man or so to fill

up."

"Do ask the Speaker. I want to know him."

"I will, and Carrington, and my Pennsylvania Senator. That will do

nobly.

Remember, Welckley's, Saturday at seven."

Meanwhile Sybil had been at the piano, and when she had sung for

a time, Orsini was induced to take her place, and show that it was

possible to sing without injury to one's beauty. Baron Jacobi came

in and found fault with them both. Little Miss Dare--commonly

known among her male friends as little Daredevil--who was

always absorbed in some flirtation with a Secretary of Legation,

came in, quite unaware that Popoff was present, and retired with

him into a corner, while Orsini and Jacobi bullied poor Sybil, and

fought with each other at the piano; everybody was talking with

very little reference to any reply, when at last Mrs. Lee drove them

all out of the room: "We are quiet people," said she, "and we dine

at half-past six."

Senator Ratcliffe had not failed to make his Sunday evening call

upon Mrs.

Lee. Perhaps it was not strictly correct to say that they had talked

books all the evening, but whatever the conversation was, it had

only confirmed Mr. Ratcliffe's admiration for Mrs. Lee, who,

without intending to do so, had acted a more dangerous part than if

she had been the most accomplished of coquettes. Nothing could

be more fascinating to the weary politician in his solitude than the

repose of Mrs. Lee's parlour, and when Sybil sang for him one or

two simple airs--she said they were foreign hymns, the Senator

being, or being considered, orthodox--Mr. Ratcliffe's heart yearned

toward the charming girl quite with the sensations of a father, or

even of an elder brother.

His brother senators very soon began to remark that the Prairie

Giant had acquired a trick of looking up to the ladies' gallery. One

day Mr. Jonathan Andrews, the special correspondent of the New

York Sidereal System, a very friendly organ, approached Senator

Schuyler Clinton with a puzzled look on his face.

"Can you tell me," said he, "what has happened to Silas P.

Ratcliffe? Only a moment ago I was talking with him at his seat on

a very important subject, about which I must send his opinions off

to New York to-night, when, in the middle of a sentence, he

stopped short, got up without looking at me, and left the Senate

Chamber, and now I see him in the gallery talking with a lady

whose face I don't know."

Senator Clinton slowly adjusted his gold eye-glasses and looked up

at the place indicated: "Ah! Mrs. Lightfoot Lee! I think I will say a

word to her myself;" and turning his back on the special

correspondent, he skipped away with youthful agility after the

Senator from Illinois.

"Devil!" muttered Mr. Andrews; "what has got into the old fools?"

and in a still less audible murmur as he looked up to Mrs. Lee,

then in close conversation with Ratcliffe: "Had I better make an

item of that?"

When young Mr. Schneidekoupon called upon Senator Ratcliffe to

invite him to the dinner at Welckley's, he found that gentleman

overwhelmed with work, as he averred, and very little disposed to

converse. No! he did not now go out to dinner. In the present

condition of the public business he found it impossible to spare the

time for such amusements. He regretted to decline Mr.

Schneidekoupon's civility, but there were imperative reasons why

he should abstain for the present from social entertainments; he

had made but one exception to his rule, and only at the pressing

request of his old friend Senator Clinton, and on a very special

occasion.

Mr. Schneidekoupon was deeply vexed--the more, he said, because

he had meant to beg Mr. and Mrs. Clinton to be of the party, as

well as a very charming lady who rarely went into society, but who

had almost consented to come.

"Who is that?" inquired the Senator.

"A Mrs. Lightfoot Lee, of New York. Probably you do not know

her well enough to admire her as I do; but I think her quite the

most intelligent woman I ever met."

The Senator's cold eyes rested for a moment on the young man's

open face with a peculiar expression of distrust. Then he solemnly

said, in his deepest senatorial tones:

"My young friend, at my time of life men have other things to

occupy them than women, however intelligent they may be. Who

else is to be of your party?"

Mr. Schneidekoupon named his list.

"And for Saturday evening at seven, did you say?"

"Saturday at seven."

"I fear there is little chance of my attending, but I will not

absolutely decline. Perhaps when the moment arrives, I may find

myself able to be there. But do not count upon me--do not count

upon me. Good day, Mr.

Schneidekoupon."

Schneidekoupon was rather a simple-minded young man, who saw

no deeper than his neighbours into the secrets of the universe, and

he went off swearing roundly at "the infernal airs these senators

give themselves." He told Mrs.

Lee all the conversation, as indeed he was compelled to do under

penalty of bringing her to his party under false pretences.

"Just my luck," said he; "here I am forced to ask no end of people

to meet a man, who at the same time says he shall probably not

come. Why, under the stars, couldn't he say, like other people,

whether he was coming or not?

I've known dozens of senators, Mrs. Lee, and they're all like that.

They never think of any one but themselves."

Mrs. Lee smiled rather a forced smile, and soothed his wounded

feelings; she had no doubt the dinner would be very agreeable

whether the Senator were there or not; at any rate she would do all

she could to carry it off well, and Sybil should wear her newest

dress. Still she was a little grave, and Mr. Schneidekoupon could

only declare that she was a trump; that he had told Ratcliffe she

was the cleverest woman he ever met, and he might have added

the most obliging, and Ratcliffe had only looked at him as though

he were a green ape. At all which Mrs. Lee laughed

good-naturedly, and sent him away as soon as she could.

When he was gone, she walked up and down the room and

thought. She saw the meaning of Ratcliffe's sudden change in tone.

She had no more doubt of his coming to the dinner than she had of

the reason why he came. And was it possible that she was being

drawn into something very near a flirtation with a man twenty

years her senior; a politician from Illinois; a huge, ponderous,

grey-eyed, bald senator, with a Websterian head, who lived in

Peonia? The idea was almost too absurd to be credited; but on the

whole the thing itself was rather amusing. "I suppose senators can

look out for themselves like other men," was her final conclusion.

She thought only of his danger, and she felt a sort of compassion

for him as she reflected on the possible consequences of a great,

absorbing love at his time of life.

Her conscience was a little uneasy; but of herself she never

thought. Yet it is a historical fact that elderly senators have had a

curious fascination for young and handsome women. Had they

looked out for themselves too? And which parties most needed to

be looked after?

When Madeleine and her sister arrived at Welckley's 's the next

Saturday evening, they found poor Schneidekoupon in a temper

very unbecoming a host.

"He won't come! I told you he wouldn't come!" said he to

Madeleine, as he handed her into the house. "If I ever turn

communist, it will be for the fun of murdering a senator."

Madeleine consoled him gently, but he continued to use, behind

Mr. Clinton's back, language the most offensive and improper

towards the Senate, and at last, ringing the bell, he sharply ordered

the head waiter to serve dinner.

At that very moment the door opened, and Senator Ratcliffe's

stately figure appeared on the threshold. His eye instantly caught

Madeleine's, and she almost laughed aloud, for she saw that the

Senator was dressed with very unsenatorial neatness; that he had

actually a flower in his burton-hole and no gloves!

After the enthusiastic description which Schneidekoupon had

given of Mrs.

Lee's charms, he could do no less than ask Senator Ratcliffe to take

her in to dinner, which he did without delay. Either this, or the

champagne, or some occult influence, had an extraordinary effect

upon him. He appeared ten years younger than usual; his face was

illuminated; his eyes glowed; he seemed bent on proving his

kinship to the immortal Webster by rivalling his convivial powers.

He dashed into the conversation; laughed, jested, and ridiculed;

told stories in Yankee and Western dialect; gave sharp little

sketches of amusing political experiences.

"Never was more surprised in my life," whispered Senator Krebs,

of Pennsylvania, across the table to Schneidekoupon. "Hadn't an

idea that Ratcliffe was so entertaining."

And Mr. Clinton, who sat by Madeleine on the other side,

whispered low into her ear: "I am afraid, my dear Mrs. Lee, that

you are responsible for this.

He never talks so to the Senate."

Nay, he even rose to a higher flight, and told the story of President

Lincoln's death-bed with a degree of feeling that brought tears into

their eyes. The other guests made no figure at all. The Speaker

consumed his solitary duck and his lonely champagne in a corner

without giving a sign.

Even Mr. Gore, who was not wont to hide his light under any kind

of extinguisher, made no attempt to claim the floor, and applauded

with enthusiasm the conversation of his opposite neighbour.

Ill-natured people might say that Mr. Gore saw in Senator Ratcliffe

a possible Secretary of State; be this as it may, he certainly said to

Mrs. Clinton, in an aside that was perfectly audible to every one at

the table: "How brilliant! what an original mind! what a sensation

he would make abroad!" And it was quite true, apart from the mere

momentary effect of dinner-table talk, that there was a certain

bigness about the man; a keen practical sagacity; a bold freedom

of self-assertion; a broad way of dealing with what he knew.

Carrington was the only person at table who looked on with a

perfectly cool head, and who criticised in a hostile spirit.

Carrington's impression of Ratcliffe was perhaps beginning to be

warped by a shade of jealousy, for he was in a peculiarly bad

temper this evening, and his irritation was not wholly concealed.

"If one only had any confidence in the man!" he muttered to

French, who sat by him.

This unlucky remark set French to thinking how he could draw

Ratcliffe out, and accordingly, with his usual happy manner,

combining self-conceit and high principles, he began to attack the

Senator with some "badinaige" on the delicate subject of Civil

Service Reform, a subject almost as dangerous in political

conversation at Washington as slavery itself in old days before the

war. French was a reformer, and lost no occasion of impressing his

views; but unluckily he was a very light weight, and his manner

was a little ridiculous, so that even Mrs. Lee, who was herself a

warm reformer, sometimes went over to the other side when he

talked. No sooner had he now shot his little arrow at the Senator,

than that astute man saw his opportunity, and promised himself the

pleasure of administering to Mr.

French punishment such as he knew would delight the company.

Reformer as Mrs. Lee was, and a little alarmed at the roughness of

Ratcliffe's treatment, she could not blame the Prairie Giant, as she

ought, who, after knocking poor French down, rolled him over and

over in the mud.

"Are you financier enough, Mr. French, to know what are the most

famous products of Connecticut?"

Mr. French modestly suggested that he thought its statesmen best

answered that description.

"No, sir! even there you're wrong. The showmen beat you on your

own ground.

But every child in the union knows that the most famous products

of Connecticut are Yankee notions, nutmegs made of wood and

clocks that won't go. Now, your Civil Service Reform is just such

another Yankee notion; it's a wooden nutmeg; it's a clock with a

show case and sham works. And you know it! You are precisely

the old-school Connecticut peddler. You have gone about peddling

your wooden nutmegs until you have got yourself into Congress,

and now you pull them out of your pockets and not only want us to

take them at your own price, but you lecture us on our sins if we

don't.

Well! we don't mind your doing that at home. Abuse us as much as

you like to your constituents. Get as many votes as you can. But

don't electioneer here, because we know you intimately, and we've

all been a little in the wooden nutmeg business ourselves."

Senator Clinton and Senator Krebs chuckied high approval over

this punishment of poor French, which was on the level of their

idea of wit. They were all in the nutmeg business, as Ratcliffe said.

The victim tried to make head against them; he protested that his

nutmegs were genuine; he sold no goods that he did not guarantee;

and that this particular article was actually guaranteed by the

national conventions of both political parties.

"Then what you want, Mr. French, is a common school education.

You need a little study of the alphabet. Or if you won't believe me,

ask my brother senators here what chance there is for your

Reforms so long as the American citizen is what he "You'll not get

much comfort in my State, Mr. French," growled the senator from

Pennsylvania, with a sneer; "suppose you come and try."

"Well, well!" said the benevolent Mr. Schuyler Clinton, gleaming

benignantly through his gold spectacles; "don't be too hard on

French. He means well.

Perhaps he's not very wise, but he does good. I know more about it

than any of you, and I don't deny that the thing is all bad. Only, as

Mr. Ratcliffe says, the difficulty is in the people, not in us. Go to

work on them, French, and let us alone."

French repented of his attack, and contented himself by muttering

to Carrington: "What a set of damned old reprobates they are!"

"They are right, though, in one thing," was Carrington's reply:

"their advice is good. Never ask one of them to reform anything; if

you do, you will be reformed yourself."

The dinner ended as brilliantly as it began, and Schneidekoupon

was delighted with his success. He had made himself particularly

agreeable to Sybil by confiding in her all his hopes and fears about

the tariff and the finances. When the ladies left the table, Ratcliffe

could not stay for a cigar; he must get back to his rooms, where he

knew several men were waiting for him; he would take his leave of

the ladies and hurry away. But when the gentlemen came up nearly

an hour afterwards they found Ratcliffe still taking his leave of the

ladies, who were delighted at his entertaining conversation; and

when at last he really departed, he said to Mrs. Lee, as though it

were quite a matter of course: "You are at home as usual

to-morrow evening?" Madeleine smiled, bowed, and he went his

way.

As the two sisters drove home that night, Madeleine was unusually

silent.

Sybil yawned convulsively and then apologized:

"Mr. Schneidekoupon is very nice and good-natured, but a whole

evening of him goes a long way; and that horrid Senator Krebs

would not say a word, and drank a great deal too much wine,

though it couldn't make him any more stupid than he is. I don't

think I care for senators." Then, wearily, after a pause: "Well,

Maude, I do hope you've got what you wanted. I'm sure you must

have had politics enough. Haven't you got to the heart of your great

American mystery yet?"

"Pretty near it, I think," said Madeleine, half to herself.

Chapter IV

SUNDAY evening was stormy, and some enthusiasm was required

to make one face its perils for the sake of society. Nevertheless, a

few intimates made their appearance as usual at Mrs. Lee's. The

faithful Popoff was there, and Miss Dare also ran in to pass an

hour with her dear Sybil; but as she passed the whole evening in a

corner with Popoff. she must have been disappointed in her object.

Carrington came, and Baron Jacobi. Schneidekoupon and his sister

dined with Mrs. Lee, and remained after dinner, while Sybil and

Julia Schneidekoupon compared conclusions about Washington

society. The happy idea also occurred to Mr. Gore that, inasmuch

as Mrs. Lee's house was but a step from his hotel, he might as well

take the chance of amusement there as the certainty of solitude in

his rooms. Finally, Senator Ratcliffe duly made his appearance,

and, having established himself with a cup of tea by Madeleine's

side, was soon left to enjoy a quiet talk with her, the rest of the

party by common consent occupying themselves with each other.

