"If you have this war," said Lady Mary Montgomery to Betty, who had come to receive with her on one of her Tuesdays, "it will be strictly constitutional if you look at it in the right way. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and as the people are practically a unit in their howl for war, they have a right to it, and the responsibility is on their shoulders, not on your few statesmen."
"That is a real gem of feminine logic, but not only is one wise man of more account than ten thousand fools, but a unit is a unit and has no comparative state. The serious men from one end of the country to the other are doing all they can to quell the excitement; so are the few decent newspapers that we possess. But they are dealing with a mob; an excited mob is always mad, and in this case the keepers are not numerous enough for the lunatics. But no one will question that the intelligent keepers are right and the mob wrong. The average intelligence is always shallow, and in electric climates very excitable. We are dealing to-day no less with a huge mob, even if it is not massed and marching, than were the few sane men of the French Revolution. An exciting idea is like a venomous microbe; it bites into the brain, and if circumstances do not occur to expel it, it produces a form of mania. That is the only way I can account for Burleigh's attitude; he is one of the few exceptions. There are thousands of men in the United States whose brains could stand any strain, but there are hundreds of thousands who were born to swell a mob. As for 'government by the people,' that phrase should be translated to-day into 'tyranny of the people.' England under a constitutional monarchy is far freer than we are."
"Well, I am suppressed and will say no more. I suppose I shall have a mob to-day. If anything, people are paying more calls than ever, for they can't stay indoors for twenty-five minutes with no one to talk to. It is getting monotonous. I wish that the President and the Senate would begin to play, but they look as impassive as the statues in the parks."
The rooms filled quickly. By five o'clock the usual crowd was there, and if it had its dowdy battalion as ever, there was no evidence that the more fortunate had lost their interest in dress, despite the warlike state of their nerves. Not that all were for war, by any means. Many were clinging to a forlorn hope, but they could talk of nothing else.
Betty had just listened to the twenty-eighth theory of the cause of theMaine's destruction when she turned in response to a familiar drawl.
"Why, howdy, Miss Madison, I'm real glad to run across you at last."
Betty was so taken aback that she mechanically surrendered her hand to the limp pressure of her former housekeeper. But she was not long recovering herself.
"Miss Trumbull, is it not? I was not aware that you were an acquaintance of Lady Mary Montgomery's."
"Well, I can't say as I know her real intimate yet, but I guess I shall in time, as we're both wives of Congressmen."
"Ah? You are married?" Betty experienced a fleeting desire to see the man who had been captivated by Miss Trumbull.
"Ye—as. I went out West to visit my sister after I left you and was married before I knew it—to Mr. George Washington Mudd. He's real nice, and smart—My! I expect to be in the White House before I die."
"It is among the possibilities, of course. I hope you are happy, and that meanwhile he is able to take care of you comfortably." Mrs. Mudd glistened with black silk and jet, but the cut of her gown was of the Middle West.
"Well, I guess! He's a lawyer and can make two hundred dollars a month any day. Of course I can't set up a house in Washington, but I live at the Ellsmere, and three or four of us Congressional ladies receive together and share carriages. I'll be happy to have you call—the first and third Tuesdays; but we always put it in the Post."
"I have little time for calling. I am very busy in many ways."
"Well, I'm sorry. You don't look as well as you did up in the mountains; you look real tired, come to examine you. But your dresses are always so swell one sees those first. I always did think you had just the prettiest dresses I ever saw."
Betty did not turn her back upon the woman; it was a relief to talk on any subject that stood aloof from war. Mrs. Mudd rambled on.
"I suppose you're engaged to Senator Burleigh by this time? He's our Senator, you know, but I don't know as he's likely to be, long. We want silver, and I guess we've got to have it."
"I suppose you take quite an interest in politics now," said Betty, looking at the woman's large self-satisfied face. So far, matrimony had not been a chastening influence. Mrs. Mudd looked more conceited than ever.
"Well, I guess I always knew as much about them as anybody; and now I'm in politics, I guess the President couldn't give me many points. If he don't declare war soon, I'll go up to the White House and tell him what I think of him."
"Suppose you make a speech from the House Gallery. It is Congress that declares war, not the President."
Mrs. Mudd's face turned the dull red which Betty well remembered. "I guess I know what I'm talking' about. It's the President—"
But Betty's back was upon her, and Betty was listening to the agitated comments of one of the year's debutantes upon the destruction of the Maine.
"Was night ever so welcome before?" thought Betty, as she settled herself between the four posts of her great-aunt's bed, a few hours later. "Here, at least, not an echo of war can penetrate, and if I think of other things that scald my pillow, it is almost a relief."
On the following evening she went with the Montgomerys to the Army and Navy reception at the White House. Lady Mary had but to express a wish for a card to any function in Washington; and her popularity had much to do with her love for her adopted country.
It was the first time Betty ever had entered the historic mansion, and as she waited for twenty minutes in the crush of people on the front porch, she reflected that probably it was the last.
But when she was in the great East Room, which was hung with flags and glittered with uniforms, and was filled with the strains of martial music, she thrilled again with the historical sense, and almost wished there was a prospect of a war which would compel her to patriotic excitement.
