Chapter ThirteenWAR AND PEACE
Crane remained perfectly silent. He did not speak a word from the time they left Senator Bicknell’s house until they reached home. Annette said nothing to him. The conviction was deepening in her mind that her husband had secretly behaved ill to Senator Bicknell. Crane had revealed unconsciously that night many things which Senator Bicknell had not understood, but which Annette understood only too well. The slight agitation and discomposure which Crane had shown was not the mere shock of a grateful surprise. Annette detected that every word Crane had uttered to Senator Bicknell was false; that his apparent acceptance of the offer was false. The money was much—much to her; the loss of it, after it had been held up to her gaze, would be much; but the loss of Crane’s integrity—ah,could that but be preserved, she would go out and dig for him and for her children! She would slave, she would starve, she would do anything that any woman ever did, that she might feel her children were the children of an honest man. She remembered there was such a thing as heredity, and she trembled at the thought that, if Crane were really a scoundrel, as Senator Bicknell had said Governor Sanders was, her little black-eyed Roger might be a scoundrel, too, before he died. These thoughts, surging through her mind, kept her silent.
Crane felt her silence to be ominous as she felt his to be. As he sat dumb, by her side, his agitation increased instead of diminishing. On what possible ground could he excuse to Annette, as well as Senator Bicknell, his declination of such an offer? But he could not accept it—he was not yet a thorough villain. Had he been a free agent, he would have preferred the splendid vista of power and preferment opened to him by his deal with Sanders to more money even than what was offered him; but he was not a free agent. He had promised Sanders, and if his nerve failed him he wouldbe ruined by Sanders politically, and perhaps personally as well. True, Sanders did not have a line of his writing—such agreements as theirs are not put on paper—nor had he, so far, borrowed a dollar from Sanders, although he expected to do so the first of the year when his notes fell due.
While he was thinking these thoughts, he found himself before the door of the great caravanserai where they lived, and presently he was sitting in their little drawing-room alone at last, and face to face with the strange circumstances which had befallen him. He sat in a great arm-chair drawn up to the embers of the fire. On the table at his elbow a light was burning. He heard Annette go into the children’s room and remain five minutes—she always said a little prayer above their cribs every night before she slept—then she went into her own room.
She turned on the light by her dressing-table, and sat down to take off her few simple ornaments and the ribbon-bow in her hair. The face that met her gaze in the mirror looked so strange that it frightened her. Yes, like Crane himself, she had been surprised at her own self-control. But sheknew as well as she knew she was alive that Crane, in some way, had betrayed Senator Bicknell, the man who, after honestly admitting that Crane could serve him, was yet animated by a sincere wish to benefit Crane; who had given Crane his first political start in life, and had treated him with unvarying kindness ever since.
The more she thought over what had happened that evening, the more acute became her fear and her pain. She stopped in her employment, and, leaning upon her arms, sat motionless for a long time. Suddenly, the distant chiming of a clock told her it was midnight. She roused herself, and then, following an influence stronger than herself, went into the next room, where Crane had been going through his agony alone. As she approached him, he raised a pale and conscience-stricken face to hers, but it was quite calm. He had fought the battle out, and there was no longer a conflict within him.
“Yes,” he said, as if continuing out aloud a consecutive train of thought, “I should be very grateful to you—Iamgrateful to you. No doubt, SenatorBicknell was influenced very much in what he did by the admiration and respect he has for you. But it only makes it the harder for me.”
“There should be no question of gratitude between you and me,” replied Annette, coming closer to him.
“There is much—much. I have not realised until within the last few months how much I really owe you—but why do I say months? I might say the last few hours—the last few minutes—and I have also realised how much more I might have owed you, for I am beginning to think that few women are as well adapted as you are for the wife of a man like me. Not all women would have borne with poverty and seclusion as you have done.”
A deep blush suffused Annette’s face. The poverty and seclusion had been in a way forced upon her by him, but, being a woman of invincible discretion, she did not put her resentment into sarcastic words, or words at all. She stood by him silently, and, seeing that Crane was striving to speak, awaited his words gently, laying her free hand on his shoulder.
At last it came—a full confession—made in broken words and phrases, but of which Annette understood every word.