Under cover of the murmur of conversation in the room, Mr.

Ratcliffe quickiy became confidential.

"I came to suggest that, if you want to hear an interesting debate,

you should come up to the Senate to-morrow. I am told that

Garrard, of Louisiana, means to attack my last speech, and I shall

probably in that case have to answer him. With you for a critic I

shall speak better."

"Am I such an amiable critic?" asked Madeleine.

"I never heard that amiable critics were the best," said he; "justice

is the soul of good criticism, and it is only justice that I ask and

expect from you."

"What good does this speaking do?" inquired she. "Are you any

nearer the end of your difficulties by means of your speeches?"

"I hardly know yet. Just now we are in dead water; but this can't

last long.

In fact, I am not afraid to tell you, though of course you will not

repeat it to any human being, that we have taken measures to force

an issue.

Certain gentlemen, myself among the rest, have written letters

meant for the President's eye, though not addressed directly to him,

and intended to draw out an expression of some sort that will show

us what to expect."

"Oh!" laughed Madeleine, "I knew about that a week ago."

"About what?"

"About your letter to Sam Grimes, of North Bend."

"What have you heard about my letter to Sam Grimes, of North

Bend?"

ejaculated Ratcliffe, a little abruptly.

"Oh, you do not know how admirably I have organised my secret

service bureau," said she. "Representative Cutter cross-questioned

one of the Senate pages, and obliged him to confess that he had

received from you a letter to be posted, which letter was addressed

to Mr. Grimes, of North Bend."

"And, of course, he told this to French, and French told you," said

Ratcliffe; "I see. If I had known this I would not have let French

off so gently last night, for I prefer to tell you my own story

without his embellishments. But it was my fault. I should not have

trusted a page.

Nothing is a secret here long. But one thing that Mr. Cutter did not

find out was that several other gentlemen wrote letters at the same

time, for the same purpose. Your friend, Mr. Clinton, wrote; Krebs

wrote; and one or two members."

"I suppose I must not ask what you said?"

"You may. We agreed that it was best to be very mild and

conciliatory, and to urge the President only to give us some

indication of his intentions, in order that we might not run counter

to them. I drew a strong picture of the effect of the present

situation on the party, and hinted that I had no personal wishes to

gratify."

"And what do you think will be the result?"

"I think we shall somehow manage to straighten things out," said

Ratcliffe.

"The difficulty is only that the new President has little experience,

and is suspicious. He thinks we shall intrigue to tie his hands, and

he means to tie ours in advance. I don't know him personally, but

those who do, and who are fair judges, say that, though rather

narrow and obstinate, he is honest enough, and will come round. I

have no doubt I could settle it all with him in an hour's talk, but it

is out of the question for me to go to him unless I am asked, and to

ask me to come would be itself a settlement."

"What, then, is the danger you fear?"

"That he will offend all the important party leaders in order to

conciliate unimportant ones, perhaps sentimental ones, like your

friend French; that he will make foolish appointments without

taking advice. By the way, have you seen French to-day?"

"No," replied Madeleine; "I think he must be sore at your treatment

of him last evening. You were very rude to him."

"Not a bit," said Ratcliffe; "these reformers need it. His attack on

me was meant for a challenge. I saw it in his manner.

"But is reform really so impossible as you describe it? Is it quite

hopeless?"

"Reform such as he wants is utterly hopeless, and not even

desirable."

Mrs. Lee, with much earnestness of manner, still pressed her

question:

"Surely something can be done to check corruption. Are we for

ever to be at the mercy of thieves and ruffians? Is a respectable

government impossible in a democracy?"

Her warmth attracted Jacobi's attention, and he spoke across the

room. "What is that you say, Mrs. Lee? What is it about

corruption?"

All the gentlemen began to listen and gather about them.

"I am asking Senator Ratcliffe," said she, "what is to become of us

if corruption is allowed to go unchecked."

"And may I venture to ask permission to hear Mr. Ratcliffe's

reply?" asked the baron.

"My reply," said Ratcliffe, "is that no representative government

can long be much better or much worse than the society it

represents. Purify society and you purify the government. But try

to purify the government artificially and you only aggravate

failure."

"A very statesmanlike reply," said Baron Jacobi, with a formal

bow, but his tone had a shade of mockery. Carrington, who had

listened with a darkening face, suddenly turned to the baron and

asked him what conclusion he drew from the reply.

"Ah!" exclaimed the baron, with his wickedest leer, "what for is

my conclusion good? You Americans believe yourselves to be

excepted from the operation of general laws. You care not for

experience. I have lived seventy-five years, and all that time in the

midst of corruption. I am corrupt myself, only I do have courage to

proclaim it, and you others have it not. Rome, Paris, Vienna,

Petersburg, London, all are corrupt; only Washington is pure!

Well, I declare to you that in all my experience I have found no

society which has had elements of corruption like the United

States. The children in the street are corrupt, and know how to

cheat me.

The cities are all corrupt, and also the towns and the counties and

the States' legislatures and the judges. Everywhere men betray

trusts both public and private, steal money, run away with public

funds. Only in the Senate men take no money. And you gentlemen

in the Senate very well declare that your great United States,

which is the head of the civilized world, can never learn anything

from the example of corrupt Europe. You are right--quite right!

The great United States needs not an example. I do much regret

that I have not yet one hundred years to live. If I could then come

back to this city, I should find myself very content--much more

than now. I am always content where there is much corruption, and

ma parole d'honneur!"

broke out the old man with fire and gesture, "the United States will

then be more corrupt than Rome under Caligula; more corrupt than

the Church under Leo X.; more corrupt than France under the

Regent!"

As the baron closed his little harangue, which he delivered directly

at the senator sitting underneath him, he had the satisfaction to see

that every one was silent and listening with deep attention. He

seemed to enjoy annoying the senator, and he had the satisfaction

of seeing that the senator was visibly annoyed. Ratcliffe looked

sternly at the baron and said, with some curtness, that he saw no

reason to accept such conclusions.

Conversation flagged, and all except the baron were relieved when

Sybil, at Schneidekoupon's request, sat down at the piano to sing

what she called a hymn. So soon as the song was over, Ratcliffe,

who seemed to have been curiously thrown off his balance by

Jacobi's harangue, pleaded urgent duties at his rooms, and retired.

The others soon afterwards went off in a body, leaving only

Carrington and Gore, who had seated himself by Madeleine, and

was at once dragged by her into a discussion of the subject which

perplexed her, and for the moment threw over her mind a net of

irresistible fascination.

"The baron discomfited the senator," said Gore, with a certain

hesitation.

"Why did Ratcliffe let himself be trampled upon in that manner?"

"I wish you would explain why," replied Mrs. Lee; "tell me, Mr.

Gore--you who represent cultivation and literary taste

hereabouts--please tell me what to think about Baron Jacobi's

speech. Who and what is to be believed? Mr.

Ratcliffe seems honest and wise. Is he a corruptionist? He believes

in the people, or says he does. Is he telling the truth or not?"

Gore was too experienced in politics to be caught in such a trap as

this. He evaded the question. "Mr. Ratcliffe has a practical piece of

work to do; his business is to make laws and advise the President;

he does it extremely well. We have no other equally good practical

politician; it is unfair to require him to be a crusader besides."

"No!" interposed Carrington, curtly; "but he need not obstruct

crusades. He need not talk virtue and oppose the punishment of

vice."

"He is a shrewd practical politician," replied Gore, "and he feels

first the weak side of any proposed political tactics."

With a sigh of despair Madeleine went on: "Who, then, is right?

How can we all be right? Half of our wise men declare that the

world is going straight to perdition; the other half that it is fast

becoming perfect. Both cannot be right. There is only one thing in

life," she went on, laughing, "that I must and will have before I die.

I must know whether America is right or wrong. Just now this

question is a very practical one, for I really want to know whether

to believe in Mr. Ratcliffe. If I throw him overboard, everything

must go, for he is only a specimen."

"Why not believe in Mr. Ratcliffe?" said Gore; "I believe in him

myself, and am not afraid to say so."

Carrington, to whom Ratcliffe now began to represent the spirit of

evil, interposed here, and observed that he imagined Mr. Gore had

other guides besides, and steadier ones than Ratcliffe, to believe

in; while Madeleine, with a certain feminine perspicacity, struck at

a much weaker point in Mr.

Gore's armour, and asked point-blank whether he believed also in

what Ratcliffe represented: "Do you yourself think democracy the

best government, and universal suffrage a success?"

Mr. Gore saw himself pinned to the wall, and he turned at bay with

almost the energy of despair:

"These are matters about which I rarely talk in society; they are

like the doctrine of a personal God; of a future life; of revealed

religion; subjects which one naturally reserves for private

reflection. But since you ask for my political creed, you shall have

it. I only condition that it shall be for you alone, never to be

repeated or quoted as mine. I believe in democracy. I accept it. I

will faithfully serve and defend it. I believe in it because it appears

to me the inevitable consequence of what has gone before it.

Democracy asserts the fact that the masses are now raised to a

higher intelligence than formerly. All our civilisation aims at this

mark. We want to do what we can to help it. I myself want to see

the result. I grant it is an experiment, but it is the only direction

society can take that is worth its taking; the only conception of its

duty large enough to satisfy its instincts; the only result that is

worth an effort or a risk. Every other possible step is backward,

and I do not care to repeat the past. I am glad to see society

grapple with issues in which no one can afford to be neutral."

"And supposing your experiment fails," said Mrs. Lee; "suppose

society destroys itself with universal suffrage, corruption, and

communism."

"I wish, Mrs. Lee, you would visit the Observatory with me some

evening, and look at Sirius. Did you ever make the acquaintance of

a fixed star? I believe astronomers reckon about twenty millions of

them in sight, and an infinite possibility of invisible millions, each

one of which is a sun, like ours, and may have satellites like our

planet. Suppose you see one of these fixed stars suddenly increase

in brightness, and are told that a satellite has fallen into it and is

burning up, its career finished, its capacities exhausted? Curious,

is it not; but what does it matter? Just as much as the burning up of

a moth at your candle."

Madeleine shuddered a little. "I cannot get to the height of your

philosophy," said she. "You are wandering among the infinites,

and I am finite."

"Not at all! But I have faith; not perhaps in the old dogmas, but in

the new ones; faith in human nature; faith in science; faith in the

survival of the fittest. Let us be true to our time, Mrs. Lee! If our

age is to be beaten, let us die in the ranks. If it is to be victorious,

let us be first to lead the column. Anyway, let us not be skulkers or

grumblers. There! have I repeated my catechism correctly? You

would have it! Now oblige me by forgetting it. I should lose my

character at home if it got out. Good night!"

Mrs. Lee duly appeared at the Capitol the next day, as she could

not but do after Senator Ratcliffe's pointed request. She went

alone, for Sybil had positively refused to go near the Capitol again,

and Madeleine thought that on the whole this was not an occasion

for enrolling Carrington in her service. But Ratcliffe did not speak.

The debate was unexpectedly postponed.

He joined Mrs. Lee in the gallery, however, sat with her as long as

she would allow, and became still more confidential, telling her

that he had received the expected reply from Grimes, of North

Bend, and that it had enclosed a letter written by the

President-elect to Mr. Grimes in regard to the advances made by

Mr. Ratcliffe and his friends.

"It is not a handsome letter," said he; "indeed, a part of it is

positively insulting. I would like to read you one extract from it,

and hear your opinion as to how it should be treated." Taking the

letter from his pocket, he sought out the passage, and read as

follows: "'I cannot lose sight, too, of the consideration that these

three Senators' (he means Clinton, Krebs, and me) are popularly

considered to be the most influential members of that so-called

senatorial ring, which has acquired such general notoriety. While I

shall always receive their communications with all due respect, I

must continue to exercise complete freedom of action in

consulting other political advisers as well as these, and I must in

all cases make it my first object to follow the wishes of the people,

not always most truly represented by their nominal

representatives.' What say you to that precious piece of

presidential manners?"

"At least I like his courage," said Mrs. Lee.

"Courage is one thing; common sense is another. This letter is a

studied insult. He has knocked me off the track once. He means to

do it again. It is a declaration of war. What ought I to do?"

"Whatever is most for the public good." said Madeleine, gravely.

Ratcliffe looked into her face with such undisguised delight--there

was so little possibility of mistaking or ignoring the expression of

his eyes, that she shrank back with a certain shock. She was not

prepared for so open a demonstration. He hardened his features at

once, and went on:

"But what is most for the public good?"

"That you know better than I," said Madeleine; "only one thing is

clear to me. If you let yourself be ruled by your private feelings,

you will make a greater mistake than he. Now I must go, for I have

visits to make. The next time I come, Mr. Ratcliffe, you must keep

your word better."

When they next met, Ratcliffe read to her a part of his reply to Mr.

Grimes, which ran thus: "It is the lot of every party leader to suffer

from attacks and to commit errors. It is true, as the President says,

that I have been no exception to this law. Believing as I do that

great results can only be accomplished by great parties, I have

uniformly yielded my own personal opinions where they have

failed to obtain general assent. I shall continue to follow this

course, and the President may with perfect confidence count upon

my disinterested support of all party measures, even though I may

not be consulted in originating them."

Mrs. Lee listened attentively, and then said: "Have you never

refused to go with your party?"

"Never!" was Ratcliffe's firm reply.

Madeleine still more thoughtfully inquired again: "Is nothing more

powerful than party allegiance?"

"Nothing, except national allegiance," replied Ratcliffe, still more

firmly.