They remained in the East Room for some time before going to shake hands with the President, that the long queue of people patiently crawling to the Blue Room might have time to wear itself down to a point. As Betty stood there eagerly watching the scene, and talking to first one and then another of the Army men who came up to speak to her, she became deeply impressed with the fact that this was the calmest function she had attended in Washington during the winter. There was no excitement on the faces of these men in uniform, and they said little and hardly mentioned the subject of war. They looked stern and thoughtful; and Betty felt proud of them, and wished they were doing themselves honour in a better cause.
She went down the long central corridor after a time, past the crowd wedged before the central door, gaping at the receiving party, to a room where she and the Montgomerys joined the diminished queue extending from a side entrance to the Blue Room. She was not surprised to see Mrs. Mudd in front of her, for although the Representative's wife should have received a card for another evening, she was quite capable of forcing her way in without one; as doubtless a good many others had done to-night. She wore her black silk gown and her bonnet, and although most of the women present were in brilliant evening dress, Mrs. Mudd had several to keep her in countenance. She glanced wearily over her shoulder during the slow progress of the queue, and caught sight of Betty. Her place was precious, but she left it at once and came down the line.
"I'll go in along with you," she said. "George couldn't come and I've felt kinder lonesome ever sense I got here. And we've been three quarters of an hour getting this far. It's terrible tiresome, but as I've found you I guess I can stand the rest of it."
Betty detected the flicker of malice in her former housekeeper's voice. They were on equal ground for once, and Miss Madison and Mrs. Mudd would shake hands with their President within consecutive moments. She smiled with some cynicism, but was too good-natured to snub the native ambition where it could do no harm.
"I saw Senator North to-day," observed Mrs. Mudd, "and he looked crosser 'n two sticks. He's mad because they'll have war in spite of him. I call him right down unpatriotic, and so do lots of others."
"That disturbs him a great deal. He is much more concerned about the country making a fool of itself."
"This country's all right, and we couldn't go wrong if we tried. Them that sets themselves up to be so terrible superior are just bad Americans, that's the long and the short of it, and they'll find it out at the next elections. If Senator North should take a trip out West just now, they'd tar and feather him, and I'd like to be there to see it done. They can't say what they think of his setting on patriotic Senators loud enough. And as for the President—"
"Well, don't criticise the President while you are under his roof. It is bad manners. Here we are. Will you go in first?"
"Well, I don't see why I shouldn't. I'll hurry on so they can see your dress; it's just too lovely for anything."
Betty wore a white embroidered chiffon over green; she shook out the train, which had been over her arm ever since she entered the house. Her name was announced in a loud tone, and she entered the pretty flowery Blue Room with its charmingly dressed receiving party standing before a large group of favoured and critical friends, and facing the inquisitive eyes in the central doorway. The President grasped her hand and said, "How do you do, Miss Madison?" in so pleased and so cordial a tone that Betty for a fleeting moment wondered where she could have met him before. Then she smiled, made a comprehensive bow to his wife and the women of the Cabinet, and passed on. Mrs. Mudd, who had shaken hands relentlessly with every weary member of the receiving party, reached the door of exit after her and clutched her by the arm.
"Say!" she exclaimed with excitement, although her drawl was but half conquered. "Wheredoyou s'pose I could have met the President before? I know by the way he said 'Mrs. Mudd,' he remembered me, but I just can't think, to save my life. My! ain't he fascinating?"
Betty had laughed aloud. "I am sorry to hurt your vanity," she replied, "but the President is said to have the best manners of any man who has occupied the White House within living memory."
"What d'you mean?" cried Mrs. Mudd, sharply. "D' you mean he didn't know me? I just know he did, so there! And he can pack his clothes in my trunk as soon as he likes."
"Good heaven!" "Oh, that's slang. I forgot you were so terrible superior. But you've got good cause to know I'm virtuous. Lands sakes! I guess nobody ever said I warn't."
"I don't fancy anybody ever did."
They were in the East Room again, with the stars and stripes, the moving glitter of gold, the loud hum mingled with the distant strains of martial music.
"It's really inspiring," said Lady Mary. "I wish I could write a war poem."
"I hope there is nothing coming to inspire war doggerel; the prospect of a new crop of war stories and war plays is too painful. We were all brought up on the Civil War and are resigned to its literature. But life is too short to get used to a new variety."
"Betty dear, ennui has embittered you, and I must confess that I am a trifle weary of the war before it has begun, myself. Randolph, I think I prefer you should vote for peace."
"I'm afraid we'll have no peace till we've had war first," said Mr.Montgomery, grimly.
"Oh, we're goin' to have war," drawled Mrs. Mudd. "Just don't you worry about that. Now don't blush," she said in Betty's ear. "Senator North's makin' straight for you. I suspicion you like him better 'n Burleigh—"
Betty had turned upon her at last, and the woman tittered nervously and fell back in the crowd.
Senator North and Miss Madison shook hands with that absence of emotion which is one of the conditions of a crowded environment, and Lady Mary suggested they should all go to the conservatory, where it was cooler.
Betty told Senator North of the impression the Army and Navy men had made on her, and he laughed.
"Of course they are not excited and say little," he said. "They will do the acting and leave the talking to the private citizens. The only argument in favour of the war and the large standing army which might be its consequence is that several hundred thousand more men would have disciplined brains inside their skulls."
"That dreadful housekeeper I had in the Adirondacks is here, married to a Representative named George Washington Mudd."
"I never heard of him, but I am sorry she has come here to remind you of what I should like to have you forget for a time. I do believe a specimen of every queer fish in the country comes to this pond."