“I could have stood anything but his kindness,” said Crane, with a pale face of woe. “That unnerved me completely. I made up my mind I could not accept the money, and then it occurred to me that you had a right to be consulted, and immediately I felt a conviction as loud as a clap of thunder, as penetrating as lightning, that you would never in the world let me accept that money. Ah, Annette, what a thing it is to have an upright wife! To feel that however weak and wavering a man may be, that half of his soul, of his heart, of his possessions, the half owner of his children, stands like a rock for truth and honesty! Thorndyke was saying something to me the other day about a man being upright instead of being made to be upright. I tell you, there are many men who can be made good or bad—and I am one of them—by their wives. Many a poor wretch to-day is a rascal who might have led an honest and respected life if but he had had a high-minded wife like you. It is you who have saved me, and what a miserablereturn have I made you for all you have done for me!”
“What you have just said repays me for all, because, you know, I have always loved you—better than you cared to know, or than I cared to show during the last few years,” Annette answered, in a calm voice.
Crane rose and opened his arms to her. It was the sweetest moment of their lives. Shameful and dishonourable as Crane’s course had been, here was one person who loved him, believed in him, and, oh, wonder of love and faith, still honoured and trusted him!
After their first rapture of love and forgiveness, action occurred to Annette’s practical mind.
“Well, then,” she said, as if a course of conduct had at once been revealed to her, “you must at once withdraw from your agreement with Governor Sanders. Of course, he will do everything he can to defeat you——”
“And he will.”
“And we shall have to go back to Circleville and begin life over again. But I am sure you can do well at your profession, and, remember, there is asmuch chance for an ambitious man in law as in politics.”
“Yes, but you can’t imagine how the life gets hold of one. It seems like death to me to leave Congress—and when I was steadily rising, too—and to be driven out ignominiously by a creature like Sanders! But I must do it; you would not let me do otherwise.”
“Yes; I would not let you do otherwise. Then you must go to Senator Bicknell and tell him all.”
“Do you think I should? Do you think Icould?”
“Oh, yes. He must know it some time. He must know why you decline this scheme he has arranged to benefit you. You must go to him early to-morrow morning.”
Crane looked at his watch.
“It is half-past twelve—he always sits up until two or three o’clock in the morning.”
“Then go now.”
“He will think my repentance a mere emotion—he will believe that my character was shown in my agreement with Sanders.”
“No matter.”
“Yes, no matter.”
Annette gave him his coat and hat and gloves. He turned to kiss her, and instinctively he removed his hat with a respect that approached reverence. This pretty pebble which he had so lightly regarded had proved to be a jewel of great price.
Two hours later Crane re-entered the house and went softly to his own rooms. As he noiselessly opened the door of the drawing-room he saw that Annette had fallen asleep in the great chair in which she had found him. She had thrown a fur cape around her bare neck and arms, but it had slipped partly away, leaving her white throat exposed. There were traces of tears upon her cheeks, but her face, though mournful, was placid—and how young she looked! It seemed impossible that she should be the mother of two children as old as Roger and Elizabeth.
As Crane approached her quietly, she stirred, opened her eyes, and sat up, in full possession of her wits. Crane drew a chair up and took both her hands in his.
“I haven’t felt so at ease in my mind since theday last summer that I first met Governor Sanders. I have repented and confessed.”
“That is good,” said Annette, in a clear voice.
“I found Senator Bicknell just where I had left him, in his den; I told him the whole story—how I had yielded, because I was poor and ambitious, where a better man would have resisted. I told him there was no fear of my falling away this time; that you would not let me; and if I had kept you with me, and had taken you more into my confidence, I believe I should never have entered into this damnable bargain with Sanders. The Senator was staggered at first. I don’t believe the slightest idea of my being disloyal to him had entered his head, but as soon as he recovered from the first shock he behaved nobly. I told him that I had not written a line to Sanders, he had not loaned me a penny, although I had expected to call upon him the first of January. Then Senator Bicknell said:
“‘So, you have not committed any overt act against me?’
“‘No,’ I said, ‘but chiefly because the time was not ripe.’
“‘You have, so far, only agreed to betray me?’