Chapter V

TO tie a prominent statesman to her train and to lead him about

like a tame bear, is for a young and vivacious woman a more

certain amusement than to tie herself to him and to be dragged

about like an Indian squaw. This fact was Madeleine Lee's first

great political discovery in Washington, and it was worth to her all

the German philosophy she had ever read, with even a complete

edition of Herbert Spencer's works into the bargain. There could be

no doubt that the honours and dignities of a public career were no

fair consideration for its pains. She made a little daily task for

herself of reading in succession the lives and letters of the

American Presidents, and of their wives, when she could find that

there was a trace of the latter's existence. What a melancholy

spectacle it was, from George Washington down to the last

incumbent; what vexations, what disappointments, what grievous

mistakes, what very objectionable manners! Not one of them, who

had aimed at high purpose, but had been thwarted, beaten, and

habitually insulted! What a gloom lay on the features of those

famous chieftains, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster; what varied

expression of defeat and unsatisfied desire; what a sense of

self-importance and senatorial magniloquence; what a craving for

flattery; what despair at the sentence of fate! And what did they

amount to, after all?

They were practical men, these! they had no great problems of

thought to settle, no questions that rose above the ordinary rules of

common morals and homely duty. How they had managed to befog

the subject! What elaborate show-structures they had built up, with

no result but to obscure the horizon! Would not the country have

done better without them? Could it have done worse? What deeper

abyss could have opened under the nation's feet, than that to whose

verge they brought it?

Madeleine's mind wearied with the monotony of the story. She

discussed the subject with Ratcliffe, who told her frankly that the

pleasure of politics lay in the possession of power. He agreed that

the country would do very well without him. "But here I am," said

he, "and here I mean to stay." He had very little sympathy for thin

moralising, and a statesmanlike contempt for philosophical

politics. He loved power, and he meant to be President.

That was enough.

So,metimes the tragic and sometimes the comic side was

uppermost in her mind, and sometimes she did not herself know

whether to cry or to laugh.

Washington more than any other city in the world swarms with

simple-minded exhibitions of human nature; men and women

curiously out of place, whom it would be cruel to ridicule and

ridiculous to weep over. The sadder exhibitions are fortunately

seldom seen by respectable people; only the little social accidents

come under their eyes. One evening Mrs. Lee went to the

President's first evening reception. As Sybil flatly refused to face

the crowd, and Carrington mildly said that he feared he was not

sufficiently reconstructed to appear at home in that august

presence, Mrs. Lee accepted Mr. French for an escort, and walked

across the Square with him to join the throng that was pouring into

the doors of the White House. They took their places in the line of

citizens and were at last able to enter the reception-room. There

Madeleine found herself before two seemingly mechanical figures,

which mlght be wood or wax, for any sign they showed of life.

These two figures were the President and his wife; they stood stiff

and awkward by the door, both their faces stripped of every sign of

intelligence, while the right hands of both extended themselves to

the column of visitors with the mechanical action of toy dolls.

Mrs. Lee for a moment began to laugh, but the laugh died on her

lips. To the President and his wife this was clearly no laughing

matter. There they stood, automata, representatives of the society

which streamed past them. Madeleine seized Mr. French by the

arm.

"Take me somewhere at once," said she, "where I can look at it.

Here! in the corner. I had no conception how shocking it was!"

Mr. French supposed she was thinking of the queer-looking men

and women who were swarming through the rooms, and he made,

after his own delicate notion of humour, some uncouth jests on

those who passed by. Mrs. Lee, however, was in no humour to

explain or even to listen. She stopped him short:--

"There, Mr. French! Now go away and leave me. I want to be

alone for half an hour. Please come for me then." And there she

stood, with her eyes fixed on the President and his wife, while the

endless stream of humanity passed them, shaking hands.

What a strange and solemn spectacle it was, and how the deadly

fascination of it burned the image in upon her mind! What a horrid

warning to ambition!

And in all that crowd there was no one besides herself who felt the

mockery of this exhibition. To all the others this task was a regular

part of the President's duty, and there was nothing ridiculous about

it. They thought it a democratic institution, this droll a ping of

monarchical forms. To them the deadly dulness of the show was as

natural and proper as ever to the courtiers of the Philips and

Charleses seemed the ceremonies of the Escurial. To her it had the

effect of a nightmare, or of an opium-eater's vision, She felt a

sudden conviction that this was to be the end of American society;

its realisation and dream at once. She groaned in spirit.

"Yes! at last I have reached the end! We shall grow to be wax

images, and our talk will be like the squeaking of toy dolls. We

shall all wander round and round the earth and shake hands. No

one will have any object in this world, and there will be no other.

It is worse than anything in the 'Inferno.' What an awful vision of

eternity!"

Suddenly, as through a mist, she saw the melancholy face of Lord

Skye approaching. He came to her side, and his voice recalled her

to reality.

"Does it amuse you, this sort of thing?" he asked in a vague way.

"We take our amusement sadly, after the manner of our people,"

she replied; "but it certainly interests me."

They stood for a time in silence, watching the slowly eddying

dance of Democracy, until he resumed:

"Whom do you take that man to be--the long, lean one, with a long

woman on each arm?"

"That man," she replied, "I take to be a Washington

department-clerk, or perhaps a member of Congress from Iowa,

with a wife and wife's sister. Do they shock your nobility?"

He looked at her with comical resignation. "You mean to tell me

that they are quite as good as dowager-countesses. I grant it. My

aristocratic spirit is broken, Mrs. Lee. I will even ask them to

dinner if you bid me, and if you will come to meet them. But the

last time I asked a member of Congress to dine, he sent me back a

note in pencil on my own envelope that he would bring two of his

friends with him, very respectable constituents from Yahoo city, or

some such place; nature's noblemen, he said."

"You should have welcomed them."

"I did. I wanted to see two of nature's noblemen, and I knew they

would probably be pleasanter company than their representative.

They came; very respectable persons, one with a blue necktie, the

other with a red one: both had diamond pins in their shirts, and

were carefully brushed in respect to their hair. They said nothing,

ate little, drank less, and were much better behaved than I am.

When they went away, they unanimously asked me to stay with

them when I visited Yahoo city."

"You will not want guests if you always do that."

"I don't know. I think it was pure ignorance on their part. They

knew no better, and they seemed modest enough. My only

complaint was that I could get nothing out of them. I wonder

whether their wives would have been more amusing."

"Would they be so in England, Lord Skye?"

He looked down at her with half-shut eyes, and drawled: "You

know my countrywomen?"

"Hardly at all."

"Then let us discuss some less serious subject."

"Willingly. I have waited for you to explain to me why you have

to-night an expression of such melancholy."

"Is that quite friendly, Mrs. Lee? Do I really look melancholy?"

"Unutterably, as I feel. I am consumed with curiosity to know the

reason."

The British minister coolly took a complete survey of the whole

room, ending with a prolonged stare at the President and his wife,

who were still mechanically shaking hands; then he looked back

into her face, and said never a word.

She insisted: "I must have this riddle answered. It suffocates me. I

should not be sad at seeing these same people at work or at play, if

they ever do play; or in a church or a lecture-room. Why do they

weigh on me like a horrid phantom here?"

"I see no riddle, Mrs. Lee. You have answered your own question;

they are neither at work nor at play."

"Then please take me home at once. I shall have hysterics. The

sight of those two suffering images at the door is too mournful to

be borne. I am dizzy with looking at these stalking figures. I don't

believe they're real.

I wish the house would take fire. I want an earthquake. I wish

some one would pinch the President, or pull his wife's hair."

Mrs. Lee did not repeat the experiment of visiting the White

House, and indeed for some time afterwards she spoke with little

enthusiasm of the presidential office. To Senator Ratcliffe she

expressed her opinions strongly. The Senator tried in vain to argue

that the people had a right to call upon their chief magistrate, and

that he was bound to receive them; this being so, there was no less

objectionable way of proceeding than the one which had been

chosen. "Who gave the people any such right?" asked Mrs.

Lee. "Where does it come from? What do they want it for? You

know better, Mr. Ratcliffe! Our chief magistrate is a citizen like

any one else. What puts it into his foolish head to cease being a

citizen and to ape royalty?

Our governors never make themselves ridiculous. Why cannot the

wretched being content himself with living like the rest of us, and

minding his own business? Does he know what a figure of fun he

is?" And Mrs. Lee went so far as to declare that she would like to

be the President's wife only to put an end to this folly; nothing

should ever induce her to go through such a performance; and if

the public did not approve of this, Congress might impeach her,

and remove her from office; all she demanded was the right to be

heard before the Senate in her own defence.

Nevertheless, there was a very general impression in Washington

that Mrs.

Lee would like nothing better than to be in the White House.

Known to comparatively few people, and rarely discussing even

with them the subjects which deeply interested her, Madeleine

passed for a clever, intriguing woman who had her own objects to

gain. True it is, beyond peradventure, that all residents of

Washington may be assumed to be in office or candidates for

office; unless they avow their object, they are guilty of an

attempt--and a stupid one--to deceive; yet there is a small class of

apparent exceptions destined at last to fall within the rule. Mrs.

Lee was properly assumed to be a candidate for office. To the

Washingtonians it was a matter of course that Mrs. Lee should

marry Silas P. Ratcliffe. That he should be glad to get a

fashionable and intelligent wife, with twenty or thirty thousand

dollars a year, was not surprising. That she should accept the first

public man of the day, with a flattering chance for the

Presidency--a man still comparatively young and not without good

looks--was perfectly natural, and in her undertaking she had the

sympathy of all well-regulated Washington women who were not

possible rivals; for to them the President's wife is of more

consequence than the President; and, indeed, if America only

knew it, they are not very far from the truth.

Some there were, however, who did not assent to this good-natured

though worldly view of the proposed match. These ladies were

severe in their comments upon Mrs. Lee's conduct, and did not

hesitate to declare their opinion that she was the calmest and most

ambitious minx who had ever come within their observation.

Unfortunately it happened that the respectable and proper Mrs.

Schuyler Clinton took this view of the case, and made little

attempt to conceal her opinion. She was justly indignant at her

cousin's gross worldliness, and possible promotion in rank.

"If Madeleine Ross marries that coarse, horrid old Illinois

politician,"

said she to her husband, "I never will forgive her so long as I live."

Mr. Clinton tried to excuse Madeleine, and even went so far as to

suggest that the difference of age was no greater than in their own

case; but his wife trampled ruthlessly on his argument.

"At any rate," said she, "I never came to Washington as a widow

on purpose to set my cap for the first candidate for the Presidency,

and I never made a public spectacle of my indecent eagerness in

the very galleries of the Senate; and Mrs. Lee ought to be ashamed

of herself. She is a cold-blooded, heartless, unfeminine cat."

Little Victoria Dare, who babbled like the winds and streams, with

utter indifference as to what she said or whom she addressed, used

to bring choice bits of this gossip to Mrs. Lee. She always affected

a little stammer when she said anything uncommonly impudent,

and put on a manner of languid simplicity. She felt keenly the

satisfaction of seeing Madeleine charged with her own besetting

sins. For years all Washington had agreed that Victoria was little

better than one of the wicked; she had done nothing but violate

every rule of propriety and scandalise every well-regulated family

in the city, and there was no good in her. Yet it could not be

denied that Victoria was amusing, and had a sort of irregular

fascination; consequently she was universally tolerated. To see

Mrs. Lee thrust down to her own level was an unmixed pleasure to

her, and she carefully repeated to Madeleine the choice bits of

dialogue which she picked up in her wanderings.

"Your cousin, Mrs. Clinton, says you are a ca-ca-cat, Mrs. Lee."

"I don't believe it, Victoria. Mrs. Clinton never said anything of the

sort."

"Mrs. Marston says it is because you have caught a ra-ra-rat, and

Senator Clinton was only a m-m-mouse!"

Naturally all this unexpected publicity irritated Mrs. Lee not a

little, especially when short and vague paragraphs, soon followed

by longer and more positive ones, in regard to Senator Ratcliffe's

matrimonial prospects, began to appear in newspapers, along with

descriptions of herself from the pens of enterprising female

correspondents for the press, who had never so much as seen her.

At the first sight of one of these newspaper articles, Madeleine

fairly cried with mortification and anger. She wanted to leave

Washington the next day, and she hated the very thought of

Ratcliffe. There was something in the newspaper style so

inscrutably vulgar, something so inexplicably revolting to the

sense of feminine decency, that she shrank under it as though it

were a poisonous spider. But after the first acute shame had

passed, her temper was roused, and she vowed that she would

pursue her own path just as she had begun, without regard to all

the malignity and vulgarity in the wide United States. She did not

care to marry Senator Ratcliffe; she liked his society and was

flattered by his confidence; she rather hoped to prevent him from

ever making a formal offer, and if not, she would at least push it

off to the last possible moment; but she was not to be frightened

from marrying him by any amount of spitefulness or gossip, and

she did not mean to refuse him except for stronger reasons than

these. She even went so far in her desperate courage as to laugh at

her cousin, Mrs.

Clinton, whose venerable husband she allowed and even

encouraged to pay her such public attention and to express

sentiments of such youthful ardour as she well knew would

inflame and exasperate the excellent lady his wife.

Carrington was the person most unpleasantly affected by the

course which this affair had taken. He could no longer conceal

from himself the fact that he was as much m love as a dignified

Virginian could be. With him, at all events, she had shown no

coquetry, nor had she ever either flattered or encouraged him. But

Carrington, m his solitary struggle against fate, had found her a

warm friend; always ready to assist where assistance was needed,

generous with her money in any cause which he was willing to

vouch for, full of sympathy where sympathy was more than

money, and full of resource and suggestion where money and

sympathy failed. Carrington knew her better than she knew herself.

He selected her books; he brought the last speech or the last report

from the Capitol or the departments; he knew her doubts and her

vagaries, and as far as he understood them at all, helped her to

solve them.

Carrington was too modest, and perhaps too shy, to act the part of

a declared lover, and he was too proud to let it be thought that he

wanted to exchange his poverty for her wealth. But he was all the

more anxious when he saw the evident attraction which Ratcliffe's

strong will and unscrupulous energy exercised over her. He saw

that Ratcliffe was steadily pushing his advances; that he flattered

all Mrs. Lee's weaknesses by the confidence and deference with

which he treated her; and that in a very short time, Madeleine must

either marry him or find herself looked upon as a heartless

coquette. He had his own reasons for thinking ill of Senator

Ratcliffe, and he meant to prevent a marriage; but he had an

enemy to deal with not easily driven from the path, and quite

capable of routing any number of rivals.

