XII
POPE, as Mrs. Ballantyne explained to Frothingham, was an Eastern Senator—a multi-millionaire, sent to the Senate because he practically supported, that is, “financed,” the machine of his party in his State, besides making large contributions to its national machine. “So the ‘Boss,’ as they call the leader of the party in that State,” she said, “sold Mr. Pope one of the Senatorships, keeping the other for himself. Mr. Ballantyne is the leader, the master, of his party inhisState and, while he’s too modest to tell it, is one of the masters of the party in the nation. He could be President if it weren’t for the disgusting prejudice among the people against all who happen to have a little something”—“a little something” being Mrs. Ballantyne’s modest way of speaking of their millions. “But,” she went on, “old Mr. Pope is a nonentity. He sits in his seat and votes the way they tell him to and is nice to everybody. Mr. Ballantyne suspects he’s getting ready to buy the Vice-Presidency.”
“How much does that cost?” asked Frothingham.
“It’ll cost him half a million if the chances of our party’s carrying the election are good; if they’re not so good, perhaps he can get it for a quarter of a million. But they may not dare nominate him. They may have to take some popular poor man. The ‘many-headed monster,’ as Shakespeare calls it, has been grumbling of late. We have a hard task in our country, Lord Frothingham, to keep the people with property in control.”
“It’s the same all over the world nowadays, I fancy,” said Frothingham. “One has to apologise for being well born or for living in decent style. The trouble with the lower classes at home is that they don’t have to work hard enough. They used to be too busy to look about and make themselves and everybody uncomfortable by doing what they call thinking.”
“That’s the trouble with our lower classes, too,” answered Mrs. Ballantyne, in her grandest manner. “We educate too much.”
The carriage rushed into the brilliantly lighted entrance of Senator Pope’s house. Frothingham saw Ysobel’s face, saw that she was having a violent attackof silent laughter. And he understood why. “The young ’un has a sense of humour,” he said to himself. “It’s ridiculous for these beggars to pose and strut before they’ve had time to brush the dirt off their knees and hands.”
As they entered the drawing room Frothingham’s attention riveted upon two gilt armchairs ensconced in a semicircle of palms and ferns. “For the President and his wife,” said Ysobel. “They’re dining here to-night, you know. This is the first President in a long time who has accepted invitations below the Cabinet circle. He comes to Senator Pope’s because they’re old friends. It’s quite an innovation and has caused a great deal of scandal. But I don’t blame him. Where’s the use in being President if you can’t do as you please?”
Mrs. Pope, stout and red and obviously “flustered,” came bustling up. After she had greeted them she said: “Lord Frothingham, you’re to take my daughter Elsie in to dinner.” Then to Mrs. Ballantyne: “Oh, my dear, why didn’t you warn me of the quarrel between the Cabinet women and the Speaker’s family. WhatevershallI do? Mrs. Secretary Mandon’s here, and so are the Speaker and his wife.”
“I’d send Grace Mandon in ahead of the Speaker’s wife, if I were you,” replied Mrs. Ballantyne. “I’ve no patience with the pretensions of the House. It’s distinctly the commonest branch of the Government, while the Cabinet is next to the President.”
“But,” objected Mrs. Pope plaintively, “the Speaker issoinfluential and really fierce about precedence, and his wife hassucha tongue andsucha temper, and neither he nor sheeverforgives.”
“Do as you like, of course,” said Mrs. Ballantyne stiffly. Being of the Senate it exasperated her that the House should be placed ahead of it.
Just then a murmur ran around the room—“The President! The President!” Those who were seated rose, conversation stopped, and the orchestra began to play. “Bless my soul,” muttered Frothingham, “they’re playing ‘God Save the King’!” And then he remembered that the Americans had, as he put it, “stolen our tune and set a lot of rot about themselves to it.” The President and his wife entered, he frowning and red and intent upon the two gilt chairs. Mrs. Pope curtsied, her husband contracted his stiff old figure in a comical half-salaam. All benttheir heads and a few of the young people, among them Ysobel, curtsied.
“See him looking at those chairs?” said she to Frothingham.
Frothingham nodded.
“He’s awfully sour at the etiquette here,” she went on. “I suppose he’s afraid the country’ll find out about it and cut up rough. He’s smashing right and left, and everyone’s wondering when he’ll throw out the gilt chairs.”
But his courage apparently failed him, for he and his wife advanced to the “thrones” and seated themselves. No one else sat, the men moving about to get the partners indicated on the little gilt-edged crested cards they had found in envelopes addressed to them and laid upon the tables in the coat-rooms. Frothingham examined Elsie Pope and saw that she was small and slight, square in the shoulders, thin in the neck, her hair of an uncertain shade of brown, her eyes commonplace, her features irregular. “She looks a good-tempered soul,” he said to himself, searching resolutely for merits. And then he noted that her hands were red, and that she had flat, rather wide wrists. “A good, plain soul,” he added. He satsilent, waiting for her to begin to entertain him—he hadn’t got used to the American custom of the men entertaining the women; and the New York and Boston women, acquainted with the British way, had humoured him. But he waited in vain. At last he stole a glance at her, and noted a gleam in the corner of her eye, the flutter of a humour-curve at the corner of her mouth. “A shrewd little thing, I suspect,” he thought. And he said to her, “No—really, I don’t bite.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I was beginning to be afraid you didn’t bark, either,” she said.
His expression retired behind his eyeglass. “Nor do I, unless I’m bid.”
“I like to be talked to—I’d so much rather criticise than be criticised.”
“What do you like to hear about?” he asked.
“About the man who’s talking. It’s the only subject he’ll really put his heart into, isn’t it?”
Frothingham smiled faintly, as if greeting an old and not especially admired acquaintance.
“I’m so disappointed,” she said presently. “All winter I’ve had the same man take me in everywhere—you know, we follow precedence very closely here inWashington. And, when I found I was to have a new man, I hadsuchhopes. The other man and I had got bored to death with each other. And now—you’re threatening to be a failure!”
Frothingham did not like this—it was pert for a woman to speak thus to him; he resented it as a man and he resented it as Lord Frothingham. “That’s a jest, ain’t it?” he drawled. “We English, you know, have a horribly defective sense of American humour.”
“No, it wasn’t a jest,” she replied. “It was a rudeness, and I beg your pardon. I thought to say something smart, and—I missed. Let’s change the subject. Do you see that intellectual-looking man with the beard on the other side of the table—next to Ysobel Ballantyne?”
“The surly chap?”
“Yes—and he’s surly because mamma has made a dreadful mistake. She’s put him two below the place his rank entitles him to. He’ll act like a savage all evening.”
“Fancy! What a small matter to fly into a rage over.”
“A small matter for a large man, but a large matterfor a small man. Sometimes I think all men are small. They’re much vainer than women!”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of what I’ve seen in Washington. They say the women started this craze for precedence. I don’t know whether that’s so or not. But I do know that in the three years I’ve been out I’ve found the men worse than the women. And those things look so much pettier in a man, too.”
“But I thought there wasn’t any rank in this country.”
“So I thought—I was educated in France. I believe in rank and all that—it seems to me absurd to talk about equality. But I despise this silly squabble over little places that last only a few years at most. As Mr. Boughton was saying—you know Mr. Boughton?”
“You mean the Second Secretary at our Embassy?”
“Yes. He said to me only last night: ‘America has an aristocracy just as we have, but gets from it all the evils and none of the good, all the pettiness, none of the dignity and sense of responsibility.’”
“But they tell me it’s different—out West.”
“I don’t know. I can only speak of the East—especially of Washington. There isn’t a capital in Europe or Asia, the diplomats say, with so elaborate a system of rank and precedence as we have. Why, do you know, it’s so bad that the fifteen-hundred-dollar-a-year clerks and their families have a society of their own between the circles of those who get eighteen hundred and those who get twelve hundred. And they’d rather die than mix with those who get less than they do.”
“Really! Really, now!”
“And anything like a good time is almost impossible. It’s precedence, precedence everywhere, always. You can’t entertain informally.”
“It must be as if one were laced in a straight jacket.”
“I’m going abroad next year and am never coming back, if I can help it. I’m going where at least there’s real rank to get excited about. I’ll go with Ysobel and her mother—unless Ysobel decides to marry on this side.”
Frothingham was internally agitated, but gave no sign of it.
“She’s marrying either Mr. Boughton or thathandsome Italian sitting next to Mrs. Ballantyne—the Prince di Rontivogli.”
“Ah,” said Frothingham. And to himself, “Just my rotten luck!”
“She makes no secret of it,” continued Miss Pope, “so I’m not violating her confidence. She says she’s determined to marry higher than her sister did. She likes Mr. Boughton better, though I should think she’d prefer the Prince—his face is ideal, and such manners! But, while Mr. Boughton is his granduncle’s heir and his granduncle is old and a widower—still—well, the dukedom might slip away from him. For instance, he might die before his granduncle.”
“That would be ghastly for her, wouldn’t it, now?” said Frothingham.
“It would kill poor Ysobel. She’ssoproud and ambitious! And that’s why she has an eye for the Prince—he’s of a frightfully old family, you know. One of his ancestors tried to poison Cesare Borgia and did succeed in getting himself poisoned or smothered or something thrilling. And they were an old, old family then. Oh, Ysobel is flying high. If her father would give her mother and her a free hand, I think she’d land a prince of some royal family.”
Cosimo, Prince di Rontivogli
Behind his mask Frothingham was hastily reforming his line of battle. The Ballantyne fortune was apparently inaccessible to an attack from a mere Earl; but he could keep it under surveillance while employing his main force against the Pope citadel, which seemed to be inviting attack. He did not fancy Miss Pope—she was too patently conscious of her cleverness and it was of a kind that did not attract him, was not what he regarded as feminine; nor was she physically up to his standard for his Countess-to-be. But—she had the essential; and he had been in America nearly five months and had had two, practically three, failures.
For the rest of his two weeks at the Ballantynes’ he spent as much time as he courteously could with Miss Pope. And when he joined Joe Wallingford at the New Willard, sharing his suite—and paying less than a third of the expenses—he was with her a large part of each day, driving with her, riding with her, lunching where she lunched, dining where she dined, dancing with her, walking with her, sending her flowers. In Boston and New York he had been somewhat hindered by the chaperon system, careless though it was. Here chaperoning was the flimsiest of farces, and heand Elsie were together almost as freely as if she were a man.
In his fourth week in Washington he called one afternoon to keep an engagement to walk with her at half-past four. She had not returned from a girl’s luncheon to which she had gone. At ten minutes past five she came, full of apology for her delay—“I really couldn’t leave. The lunch was over before three o’clock, but the Secretary of State’s daughter was enjoying herself and, though we were all furious with her, as we had other engagements, she wouldn’t leave; and, of course, none of us could leave until she left. When she did finally take herself away the Secretary of the Treasury’s daughter had given up her engagement and had settled herself for the rest of the afternoon. She didn’t leave until ten minutes ago. So there we were, penned in and forced to stay.”
“Precedence again?” said Frothingham.
“Precedence. It’s outrageous that those two girls should show so little consideration.”
“I’ve known the same sort of thing to happen at home,” Frothingham assured her. “Once when I’d gone to a house only for dinner I had to stay until half-past four in the morning. The Prince of Waleswas there, and he was just then mad about ‘bridge.’ He insisted on playing and playing. Several of us were asleep in the next room—the hostess was nodding over her cards.”
“But he must have seen,” said Elsie. “Why didn’t he take the hint?”
“Well, you see, the poor chap led such a deadly dull life in those days. When he found himself having a bit of fun he didn’t care a rap what it cost anyone else. It’s a mistake to bother with other people’s feelings, don’t you think?”
“It only makes them supersensitive and hard to get on with,” replied Elsie. “I used to be considerate. Now I’m considerate only when it’s positively rude not to be. Besides, I must expect to buy my way through the world. I never had any friends—though I used to think I had, when I was a fool and didn’t know that just the sight of wealth makes human beings tie up their good instincts and turn loose the worst there is in them. Even when rich people are friendly with each other it’s usually in the hope of getting some sordid advantage.”
“Do you apply that to yourself or only to others?”
“It applies to me—it has applied to me ever since I found what sort of a world I was living in.”
“I don’t believe it, my dear girl,” drawled Frothingham, the more convincingly for the lack of energy in his tone. And he gave her a quick, queer look through his eyeglass and was stolid again.
She coloured just a little. “Oh, I suppose I’d be as big a goose as ever if I should fall in love again.”
“Again?”
She laughed. “I’ve been in love four times in the last four years, and almost in love three times more. That’s a poor record for a Washington girl—there are so many temptations, with all these fascinating foreigners streaming through. But I’m not counting the times I’ve been made love to in half a dozen modern languages—I and my father’s money.”
“Possibly you were unjust to some of the men who’ve said they admired you. They may not have attached so much importance to your father’s money as—you do.”
The thrust tickled her vanity—nature had given her an over-measure of vanity to compensate for her under-measure of charm. She looked pleased, though she said: “I don’t deceive myself as to myself.”
“A man might have been attracted to you because you had money,” continued Frothingham dispassionately, “and might have stayed on for your own sake.”
Elsie lifted her eyebrows. “Perhaps,” she said. “I’ll admit it’s possible.”
“And, honestly now, do you pretend that you’d marry a man who had nothing but love to offer you? What has attracted you in the men you thought well of? You say there have been four—or, rather, four and three halves. Has any one of ’em been a poor devil of a nobody?”
Elsie hesitated; in the twilight he saw from the corner of his eye that her upper lip was trembling. They were walking near the tall, white, glistening monument, in the quiet street that skirts the grounds of the White House. “One,” she said, at last, in a low voice. “I didn’t care especially for him. But sometimes I think he really did care for me—he was a wild, sensitive creature.” She looked at Frothingham and smiled. “And when I get in my black moods I’m half sorry I sent him away.”
“But you did send him away, didn’t you?” Frothingham’s expression and tone were satirical, yetsympathetic, too. “And you complain of men for being precisely as you are!”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted.
“I take it for granted the girl who consents to marry me will consent because she wishes to be a Countess.” He drew closer to her—she looked her best in twilight hours, and he succeeded in putting as much tenderness into his voice as was necessary to enable so drawling and indifferent a person to create an impression of sentiment. “If I were walking here with the girl I wished to win, I’d say nothing of sentiment. I’d simply trust to the only thing I have that could possibly induce her to listen to me.”
She glanced shyly up at him—he thought her almost pretty.
“Do you think that would win her?” he asked in a low tone.
“I—don’t—know,” she replied slowly. Her commonplace voice had also been touched with the magic that had transformed her face.
“Won’t you think of it?”
“If you wish,” she murmured.
They went on in silence a few minutes, then she spoke in an attempt at her usual voice: “But wemust turn back. I’ll have just time to dress for dinner.”
And he decided that he would say no more on the principal subject for several days. He thought he understood how to deal with American girls rather better now. “I’ll give her a chance to walk round the trap,” he thought. And then he reminded himself that it was hardly a trap—wasn’t she getting the better of the bargain? “She’s indulging in a luxury, while I’m after a desperate necessary. And, by Jove, it won’t be easy not to make a face, if I get it—with her.”