“I said yes, but that was crime enough. He reflected a while, and then he held out his hand and said:
“‘Let bygones be bygones. Sanders will make you pay for this, and that will be punishment enough. But I am ready and willing to believe that, no matter how much you might have agreed to knife me, when the time came you wouldn’t have done it. At the first moment we meet in private, at the first hint of kindness on my part, your resolution to do me wrong melts away. That must count.’
“‘And something else,’ I said. ‘Of course, I can’t accept the benefit you thought to confer on me. That would invalidate all.’
“‘What does your wife say to this?’ he said. ‘You remember the offer was made in her presence. Or does she know that you wish to refuse it?’
“‘My wife would not let me take it if I wished to,’ I replied. ‘She is a much more high-minded person than I am or ever can be.’
“‘She must indeed be high-minded,’ he said, ‘and you are right in saying that to accept it would invalidate everything. I am of the opinionthat your wife has seen clearly in this instance. But’—here he took a turn or two up and down the floor—‘I don’t think it would invalidate my promoting your candidacy before the Legislature in January. It seems to me now to be the best thing for both of us. The fight with Sanders has got to come, and the sooner the better, so that the field can be cleared for my own fight a year and a half from now. Yes, it is decidedly best. You may recall I indicated last spring that I would support your senatorial aspirations in certain contingencies. These contingencies have come to pass. I doubt if we can save the State to the party without joining forces now.’
“Then I told him that I owed money, and could hardly support the position of a Senator here with the salary, less what I was obliged to pay in interest.
“‘Nonsense,’ he said; ‘turn your salary over to your wife; she is a woman of uncommonly sound sense, a good manager—that I saw in her house. Of course you can’t go into society on less than your salary, but you can live comfortably and respectably. And let me tell you, this town is fullof big houses which caused the Senators who built them to lose their elections. It doesn’t hurt a man with his constituents in the least to live simply. Some of the gentlemen from the rural districts have complained bitterly of this little place——’
“And then, after more talk, everything was settled. I wasn’t to write to Sanders, of course, but to go and see him. Sanders wouldn’t dare to proclaim what we agreed to do, but he will fight me with every weapon at his command. I shouldn’t much care how things went—that is, so I feel now—except for Senator Bicknell, but every blow at Sanders helps the Senator, and I shall fight for him as long as breath warms my body. When we parted I was much overcome, and I think Senator Bicknell was, too. Coming home, it occurred to me how well you had managed on the pittance I allowed you at Circleville.”
“It was not much, but it could hardly be called a pittance,” replied Annette, smiling through her tears, for the stress of emotion under which she had suffered had found its natural vent at last, and she was weeping a little. But they were happy tears. Crane had reached the turn in life when it was tobe determined whether God or the devil should be his master, and he had turned his back on Satan. He took his wife in his arms and kissed her tenderly and reverently. No one knew better then than he the moral beauty, the power to charm, to sustain, to lead forward, of the woman he had not thought worthy to stand by him in Washington.
The next morning early, Crane started West. He had his fateful interview with Sanders and returned to Washington within a week. Sanders’s words had been few, but full of meaning.
“All right,” he said. “I don’t take any stock in this awakening of conscience business. You think Bicknell can serve you better than I can. Very well. We will see.”
Suddenly, and apparently without volition, Crane’s right arm shot out and his open palm struck Sanders’s check. The Governor, as quick as thought, hit back. He was a brute, but not a coward. Then both men came to their senses, and, hating each other worse than ever, each was ashamed of his violence.
The Governor, taking out his handkerchief, coolly wiped the blood from his nose, and said:
“I don’t care to engage in a fist fight with you. We can settle all our quarrels when the Legislature meets. You will need all your courage then.”
When Crane returned to Washington, he went straight to Senator Bicknell and told him all.
“All right,” replied the Senator, as Governor Sanders had said. “This is my fight now,” and straightway the Senator took the midnight train for the State capital to pull off his coat and do yeoman’s work for Crane, and incidentally for himself.
The month of December was bright and beautiful all the way through, and the sunshine lasted into January. Thorndyke thought he had not been so nearly happy for a long time. He saw Constance often, and she was beautifully kind to him. He scarcely went into society at all, and had the hardihood to decline an invitation to one of the Secretary of State’s small dinners on the comprehensive excuse of “a previous engagement,” which Mrs. Hill-Smith, who had invited him, did not believe in the least; and when she had plaintively mentionedthe names of various English, French, Russian, Austrian, and German diplomats who were to be present, Thorndyke had replied in a manner which mightily discomposed Mrs. Hill-Smith:
“Oh, then, you won’t miss a stray American or two!”
If Mrs. Hill-Smith had had her way, she would have missed every American invited.
Thorndyke saw much of the Cranes and of the children, who showered their favour upon him. He could not but be struck by the new note in Crane—something subdued, yet full of hope—and he had quite lost that look of harassment and dejection which, on first meeting him, had struck Thorndyke. Crane was normally a lover of fighting, and, although Senator Bicknell, for strategic reasons, chose to keep him in Washington while the preliminaries to the senatorial fight were raging, yet he delivered some good shots at long range, and it began to look as if he might be elected for the short term in spite of Governor Sanders. The National Committee was not indifferent to this fight, and Senator Bicknell went into it with all his old-time vigour. He worked, ate and drank, waked andslept, with members of the Legislature for three weeks before the election came off. It was a stupendous battle, and neither side got any odds in the betting.
During the latter part of the Christmas recess, Thorndyke went north to pay his sister, Elizabeth, a visit. Her first words to him were:
“Why, Geoffrey, how young you look!”
And everybody who met him told him he looked young, or looked well, or looked prosperous, and one horny-handed old constituent hazarded the opinion that Mr. Thorndyke was “thinkin’ o’ gittin’ spliced.” It was all because Constance Maitland had been kind to him.
On his way back to Washington he found himself in the same car with James Brentwood Baldwin, Junior, who was coming home to be nursed and taken to Palm Beach after an attack of the chicken-pox. This fifteen-year-old youth was in charge of a valet who attended to him assiduously, and even went into the dining-car with him to see that he exercised due prudence with regard to his diet. This, however, was superfluous, as the scion of the house of Baldwin was the very epitome of prudence, andturned away from entrées, sweets, and ices with a degree of virtue which, to Thorndyke, dining at the same table with him, seemed superhuman in a boy of any age. Thorndyke watched the Baldwin boy curiously; it was one of the most deadly and fascinating phases of the whole newly-rich question to him, how the children of the newly rich were brought up. He observed in the Baldwin boy a total lack of the normal faults and virtues of the normal boy. Young Baldwin eyed Thorndyke at first with suspicion, but Thorndyke, wishing to examine and classify the specimen of a boy before him, intimated that he was acquainted with the James Brentwood Baldwins in Washington. Then James, Junior, abandoned something of his hauteur. He acknowledged being the pupil of a school at which Thorndyke happened to know the fees were made purposely so high as to exclude any but the sons of the very rich. They had an Anglican nomenclature, a resident chaplain, and the spiritual direction of the masters as well as the pupils was attended to by the Bishop of the diocese—the brother of the Secretary of State. All this James, Junior, communicated while toying with his rice-pudding, andturning an eye of stern disapproval at the tutti-frutti ice.
“And what do you expect to be when you grow up, my lad?” asked Thorndyke.
“I shall be a philanthropist,” replied James, Junior, with dignity. “I shall try to use my wealth as a means of benefiting others. I am president of our association for giving Christmas gifts to poor boys, and I like it very much. We, who have superior advantages, should try and extend a helping hand to others less fortunately placed.”
Less fortunately placed! Thorndyke looked at the boy with the deepest commiseration, and pitied the poor children of the rich.
“You can learn a great deal from a poor boy,” said he, presently, watching the boy’s solemn, handsome face. He might have been a hearty, wholesome youngster, this grandson of Danny Hogan’s, had he but been given a chance. “The poor boy is the normal boy; a boy should be generally dirty and noisy; he should occasionally get a lecture from his mother and a licking from his father, and a black eye from some other boy. He must be a fighter. No less a man than Paul Jones has saidthat he never saw a liar who would fight, or a fighter who would lie; and he must not only tell the truth himself, but be ready to lick any other boy who tells him a lie, for boys are, to themselves, a law-making body, and must enforce their own laws.”
“That is not the way of the boys at our school,” icily replied James Brentwood Baldwin, Junior, rising with dignity and receiving his hat from the hand of his valet.
The day of Thorndyke’s arrival in Washington he was walking along the street in the bright, sunny, early afternoon of winter. He stopped to buy an afternoon newspaper, that he might see how the balloting for Senator was going in Crane’s State, when a shout aroused him, and Letty Standiford, in a gorgeous crimson automobile, with Senator Mince Pie Mulligan by her side, dashed up to the sidewalk.
“Mr. Thorndyke,” shrieked Letty, playfully pretending she meant to run Thorndyke down. “I have a piece of news for you. Look out, this is my new red devil—I don’t mean Senator Mulligan, but my auto.”
“I certainly shall look out when you are aroundin that death-dealing machine,” replied Thorndyke, dodging barely in time to save his legs. “What is your news?”
“Just this. Dad gave me his word this morning that he would not be a candidate for re-election next year. I went after the doctors myself, and made them tell me the truth about Dad—he’s the only father I’ve got, you know. And they all told me the same thing—that if he could slack up work, and retire at the end of his term, he was good for twenty years more, but that if he kept at the grind, his life wasn’t worth a pin’s purchase. Dad wasn’t scared by that, but when I told him that I should die of fright and distress if he went away and left me, the poor old thing weakened, and said he’d decline a re-election, and—oh, good gracious! He told me not to breathe it to a soul! He actually shook his finger at me when he said it. Oh, heavens! If you or Senator Mulligan give me away——”
“Dad will shake his finger at you again,” replied Thorndyke, laughing. Nevertheless, his pulses had started off at a great rate.
“It’s not that—it’s not that I’m afraid of him—butit would break his dear old heart to think I had disobeyed him.”
Letty Standiford, as she said this, was an object for angels to love, in spite of her wild air, her mannish hat and coat, her flying and dishevelled locks.
“It is safe with me,” said Thorndyke, gravely, and Senator Mulligan spoke up:
“Divil a word will I say about it. I’m too much afraid of th’ ould chap—and of you, too, Miss Letty.”
“Glad to hear it, Sinitor,” replied madcap Letty, viciously mimicking the Senator’s unfortunate accent, “and, oh, Mr. Thorndyke, have you heard that Miss Maitland is engaged to Mr. Cathcart, the navy man, who is always hanging around her? It was announced this morning. Good-bye.”
Letty flashed off, with a bicycle policeman after her full tilt.
Thorndyke was near his lodgings. He did not know how he got there, but presently he found himself sitting in his arm-chair before the fire. Two hours later, when the maid-servant brought him a letter, he was sitting in the same position.
The dusk was closing in, but he saw that the address was in Constance Maitland’s handwriting. Of course she had written to tell him of her engagement—it was kind of her so to break his calamity to him.
The letter lay unopened for half an hour. Then, with a desperate courage, Thorndyke tore open the envelope. It was an invitation to dinner two weeks hence. It was unfeeling of her to do this. It was ignoble to forget that dear, lost past of which she had often spoken to him, and had allowed him freely to speak to her. It was impossible that he should accept; it was impossible that he should voluntarily meet Constance again, except for one last interview—that final leave-taking which is like the last farewell to the dying. And the sooner it was over the better. Thorndyke pulled himself together, and made up his mind to go to Constance at once.
As he walked along the streets in the sharp air of the January twilight, everything looked unfamiliar to him. His interior world was destroyed—engulfed. Never more could he know hope or happiness; for him was only that stolid enduranceof life which is like a prisoner’s endurance of his cell and his shackles.
When he reached Constance Maitland’s door, she was at home, and he walked into the familiar drawing-room. She was sitting on the great, deep sofa, with no light but that of the blazing wood fire, although it was quite six o’clock. She rose as Thorndyke entered and greeted him gaily. Her meditations seemed to have been singularly happy.
Thorndyke sat down on the sofa by her, and, as all men do under stress of feeling, put his pain into the fewest words possible.
“I heard this afternoon,” he said, in a strange, cold voice, “of your engagement to Cathcart.”
“Did you?” replied Constance, smiling brightly. “From whom, pray?”
“From Miss Standiford.”
“So that crazy Letty Standiford goes about announcing my engagement!” There was a pause, and then Thorndyke said, in the same strange, cold voice:
“Cathcart is an admirable man.”
“So everybody says,” brightly responded Constance. “Many persons have assured me of that.”
A longer pause followed. It might be ungenerous to interject a note of pain into her first happiness, but it is human to cry out, to justify one’s self, to call attention to the gift, when one has given a heart and a soul.
“If Cathcart can give you even a part of the fortune you will lose by marrying him, he is right to ask you. I could give you nothing. And so, although I have loved you for nineteen years, I could not ask you to descend from wealth to poverty with me.”
“I shall not lose, perhaps, as much as you think by marrying an American,” replied Constance to this, adjusting her draperies in the light of the fire, which played over her face. How bright, how smiling she was! Her dark eyes shone, and the faint dimple in her cheek kept coming and going. “I did not, of course, relish the thought of spending all my life alone,” she continued, laughing shamelessly. “I was very young, you may remember. So I determined to save up all I could of my income. It was easy enough, living, as I did, with a person who was most of the time a helpless invalid. Then, my uncle, von Hesselt, realising the injustice doneme by my aunt, left in his will a considerable sum of money, which was to be paid me if I lost my aunt’s fortune through marrying an American. This was no more than fair, as my aunt left the money to the von Hesselts in case I should marry an American. My lawyers here have assured me that it is an open question whether I could not, after all, marry whom I will, and retain the money, because the terms of the reversion to the von Hesselts are very obscure, and it might come at last to my aunt’s heirs-at-law, of which I am the chief. But I hate publicity and lawsuits and all such things, and as I am still reasonably well off, I concluded to spare myself such agonies, and to be satisfied with much less than I have now. But it will be enough to give me all I want in any event. I can keep this house, my carriage and servants, and dress well. What more does any one want?”
As she continued speaking, Thorndyke’s agony increased with every word. If only he had known before! Possibly—ah, how vain now was it! How hopeless, how full of everlasting pain!
“But,” Constance kept on, “Mr. Cathcart is not the man for whom I should sacrifice even somuch. He has never hinted that I should marry him. I am sure he does not want me. I cannot imagine how such an absurd report got out.”
Thorndyke felt stunned. He said, after a moment:
“So you are not engaged to Cathcart?”
“Certainly not. Have I not just said that he has never asked me to marry him? And thatheis not the man for whom I would sacrifice any part of my fortune?”
She emphasised the “he,” and her words were full of meaning.
Poor Thorndyke was so dazed, so overwhelmed, that he could do nothing but stare stupidly into Constance’s face. The man who really loves and suffers is generally stupid at the supreme moment. And as she looked into his eyes, so full of longing and yet half-despairing, she turned her head aside and held out her hand a little way, and he caught it in his.
Ten minutes afterward Scipio Africanus poked his head in the door and saw that which made hiseyeballs bulge an inch from his head. At the same moment the bell rang sharply.
Scipio opened the front door, and, announcing that Miss Maitland was at home, showed Julian Crane and Annette into the drawing-room. As they walked briskly to the fireplace, they saw the two persons on the sofa start apart. Thorndyke rose to his feet. Having been accepted, he was once more master of himself and of the situation. Constance cowered in the corner of the sofa.
“Pray excuse us,” cried Annette, laughing, blushing, and hesitating.
“There is nothing to excuse,” replied Thorndyke, smiling coolly. “Miss Maitland has just promised to marry me. I am sure I don’t know why, but I am very much obliged to her all the same.”
Annette reached out and took Thorndyke’s hand in hers.
“I know why,” she said, “any woman would know why.”
Crane shook Thorndyke’s hand warmly.
Constance, too, rose, and without a word, but with rapture in her eyes and smile, receivedAnnette’s kiss and Crane’s cordial grasp of the hand.
“I suppose,” said Annette, “you are too blissfully happy to be interested in anything now, but when you come to your senses, I am sure both of you will rejoice with us. We have just had a despatch from Senator Bicknell, saying my husband was elected Senator at four o’clock to-day on the fifth ballot.”
And then Crane spoke, with sincerity in his eye and his smile:
“We came straight to you for sympathy in our good fortune, for which we are wholly indebted to Senator Bicknell. And we find you enjoying the good fortune that befell us ten years ago. Ah, there is no such good fortune on this earth, Thorndyke, as a good wife!”
THE END