Ratcliffe was afraid of no one. He had not fought his own way in

life for nothing, and he knew all the value of a cold head and

dogged self-assurance.

Nothing but this robust Americanism and his strong will carried

him safely through the snares and pitfalls of Mrs. Lee's society,

where rivals and enemies beset him on every hand. He was little

better than a schoolboy, when he ventured on their ground, but

when he could draw them over upon his own territory of practical

life he rarely failed to trample on his assailants.

It was this practical sense and cool will that won over Mrs. Lee,

who was woman enough to assume that all the graces were well

enough employed in decorating her, and it was enough if the other

sex felt her superiority. Men were valuable only in proportion to

their strength and their appreciation of women. If the senator had

only been strong enough always to control his temper, he would

have done very well, but his temper was under a great strain in

these times, and his incessant effort to control it in politics made

him less watchful in private life. Mrs. Lee's tacit assumption of

superior refinement irritated him, and sometimes made him show

his teeth like a bull-dog, at the cost of receiving from Mrs. Lee a

quick stroke in return such as a well-bred tortoise-shell cat

administers to check over-familiarity; innocent to the eye, but

drawing blood. One evening when he was more than commonly

out of sorts, after sitting some time in moody silence, he roused

himself, and, taking up a book that lay on her table, he glanced at

its title and turned over the leaves. It happened by ill luck to be a

volume of Darwin that Mrs. Lee had just borrowed from the

library of Congress.

"Do you understand this sort of thing?" asked the Senator abruptly,

in a tone that suggested a sneer.

"Not very well," replied Mrs. Lee, rather curtly.

"Why do you want to understand it?" persisted the Senator. "What

good will it do you?"

"Perhaps it will teach us to be modest," answered Madeleine, quite

equal to the occasion.

"Because it says we descend from monkeys?" rejoined the Senator,

roughly.

"Do you think you are descended from monkeys?"

"Why not?" said Madeleine.

"Why not?" repeated Ratcliffe, laughing harshly. "I don't like the

connection. Do you mean to introduce your distant relations into

society?"

"They would bring more amusement into it than most of its present

members,"

rejoined Mrs. Lee, with a gentle smile that threatened mischief.

But Ratcliffe would not be warned; on the contrary, the only effect

of Mrs.

Lee's defiance was to exasperate his ill-temper, and whenever he

lost his temper he became senatorial and Websterian. "Such

books," he began, "disgrace our civilization; they degrade and

stultify our divine nature; they are only suited for Asiatic

despotisms where men are reduced to the level of brutes; that they

should be accepted by a man like Baron Jacobi, I can understand;

he and his masters have nothing to do in the world but to trample

on human rights. Mr. Carrington, of course, would approve those

ideas; he believes in the divine doctrine of flogging negroes; but

that you, who profess philanthropy and free principles, should go

with them, is astonishing; it is incredible; it is unworthy of you."

"You are very hard on the monkeys," replied Madeleine, rather

sternly, when the Senator's oration was ended. "The monkeys

never did you any harm; they are not in public life; they are not

even voters; if they were, you would be enthusiastic about their

intelligence and virtue. After all, we ought to be grateful to them,

for what would men do in this melancholy world if they had not

inherited gaiety from the monkeys--as well as oratory."

Ratcliffe, to do him justice, took punishment well, at least when it

came from Mrs. Lee's hands, and his occasional outbursts of

insubordination were sure to be followed by improved discipline;

but if he allowed Mrs. Lee to correct his faults, he had no notion of

letting himself be instructed by her friends, and he lost no chance

of telling them so. But to do this was not always enough. Whether

it were that he had few ideas outside of his own experience, or that

he would not trust himself on doubtful ground, he seemed

compelled to bring every discussion down to his own level.

Madeleine puzzled herself in vain to find out whether he did this

because he knew no better, or because he meant to cover his own

ignorance.

"The Baron has amused me very much with his account of

Bucharest society,"

Mrs. Lee would say: "I had no idea it was so gay."

"I would like to show him our society in Peonia," was Ratcliffe's

reply; "he would find a very brilliant circle there of nature's true

noblemen."

"The Baron says their politicians are precious sharp chaps," added

Mr.

French.

"Oh, there are politicians in Bulgaria, are there?" asked the

Senator, whose ideas of the Roumanian and Bulgarian

neighbourhood were vague, and who had a general notion that all

such people lived in tents, wore sheepskins with the wool inside,

and ate curds: "Oh, they have politicians there! I would like to see

them try their sharpness in the west."

"Really!" said Mrs. Lee. "Think of Attila and his hordes running an

Indiana caucus?"

"Anyhow," cried French with a loud laugh, "the Baron said that a

set of bigger political scoundrels than his friends couldn't be found

in all Illinois."

"Did he say that?" exclaimed Ratcliffe angrily.

"Didn't he, Mrs. Lee? but I don't believe it; do you? What's your

candid opinion, Ratcliffe? What you don't know about Illinois

politics isn't worth knowing; do you really think those Bulgrascals

couldn't run an Illinois state convention?"

Ratcliffe did not like to be chaffed, especially on this subject, but

he could not resent French's liberty which was only a moderate

return for the wooden nutmeg. To get the conversation away from

Europe, from literature, from art, was his great object, and chaff

was a way of escape.

Carrington was very well aware that the weak side of the Senator

lay in his blind ignorance of morals. He flattered himself that Mrs.

Lee must see this and be shocked by it sooner or later, so that

nothing more was necessary than to let Ratcliffe expose himself.

Without talking very much, Carrington always aimed at drawing

him out. He soon found, however, that Ratcliffe understood such

tactics perfectly, and instead of injuring, he rather improved his

position. At times the man's audacity was startling, and even when

Carrington thought him hopelessly entangled, he would sweep

away all the hunter's nets with a sheer effort of strength, and walk

off bolder and more dangerous than ever.

When Mrs. Lee pressed him too closely, he frankly admitted her

charges.

"What you say is in great part true. There is much in politics that

disgusts and disheartens; much that is coarse and bad. I grant you

there is dishonesty and corruption. We must try to make the

amount as small as possible."

"You should be able to tell Mrs. Lee how she must go to work,"

said Carrington; "you have had experience. I have heard, it seems

to me, that you were once driven to very hard measures against

corruption."

Ratcliffe looked ill-pleased at this compliment, and gave

Carrington one of his cold glances that meant mischief. But he

took up the challenge on the spot:--

"Yes, I was, and am very sorry for it. The story is this, Mrs. Lee;

and it is well-known to every man, woman, and child in the State

of Illinois, so that I have no reason for softening it. In the worst

days of the war there was almost a certainty that my State would

be carried by the peace party, by fraud, as we thought, although,

fraud or not, we were bound to save it. Had Illinois been lost then,

we should certainly have lost the Presidential election, and with it

probably the Union. At any rate, I believed the fate of the war to

depend on the result. I was then Governor, and upon me the

responsibility rested. We had entire control of the northern

counties and of their returns. We ordered the returning officers in a

certain number of counties to make no returns until they heard

from us, and when we had received the votes of all the southern

counties and learned the precise number of votes we needed to

give us a majority, we telegraphed to our northern returning

officers to make the vote of their districts such and such, thereby

overbalancing the adverse returns and giving the State to us.

This was done, and as I am now senator I have a right to suppose

that what I did was approved. I am not proud of the transaction,

but I would do it again, and worse than that, if I thought it would

save this country from disunion. But of course I did not expect Mr.

Carrington to approve it. I believe he was then carrying out his

reform principles by bearing arms against the government."

"Yes!" said Carrington drily; "you got the better of me, too. Like

the old Scotchman, you didn't care who made the people's wars

provided you made its ballots.

Carrington had missed his point. The man who has committed a

murder for his country, is a patriot and not an assassin, even when

he receives a seat in the Senate as his share of the plunder. Women

cannot be expected to go behind the motives of that patriot who

saves his country and his election in times of revolution.

Carrington's hostility to Ratcliffe was, however, mild, when

compared with that felt by old Baron Jacobi. Why the baron should

have taken so violent a prejudice it is not easy to explain, but a

diplomatist and a senator are natural enemies, and Jacobi, as an

avowed admirer of Mrs. Lee, found Ratcliffe in his way. This

prejudiced and immoral old diplomatist despised and loathed an

American senator as the type which, to his bleared European eyes,

combined the utmost pragmatical self-assurance and overbearing

temper with the narrowest education and the meanest personal

experience that ever existed in any considerable government. As

Baron Jacobi's country had no special relations with that of the

United States, and its Legation at Washington was a mere job to

create a place for Jacobi to fill, he had no occasion to disguise his

personal antipathies, and he considered himself in some degree as

having a mission to express that diplomatic contempt for the

Senate which his colleagues, if they felt it, were obliged to

conceal. He performed his duties with conscientious precision. He

never missed an opportunity to thrust the sharp point of his

dialectic rapier through the joints of the clumsy and hide-bound

senatorial self-esteem. He delighted in skilfully exposing to

Madeleine's eyes some new side of Ratcliffe's ignorance. His

conversation at such times sparkled with historical allusions,

quotations in half a dozen different languages, references to

well-known facts which an old man's memory could not recall

with precision in all their details, but with which the Honourable

Senator was familiarly acquainted, and which he could readily

supply. And his Voltairian face leered politely as he listened to

Ratcliffe's reply, which showed invariable ignorance of common

literature, art, and history. The climax of his triumph came one

evening when Ratcliffe unluckily, tempted by some allusion to

Molière which he thought he understood, made reference to the

unfortunate influence of that great man on the religious opinions

of his time. Jacobi, by a flash of inspiration, divined that he had

confused Molière with Voltaire, and assuming a manner of

extreme suavity, he put his victim on the rack, and tortured him

with affected explanations and interrogations, until Madeleine was

in a manner forced to interrupt and end the scene. But even when

the senator was not to be lured into a trap, he could not escape

assault. The baron in such a case would cross the lines and attack

him on his own ground, as on one occasion, when Ratcliffe was

defending his doctrine of party allegiance, Jacobi silenced him by

sneering somewhat thus:

"Your principle is quite correct, Mr. Senator. I, too, like yourself,

was once a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was

ultramontane.

Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church; your

National Convention is our OEcumenic Council; you abdicate

reason, as we do, before its decisions; and you yourself, Mr.

Ratcliffe, you are a Cardinal. They are able men, those cardinals; I

have known many; they were our best friends, but they were not

reformers. Are you a reformer, Mr. Senator?"

Ratcliffe grew to dread and hate the old man, but all his ordinary

tactics were powerless against this impenetrable eighteenth

century cynic. If he resorted to his Congressional practise of

browbeating and dogmatism, the Baron only smiled and turned his

back, or made some remark in French which galled his enemy all

the more, because, while he did not understand it, he knew well

that Madeleine did, and that she tried to repress her smile.

Ratcliffe's grey eyes grew colder and stonier than ever as he

gradually perceived that Baron Jacobi was carrying on a set

scheme with malignant ingenuity, to drive him out of Madeleine's

house, and he swore a terrible oath that he would not be beaten by

that monkey-faced foreigner. On the other hand Jacobi had little

hope of success: "What can an old man do?" said he with perfect

sincerity to Carrington; "If I were forty years younger, that great

oaf should not have his own way. Ah! I wish I were young again

and we were in Vienna!" From which it was rightly inferred by

Carrington that the venerable diplomatist would, if such acts were

still in fashion, have coolly insulted the Senator, and put a bullet

through his heart.

Chapter VI

IN February the weather became warmer and summer-like. In

Virginia there comes often at this season a deceptive gleam of

summer, slipping in between heavy storm-clouds of sleet and

snow; days and sometimes weeks when the temperature is like

June; when the earliest plants begin to show their hardy flowers,

and when the bare branches of the forest trees alone protest against

the conduct of the seasons. Then men and women are languid; life,

seems, as in Italy, sensuous and glowing with colour; one is

conscious of walking in an atmosphere that is warm, palpable,

radiant with possibilities; a delicate haze hangs over Arlington,

and softens even the harsh white glare of the Capitol; the struggle

of existence seems to abate; Lent throws its calm shadow over

society; and youthful diplomatists, unconscious of their danger, are

lured into asking foolish girls to marry them; the blood thaws in

the heart and flows out into the veins, like the rills of sparkling

water that trickle from every lump of ice or snow, as though all the

ice and snow on earth, and all the hardness of heart, all the heresy

and schism, all the works of the devil, had yielded to the force of

love and to the fresh warmth of innocent, lamb-like, confiding

virtue. In such a world there should be no guile--but there is a great

deal of it notwithstanding. Indeed, at no other season is there so

much. This is the moment when the two whited sepulchres at

either end of the Avenue reek with the thick atmosphere of bargain

and sale. The old is going; the new is coming. Wealth, office,

power are at auction. Who bids highest? who hates with most

venom? who intrigues with most skill? who has done the dirtiest,

the meanest, the darkest, and the most, political work? He shall

have his reward.

Senator Ratcliffe was absorbed and ill at ease. A swarm of

applicants for office dogged his steps and beleaguered his rooms in

quest of his endorsement of their paper characters. The new

President was to arrive on Monday. Intrigues and combinations, of

which the Senator was the soul, were all alive, awaiting this

arrival. Newspaper correspondents pestered him with questions.

Brother senators called him to conferences. His mind was

pre-occupied with his own interests. One might have supposed

that, at this instant, nothing could have drawn him away from the

political gaming-table, and yet when Mrs. Lee remarked that she

was going to Mount Vernon on Saturday with a little party,

including the British Minister and an Irish gentleman staying as a

guest at the British Legation, the Senator surprised her by

expressing a strong wish to join them. He explained that, as the

political lead was no longer in his hands, the chances were nine in

ten that if he stirred at all he should make a blunder; that his

friends expected him to do something when, in fact, nothing could

be done; that every preparation had already been made, and that

for him to go on an excursion to Mount Vernon, at this moment,

with the British Minister, was, on the whole, about the best use he

could make of his time, since it would hide him for one day at

least.

Lord Skye had fallen into the habit of consulting Mrs. Lee when

his own social resources were low, and it was she who had

suggested this party to Mount Vernon, with Carrington for a guide

and Mr. Gore for variety, to occupy the time of the Irish friend

whom Lord Skye was bravely entertaining.

This gentleman, who bore the title of Dunbeg, was a dilapidated

peer, neither wealthy nor famous. Lord Skye brought him to call

on Mrs. Lee, and in some sort put him under her care. He was

young, not ill-looking, quite intelligent, rather too fond of facts,

and not quick at humour. He was given to smiling in a deprecatory

way, and when he talked, he was either absent or excited; he made

vague blunders, and then smiled in deprecation of offence, or his

words blocked their own path in their rush. Perhaps his manner

was a little ridiculous, but he had a good heart, a good head, and a

title. He found favour in the eyes of Sybil and Victoria Dare, who

declined to admit other women to the party, although they offered

no objection to Mr.

Ratcliffe's admission. As for Lord Dunbeg, he was an enthusiastic

admirer of General Washington, and, as he privately intimated,

eager to study phases of American society. He was delighted to go

with a small party, and Miss Dare secretly promised herself that

she would show him a phase.

The morning was warm, the sky soft, the little steamer lay at the

quiet wharf with a few negroes lazily watching her preparations for

departure.

Carrington, with Mrs. Lee and the young ladies, arrived first, and

stood leaning against the rail, waiting the arrival of their

companions. Then came Mr. Gore, neatly attired and gloved, with

a light spring overcoat; for Mr.

Gore was very careful of his personal appearance, and not a little

vain of his good looks. Then a pretty woman, with blue eyes and

blonde hair, dressed in black, and leading a little girl by the hand,

came on board, and Carrington went to shake hands with her. On

his return to Mrs. Lee's side, she asked about his new

acquaintance, and he replied with a half-laugh, as though he were

not proud of her, that she was a client, a pretty widow, well known

in Washington. "Any one at the Capitol would tell you all about

her.

She was the wife of a noted lobbyist, who died about two years

ago.

Congressmen can refuse nothing to a pretty face, and she was their

idea of feminine perfection. Yet she is a silly little woman, too.

Her husband died after a very short illness, and, to my great

surprise, made me executor under his will. I think he had an idea

that he could trust me with his papers, which were important and

compromising, for he seems to have had no time to go over them

and destroy what were best out of the way. So, you see, I am left

with his widow and child to look after. Luckily, they are well

provided for."

"Still you have not told me her name." "Her name is Baker--Mrs.

Sam Baker. But they are casting off, and Mr.

Ratcliffe will be left behind. I'll ask the captain to wait." About a

dozen passengers had arrived, among them the two Earls, with a

footman carrying a promising lunch-basket, and the planks were

actually hauled in when a carriage dashed up to the whatf, and Mr.

Ratcliffe leaped out and hurried on board. "Off with you as quick

as you can!" said he to the negro-hands, and in another moment the

little steamer had begun her journey, pounding the muddy waters

of the Potomac and sending up its small column of smoke as

though it were a newly invented incense-burner approaching the

temple of the national deity. Ratcliffe explained in great glee how

he had barely managed to escape his visitors by telling them that

the British Minister was waiting for him, and that he would be

back again presently. "If they had known where I was going," said

he, "you would have seen the boat swamped with office-seekers.

Illinois alone would have brought you to a watery grave." He was

in high spirits, bent upon enjoying his holiday, and as they passed

the arsenal with its solitary sentry, and the navy-yard, with its one

unseaworthy wooden war-steamer, he pointed out these evidences

of national grandeur to Lord Skye, threatening, as the last terror of

diplomacy, to send him home in an American frigate. They were

thus indulging in senatorial humour on one side of the boat, while

Sybil and Victoria, with the aid of Mr. Gore and Carrington, were

improving Lord Dunbeg's mind on the other.

Miss Dare, finding for herself at last a convenient seat where she

could repose and be mistress of the situation, put on a more than

usually demure expression and waited with gravity until her noble

neighbour should give her an opportunity to show those powers

which, as she believed, would supply a phase in his existence.

Miss Dare was one of those young persons, sometimes to be found

in America, who seem to have no object in life, and while

apparently devoted to men, care nothing about them, but find

happiness only in violating rules; she made no parade of whatever

virtues she had, and her chief pleasure was to make fun of all the

world and herself.

"What a noble river!" remarked Lord Dunbeg, as the boat passed

out upon the wide stream; "I suppose you often sail on it?"

"I never was here in my life till now," replied the untruthful Miss

Dare; "we don't think much of it; it s too small; we're used to so

much larger rivers."

"I am afraid you would not like our English rivers then; they are

mere brooks compared with this."

"Are they indeed?" said Victoria, with an appearance of vague

surprise; "how curious! I don't think I care to be an Englishwoman

then. I could not live without big rivers."

Lord Dunbeg stared, and hinted that this was almost unreasonable.

"Unless I were a Countess!" continued Victoria, meditatively,

looking at Alexandria, and paying no attention to his lordship; "I

think I could manage if I were a C-c-countess. It is such a pretty

title!"

"Duchess is commonly thought a prettier one," stammered

Dunbeg, much embarrassed. The young man was not used to chaff

from women.

"I should be satisfied with Countess. It sounds well. I am surprised

that you don't like it." Dunbeg looked about him uneasily for some

means of escape but he was barred in. "I should think you would

feel an awful responsibility in selecting a Countess. How do you

do it?"

Lord Dunbeg nervously joined in the general laughter as Sybil

ejaculated:

"Oh, Victoria!" but Miss Dare continued without a smile or any

elevation of her monotonous voice:

"Now, Sybil, don't interrupt me, please. I am deeply interested in

Lord Dunbeg's conversation. He understands that my interest is

purely scientific, but my happiness requires that I should know

how Countesses are selected.

Lord Dunbeg, how would you recommend a friend to choose a

Countess?"

Lord Dunbeg began to be amused by her impudence, and he even

tried to lay down for her satisfaction one or two rules for selecting

Countesses, but long before he had invented his first rule, Victoria

had darted off to a new subject.

"Which would you rather be, Lord Dunbeg? an Earl or George

Washington?"

"George Washington, certainly," was the Earl's courteous though

rather bewildered reply.

"Really?" she asked with a languid affectation of surprise; "it is

awfully kind of you to say so, but of course you can't mean it.

"Indeed I do mean it."

"Is it possible? I never should have thought it."

"Why not, Miss Dare?"

"You have not the air of wishing to be George Washington."

"May I again ask, why not?"

"Certainly. Did you ever see George Washington?"

"Of course not. He died fifty years before I was born."

"I thought so. You see you don't know him. Now, will you give us

an idea of what you imagine General Washington to have looked

like?"

Dunbeg gave accordingly a flattering description of General

Washington, compounded of Stuart's portrait and Greenough's

statue of Olympian Jove with Washington's features, in the Capitol

Square. Miss Dare listened with an expression of superiority not

unmlxed with patience, and then she enlightened him as follows:

"All you have been saying is perfect stuff--excuse the vulgarity of

the expression. When I am a Countess I will correct my language.

The truth is that General Washington was a raw-boned country

farmer, very hard-featured, very awkward, very illiterate and very

dull; very bad tempered, very profane, and generally tipsy after

dinner."

"You shock me, Miss Dare!" exclaimed Dunbeg.

"Oh! I know all about General Washington. My grandfather knew

him intimately, and often stayed at Mount Vernon for weeks

together. You must not believe what you read, and not a word of

what Mr. Carrington will say.

He is a Virginian and will tell you no end of fine stories and not a

syllable of truth in one of them. We are all patriotic about

Washington and like to hide his faults. If I weren't quite sure you

would never repeat it, I would not tell you this. The truth is that

even when George Washington was a small boy, his temper was so

violent that no one could do anything with him. He once cut down

all his father's fruit-trees in a fit of passion, and then, just because

they wanted to flog him, he threatened to brain his father with the

hatchet. His aged wife suffered agonies from him. My grandfather

often told me how he had seen the General pinch and swear at her

till the poor creature left the room in tears; and how once at Mount

Vernon he saw Washington, when quite an old man, suddenly rush

at an unoffending visitor, and chase him off the place, beating him

all the time over the head with a great stick with knots in it, and all

just because he heard the poor man stammer; he never could abide

s-s-stammering."

Carrington and Gore burst into shouts of laughter over this

description of the Father of his country, but Victoria continued in

her gentle drawl to enlighten Lord Dunbeg in regard to other

subjects with information equally mendacious, until he decided

that she was quite the most eccentric person he had ever met. The

boat arrived at Mount Vernon while she was still engaged in a

description of the society and manners of America, and especially

of the rules which made an offer of marriage necessary. According

to her, Lord Dunbeg was in imminent peril; gentlemen, and

especially foreigners, were expected, in all the States south of the

Potomac, to offer themselves to at least one young lady in every

city: "and I had only yesterday," said Victoria, "a letter from a

lovely girl in North Carolina, a dear friend of mine, who wrote me

that she was right put out because her brothers had called on a

young English visitor with shot guns, and she was afraid he

wouldn't recover, and, after all, she says she should have refused

him."

Meanwhile Madeleine, on the other side of the boat, undisturbed

by the laughter that surrounded Miss Dare, chatted soberly and

seriously with Lord Skye and Senator Ratcliffe. Lord Skye, too, a

little intoxicated by the brilliancy of the morning, broke out into

admiration of the noble river, and accused Americans of not

appreciating the beauties of their own country.

"Your national mind," said he, "has no eyelids. It requires a broad

glare and a beaten road. It prefers shadows which you can cut out

with a knife. It doesn't know the beauty of this Virginia winter

softness."

Mrs. Lee resented the charge. America, she maintained, had not

worn her feelings threadbare like Europe. She had still her story to

tell; she was waiting for her Burns and Scott, her Wordsworth and

Byron, her Hogarth and Turner. "You want peaches in spring," said

she. "Give us our thousand years of summer, and then complain, if

you please, that our peach is not as mellow as yours. Even our

voices may be soft then," she added, with a significant look at Lord

Skye.

"We are at a disadvantage in arguing with Mrs. Lee," said he to

Ratcliffe; "when she ends as counsel, she begins as witness. The

famous Duchess of Devonshire's lips were not half as convincing

as Mrs. Lee's voice."

Ratcliffe listened carefully, assenting whenever he saw that Mrs.

Lee wished it. He wished he understood precisely what tones and

half-tones, colours and harmonies, were.

They arrived and strolled up the sunny path. At the tomb they

halted, as all good Americans do, and Mr. Gore, in a tone of

subdued sorrow, delivered a short address--

"It might be much worse if they improved it," he said, surveying its

proportions with the ?sthetic eye of a cultured Bostonian. "As it

stands, this tomb is a simple misfortune which might befall any of

us; we should not grieve over it too much. What would our

feelings be if a Congressional committee reconstructed it of white

marble with Gothic pepper-pots, and gilded it inside on

machine-moulded stucco!"

Madeleine, however, insisted that the tomb, as it stood, was the

only restless spot about the quiet landscape, and that it

contradicted all her ideas about repose in the grave. Ratcliffe

wondered what she meant.

They passed on, wandering across the lawn, and through the house.

Their eyes, weary of the harsh colours and forms of the city, took

pleasure in the worn wainscots and the stained walls. Some of the

rooms were still occupied; fires were burning in the wide

fire-places. All were tolerably furnished, and there was no

uncomfortable sense of repair or newness. They mounted the

stairs, and Mrs. Lee fairly laughed when she was shown the room

in which General Washington slept, and where he died.

Carrington smiled too. "Our old Virginia houses were mostly like

this," said he; "suites of great halls below, and these gaunt barracks

above. The Virginia house was a sort of hotel. When there was a

race or a wedding, or a dance, and the house was full, they thought

nothing of packing half a dozen people in one room, and if the

room was large, they stretched a sheet a cross to separate the men

from the women. As for toilet, those were not the mornings of cold

baths. With our ancestors a little washing went a long way."

"Do you still live so in Virginia?" asked Madeleine.

"Oh no, it is quite gone. We live now like other country people,

and try to pay our debts, which that generation never did. They

lived from hand to mouth. They kept a stable-full of horses. The

young men were always riding about the country, betting on

horse-races, gambling, drinking, fighting, and making love. No one

knew exactly what he was worth until the crash came about fifty

years ago, and the whole thing ran out."

"Just what happened in Ireland!" said Lord Dunbeg, much

interested and full of his article in the Quarterly; "the resemblance

is perfect, even down to the houses."

Mrs. Lee asked Carrington bluntly whether he regretted the

destruction of this old social arrangement.

"One can't help regretting," said he, "whatever it was that produced

George Washington, and a crowd of other men like him. But I

think we might produce the men still if we had the same field for

them."

"And would you bring the old society back again if you could?"

asked she.

"What for? It could not hold itself up. General Washington himself

could not save it. Before he died he had lost his hold on Virginia,

and his power was gone."

The party for a while separated, and Mrs. Lee found herself alone

in the great drawing-room. Presently the blonde Mrs. Baker

entered, with her child, who ran about making more noise than

Mrs. Washington would have permitted.

Madeleine, who had the usual feminine love of children, called the

girl to her and pointed out the shepherds and shepherdesses carved

on the white Italian marble of the fireplace; she invented a little

story about them to amuse the child, while the mother stood by and

at the end thanked the story-teller with more enthusiasm than

seemed called for. Mrs. Lee did not fancy her effusive manner, or

her complexion, and was glad when Dunbeg appeared at the

doorway.

"How do you like General Washington at home?" asked she.

"Really, I assure you I feel quite at home myself," replied Dunbeg,

with a more beaming smile than ever. "I am sure General

Washington was an Irishman.

I know it from the look of the place. I mean to look it up and write

an article about it."

"Then if you have disposed of him," said Madeleine, "I think we

will have luncheon, and I have taken the liberty to order it to be

served outside."

There a table had been improvised, and Miss Dare was inspecting

the lunch, and making comments upon Lord Skye's cuisine and

cellar.

"I hope it is very dry champagne," said she, "the taste for sweet

champagne is quite awfully shocking."

The young woman knew no more about dry and sweet champagne

than of the wine of Ulysses, except that she drank both with equal

satisfaction, but she was mimicking a Secretary of the British

Legation who had provided her with supper at her last evening

party. Lord Skye begged her to try it, which she did, and with great

gravity remarked that it was about five per cent. she presumed.

This, too, was caught from her Secretary, though she knew no

more what it meant than if she had been a parrot.

The luncheon was very lively and very good. When it was over, the

gentlemen were allowed to smoke, and conversation fell into a

sober strain, which at last threatened to become serious.

"You want half-tones!" said Madeleine to Lord Skye: "are there not

half-tones enough to suit you on the walls of this house?"

Lord Skye suggested that this was probably owing to the fact that

Washington, belonging, as he did, to the universe, was in his taste

an exception to local rules.

"Is not the sense of rest here captivating?" she continued. "Look at

that quaint garden, and this ragged lawn, and the great river in

front, and the superannuated fort beyond the river! Everything is

peaceful, even down to the poor old General's little bed-room. One

would like to lie down in it and sleep a century or two. And yet

that dreadful Capitol and its office-seekers are only ten miles off."

"No! that is more than I can bear!" broke in Miss Victoria in a

stage whisper, "that dreadful Capitol! Why, not one of us would be

here without that dreadful Capitol! except, perhaps, myself."

"You would appear very well as Mrs. Washington, Victoria."

"Miss Dare has been so very obliging as to give us her views of

General Washington's character this morning," said Dunbeg, "but I

have not yet had time to ask Mr. Carrington for his."

"Whatever Miss Dare says is valuable," replied Carrington, "but

her strong point is facts."

"Never flatter! Mr. Carrington," drawled Miss Dare; "I do not need

it, and it does not become your style. Tell me, Lord Dunbeg, is not

Mr. Carrington a little your idea of General Washington restored to

us in his prime?"

"After your account of General Washington, Miss Dare, how can I

agree with you?"

"After all," said Lord Skye, "I think we must agree that Miss Dare

is in the main right about the charms of Mount Vernon. Even Mrs.

Lee, on the way up, agreed that the General, who is the only

permanent resident here, has the air of being confoundedly bored

in his tomb. I don't myself love your dreadful Capitol yonder, but I

prefer it to a bucolic life here. And I account in this way for my

want of enthusiasm for your great General. He liked no kind of life

but this. He seems to have been greater in the character of a

home-sick Virginia planter than as General or President. I forgive

him his inordinate dulness, for he was not a diplomatist and it was

not his business to lie, but he might once in a way have forgotten

Mount Vernon."

Dunbeg here burst in with an excited protest; all his words seemed

to shove each other aside in their haste to escape first. "All our

greatest Englishmen have been home-sick country squires. I am a

home-sick country squire myself."

"How interesting!" said Miss Dare under her breath.

Mr. Gore here joined in: "It is all very well for you gentlemen to

measure General Washington according to your own private

twelve-inch carpenter's rule. But what will you say to us New

Englanders who never were country gentlemen at all, and never

had any liking for Virginia? What did Washington ever do for us?

He never even pretended to like us. He never was more than barely

civil to us. I'm not finding fault with him; everybody knows that he

never cared for anything but Mount Vernon. For all that, we

idolize him. To us he is Morality, Justice, Duty, Truth; half a

dozen Roman gods with capital letters. He is austere, solitary,

grand; he ought to be deified. I hardly feel easy, eating, drinking,

smoking here on his portico without his permission, taking

liberties with his house, criticising his bedrooms in his absence.

Suppose I heard his horse now trotting up on the other side, and he

suddenly appeared at this door and looked at us. I should abandon

you to his indignation. I should run away and hide myself on the

steamer. The mere thought unmans me."

Ratcliffe seemed amused at Gore's half-serious notions. "You

recall to me,"

said he, "my own feelings when I was a boy and was made by my

father to learn the Farewell Address by heart. In those days

General Washington was a sort of American Jehovah. But the

West is a poor school for Reverence. Since coming to Congress I

have learned more about General Washington, and have been

surprised to find what a narrow base his reputation rests on. A fair

military officer, who made many blunders, and who never had

more men than would make a full army-corps under his command,

he got an enormous reputation in Europe because he did not make

himself king, as though he ever had a chance of doing it. A

respectable, painstaking President, he was treated by the

Opposition with an amount of deference that would have made

government easy to a baby, but it worried him to death. His official

papers are fairly done, and contain good average sense such as a

hundred thousand men in the United States would now write. I

suspect that half of his attachment to this spot rose from his

consciousness of inferior powers and his dread of responsibility.

This government can show to-day a dozen men of equal abilities,

but we don't deify them. What I most wonder at in him is not his

military or political genius at all, for I doubt whether he had much,

but a curious Yankee shrewdness in money matters. He thought

himself a very rich man, yet he never spent a dollar foolishly. He

was almost the only Virginian I ever heard of, in public life, who

did not die insolvent."

During this long speech, Carrington glanced across at Madeleine,

and caught her eye. Ratcliffe's criticism was not to her taste.

Carrington could see that she thought it unworthy of him, and he

knew that it would irritate her.

"I will lay a little trap for Mr. Ratcliffe," thought he to himself;

"we will see whether he gets out of it." So Carrington began, and

all listened closely, for, as a Virginian, he was supposed to know

much about the subject, and his family had been deep in the

confidence of Washington himself.

"The neighbours hereabout had for many years, and may have still,

some curious stories about General Washington's closeness in

money matters. They said he never bought anything by weight but

he had it weighed over again, nor by tale but he had it counted, and

if the weight or number were not exact, he sent it back. Once,

during his absence, his steward had a room plastered, and paid the

plasterer's bill. On the General's return, he measured the room, and

found that the plasterer had charged fifteen shillings too much.

Meanwhile the man had died, and the General made a claim of

fifteen shillings on his estate, which was paid. Again, one of his

tenants brought him the rent. The exact change of fourpence was

required.

The man tendered a dollar, and asked the General to credit him

with the balance against the next year's rent. The General refused

and made him ride nine miles to Alexandria and back for the

fourpence. On the other hand, he sent to a shoemaker in

Alexandria to come and measure him for shoes. The man returned

word that he did not go to any one's house to take measures, and

the General mounted his horse and rode the nine miles to him. One

of his rules was to pay at taverns the same sum for his servants'

meals as for his own. An inn-keeper brought him a bill of

three-and-ninepence for his own breakfast, and three shillings for

his servant. He insisted upon adding the extra ninepence, as he did

not doubt that the servant had eaten as much as he. What do you

say to these anecdotes? Was this meanness or not?"

Ratcliffe was amused. "The stories are new to me," he said. "It is

just as I thought. These are signs of a man who thinks much of

trifles; one who fusses over small matters. We don't do things in

that way now that we no longer have to get crops from granite, as

they used to do in New Hampshire when I was a boy."

Carrington replied that it was unlucky for Virginians that they had

not done things in that way then: if they had, they would not have

gone to the dogs.

Gore shook his head seriously; "Did I not tell you so?" said he.

"Was not this man an abstract virtue? I give you my word I stand in

awe before him, and I feel ashamed to pry into these details of his

life. What is it to us how he thought proper to apply his principles

to nightcaps and feather dusters? We are not his body servants, and

we care nothing about his infirmities. It is enough for us to know

that he carried his rules of virtue down to a pin's point, and that we

ought, one and all, to be on our knees before his tomb."

Dunbeg, pondering deeply, at length asked Carrington whether all

this did not make rather a clumsy politician of the father of his

country.

"Mr. Ratcliffe knows more about politics than I. Ask him," said

Carrington.

"Washington was no politician at all, as we understand the word,"

replied Ratcliffe abruptly. "He stood outside of politics. The thing

couldn't be done to-day. The people don't like that sort of royal

airs."

"I don't understand!" said Mrs. Lee. "Why could you not do it

now?"

"Because I should make a fool of myself;" replied Ratcliffe,

pleased to think that Mrs. Lee should put him on a level with

Washington. She had only meant to ask why the thing could not be

done, and this little touch of Ratcliffe's vanity was inimitable.

"Mr. Ratcliffe means that Washington was too respectable for our

time,"

interposed Carrington.

This was deliberately meant to irritate Ratcliffe, and it did so all

the more because Mrs. Lee turned to Carrington, and said, with

some bitterness:

"Was he then the only honest public man we ever had?"

"Oh no!" replied Carrington cheerfully; "there have been one or

two others."

"If the rest of our Presidents had been like him," said Gore, "we

should have had fewer ugly blots on our short history."

Ratcliffe was exasperated at Carrington's habit of drawing

discussion to this point. He felt the remark as a personal insult, and

he knew it to be intended. "Public men," he broke out, "cannot be

dressing themselves to-day in Washington's old clothes. If

Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways

or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that our

society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make

one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our purpose, we must

use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as

true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will be."

"Come," said Lord Skye, who was beginning to fear an open

quarrel; "the conversation verges on treason, and I am accredited

to this government. Why not examine the grounds?"

A kind of natural sympathy led Lord Dunbeg to wander by the side

of Miss Dare through the quaint old garden. His mind being much

occupied by the effort of stowing away the impressions he had just

received, he was more than usually absent in his manner, and this

want of attention irritated the young lady. She made some

comments on flowers; she invented some new species with

startling names; she asked whether these were known in Ireland;

but Lord Dunbeg was for the moment so vague in his answers that

she saw her case was perilous.

"Here is an old sun-dial. Do you have sun-dials in Ireland, Lord

Dunbeg?"

"Yes; oh, certainly! What! sun-dials? Oh, yes! I assure you there

are a great many sun-dials in Ireland, Miss Dare."

"I am so glad. But I suppose they are only for ornament. Here it is

just the other way. Look at this one! they all behave like that. The

wear and tear of our sun is too much for them; they don't last. My

uncle, who has a place at Long Branch, had five sun-dials in ten

years."

"How very odd! But really now, Miss Dare, I don't see how a

sun--dial could wear out."

"Don't you? How strange! Don't you see, they get soaked with

sunshine so that they can't hold shadow. It's like me, you know. I

have such a good time all the time that I can't be unhappy. Do you

ever read the Burlington Hawkeye, Lord Dunbeg?"

"I don't remember; I think not. Is it an American serial?" gasped

Dunbeg, trying hard to keep pace with Miss Dare in her reckless

dashes across country.

"No, not serial at all!" replied Virginia; "but I am afraid you would

find it very hard reading. I shouldn't try."

"Do you read it much, Miss Dare?"

"Oh, always! I am not really as light as I seem. But then I have an

advantage over you because I know the language."

By this time Dunbeg was awake again, and Miss Dare, satisfied

with her success, allowed herself to become more reasonable, until

a slight shade of sentiment began to flicker about their path.

The scattered party, however, soon had to unite again. The boat

rang its bell for return, they filed down the paths and settled

themselves in their old places. As they steamed away, Mrs. Lee

watched the sunny hill-side and the peaceful house above, until she

could see them no more, and the longer she looked, the less she

was pleased with herself. Was it true, as Victoria Dare said, that

she could not live in so pure an air? Did she really need the denser

fumes of the city? Was she, unknown to herself; gradually

becoming tainted with the life about her? or was Ratcliffe right in

accepting the good and the bad together, and in being of his time

since he was in it? Why was it, she said bitterly to herself; that

everything Washington touched, he purified, even down to the

associations of his house?

and why is it that everything we touch seems soiled? Why do I feel

unclean when I look at Mount Vernon? In spite of Mr. Ratcliffe, is

it not better to be a child and to cry for the moon and stars?

The little Baker girl came up to her where she stood, and began

playing with her parasol.

"Who is your little friend?" asked Ratcliffe.

Mrs. Lee rather vaguely replied that she was the daughter of that

pretty woman in black; she believed her name was Baker.

"Baker, did you say?" repeated Ratcliffe.

"Baker--Mrs. Sam Baker; at least so Mr. Carrington told me; he

said she was a client of his."

In fact Ratcliffe soon saw Carrington go up to her and remain by

her side during the rest of the trip. Ratcliffe watched them sharply

and grew more and more absorbed in his own thoughts as the boat

drew nearer and nearer the shore.

Carrington was in high spirits. He thought he had played his cards

with unusual success. Even Miss Dare deigned to acknowledge his

charms that day.

She declared herself to be the moral image of Martha Washington,

and she started a discussion whether Carrington or Lord Dunbeg

would best suit her in the r?le of the General.

"Mr. Carrington is exemplary," she said, "but oh, what joy to be

Martha Washington and a Countess too!"

Chapter VII

WHEN he reached his rooms that afternoon, Senator Ratcliffe

found there, as he expected, a choice company of friends and

admirers, who had beguiled their leisure hours since noon by

cursing him in every variety of profane language that experience

could suggest and impatience stimulate. On his part, had he

consulted his own feelings only, he would then and there have

turned them out, and locked the doors behind them. So far as silent

maledictions were concerned, no profanity of theirs could hold its

own against the intensity and deliberation with which, as he found

himself approaching his own door, he expressed between his teeth

his views in respect to their eternal interests. Nothing could be less

suited to his present humour than the society which awaited him in

his rooms. He groaned in spirit as he sat down at his writing-table

and looked about him. Dozens of office-seekers were besieging the

house; men whose patriotic services in the last election called

loudly for recognition from a grateful country.

They brought their applications to the Senator with an entreaty that

he would endorse and take charge of them. Several members and

senators who felt that Ratcliffe had no reason for existence except

to fight their battle for patronage, were lounging about his room,

reading newspapers, or beguiling their time with tobacco in

various forms; at long intervals making dull remarks, as though

they were more weary than their constituents of the atmosphere

that surrounds the grandest government the sun ever shone upon.

Several newspaper correspondents, eager to barter their news for

Ratcliffe's hints or suggestions, appeared from time to time on the

scene, and, dropping into a chair by Ratcliffe's desk, whispered

with him in mysterious tones.

Thus the Senator worked on, hour after hour, mechanically doing

what was required of him, signing papers without reading them,

answering remarks without hearing them, hardly looking up from

his desk, and appearing immersed in labour. This was his

protection against curiosity and garrulity.

The pretence of work was the curtain he drew between himself and

the world.

Behind this curtain his mental operations went on, undisturbed by

what was about him, while he heard all that was said, and said

little or nothing himself. His followers respected this privacy, and

left him alone. He was their prophet, and had a right to seclusion.

He was their chieftain, and while he sat in his monosyllabic

solitude, his ragged tail reclined in various attitudes about him,

and occasionally one man spoke, or another swore. Newspapers

and tobacco were their resource in periods of absolute silence.

A shade of depression rested on the faces and the voices of Clan

Ratcliffe that evening, as is not unusual with forces on the eve of

battle. Their remarks came at longer intervals, and were more

pointless and random than usual. There was a want of elasticity in

their bearing and tone, partly coming from sympathy with the

evident depression of their chief; partly from the portents of the

time. The President was to arrive within forty-eight hours, and as

yet there was no sign that he properly appreciated their services;

there were signs only too unmistakeable that he was painfully

misled and deluded, that his countenance was turned wholly in

another direction, and that all their sacrifices were counted as

worthless. There was reason to believe that he came with a

deliberate purpose of making war upon Ratcliffe and breaking him

down; of refusing to bestow patronage on them, and of bestowing

it wherever it would injure them most deeply. At the thought that

their honestly earned harvest of foreign missions and consulates,

department-bureaus, custom-house and revenue offices,

postmasterships, Indian agencies, and army and navy contracts,

might now be wrung from their grasp by the selfish greed of a

mere accidental intruder--a man whom nobody wanted and every

one ridiculed--their natures rebelled, and they felt that such things

must not be; that there could be no more hope for democratic

government if such things were possible. At this point they

invariably became excited, lost their equanimity, and swore. Then

they fell back on their faith in Ratcliffe: if any man could pull

them through, he could; after all, the President must first reckon

with him, and he was an uncommon tough customer to tackle.

Perhaps, however, even their faith in Ratcliffe might have been

shaken, could they at that moment have looked into his mind and

understood what was passing there. Ratcliffe was a man vastly

their superior, and he knew it. He lived in a world of his own and

had instincts of refinement. Whenever his affairs went

unfavourably, these instincts revived, and for the time swept all his

nature with them. He was now filled with disgust and cynical

contempt for every form of politics. During long years he had done

his best for his party; he had sold himself to the devil, coined his

heart's blood, toiled with a dogged persistence that no day-labourer

ever conceived; and all for what? To be rejected as its candidate;

to be put under the harrow of a small Indiana farmer who made no

secret of the intention to "corral" him, and, as he elegantly

expressed it, to "take his hide and tallow." Ratcliffe had no great

fear of losing his hide, but he felt aggrieved that he should be

called upon to defend it, and that this should be the result of

twenty years' devotion. Like most men in the same place, he did

not stop to cast up both columns of his account with the party, nor

to ask himself the question that lay at the heart of his grievance:

How far had he served his party and how far himself? He was in no

humour for self-analysis: this requires more repose of mind than he

could then command. As for the President, from whom he had not

heard a whisper since the insolent letter to Grimes, which he had

taken care not to show, the Senator felt only a strong impulse to

teach him better sense and better manners. But as for political life,

the events of the last six months were calculated to make any man

doubt its value. He was quite out of sympathy with it. He hated the

sight of his tobacco-chewing, newspaper-reading satellites, with

their hats tipped at every angle except the right one, and their feet

everywhere except on the floor. Their conversation bored him and

their presence was a nuisance. He would not submit to this slavery

longer. He would have given his Senatorship for a civilized house

like Mrs. Lee's, with a woman like Mrs. Lee at its head, and twenty

thousand a year for life. He smiled his only smile that evening

when he thought how rapidly she would rout every man Jack of his

political following out of her parlours, and how meekly they would

submit to banishment into a back-office with an oil-cloth carpet

and two cane chairs.

He felt that Mrs. Lee was more necessary to him than the

Presidency itself; he could not go on without her; he needed

human companionship; some Christian comfort for his old age;

some avenue of communication with that social world, which

made his present surroundings look cold and foul; some touch of

that refinement of mind and morals beside which his own seemed

coarse. He felt unutterably lonely. He wished Mrs. Lee had asked

him home to dinner; but Mrs. Lee had gone to bed with a

headache. He should not see her again for a week. Then his mind

turned back upon their morning at Mount Vernon, and bethinking

himself of Mrs. Sam Baker, he took a sheet of note-paper, and

wrote a line to Wilson Keen, Esq., at Georgetown, requesting him

to call, if possible, the next morning towards one o'clock at the

Senator's rooms on a matter of business. Wilson Keen was chief of

the Secret Service Bureau in the Treasury Department, and, as the

depositary of all secrets, was often called upon for assistance

which he was very good-natured in furnishing to senators,

especially if they were likely to be Secretaries of the Treasury.

This note despatched, Mr. Ratcliffe fell back into his reflective

mood, which led him apparently into still lower depths of

discontent until, with a muttered oath, he swore he could "stand no

more of this," and, suddenly rising, he informed his visitors that he

was sorry to leave them, but he felt rather poorly and was going to

bed; and to bed he went, while his guests departed, each as his

business or desires might point him, some to drink whiskey and

some to repose.

On Sunday morning Mr. Ratcliffe, as usual, went to church. He

always attended morning service--at the Methodist Episcopal

Church--not wholly on the ground of religious conviction, but

because a large number of his constituents were church-going

people and he would not willingly shock their principles so long as

he needed their votes. In church, he kept his eyes closely fixed

upon the clergyman, and at the end of the sermon he could say

with truth that he had not heard a word of it, although the

respectable minister was gratified by the attention his discourse

had received from the Senator from Illinois, an attention all the

more praiseworthy because of the engrossing public cares which

must at that moment have distracted the Senator's mind. In this last

idea, the minister was right. Mr. Ratcliffe's mind was greatly

distracted by public cares, and one of his strongest reasons for

going to church at all was that he might get an hour or two of

undisturbed reflection. During the entire service he was absorbed

in carrying on a series of imaginary conversations with the new

President. He brought up in succession every form of proposition

which the President might make to him; every trap which could be

laid for him; every sort of treatment he might expect, so that he

could not be taken by surprise, and his frank, simple nature could

never be at a loss. One object, however, long escaped him.

Supposing, what was more than probable, that the President's

opposition to Ratcliffe's declared friends made it impossible to

force any of them into office; it would then be necessary to try

some new man, not obnoxious to the President, as a candidate for

the Cabinet. Who should this be? Ratcliffe pondered long and

deeply, searching out a man who combined the most powerful

interests, with the fewest enmities. This subject was still

uppermost at the moment when service ended. Ratcliffe pondered

over it as he walked back to his rooms. Not until he reached his

own door did he come to a conclusion:

Carson would do; Carson of Pennsylvania; the President had

probably never heard of him.

Mr. Wilson Keen was waiting the Senator's return, a heavy man

with a square face, and good-natured, active blue eyes; a man of

few words and those well-considered. The interview was brief.

After apologising for breaking in upon Sunday with business, Mr.

Ratcliffe excused himself on the ground that so little time was left

before the close of the session. A bill now before one of his

Committees, on which a report must soon be made, involved

matters to which it was believed that the late Samuel Baker,

formerly a well-known lobby-agent in Washington, held the only

clue. He being dead, Mr. Ratcliffe wished to know whether he had

left any papers behind him, and in whose hands these papers were,

or whether any partner or associate of his was acquainted with his

affairs.

Mr. Keen made a note of the request, merely remarking that he had

been very well acquainted with Baker, and also a little with his

wife, who was supposed to know his affairs as well as he knew

them himself; and who was still in Washington. He thought he

could bring the information in a day or two. As he then rose to go,

Mr. Ratcliffe added that entire secrecy was necessary, as the

interests involved in obstructing the search were considerable, and

it was not well to wake them up. Mr. Keen assented and went his

way.

All this was natural enough and entirely proper, at least so far as

appeared on the surface. Had Mr. Keen been so curious in other

people's affairs as to look for the particular legislative measure

which lay at the bottom of Mr.

Ratcliffe's inquiries, he might have searched among the papers of

Congress a very long time and found himself greatly puzzled at

last. In fact there was no measure of the kind. The whole story was

a fiction. Mr. Ratcliffe had scarcely thought of Baker since his

death, until the day before, when he had seen his widow on the

Mount Vernon steamer and had found her in relations with

Carrington. Something in Carrington's habitual attitude and

manner towards himself had long struck him as peculiar, and this

connection with Mrs. Baker had suggested to the Senator the idea

that it might be well to have an eye on both. Mrs. Baker was a silly

woman, as he knew, and there were old transactions between

Ratcliffe and Baker of which she might be informed, but which

Ratcliffe had no wish to see brought within Mrs. Lee's ken. As for

the fiction invented to set Keen in motion, it was an innocent one.

It harmed nobody. Ratcliffe selected this particular method of

inquiry because it was the easiest, safest, and most effectual. If he

were always to wait until he could afford to tell the precise truth,

business would very soon be at a standstill, and his career at an

end.

This little matter disposed of; the Senator from Illinois passed his

afternoon in calling upon some of his brother senators, and the

first of those whom he honoured with a visit was Mr. Krebs, of

Pennsylvania. There were many reasons which now made the

co-operation of that high-minded statesman essential to Mr.

Ratcliffe. The strongest of them was that the Pennsylvania

delegation in Congress was well disciplined and could be used

with peculiar advantage for purposes of "pressure." Ratcliffe's

success in his contest with the new President depended on the

amount of "pressure" he could employ. To keep himself in the

background, and to fling over the head of the raw Chief Magistrate

a web of intertwined influences, any one of which alone would be

useless, but which taken together were not to be broken through; to

revive the lost art of the Roman retiarius, who from a safe distance

threw his net over his adversary, before attacking with the dagger;

this was Ratcliffe's intention and towards this he had been

directing all his manipulation for weeks past. How much

bargaining and how many promises he found it necessary to make,

was known to himself alone. About this time Mrs. Lee was a little

surprised to find Mr. Gore speaking with entire confidence of

having Ratcliffe's support in his application for the Spanish

mission, for she had rather imagined that Gore was not a favourite

with Ratcliffe. She noticed too that Schneidekoupon had come

back again and spoke mysteriously of interviews with Ratcliffe; of

attempts to unite the interests of New York and Pennsylvania; and

his countenance took on a dark and dramatic expression as he

proclaimed that no sacrifice of the principle of protection should

be tolerated. Schneidekoupon disappeared as suddenly as he came,

and from Sybil's innocent complaints of his spirits and temper,

Mrs. Lee jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Ratcliffe, Mr. Clinton,

and Mr.

Krebs had for the moment combined to sit heavily upon poor

Schneidekoupon, and to remove his disturbing influence from the

scene, at least until other men should get what they wanted. These

were merely the trifling incidents that fell within Mrs. Lee's

observation. She felt an atmosphere of bargain and intrigue, but

she could only imagine how far it extended. Even Carrington,

when she spoke to him about it, only laughed and shook his head:

"Those matters are private, my dear Mrs. Lee; you and I are not

meant to know such things."

This Sunday afternoon Mr. Ratcliffe's object was to arrange the

little manoeuvre about Carson of Pennsylvania, which had

disturbed him in church.

His efforts were crowned with success. Krebs accepted Carson and

promised to bring him forward at ten minutes' notice, should the

emergency arise.

Ratcliffe was a great statesman. The smoothness of his

manipulation was marvellous. No other man in politics, indeed no

other man who had ever been in politics in this country, could--his

admirers said--have brought together so many hostile interests and

made so fantastic a combination. Some men went so far as to

maintain that he would "rope in the President himself before the

old man had time to swap knives with him." The beauty of his

work consisted in the skill with which he evaded questions of

principle. As he wisely said, the issue now involved was not one of

principle but of power.

The fate of that noble party to which they all belonged, and which

had a record that could never be forgotten, depended on their

letting principle alone. Their principle must be the want of

principles. There were indeed individuals who said in reply that

Ratcliffe had made promises which never could be carried out, and

there were almost superhuman elements of discord in the

combination, but as Ratcliffe shrewdly rejoined, he only wanted it

to last a week, and he guessed his promises would hold it up for

that time.

Such was the situation when on Monday afternoon the

President-elect arrived in Washington, and the comedy began. The

new President was, almost as much as Abraham Lincoln or

Franklin Pierce, an unknown quantity in political mathematics. In

the national convention of the party, nine months before, after

some dozens of fruitless ballots in which Ratcliffe wanted but

three votes of a majority, his opponents had done what he was now

doing; they had laid aside their principles and set up for their

candidate a plain Indiana farmer, whose political experience was

limited to stump-speaking in his native State, and to one term as

Governor. They had pitched upon him, not because they thought

him competent, but because they hoped by doing so to detach

Indiana from Ratcliffe's following, and they were so successful

that within fifteen minutes Ratcliffe's friends were routed, and the

Presidency had fallen upon this new political Buddha.

He had begun his career as a stone-cutter in a quarry, and was, not

unreasonably, proud of the fact. During the campaign this incident

had, of course, filled a large space in the public mind, or, more

exactly, in the public eye. "The Stone-cutter of the Wabash," he

was sometimes called; at others "the Hoosier Quarryman," but his

favourite appellation was "Old Granite," although this last

endearing name, owing to an unfortunate similarity of sound, was

seized upon by his opponents, and distorted into "Old Granny." He

had been painted on many thousand yards of cotton sheeting,

either with a terrific sledge-hammer, smashing the skulls (which

figured as paving-stones) of his political opponents, or splitting by

gigantic blows a huge rock typical of the opposing party. His

opponents in their turn had paraded illuminations representing the

Quarryman in the garb of a State's-prison convict breaking the

heads of Ratcliffe and other well-known political leaders with a

very feeble hammer, or as "Old Granny" in pauper's rags,

hopelessly repairing with the same heads the impossible roads

which typified the ill-conditioned and miry ways of his party. But

these violations of decency and good sense were universally

reproved by the virtuous; and it was remarked with satisfaction

that the purest and most highly cultivated newspaper editors on his

side, without excepting those of Boston itself; agreed with one

voice that the Stone-cutter was a noble type of man, perhaps the

very noblest that had appeared to adorn this country since the

incomparable Washington.