They passed one of the bands, and conversation was impossible until they entered the great conservatory with its wide cool walks among the green. It was not crowded, and although there was no seclusion in it at any time, its lights were few and it had a sequestered atmosphere.
Betty and Senator North involuntarily drew closer together.
"In a way I am happy now," she said. "It is something to be with you and close to you. I will not think of how much this may lack until I am alone again and there is no limit to my wants."
"I feel the reverse of depressed," he said, smiling. "Are you quite well? You look a little tired."
"I am tired with much thinking; but that is inevitable. One cannot love hopelessly and look one's best. I always despised the heroines of romance who went into a decline, but Nature demands some tribute in spite of the strongest will."
He held her arm more closely, but he set his lips and did not answer.She spoke again after a moment.
"Since that night I have not been nearly so unhappy, however. I even feel gay sometimes, and my sense of humour has come back. It would be quite dreadful to go through life without that, but I thought I had lost it."
He had turned his eyes and was regarding her intently; but much as she loved them she felt as helpless as ever before their depths. They could pierce and burn, but they never were limpid for a moment.
"You do not misunderstand that?" she asked hurriedly. "It does not mean that I love you less, but more, if anything. And I am not resigned! Only, I feel as if in some way I had received a little help, as if—I cannot express it."
"I understand you perfectly. We are a little closer than we were, and life is not quite so grey."
"That is it. And I would supplement your bare statement of the fact, ifI dared."
"If you do, I certainly shall kiss you right here in the crowd," he said, and they smiled into each other's eyes. There was little need of explanations between them.
"That would form a brief diversion for Washington. And as for Mrs. Mudd—By the way, I hope I am not going off. You are the second person who has told me that I am not looking well."
"You are improved as far as I am concerned. And if you ever faded, happiness would restore you at once. If happiness never came, perhaps you would not care—would you?"
She shrugged her beautiful shoulders and smiled quizzically.
"I don't know.Je suis femme. I think I might always find some measure of consolation in the mirror if it behaved properly."
"Your sincerity is one of your charms. So walk and eat and live in the world, and think as little as you can."
"This conservatory is fearfully draughty," remarked Lady Mary, close toBetty's shoulder. "I don't want to stay all night, do you?"
"I am ready," said Betty; but she sighed, for she had been almost happy for the hour.
If the reception at the White House had been calm, Betty'ssalonon the following evening was not. On Tuesday the House, after duly relieving its feelings by an hour and a half of war talk, flaming with every variety of patriotism, passed the bill appropriating $50,000,000 for the national defence. On Wednesday the bill passed the Senate without a word beyond the "ayes" of its members. On the morrow the War Department would begin the mobilization of the army; and although theMaineCourt of Inquiry had not completed its labours, the New York World, in the interest of curious humanity, had instituted a submarine inquiry of its own and given the result to the country. Even Senator North regarded war as almost inevitable, although the controvertible proof of explosion from without only involved the Spanish by inference.
The women who were privileged to attend the now famoussalonwore their freshest and most becoming gowns, and most of the Senators would have been glad to have frivoled away the evening in compliments, so refreshing was the sight of an attractive face after a long and anxious day. But the eyes of the women sparkled with patriotic fire only. One burst into tears and others threatened hysterics, but got through the evening comfortably. Mrs. Madison sat on a sofa and fanned herself nervously; Senator Maxwell and Senator North at her request kept close to her side.
"They were not so excited during the Civil War," she exclaimed, as a shrill voice smote her ear. "I suppose we have developed more nerves or something."
"The mind was possessed by the Grim Fact during the Civil War," said Senator Maxwell. "This is a second-rate thing that appeals to the nerves and not to the soul."
Betty, who understood the patient longing of her statesmen for variety, had imported for the evening several members of the troupe singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. Conversation consequently was interrupted six or seven times, but it burst forth with increased vigour at the end of every song; and when the Polish tenor with mistaken affability sang "The Star Spangled Banner," the women and some of the younger men took it up with such vehemence that Mrs. Madison put her fingers to her ears. When one girl jumped on a chair and waved her handkerchief, which she had painted red, white, and blue, the unwilling hostess asked Senator North if he thought Betty would be able to keep her head till the end of the evening, or would be excited to some extraordinary antic.
"There is not the least danger," he replied soothingly. "Miss Madison could manage to look impassive if a cyclone were raging within her. It is a long while since the Americans have had a chance to be excited. You must make allowances."
Betty for some time had suppressed her Populist with difficulty. He was one of those Americans to whom a keen thin face and a fair education give the superficial appearance of refinement. In a country as democratic as the United States and where schooling and intelligence are so widespread, it is possible for many half-bred men to create a good impression when in an equable frame of mind. But excitement tears their thin coat of gentility in twain, and Betty already regretted having invited Armstrong to her salon. He had not missed a Thursday evening, for he not only appreciated the social advantage of a footing in such a house, but his clever mind enjoyed the conversation there, and the frankly expressed opinions of well-bred people who argued without acerbity and never called each other names. With his slender well-dressed figure and bright fair sharply cut face, he by no means looked an alien, and if he could have corrected the habit of contradicting people up and down—to say nothing of his occasional indulgence in the Congressional snort—his manners would have passed muster in any gathering. He was a good specimen of the ambitious American of obscure birth and clever but shallow brain, quick to seize every opportunity for advancement. But politics were his strongest instinct, and exciting crises stifled every other.
He was very much excited to-night, for he had, during the afternoon, tried three times to bring in a war resolution, and thrice been extinguished by the Speaker. When the tenor started "The Star-Spangled Banner," he braced himself against the wall and sang at the top of his lungs; and the performance seemed to lash his temper rather than relieve it. He twice raised his voice to unburden his mind, and was distracted by Betty, who kept him close beside her. Finally she attempted to change the subject by chatting of personal matters.
"I went to the White House last night," she said, "and was delighted to find that the President had the most charming manners—"
"What's a manner?" interrupted Armstrong, roughly. "You women are all alike. I suppose you'd turn up your nose at William J. Bryan because he ain't what you call a gentleman. But if he were in the White House instead of that milk-and-water puppet of Wall Street, we'd be shooting those murderers down in Cuba as we ought to be. The President and the whole Republican party," he shouted, "are a lot of hogs who've chawed so much gold their digestion won't work and their brains are torpid; and there's nothing to do but to kick them into this war—the whole greedy, white-livered, Trust-owned, thieving lot of them, including that great immaculate Joss up at the White House with his manners. Damn his manners! They come too high—"
"Armstrong," said Burleigh soothingly, but with a glint in his eye, "I have an important communication to make to you. Will you come out into the hall a moment?" He passed his arm through the Populist's, and led him unresistingly away.
Betty glanced at her mother. Mrs. Madison was fanning herself with an air of profound satisfaction. As she met her daughter's eyes, she raised her brows, and her whole being breathed the content of the successful prophetess. Senator North looked grimly amused. Betty turned away hastily. She felt much like laughing, herself.
Burleigh returned alone. "I took the liberty of telling him to go and not to come again," he said. "That sort of man never apologizes, so you are rid of him."
Betty smiled and thanked him; then she frowned a little, for she saw several people glance significantly at each other. She knew that Washington took it for granted she would marry Burleigh.
They went in to supper a few moments later, and in that admirable meal the weary statesmen found the solace that woman denied him. And the flowers were fragrant; the candlelight was grateful to tired eyes, and the champagne unrivalled. Until the toasts—which in this agitated time had become a necessary feature of thesalon—the conversation, under the tactful management of Betty and several of her friends, and the diverting influence of the great singers, was but a subdued hum about nothing in particular. When at the end of an hour Burleigh rose impulsively and proposed the health of the President, even the Democrats responded with as much warmth as courtesy.
"You manage your belligerents very well," said Senator North, when he shook her hand awhile later. "Yours has probably been the only amiable supper-room in Washington to-night."
"Now!" exclaimed Sally Carter, who was sobbing hysterically, "I hope they will impeach the President if he delays any longer with theMainereport and if he doesn't send a warlike message on top of it. After that speech I don't see why Congress should wait for him at all."
It was the seventeenth of March, and she and Betty were driving home from the Capitol after listening to the Senator from Vermont on the situation in Cuba,—to that cold, bare, sober statement of the result of personal investigation, which produced a far deeper and more historical impression than all the impassioned rhetoric which had rent the air since the agitation began. He appeared to have no feeling on the matter, no personal bias; he told what he had seen, and he had seen misery, starvation, and wholesale death. He blamed the Spaniards no more than the insurgents, but two hundred thousand people were the victims of both; and the bold yet careful etching he made of the Cuban drama burnt itself into the brains of the forty-six Senators present and of the eight hundred people in the galleries.
"I cannot bring myself to think that death is the worst of all evils," said Betty, "and I do not think that we have any right to go to war with Spain, no matter what she chooses to do with her own. Besides, she is thoroughly frightened now, and I believe would rectify her mistakes in an even greater measure than she has already tried to do, if the President were given time to handle her with tact and diplomacy. If the country would give him a chance to save her pride, war could be averted."
"You are heartless! Don't argue with me. I hate argument when my emotions feel as if they had dynamite in them. I could sit down on the floor of the Senate and scream until war was declared. I hate Senator North. He never moved a muscle of his face during that entire terrible recital. He hardly looked interested. He is a heartless brute."
"He is not heartless. He fears everlasting complications if we go to war with Spain, the expenditure of hundreds of millions, as one result of those complications, and danger to the Constitution. The statesman thinks of his own country first—"
"I won't listen! I won't! I won't! Oh, I never thought I could get so excited about anything. I believe I'm going to have nervous prostration and I sha'n't see you again till war is declared. So there!"
The carriage stopped at her house, and she jumped out and ran up the steps. She kept her word, and it was weeks before Betty saw her to speak to again.
"If intelligent people get into that condition," thought Betty, "what can be expected of the fools? And the fools are more dangerous in the United States than elsewhere, because they are just bright enough to think that they know more than the Almighty ever knew in His best days."
A few days later she was crossing Statuary Hall on her way back from the House Gallery; whither she had gone during an Executive Session of the Senate, when she met Senator North. His face illuminated as he saw her, and they both turned spontaneously and went to a bench behind the immortal ones of the Republic, who in dust and marble were happier than their inheritors to-day.
"I am thinking of coming down here to live, renting a Committee Room," said Betty. "It is the only place where I do not have my opinion asked and where I do not quarrel with my friends. Molly is sure I shall be taken for a lobbyist, and if people were not too absorbed to notice me, I think I should engage a companion; but as it is, I believe I am safe enough. I have had this simple brown serge made, on purpose."
"There is not the least danger of your motives being misconstrued, and the Capitol is swarming with women, all the time. They seem to regard it as a sort of National Theatre, where the most exciting denouement may take place any minute. I fancy they have come from all over the country for the satisfaction of being able to say, for the rest of their lives, that they were in at the death. The poor Capitol has become a sort of asylum for wandering lunatics."
Betty laughed. "I feel calmer here than anywhere else, especially now that Molly has gone over to the Cubans since the publication of that speech. I suspect it has made a good many other converts. I didn't think the tide of excitement in the country could rise any higher, but it appears to have needed that last straw. Have you any hope left?"
"None whatever. The politicians in both parties are rushing the President off his feet and inflaming the country at the same time. Sincere sympathizers with Cuba, like Burleigh, are holding their peace until the President shall have declared himself, but there is very little patriotism amongst politicians desirous of re-election. If Spain was a quick-thinking nation and was not stultified by a mulish obstinacy for which the word 'pride' is a euphemism, or if the President could hypnotize the country for six months, all would be well, but I do not look for a miracle. I have done all I can. I have persuaded my own State to keep quiet, and that has lessened the pressure a little; and I have persuaded no less than eight of our bellicose members to say nothing on the floor of the Senate until the President has sent in his message,—that delay is necessary if we are to meet war with any sort of preparation. That is all I can do, for I don't care to speak on the subject again, to bring it up in the Senate until it no longer can be held down. But I have said a good deal in the lobby."
"I suspect you have! Do you mind all the talk about your being unpatriotic, and that sort of thing? I cried for an hour the other day over an article in a New York paper, headed 'A Traitor,' and saying the most hideous things about you."
"I didn't read it. And don't spoil your eyes over anything sensational American newspapers may say of anybody; let them alone and read the few decent ones. For a public man to worry over such assaults would be a stupid waste of his mental energy; for if he is in the right he consoles himself with the reflection that the traitor of to-day is the patriot of to-morrow. But let politics go to the winds for a little. Tell me something about yourself. I have started no less than four times to go to see you—at half-past six in the afternoon—and turned back."
"I go there and sit almost every afternoon. This excitement has been a godsend. If the world had been pursuing its even way during the last two months, I don't know what would have happened to me. What am I to do when it is over?" she broke out, for they were almost secluded. "The more I think of the future the more hopeless it seems. If there is war, I'll go as a nurse—"
"You will do nothing of the sort. Promise me that—instantly. There will be trained nurses without end, and you would run the risk of fever for nothing. Promise me."
"But Imustdo something. I have hours that you cannot imagine. Ordinarily I keep up very well, for I have character enough to make the best of life, whatever happens; but one can control one's heart with one's will just so long and no longer. When the world is quiet and I am alone at night, if I don't go to sleep at once—it is terrible! Do you think I should be afraid of death? If I have got to go through life with this terrible ache in my heart, in my whole body—for when I cry my very fingers cramp—I'd a thousand times rather go to Cuba and have done with it."
For a moment he only stared at her. Then he parted his lips as if to speak, but closed them again so firmly that Betty wondered what he was holding back. But his eyes, although they had flashed for a moment and burned still, told her nothing. He did not speak for fully a minute. Then he said,—
"Death can be met with fortitude by any strong brain, but not a lifetime of miserable invalidism. If you contracted fever down there, you might get rid of it in several years and you might not. Meanwhile," he added, smiling, "you would become yellow and wrinkled. So promise me at once that you will not go."
"I swear it!" she said with an attempt at gayety. "Not even for you will I get yellow and wrinkled—and I adore you! Tell me," she went on rapidly and with little further attempt at self-control; "what shall I do next? Shall I go abroad? There is no distraction in castles and cathedrals and crooked streets; they must be enjoyed when one is idle and tranquil. I'm tired of pictures. I suppose I've seen about twenty miles of them in my life. As for the old masters they give me nightmares. There is nothing left but society, and I don't like foreigners and should find little novelty in England—and many reminders! The future appalls me. I cannot face it. Am I inconsiderate to talk like this when you are so worried? Sometimes I feel that I have no right to be even sensible of my individuality when a whole nation is convulsed; it seems almost absurd that there are hundreds of thousands of tragedies within the great one—but there are! There are! And the war will bring oblivion to only those to whom it brings death."
She stopped, panting, after the torrent of words. His hand had closed about her arm, and he was bending close above her. His face had flushed deeply, and once more he opened his lips as if to speak, but did not. Betty shook suddenly. Was the word he would not utter "Wait"? There could be no doubt that a word struggled for utterance, and that he held it back. If he did not, Betty felt that her love would turn cold. For a great love may be killed by a sudden blow, and there is always some one thing that will kill the greatest. But she wished that his brain would flash its message to hers.
The silence between them became so intense and the strain on her eyes so intolerable that she dropped her head and fumbled with her muff. She dared not speak, dared not divert his mind. He was too much the master of his own fate.
"Don't ever hesitate to speak out through consideration for me, my dear," he said. "The only relief we both have is to speak our thoughts occasionally. And you can tell me nothing of yourself that I do not know already. I never forget that you are tormented. But Time will help you. The future which looms with a few dull and insupportable Facts is crowded with small details which consume both time and thought, and it is full of little unexpected pleasures. War is very diverting. One's attitude to a war after the first few shocks is as to a great military drama. If by a miracle ours should be averted, then go to England, where you will have men at least to talk to. When plans for the future are futile, live in the present and be careful to make no mistake. It is the only philosophy for those who are not in the favour of Circumstance. I am going now. Bend your ear closer. I have had so little opportunity to be tender with you, and I have thought of that as much as of anything else."
Betty inclined her head eagerly, and he whispered to her for a moment, then left her.
For a few moments she did not move. The buoyancy of her nature was still considerable, and his last words had thrilled her and made her almost as happy as if he would return in an hour. She rose finally and walked across the hall, her inclination divided between the Senate Gallery where she might look at him, and her boudoir where she might fling herself on her divan and think of him. As she was moving along slowly, seeing no one, her arm was caught by a bony hand, and a familiar drawl smote her ear.
"Laws, Miss Madison, have you gone blind all of a sudden? But you look as if you had two stars in your eyes."
"How do you do, Mrs. Mudd? These are times to make anybody absent-minded."
"Well, I guess! We're gettin' there and no mistake. Now look quick, Miss Madison—there's my husband, the one that's just got up off that bench. He's been talkin' to a constituent."
Betty glanced across the Hall with some interest: she occasionally had doubted the reality of George Washington Mudd. A tall stout man in a loose black overcoat, a black slouch hat, and a big cotton umbrella under his arm, was stalking across the Hall with his head in the air, as if to sniff at the marble effigies of the great. Betty felt young again and gave a delighted laugh.
"Why, I didn't know there really was anything like that!" she cried. "I thought—"
"Well, I guess I'd like to know what you mean," exclaimed an infuriate voice; and Betty, turning to Mrs. Mudd's dark red face, recovered herself instantly.
"I mean that your husband belongs to a type that our dramatists have thought worthy of preservation and of exercising their finest art upon. I often give writers credit for more creative ability than they possess, for I always am seeing some one in real life whose entire type I had supposed had come straight out of their genius. Take yourself, for instance. If I had not met you outside of a book, I should have thought you a triumph of imagination."
"Well—thanks," drawled Mrs. Mudd, mollified though doubtful. "I don't claim that George is handsome, but he's the smartest man in our district and he'll make the House sit up yet." She giggled and rolled her eyes. "He was downright jealous because I came home from the reception and raved over the President," she announced. "Oh, my!"
"Perhaps he's a Populist," suggested Betty.
"Not much he ain't. He's a good Democrat with Silver principles."
"Well, I'm glad you're happy. Good-afternoon."
"I love the greatest man in America and she loves George Washington Mudd," thought Betty, as she walked down the corridor. "Mortals die, but love is imperishable. A half-century hence and where will the love that dwells in every fibre of me now, have gone? Will it be dust with my dust, or vigorous with eternal youth in some poor girl who never heard my name?"
And then she went home to her boudoir.
Betty, who had come justly to the conclusion that she knew something of politics after a year's application to the science and several object lessons, made in the following weeks her first acquaintance with the intricacies which sometimes may involve political motives. The President was not given time to exhaust diplomacy with Spain, although in his War Message he was obliged to state that he had done so. To deal successfully with a proud and mediaeval country required months, not days, and as Spain had grudgingly but surely yielded all along the line to the demands of the United States, it is safe to assume that she would have withdrawn peacefully her forces from Cuba if her pride could have been saved. Sagasta was working in the interests of peace; but a bigoted old country, too indolent to read history, and puzzled at a youthful nation's industry in the cause of humanity, would move so fast and no faster.
The President was rushed off his feet and his hand was forced. An honest but delirious country was threatening impeachment and clamouring for war. Its representatives were hammering on the doors of the White House and shrieking in Congress. A dishonest press was inflaming it and injuring it in the eyes of the world by assaulting the integrity of the Executive and of the leading men in both Houses; and unscrupulous politicians were extracting every possible party advantage, until it looked as if the Democratic party, rent asunder by Mr. Bryan and his doctrines, would be unified once more. The House, after the President's calm and impersonal message on theMainereport, acted like a mutinous school of bad boys who had not been taught the first principles of breeding and dignity; the few gentlemen in it hardly tried to make themselves heard, and even the Speaker was powerless to quell a couple of hundred tempers all rampant at once. Every conceivable insult was heaped upon the head of the President as he delayed his War Message from day to day, hoping against hope, and gaining what time he could to strengthen the Navy.
It became necessary therefore for the high-class men in the Senate, particularly the Republicans, to present an unbroken front. Whatever the conclusions of the President, they must stand by him. It was their duty as Americans first and Republicans after; for they had elected him to the high and representative office he filled, they were responsible for him, he had done nothing to forfeit their confidence, and everything, by his wise and conservative course, to win their approval. And it was their duty to their party to uphold him, for internal dissensions in this great crisis would weaken their forces and play them into the hands of the Democrats. Therefore, Senator North and others, who had strenuously and consistently opposed war from any cause, until it became evident that the President had been elbowed into the position of a puppet by his people instead of being permitted to guide them, withdrew their opposition, and when his Message finally was forced from his hand, let it be known that they should support it against the powerful faction in the Senate which demanded the recognition of Cuba as a Republic. The Message meant war, but a war that no longer could be averted, and there was nothing left for any high-minded statesman and loyal party man to do but to defend the President from those who would usurp his authority and tie his hands, to demonstrate to the world their belief in a statesmanship which was being attacked at every point by those whom his Message had disappointed, and to provide against one future embarrassment the more.
When Betty had trodden the maze this far, she realized the unenviable position of the conservative faction in the Senate. North's position was particularly unpleasant. He had stood to the country as the embodiment of its conservative spirit, the spirit which was opposed uncompromisingly to this war. Several days before the speech of the Senator from Vermont exploded the inflamed nervous system of the country, he had made an address which had been copied in every State in the Union and been hopefully commented on abroad. In this speech, which was a passionless, impersonal, and judicial argument against interference in the domestic affairs of a friendly nation seeking to put down an insurgent population whose record for butchery and crime equalled her own, as well as a brilliant forecast of the evils, foreign and domestic, which must follow such a war, he demonstrated that if war was declared at this period it would be unjustifiable because it would be the direct result of the accident to theMaine, which, as the explosion could not be traced to the Spanish officials, was not acasus belli. Prior to that accident no important or considerable number of the American people had clamoured for war, only for according belligerent rights to the Cubans, which measure they were not wise enough to see would lead to war. Therefore, had theMaineincident not occurred, the President would have been given the necessary time for successful diplomacy, despite the frantic efforts of the press and the loud-voiced minority; and it could not be claimed that the present clamour, dating from the fifteenth of February, was honestly in behalf of the suffering Cuban. It was for revenge, and it was an utterly unreasonable demand for revenge, as no sane man believed that Spain had seized the first opportunity to cut her throat; and until it could be proved that she had done so, it was a case for indemnity, not for war. Therefore, if war came at the present juncture it was because the people of the United States had made up their minds they wanted a fight, they would have a fight, they didn't care whether they had an excuse or not.
The speech made a profound impression even in the agitated state of the public mind, for bitterly as North might be denounced he always was listened to. The press lashed itself into a fury and wrote head-lines which would have ridden its editors into prison had the country possessed libel laws adequate to protect a noble provision of the Constitution. The temperate men in the country had been with North from the beginning, but the excited millions excoriated him the more loudly. He was denounced at public banquets and accused by excited citizens all over the Union, except in his own State, of every depravity, from holding an unimaginable number of Spanish bonds to taking a ferocious pleasure in the sufferings of the reconcentrados.
And in the face of this he must cast his vote for war.
A weaker man would have held stubbornly to his position, made notorious by his personality, and a less patriotic have chosen the satisfaction of being consistent to the bitter end and winning some measure of approval from the unthinking.
But North was a statesman, and although Betty did not see him to speak to for many weeks after the Message went to Congress, she doubted if he had hesitated a moment in choosing his course. He was a man who made a problem of nothing, who thought and acted promptly on all questions great and small. It was his manifest duty to support his President, who was also the head of his party, and to do what he could to win the sympathy of Europe for his country by making its course appear the right and inevitable one.
North's position was the logical result of the deliberations and decisions of the year 1787. Hamilton, the greatest creative and constructive genius of his century, never so signally proved his far-sighted statesmanship as when he pleaded for an aristocratic republic with a strong centralized government. As he was capable of anything, he doubtless foresaw the tyranny of the people into which ill-considered liberty would degenerate, just as he foresaw the many strong, wise, and even great men who would be born to rule the country wisely if given the necessary power. If the educated men of the country knew that its destinies were wholly in their hands, and that they alone could achieve the highest honours, there is not one of them who would not train himself in the science of government. Such men, ruling a country in which liberty did not mean a heterogeneous monarchy, would make the lot of the masses far easier than it is to-day. The fifteen million Irish plebeians with which the country is cursed would be harmlessly raising pigs in the country. Hamilton, in one of his letters, speaks of democracy as a poison. Some twenty years ago an eminent Englishman bottled and labelled the poison in its infinite variety, as a warning to the extreme liberals in his own country. We attempted one ideal, and we almost have forgotten what the ideal was. Hamilton's could not have fared worse, and there is good reason to believe that educated and thinking men, unhampered by those who talk bad grammar and think not, would have raised our standards far higher than they are, even with men like North patiently and dauntlessly striving to counteract the poison below. At all events, there would be no question of a President's hand being forced. Nor would such a class of rulers put a man in the White House whose hand could be forced.
Although Betty knew North would disregard the sneers of the press and of ambitious orators who would declaim while cannon thundered, she also knew that his impassive exterior hid a sense of humiliating defeat, and that the moment in which he was obliged to utter his aye for war would be the bitterest of his life. She fancied that he forgot her in these days, but she was willing to have it so. The intense breathless excitement of that time, when scarcely a Senator left his seat from ten in the morning till some late hour of the night, except to snatch a meal; the psychological effect of the silent excited crowds in the galleries and corridors of the Capitol and on its lawns and the immensity of its steps; the solemnity and incalculable significance of the approaching crisis, and the complete gravity of the man who possessed her mind, carried her out of herself and merged her personality for a brief while into the great personality of the nation.
It was half-past one o'clock in the morning of the nineteenth of April. A thousand people, weary and breathless but intensely silent, were crowded together in the galleries of the Senate. They had been there all night, some of them since early afternoon, a few since twelve o'clock. Outside, the corridors were so packed with humanity that it was a wonder the six acres of building did not sway. For the first time in hours they were silent and motionless, although they could hear nothing.
On the floor of the Senate almost every chair was occupied, and every Senator was singularly erect; no one was lounging, or whispering, or writing to-night. All faced the Vice-President, alone on his dais, much as an army faces its general. Every foot of the wide semicircle between the last curve of chairs and the wall was occupied by members of the House of Representatives, who stood in a dignified silence with which they had been little acquainted of late.
The Senate no longer looked like a Club. It recalled the description ofBryce: "The place seems consecrated to great affairs."
The Secretary was about to call the roll for the vote which would decide the fate of Cuba and alter for ever the position of the United States in the family of nations.
Betty had been in the gallery all night and a part of the preceding day. When the Senate took a recess at half-past six in the evening, she and Mary Montgomery, while Mrs. Shattuc guarded their seats, had forced their way down to the restaurant, but had been obliged to content themselves with a few sandwiches bought at the counter. But Betty was conscious of neither hunger nor fatigue, although the strain during the last eight hours had been almost insupportable: the brief sharp debates, the prosing of bores, interrupted by angry cries of "Vote! Vote!" the reiterated announcement of the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations that the conferees could not agree, the perpetual nagging of two Democrats and one Populist, the long trying intervals of debate on matters irrelevant to the great question torturing every mind, during which there was much confusion on the floor: the Senators talked constantly in groups except when the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations brought in his amended bill;—all this had made up a day trying to the stoutest nerves, and more than one person had fainted and been carried from the galleries.
The blood throbbed in Betty Madison's head from repressed excitement and the long strain on her nerves. But the solemnity of the scene affected her so powerfully that her ego seemed dead, she only was conscious of looking down upon history. It seemed to her that for the first time she fully realized the tremendous issues involved in the calling of that roll of names. The attitude of the American people which she had deprecated and scorned was dignified by the attitude of that historical body below her. Even Senator North did not interest her. The Senate for the time was a unit.
It seemed to her an interminable interval between the last echo of the rumbling voice of the Clerk who had read the resolution amended by the report of the conferees, and the first raucous exasperated note of the Secretary's clerk, after a brief colloquy between Senators. This clerk calls the roll of the Senate at all times as if he hated every member of it, and to-night he was nervous.
Betty felt the blood throb in her ears as she counted the sharp decisive "ayes" and "nos," although Burleigh, whom she had seen during the recess, had told her there was no doubt of the issue. As the clerk entered the M's, she came to herself with a shock, and simultaneously was possessed by a desire to get out of the gallery before Senator North's time came to say "aye." She had heard the roll called many times, she knew there were fourteen M's, and that she would have time to get out of the gallery if she were quick about it. She made so violent an effort to control the excitement raging within her that her brain ached as if a wedge had been driven through it. She whispered hurriedly to Mary Montgomery, who was leaning breathlessly over the rail and did not hear her, then made her way up to the door as rapidly as she could; even the steps were set thick with people.
As she was passed out of the gallery by the doorkeeper, and found herself precipitated upon that pale trembling hollow-eyed crowd wedged together like atoms in a rock, her knees trembled and her courage almost failed her. Several caught her by the arms, and asked her how the vote was going; but she only shrugged her shoulders with the instinct of self-defence and pushed her way toward a big policeman. He knew her and put out his hand, thrusting one or two people aside.
"This has been too much for you, miss, I reckon," he said. "I'll get you downstairs. Keep close behind me."
He forced a way through the crowd to the elevator. To attempt to part the compact mass on the staircase would invite disaster. The elevator boy had deserted his post that he might hear the news the sooner, but the policeman pushed Betty into the car, and manipulated the ropes himself. On the lower floor was another dense crowd; but he got her to the East door after rescuing her twice, called her carriage and returned to his post, well pleased with his bill.
For many moments Betty, bruised from elbows, breathless from her passage through that crush in the stagnant air, could not think connectedly. She vaguely recalled Mrs. Mudd's large face and black silk dress in the Diplomats' Gallery, which even a Cabinet minister might not enter without a permit from a member of the Corps. Doubtless the doorkeepers had been flung to and fro more than once to-night, like little skiffs in an angry sea. She wondered how she had had sufficient presence of mind to fee the policeman, and hoped she had not given him silver instead of the large bill which had seemed to spring to her fingers at the end of that frightful journey.
She leaned out of the open window, wishing it were winter, that the blood might be driven from her head; but there was only the slight chill of a delicious April morning in the air, and the young leaves fluttered gently in the trees. In the afternoon hundreds of boys had sold violets in the streets, and the perfume lingered, floating above the heavier scent of the magnolias in the parks. Betty's weary mind pictured Washington as it would be a few weeks hence, a great forest of brilliant living green amidst which one had almost to look for the houses and the heroes in the squares. Every street was an avenue whose tall trees seemed to cut the sky into blue banners—the word started the rearrangement of her scattered senses; in a few weeks the dust would be flying up to the green from thousands of marching feet.
She burst into tears, and they gave her some relief. The carriage stopped at the house a moment later, and she went directly to her boudoir. She took off her hat and pulled down her hair, rubbing her fingers against her burning head. Senator North took possession of her mind at once. The Senate was no longer a unit to her excited imagination; it seemed to dissolve away and leave one figure standing there beaten and alone.
She forgot the passionate efforts of other Senators in behalf of peace; to her the fine conservative strength of the Senate was personified in one man. And if there were others as pure and unselfish in their ideals, his at least was the master intellect.
She wondered if he remembered in this hour of bitter defeat that she had promised to come to this room and give him what she could of herself. That was weeks and weeks ago, and she had not repeated her intention, as she should have done. But he loved her, and was not likely to forget anything she said to him. