Chapter III: Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crane smiled a little.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good-bye,” replied Constance, cheerfully.

The feeling that another woman’s husband or lover can be enlightened, encouraged, and comforted by her is a very awkward circumstance to a woman of sense.

_Chapter Six_

DEVILS AND ANGELS FIGHT FOR THE SOULS OF MEN

Crane went back to his rooms, wrote his letter to Governor Sanders, and awaited developments.

Nothing happened for more than a week concerning the senatorship. Meanwhile, he gave up his expensive rooms, and with the assistance of a note-broker managed to borrow enough money from Peter to pay Paul and to relieve himself from present obligations to one of the gentlemen who had so urgently invited him to commit political hari-kari. He secured quiet quarters in one of the suburbs of Washington and found that he was quite as comfortable as he had been at his high-priced hotel, at about one-fourth the cost.

The May days that followed were cool and bright and soft, as May days in Washington often are. The called session of Congress and the necessary presence of so many officials and diplomats made the gay town gayer than usual. The whole country was in a mood of exhilaration and self-gratulation, which was vividly reflected at Washington.

There could be no doubt that Crane’s success was real and substantial, and that he was already a person to be reckoned with.

Crane hugged himself with satisfaction when he reflected on his escape from being interned in the Senate, forced to remain quiescent during the time that he should have been most active, and finally enter the senatorial contest, two years ahead, with a reputation which would probably have dwindled as rapidly as it had developed. Instead of that he was in the centre of movement and interest, and even if he could not make a serious effort before the Legislature in January, he was in a good strategic position for the senatorial election two years in advance--and a great deal may happen in two years.

The Secretary of State, however, was disappointed in Crane. He proved to be quite as intractable as Thorndyke had been, and with less excuse--for Thorndyke had never been asked to little dinners at the Secretary’s house. The Secretary’s widowed daughter, Mrs. Hill-Smith, the beautiful, well-gowned, soft-voiced granddaughter of Cap’n Josh Slater, of Ohio River fame, murmured once or twice when Crane was under discussion that he was “so very Western,” and assumed a rather apologetic tone for having been seen at the play with him. The Secretary himself, despairing of making the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs a handy tool for the State Department, returned to his legitimate business. This business consisted of labouring and slaving, in conjunction with foreign chancelleries, to make elaborate treaties, which the House and Senate treated as college football teams treat the pigskin on hard-fought fields. The Secretary felt peculiarly aggrieved over the Brazilian affair, in which the State Department made a ridiculously small figure, in spite of innumerable letters, memoranda, protocols, treaties, and what not. When the time came for action the Congress had quietly taken the whole matter in charge, and had not even censured the Secretary if it could not praise him. Could he have been attacked and denounced, as Mr. Balfour and M. Combes and Chancellor von Buelow, and the Prime Ministers of Europe were, it would have been a consolation. But even this was cruelly denied him. He had gone through all the strenuous forms of diplomacy which meant something a hundred years ago, when there was neither cable nor telegraph, and when diplomats were not merely clerks and auditors of their respective foreign offices. The Secretary had practised all the diplomatic expedients he knew. When he had not made up his mind what to say to an ambassador, he had gone to bed with lumbago. When he wished to impress one of the great Powers of Europe with the notion that it had in him a Bismarck to deal with, he had lighted a cigar in the presence of five full-fledged ambassadors. Remembering how eagerly the world always waited for the speech of the Prime Minister of England at the annual Lord Mayor’s banquet, the Secretary had spent a whole month composing and revising his remarks at a great banquet in New York on Decoration Day, and the reporters had got his speech all wrong, and a disrespectful New York newspaper had made game of his trousers, had compared them to Uncle Josh Whitcomb’s in “The Old Homestead,” and had asked pertinently--or impertinently--where the Secretary had hired them. In Congress he fared little better. The Senate had taken some small notice of him. In the House he had been practically ignored, except once when a member alluded to having “an interview with the Secretary of State.” A member of his own party, the same Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins, of Texas, who had guyed Crane, had sternly rebuked his colleague for his phraseology, and declared that what he should have said was “an audience with the Prime Minister”--and the House laughed at the unseemly joke. The Secretary had in secret a low opinion of the collective wisdom of Congress, and in this he was at one with the whole diplomatic body in Washington.