That he was honest, all admitted; that is to say, all who voted for

him.

This is a general characteristic of all new presidents. He himself

took great pride in his home-spun honesty, which is a quality

peculiar to nature's noblemen. Owing nothing, as he conceived, to

politicians, but sympathising through every fibre of his unselfish

nature with the impulses and aspirations of the people, he affirmed

it to be his first duty to protect the people from those vultures, as

he called them, those wolves in sheep's clothing, those harpies,

those hyenas, the politicians; epithets which, as generally

interpreted, meant Ratcliffe and Ratcliffe's friends.

His cardinal principle in politics was hostility to Ratcliffe, yet he

was not vindictive. He came to Washington determined to be the

Father of his country; to gain a proud immortality and a

re-election.

Upon this gentleman Ratcliffe had let loose all the forms of

"pressure"

which could be set in motion either in or out of Washington. From

the moment when he had left his humble cottage in Southern

Indiana, he had been captured by Ratcliffe's friends, and smothered

in demonstrations of affection. They had never allowed him to

suggest the possibility of ill-feeling. They had assumed as a matter

of course that the most cordial attachment existed between him

and his party. On his arrival in Washington they systematically cut

him off from contact with any influences but their own. This was

not a very difficult thing to do, for great as he was, he liked to be

told of his greatness, and they made him feel himself a colossus.

Even the few personal friends in his company were manipulated

with the utmost care, and their weaknesses put to use before they

had been in Washington a single day.

Not that Ratcliffe had anything to do with all this underhand and

grovelling intrigue. Mr. Ratcliffe was a man of dignity and

self-respect, who left details to his subordinates. He waited calmly

until the President, recovered from the fatigues of his journey,

should begin to feel the effect of a Washington atmosphere. Then

on Wednesday morning, Mr. Ratcliffe left his rooms an hour

earlier than usual on his way to the Senate, and called at the

President's Hotel: he was ushered into a large apartment in which

the new Chief Magistrate was holding court, although at sight of

Ratcliffe, the other visitors edged away or took their hats and left

the room. The President proved to be a hard-featured man of sixty,

with a hooked nose and thin, straight, iron-gray hair. His voice was

rougher than his features and he received Ratcliffe awkwardly. He

had suffered since his departure from Indiana. Out there it had

seemed a mere flea-bite, as he expressed it, to brush Ratcliffe

aside, but in Washington the thing was somehow different.

Even his own Indiana friends looked grave when he talked of it,

and shook their heads. They advised him to be cautious and gain

time; to lead Ratcliffe on, and if possible to throw on him the

responsibility of a quarrel. He was, therefore, like a brown bear

undergoing the process of taming; very ill-tempered, very rough,

and at the same time very much bewildered and a little frightened.

Ratcliffe sat ten minutes with him, and obtained information in

regard to pains which the President had suffered during the

previous night, in consequence, as he believed, of an

over-indulgence in fresh lobster, a luxury in which he had found a

diversion from the cares of state. So soon as this matter was

explained and condoled upon, Ratcliffe rose and took leave.

Every device known to politicians was now in full play against the

Hoosier Quarryman. State delegations with contradictory requests

were poured in upon him, among which that of Massachusetts

presented as its only prayer the appointment of Mr. Gore to the

Spanish mission. Difficulties were invented to embarrass and

worry him. False leads were suggested, and false information

carefully mingled with true. A wild dance was kept up under his

eyes from daylight to midnight, until his brain reeled with the

effort to follow it. Means were also found to convert one of his

personal, confidential friends, who had come with him from

Indiana and who had more brains or less principle than the others;

from him every word of the President was brought directly to

Ratcliffe's ear.

Early on Friday morning, Mr. Thomas Lord, a rival of the late

Samuel Baker, and heir to his triumphs, appeared in Ratcliffe's

rooms while the Senator was consuming his lonely egg and chop.

Mr. Lord had been chosen to take general charge of the

presidential party and to direct all matters connected with

Ratcliffe's interests. Some people might consider this the work of a

spy; he looked on it as a public duty. He reported that "Old

Granny" had at last shown signs of weakness. Late the previous

evening when, according to his custom, he was smoking his pipe

in company with his kitchen-cabinet of followers, he had again

fallen upon the subject of Ratcliffe, and with a volley of oaths had

sworn that he would show him his place yet, and that he meant to

offer him a seat in the Cabinet that would make him "sicker than a

stuck hog." From this remark and some explanatory hints that

followed, it seemed that the Quarryman had abandoned his scheme

of putting Ratcliffe to immediate political death, and had now

undertaken to invite him into a Cabinet which was to be specially

constructed to thwart and humiliate him.

The President, it appeared, warmly applauded the remark of one

counsellor, that Ratcliffe was safer in the Cabinet than in the

Senate, and that it would be easy to kick him out when t,he time

came.

Ratcliffe smiled grimly as Mr. Lord, with much clever mimicry,

described the President's peculiarities of language and manner, but

he said nothing and waited for the event. The same evening came a

note from the President's private secretary requesting his

attendance, if possible, to-morrow, Saturday morning, at ten

o'clock. The note was curt and cool. Ratcliffe merely sent back

word that he would come, and felt a little regret that the President

should not know enough etiquette to understand that this verbal

answer was intended as a hint to improve his manners. He did

come accordingly, and found the President looking blacker than

before. This time there was no avoiding of tender subjects. The

President meant to show Ratcliffe by the decision of his course,

that he was master of the situation. He broke at once into the

middle of the matter: "I sent for you,"

said he, "to consult with you about my Cabinet. Here is a list of the

gentlemen I intend to invite into it. You will see that I have got

you down for the Treasury. Will you look at the list and say what

you think of it?"

Ratcliffe took the paper, but laid it at once on the table without

looking at it. "I can have no objection," said he, "to any Cabinet

you may appoint, provided I am not included in it. My wish is to

remain where I am. There I can serve your administration better

than in the Cabinet."

"Then you refuse?" growled the President.

"By no means. I only decline to offer any advice or even to hear

the names of my proposed colleagues until it is decided that my

services are necessary. If they are, I shall accept without caring

with whom I serve."

The President glared at him with an uneasy look. What was to be

done next?

He wanted time to think, but Ratcliffe was there and must be

disposed of. He involuntarily became more civil: "Mr. Ratcliffe,

your refusal would knock everything on the head. I thought that

matter was all fixed. What more can I do?"

But Ratcliffe had no mind to let the President out of his clutches

so easily, and a long conversation followed, during which he

forced his antagonist into the position of urging him to take the

Treasury in order to prevent some undefined but portentous

mischief in the Senate. All that could be agreed upon was that

Ratcliffe should give a positive answer within two days, and on

that agreement he took his leave.

As he passed through the corridor, a number of gentlemen were

waiting for interviews with the President, and among them was the

whole Pennsylvania delegation, "ready for biz," as Mr. Tom Lord

remarked, with a wink.

Ratcliffe drew Krebs aside and they exchanged a few words as he

passed out.

Ten minutes afterwards the delegation was admitted, and some of

its members were a little surprised to hear their spokesman,

Senator Krebs, press with extreme earnestness and in their names,

the appointment of Josiah B. Carson to a place in the Cabinet,

when they had been given to understand that they came to

recommend Jared Caldwell as postmaster of Philadelphia. But

Pennsylvania is a great and virtuous State, whose representatives

have entire confidence in their chief. Not one of them so much as

winked.

The dance of democracy round the President now began again with

wilder energy. Ratcliffe launched his last bolts. His two-days' delay

was a mere cover for bringing new influences to bear. He needed

no delay. He wanted no time for reflection. The President had

undertaken to put him on the horns of a dilemma; either to force

him into a hostile and treacherous Cabinet, or to throw on him the

blame of a refusal and a quarrel. He meant to embrace one of the

horns and to impale the President on it, and he felt perfect

confidence in his own success. He meant to accept the Treasury

and he was ready to back himself with a heavy wager to get the

government entirely into his own hands within six weeks. His

contempt for the Hoosier Stone-cutter was unbounded, and his

confidence in himself more absolute than ever.

Busy as he was, the Senator made his appearance the next evening

at Mrs.

Lee's, and finding her alone with Sybil, who was occupied with her

own little devices, Ratcliffe told Madeleine the story of his week's

experience.

He did not dwell on his exploits. On the contrary he quite ignored

those elaborate arrangements which had taken from the President

his power of volition. His picture presented himself; solitary and

unprotected, in the character of that honest beast who was invited

to dine with the lion and saw that all the footmarks of his

predecessors led into the lion's cave, and none away from it. He

described in humorous detail his interviews with the Indiana lion,

and the particulars of the surfeit of lobster as given in the

President's dialect; he even repeated to her the story told him by

Mr. Tom Lord, without omitting oaths or gestures; he told her how

matters stood at the moment, and how the President had laid a trap

for him which he could not escape; he must either enter a Cabinet

constructed on purpose to thwart him and with the certainty of

ignominious dismissal at the first opportunity, or he must refuse an

offer of friendship which would throw on him the blame of a

quarrel, and enable the President to charge all future difficulties to

the account of Ratcliffe's "insatiable ambition." "And now, Mrs.

Lee," he continued, with increasing seriousness of tone; "I want

your advice; what shall I do?"

Even this half revelation of the meanness which distorted politics;

this one-sided view of human nature in its naked deformity playing

pranks with the interests of forty million people, disgusted and

depressed Madeleine's mind. Ratclife spared her nothing except

the exposure of his own moral sores. He carefully called her

attention to every leprous taint upon his neighbours' persons, to

every rag in their foul clothing, to every slimy and fetid pool that

lay beside their path. It was his way of bringing his own qualities

into relief. He meant that she should go hand in hand with him

through the brimstone lake, and the more repulsive it seemed to

her, the more overwhelming would his superiority become. He

meant to destroy those doubts of his character which Carrington

was so carefully fostering, to rouse her sympathy, to stimulate her

feminine sense of self-sacrifice.

When he asked this question she looked up at him with an

expression of indignant pride, as she spoke:

"I say again, Mr. Ratcliffe, what I said once before. Do whatever is

most for the public good."

"And what is most for the public good?"

Madeleine half opened her mouth to reply, then hesitated, and

stared silently into the fire before her. What was indeed most for

the public good?

Where did the public good enter at all into this maze of personal

intrigue, this wilderness of stunted natures where no straight road

was to be found, but only the tortuous and aimless tracks of beasts

and things that crawl?

Where was she to look for a principle to guide, an ideal to set up

and to point at?

Ratcliffe resumed his appeal, and his manner was more serious

than ever.

"I am hard pressed, Mrs. Lee. My enemies encompass me about.

They mean to ruin me. I honestly wish to do my duty. You once

said that personal considerations should have no weight. Very

well! throw them away! And now tell me what I should do."

For the first time, Mrs. Lee began to feel his power. He was

simple, straightforward, earnest. His words moved her. How

should she imagine that he was playing upon her sensitive nature

precisely as he played upon the President's coarse one, and that this

heavy western politician had the instincts of a wild Indian in their

sharpness and quickness of perception; that he divined her

character and read it as he read the faces and tones of thousands

from day to day? She was uneasy under his eye. She began a

sentence, hesitated in the middle, and broke down. She lost her

command of thought, and sat dumb-founded. He had to draw her

out of the confusion he had himself made.

"I see your meaning in your face. You say that I should accept the

duty and disregard the consequences."

"I don't know," said Madeleine, hesitatingly; "Yes, I think that

would be my feeling."

"And when I fall a sacrifice to that man's envy and intrigue, what

will you think then, Mrs. Lee? Will you not join the rest of the

world and say that I overreached myself; and walked into this trap

with my eyes open, and for my own objects? Do you think I shall

ever be thought better of; for getting caught here? I don't parade

high moral views like our friend French. I won't cant about virtue.

But I do claim that in my public life I have tried to do right. Will

you do me the justice to think so?"

Madeleine still struggled to prevent herself from being drawn into

indefinite promises of sympathy with this man. She would keep

him at arm's length whatever her sympathies might be. She would

not pledge herself to espouse his cause. She turned upon him with

an effort, and said that her thoughts, now or at any time, were folly

and nonsense, and that the consciousness of right-doing was the

only reward any public man had a right to expect.

"And yet you are a hard critic, Mrs. Lee. If your thoughts are what

you say, your words are not. You judge with the judgment of

abstract principles, and you wield the bolts of divine justice. You

look on and condemn, but you refuse to acquit. When I come to

you on the verge of what is likely to be the fatal plunge of my life,

and ask you only for some clue to the moral principle that ought to

guide me, you look on and say that virtue is its own reward. And

you do not even say where virtue lies."

"I confess my sins," said Madeleine, meekly and despondently;

"life is more complicated than I thought."

"I shall be guided by your advice," said Ratcliffe; "I shall walk into

that den of wild beasts, since you think I ought. But I shall hold

you to your responsibility. You cannot refuse to see me through

dangers you have helped to bring me into."

"No, no!" cried Madeleine, earnestly; "no responsibility. You ask

more than I can give."

Ratcliffe looked at her a moment with a troubled and careworn

face. His eyes seemed deep sunk in their dark circles, and his voice

was pathetic in its intensity. "Duty is duty, for you as well as for

me. I have a right to the help of all pure minds. You have no right

to refuse it. How can you reject your own responsibility and hold

me to mine?"

Almost as he spoke, he rose and took his departure, leaving her no

time to do more than murmur again her ineffectual protest. After

he was gone, Mrs.

Lee sat long, with her eyes fixed on the fire, reflecting upon what

he had said. Her mind was bewildered by the new suggestions

which Ratcliffe had thrown out. What woman of thirty, with

aspirations for the infinite, could resist an attack like this? What

woman with a soul could see before her the most powerful public

man of her time, appealing--with a face furrowed by anxieties, and

a voice vibrating with only half-suppressed affection--to her for

counsel and sympathy, without yielding some response? and what

woman could have helped bowing her head to that rebuke of her

over-confident judgment, coming as it did from one who in the