Crane, like everybody else, had really forgotten the Secretary in the press of affairs. He was amazed at not receiving an answer to his letter to Governor Sanders, and so told Thorndyke one night a few days after their meeting at Constance Maitland’s house. Crane had a great esteem for Thorndyke’s sincerity, which was justified, and Thorndyke, in his heart, was forced to admire Crane’s force and to expect great things of him. He did not entertain any doubt of Crane’s loyalty, but he watched curiously the development of the character of a man exposed to Crane’s peculiar temptations. That Crane had both good and bad qualities in great vigour he saw easily enough, but he could not tell which were the fundamentals. Crane was desperately poor, was foolishly proud, was rash and vainglorious, and was destined to shine brilliantly in the world of politics. What was to become of such a man? What usually became of such men? It was with these thoughts that Thorndyke, at his lodgings, on a warm May night, listened to Crane’s account of what had happened to him in the last few days.

He assured Crane that his conduct regarding Governor Sanders and the senatorship seemed eminently sensible, after deducting the initial folly of it. And his making his first serious attempt to save money at the very time when it might be expected he would become extravagant inclined Thorndyke to the belief that Crane was, after all, fundamentally honest.

Crane at that very moment suffered from a feeling of conscious guilt. He had begun to practise more than the one virtue of economy. He was practising several others, but all with a view to his own advantage. One of them was that his wife should come on and visit him during the remainder of the session. She had not been in Washington for five years--not since that first unlucky venture in the Eleventh Street boarding-house.

He mentioned to Thorndyke his intention to send for his wife, and had the grace to say that it was because he was lonely without her--and in saying so he was conscious of uttering a colossal lie. But being inexpert as a liar he did badly, and felt ashamed of doing badly even in lying.

Thorndyke, on whom Annette Crane’s simple and natural charm had made a strong impression, was pleased at the thought that Crane would pay her the compliment of having her with him and pleased at the thought of seeing her again.

“I shall be going West next week,” he said, “and if Mrs. Crane is ready to come to Washington I shall be proud to escort her back.”

“Thank you,” answered Crane, “it would be a kindness to me as well as to Mrs. Crane. She is not an experienced traveller.”

Both Thorndyke and Crane when they were together desired to keep Constance Maitland out of their conversation, but by one of those contradictory and involuntary impulses which cannot be accounted for, her name always came up between them. This time it was by Crane’s saying, after a while:

“Have you seen Miss Maitland lately?”

“I dined there night before last,” answered Thorndyke.

Crane knew that Constance Maitland’s favourite form of entertaining was at little dinners, which were perfection in the way of guests and service. He had never been asked to one of them, and thought gloomily that after Constance’s very plain speaking to him at their last interview his chance of being invited was thin to attenuation.

“Was that the night that fellow Hudgins from Texas dined there?” asked Crane, who had not taken Constance’s sound advice to cultivate reticence.

“Yes, and I never saw a better dinner-man than Hudgins, nor was ever at a more agreeable dinner.”

“Bosh! Hudgins?”

“Yes, Hudgins. The fellow has a quiet manner, a soft voice, and the most delightful and archaic reverence for ‘the ladies,’ as he calls them. It is like what history tells us of General Sam Houston. Hudgins was a screaming success at the dinner.”

Seeing that the account of Hudgins’s triumph gave Crane acute discomfort, Thomdyke, lighting a fresh cigar, kept on remorselessly:

“Miss Maitland wanted to ask some really representative man to meet Sir Mark le Poer, a very agreeable and considerable Englishman, one of the permanent under-secretaries in the British Foreign Office--it seems he is a great friend of hers. He had been gorgeously entertained by all the retired trades-people who are in the smart set here, but complained that he hadn’t met any Americans--they _would_ ask all the diplomats to meet him, fellows that bored him to death in Europe and still more so here. It seems that Miss Maitland had heard that the long, thin, soft-voiced Texan was delightful at dinner--so she asked me to bring him to call, and the dinner invitation followed. Besides Sir Mark and Hudgins and myself, there was Cathcart--a navy man--good old New England family, four generations in the navy, travelled man of the world, and flower of civilisation. But Hudgins was easily the star of the occasion. There were three other women present besides Miss Maitland, all of them charming women, who know the world and command it; and the way they, as well as the Englishman and the naval officer, fell in love with Hudgins and his soft Texas accent, and his stupendous Texas yarns, and his way of looking at things--well, it was a show.”

“Oh, come, Thorndyke--Hudgins!”

“Yes, Hudgins, I tell you. When the time came for the ladies to leave the table none of them wanted to go, and they said so. Then Hudgins rose and said in that inimitable manner of his, which catches the women every time, ‘If Miss Maitland would kindly permit it, I’d rather a million times go into the parlour with her and the other ladies than stay out here with these fellows. I can get the society of men and a cigar any day, but it isn’t often that I can bask in the presence of ladies like these present.’ And the presumptuous dog actually walked off and left us in the lurch--and you can depend upon it, the women liked him better than any of us.”

“If women are won by compliments like that, any man can win their favour,” said Crane, crossly.

“My dear fellow, women know vastly more than we do. It wasn’t Hudgins’s compliments in words that won the women--it was his giving up his cigar and the extra glass of champagne and the society of men that fetched ’em--it was the sincerity of the thing. When we went into the drawing-room Hudgins was sitting on the piano-stool telling them some sentimental story about his mother down in Texas when he started out in life, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a six-shooter in his pocket. The women were nearly in tears. As for the rest of us, including Sir Mark le Poer, we simply weren’t in it with Hudgins. We stayed until nearly midnight; then the men adjourned to the club, where Hudgins kept us until three o’clock in the morning telling us more yarns about Texas. Sir Mark would hardly let him out of sight, and Hudgins has engaged to spend August with him in Scotland at a splendid place he has near Inverness. That’s the way a man with great natural gifts of entertaining and being entertained can get on, if he has a chance.”

Crane felt humiliated and disappointed. In all honesty, he could not imagine why he, with his recognised talents, his extreme good looks, his fondness for society, should have no such social triumphs as that long, lean, lanky Texan. He had not grasped the truth that society is a pure democracy, and until a man has abandoned all pretensions to superiority he will not be acceptable in it.

Just then, along the dusky street a carriage came rolling. At Thorndyke’s door it stopped, a footman descended from the box and assisted Senator Bicknell to alight.

“The Senator has come hunting you up,” Thorndyke remarked to Crane. “When a man is anxious enough to see you to come after you, it is generally possible to make your own terms with him.”

Crane’s backbone was considerably stiffened by this remark of Thorndyke’s, and then Senator Bicknell walked in the room and greeted Thorndyke and Crane affably. He made an elaborate apology for seeking Crane, but said frankly he wished to discuss some matters of State politics with him.

Thorndyke at once rose to leave the room, but Crane, asking Senator Bicknell if he had any objection to Thorndyke’s remaining and the Senator feebly agreeing to it, Thorndyke sat down again to enjoy the scrap. As it was not in his own party, he was a perfectly disinterested listener.

“Mr. Crane,” began Senator Bicknell, in a dulcet voice, “I hardly think you realise what it means to our State organisation to introduce discord into it at this time.”

It was less than fourteen months before a national convention and the rainbow of a Presidential nomination had arisen upon Senator Bicknell’s political horizon. This had happened more than once, but the Senator had never been able, heretofore, to catch the rainbow by the tail--yet, hope springs eternal in the human breast.

To this Crane replied, firmly:

“I desire, Senator, to do everything I can to promote harmony in the State organisation. It is Governor Sanders who is making trouble, and I shall defend myself from him, and die in the last ditch, if necessary.”

Crane was by nature a gladiator, and the prospect of a fight by no means discomposed him.

Senator Bicknell sighed. He had already on his hands nine bloody fights in various parts of the State, and the prospect of a tenth fight, of a triangular nature at that, with two such sluggers as Crane and the Governor of the State, made the Senator’s head ache. He looked sadly at Thorndyke and yearned after a knowledge of the secret by which his friend, Senator Standiford, could get hold of a man like Thorndyke, and keep him forever in a subordinate position, while he, Senator Bicknell, was always engaged in a tussle with his lieutenants.

Crane improved the opportunity to explain fully his position; and there could not be the slightest doubt that he had narrowly escaped from a conspiracy meant to ruin him.

Senator Bicknell said little and was evidently impressed by Crane’s statement. Thorndyke was mentally comparing his own boss with Crane’s boss. All the pleas in the world would not have availed Crane had he been dealing with Standiford. He would have been required to sacrifice himself without a moment’s hesitation and accept the disastrous honour of the senatorial appointment or be quietly put out of the way. Politics with Senator Standiford was a warfare in which quarter was neither asked nor given, and no time was permitted to succour the wounded or bury the dead. Yet Thorndyke doubted if Senator Bicknell, or any man then in public life, had ever known a tithe of the tremendous parental passion which Senator Standiford had for his daughter. So strange a thing is human nature.

A discussion followed Crane’s words which made a very important fact clear: that Crane had suddenly become a factor in State politics. Crane’s colour deepened as Senator Bicknell made a last effort with him for peace with Sanders, and when it was met with a firm refusal to accept the appointment, Senator Bicknell dropped some words which indicated plainly that if forced to choose sides he might be with Crane. For a man who a month before had been obscure this was a vast though silent triumph.

After an hour’s talk Senator Bicknell got up and departed. It was well on toward ten o’clock, and Crane, too, rose to go. Thorndyke went out with him and they walked together as far as the foot of the hill at Connecticut Avenue. Then Thorndyke turned back, to indulge in a folly which had been his nightly, since that first afternoon with Constance Maitland. It was, to pass within sight of her house, then to return sick at heart to his own rooms and ask himself if he could be such a fool as to wish her to give up that charming home for lodgings such as he could afford.

Crane presently reached his quarters, a comfortable suburban house with many verandas, and not unlike his own house at Circleville. On the table in his room lay a parcel, evidently containing photographs. He opened it and took out a photograph of his wife with her two children, Roger and Elizabeth, by her side. The children were handsome--the boy the sturdy, well-made replica of his father, the little girl her mother in miniature; both of them children of whom any father might be proud. As for Annette, the sweetness, the soft, appealing character of her beauty, was singularly brought out in the photograph. Nor was there any suspicion of weakness in the face, which most men would have fallen in love with on the spot.

But Crane was dissatisfied. She was not a woman even to be talked about. Crane would have liked a woman whose name would be in the newspapers every day. True, Constance Maitland kept out of them all she could, but she was too striking a personality not to attract the attention of the society correspondents. If she had been the wife of a public man, she would have been in print quite as often as he was.

Still Crane was glad he had sent for his wife. He had not realised until this crisis in his fate had come upon him what a mistake he had made in not having her with him sometimes. Not a man of his acquaintance who owned a wife but had her occasionally in Washington. He began to think with terror of what his enemies might have to say concerning this, and then, going to his table, wrote Annette another letter more urgent than his first, in his desire that she should come to Washington. He mentioned the chance that Thorndyke, who had never failed to show interest in her, had offered to escort her East. He felt like a hero and a martyr while writing this. But after he had posted his letter, and he had gone back to the balcony of his room and gazed out into the solemn night, he had a return of that strange sense of guilt. He felt like a hypocrite; and, as he was not a hypocrite by nature, the feeling was uncomfortable. He put his request to Annette on the same ground he had alleged to Thorndyke--his wish to see her. And he ought to wish to see her--he _did_ wish to see her; but the stillness of the night and the presence of the stars is disconcerting sometimes to one’s conscience. The stars were very bright and it was wonderfully clear, although the moon was just rising. Tall apartment houses blazing with light made centres of radiance in the purple night. The Washington monolith was like a pillar of cloud, and the dome of the Capitol seemed suspended in mid-air. It was all very beautiful, but Crane saw nothing of its beauty. He saw only before him a struggle with stupendous forces--these he feared not--but also a struggle with himself; and this he feared! He went to bed and slept uneasily.

_Chapter Seven_

HOW VARIOUS PERSONS SPENT A MAY SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON

Next morning Crane rose with the intention of going to church--a thing he had not done for years. And in the practice of this virtue he committed an act of the greatest hypocrisy. He knew the very hour when Hardeman, the correspondent of his home paper, took his Sunday morning stroll on Connecticut Avenue. Crane timed his own appearance so that he met Hardeman directly in front of the Austrian Embassy.

In half a minute afterward Crane mentioned that he was on his way to church.

As he spoke Hardeman took a newspaper out of his pocket, and opening it, held it up before Crane. On the first page, with the most violent display-head, was the official announcement of his appointment by Governor Sanders to the unexpired time of the late Senator Brand’s term.

Crane turned pale. He was ready for the fight, but the fight had come unexpectedly soon. And that it was to be to the knife, and knife to the hilt, was now perfectly plain.

“Come with me,” said he to Hardeman, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”

They turned back to Dupont Circle, seated themselves on a bench left vacant by a coloured brother, and Crane told the whole story to Hardeman to be printed next day.

As he talked, his course of action, simple, above-board, and effective, at once took shape in his mind. He wrote out on a pocket-pad a letter to the Governor, saying as the Governor had thought fit to make the public aware of his action in the senatorship before communicating with Crane himself, that he, Crane, should do likewise and make a public declination of it. He then gave a brief statement of what had passed, inserted a copy of his first letter to the Governor, and reiterated his refusal to accept the senatorship. Hardeman, a keen-eyed man, was in the seventh heaven of delight. The letter would, of course, be sent to the Associated Press, but there was “a good story” for the home paper, and a specific mention that Representative Crane was on his way to church when the news was communicated to him.

Crane, still pale, rose and announced that he should keep on to church--a fact also certain to be chronicled. Church was a very good place to think out the problems which would come out of this extraordinary and far-reaching fight.

He went on, sat through a long sermon of which he heard not a word, listened to the musical gymnastics of a high-priced quartette, and gradually became himself, or, rather, more than himself, for the fight at hand brought out in him all the thews and sinews of courage, foresight, and judgment. At the very last, when the name of God was mentioned in the final prayer, Crane had one moment of sincere piety. Otherwise his thoughts were very far from pious, being absolutely those of self-seeking and revenge. Like other men, he promised himself that when Mammon had granted him all he wanted, then he would turn to God.

When he found himself on the street again it was a little past twelve o’clock. He turned into the side streets to escape the throng of people going home from church. As he walked under the arcade of the sweet-smelling tulip-trees with the May sunshine filtering through, he felt the ever-present longing for sympathy. He would have liked to go to Constance Maitland, but something in her tone and manner at their last meeting made him afraid.

On that former occasion he had scarcely been master of himself, he did not know when he was offending her; but now he was far more composed. Yet he dared not go.

While these thoughts were passing through his mind he looked up and saw Constance coming down the street under the dappled shadows of the tulip-trees. She was dressed simply in black, but Crane had never been more struck by the distinction of her appearance. With her was a fine-looking man whom Crane surmised was Cathcart, the naval man. Crane intended to pass the pair without stopping, but when he raised his hat Constance halted him. There was that ever-present feeling of pity for him, and she was conscious of having said some hard things to him in that last interview.

“I have glanced at the newspaper this morning,” she said, “and I fancy your friend, Governor Sanders, has treated you rather shabbily.”

“Very shabbily,” replied Crane, smiling; “he has driven me to the wall, but he will find me fighting with my back to the wall.”

Then Constance introduced her companion, and it was Cathcart, after all.

“You can’t expect much sympathy from me, Mr. Crane,” said Cathcart, smiling. “If it had not been for you and your colleagues I might have been in command of a ship at this moment, making a run for the Caribbean Sea. You did us naval men a bad turn by forcing those beggars to back down without striking a blow.”

Cathcart, like all naval men, was eager to play the great game of war with the new implements lately acquired, and did not welcome the exercise of peaceful power which had forced an amicable arrangement of a dangerous question.

Just then a handsome victoria drew up at the sidewalk. In it sat Mrs. Hill-Smith, the widowed daughter of the Secretary of State, and a beautifully dressed, high-bred-looking girl, Eleanor Baldwin. Baldwin, _père_, whose cards read, “Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin,” was the successful inventor of a machine for stitching shoes, which had brought him a great fortune early in life, and had enabled him to establish himself in Washington and adopt the rôle of a gentleman of leisure and of inherited fortune. His daughter looked like the younger sister of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, as Mrs. Hill-Smith, Cap’n Josh Slater’s granddaughter, looked like Lady Clara Vere de Vere herself.

Mrs. Hill-Smith beckoned to Constance, who approached, leaving the two men a little distance away talking together under the overhanging branches of the tulip-trees.

“My dear girl,” said Mrs. Hill-Smith, who had adopted the “dear girl” mode of addressing all women like herself over thirty-five, “you must come to the meeting of the Guild for Superannuated Governesses, which is to be organised at my house to-morrow. It is a branch of the one presided over in London by the Princess Christian”--and Mrs. Hill-Smith ran over glibly a number of names of ladies of the diplomatic corps in Washington who were interested in it, winding up with, “And we _can’t_ get on without you.”

Constance Maitland’s full gaze had in it power over women as well as over men, and Mrs. Hill-Smith was not quite certain whether there was a laugh or not in Constance’s deep, dark eyes, as turning them on her she replied:

“Very well--but my first proposition will be revolutionary, I warn you. I shall suggest that we pay governesses enough to enable them to save something, and thus we can get hold of the economic problem by the head instead of by the tail.”

Was she really in earnest? Mrs. Hill-Smith did not know, but there was certainly a flippancy in Constance’s tone which shocked both Mrs. Hill-Smith and Miss Baldwin. The serious, hard-working women by whom they were mothered and grandmothered had given them a deadly soberness and energy in the pursuit of social schemes and pleasures, just as their forbears had industriously and seriously washed and baked and brewed.

Mrs. Hill-Smith was so annoyed by Constance’s manner of receiving her communication that if Constance had not been very intimate at the British Embassy Mrs. Hill-Smith would have made her displeasure felt. But she was constitutionally timid, like all social new-comers--timid in admitting people into her circle, and timid in turning them out--so she merely smiled brightly and said as they drove off:

“You’ll come like a dear, and be as revolutionary as you please. Good-bye.”

Constance, with her two men, lingered a minute, and then Crane left her. He yearned for his stenographer, and set out to seek him. Cathcart walked home with Constance and left her at the door. She was malicious enough to describe to him some of Mrs. Hill-Smith’s charities, at which Cathcart was in an ecstasy of amusement.

Meanwhile Mrs. Hill-Smith went home with Eleanor Baldwin to what they called breakfast, but most Americans call luncheon. On the way the two women had discussed Constance Maitland cautiously--each afraid to let on to the other what she really thought--because, after all, Constance was intimate at the British Embassy.

Arrived at the Baldwin house--an imposing white stone mansion, with twenty-five bedrooms for a family of four, of whom one was a boy at school, a family which never had a visitor overnight--Eleanor led the way to the library, where her father sat.

It was a great, high-ceiled, cool room, dark, in spite of many windows and a glass door opening on a balcony. At a library table near the glass door sat Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, alias Jim Baldwin, and on the balcony outside, under the awning, sat Mrs. James Baldwin, née Hogan.

It was easy to see whence Eleanor Baldwin had got her beauty. Jim Baldwin was handsome, Nora Hogan Baldwin was handsomer.

From the days when Jim Baldwin had carried home parcels of tea and buckets of butter in his father-in-law’s corner grocery, he had cherished an honourable ambition to have a great big library full of books. In the course of time, through the operations of the shoe-stitching machine, he had been able to gratify this ambition and taste. He had all of those books which Charles Lamb declares “are no books--that is, all the books which no gentleman’s library should be without.” They were all bound sumptuously in calf, and éditions de luxe were as common as flies in a baker’s shop. The four vast walls were lined with these treasures, and from them Baldwin derived an excess of pleasure. This was not by reading them--he had never read a book in his life. Two Chicago newspapers, one from New York, and the Washington morning and evening papers satisfied his cravings for knowledge. But he got from the outside of his books all the pleasure that most people get from the inside. He justly felt that to be seen surrounded by the glorious company of the living who died a thousand years ago, and the conspicuous dead who live to-day, was to give him dignity and poise. Nobody but himself knew that he never read. His days were spent in his library--he always spoke of himself as “among my books”--and shrewd, sharp, and keen as he was and ever must remain, he had actually succeeded in bamboozling himself into the notion that he was a person of “literary tastes.”

Mrs. Baldwin was one of the handsomest women in Washington, and considered quite the proudest. Her abundant grey hair, setting off a face of Grecian beauty, gave her a look as of a queen in the days of powder and patches. She had a rarity of speech, a way of looking straight ahead of her, which was regal. But this exterior of pride was really a result of the sincerest bashfulness and reserve. When Nora Hogan, the grocer’s daughter, had married Jim Baldwin, the contractor’s son, Fortune was already smiling on Jim. Then suddenly she opened her apron and deluged him with gold. Mrs. Baldwin was frightened and stunned. She was afraid to say much for fear she might make mistakes--so she gradually came to saying nothing at all. She dreaded to look from side to side for fear she might find some one laughing at her. So she always looked straight ahead of her. By degrees she acquired a degree of coldness, of stiffness, that was perfectly well suited to the mother of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. She was, of course, an unhappy woman, being a misjudged one. Her chief solace lay in the practice of secret acts of charity among the poorest of the poor, not letting her left hand know what her right hand did. The promoters of fashionable charities complained that Mrs. Baldwin was so stately and so unsympathetic that they could not get on with her in charitable work. True it is, that at the meetings for fashionable charities Mrs. Baldwin would be more silent, more queenly than ever, but her heart would be crying aloud for the poor who are born to suffer and to die, and to have helped them she would cheerfully have given the very clothes off her back. But cowardice kept her silent, as it kept her silent in the presence of her servants, whom she feared inexpressibly.

If Mrs. Baldwin was constitutionally timid, not so Eleanor. All the courage of her father had gone into his willowy, beautiful, well-groomed daughter. Her first recollections were of the inland town where they lived secluded in their big house, because nobody was good enough for them to associate with after their fortune was made. Then she was taken to Europe and returned a finished product, with no more notion of what the word “American” meant than if she had been a daughter of the Hapsburgs. As a compromise between Europe and America, Baldwin had pitched upon Washington as a place of residence. His social status had been agreeably fixed by a lucky accident--he had been asked to be pall-bearer for a foreign Minister who died in Washington. Baldwin rightly considered the dead diplomat worth, to him, all the live ones going; for, having assisted in carrying the dead man from the Legation to the hearse, Baldwin was, in consequence, elected to the swell club, asked to the smart cotillion, and made more headway in a month in the smart set than he could have made otherwise in a year. He repaid his debt to the dead diplomat by buying some very ordinary pictures at the sale of the Minister’s effects, and paying the most extravagant price ever heard of for them.

To Eleanor their social rise was nothing surprising. She expected it, having been bred like a young princess, only with less of democracy than real princesses are bred. When she entered the room with Mrs. Hill-Smith, Baldwin rose and responded smilingly to Mrs. Hill-Smith’s remark:

“Here you are, as usual, among your books.”

“Yes--as usual, among my books. I daresay your father, the Secretary, spends a good deal of time among _his_ books.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Mrs. Hill-Smith, airily, “but he has been dreadfully put out of late. Congress has been so troublesome. I don’t know exactly _how_, but it has annoyed papa extremely.”

“Very reprehensible,” said Baldwin, earnestly, who had the opinion of the average commercial man that Congress is a machine to create prosperity, or its reverse, and if prosperity is not created, Congressmen are blamed fools.

“I _hate_ Congressmen--except a few from New York,” said Eleanor, drawing off her gloves daintily. “There was one talking to Miss Maitland when we stopped her on the street just now. The creature was introduced to me at one of those queer Southern houses where they introduce people without asking permission first, and ever since then the man has tried to talk to me whenever we meet. But I really couldn’t stand him. This morning I cut him dead. His name is Crane, and he’s from somewhere in the West.”

Now it happened that there was another Crane in the House from the West, and Baldwin had a business motive for wishing to cultivate this particular Crane--and business was business still with Jim Baldwin. So, at Eleanor’s words, he turned on her. His air of scholar-and-gentleman, man-of-the-world, and person-of-inherited-leisure suddenly dropped from him; he was once more Jim Baldwin, the shoe-stitching-machine man.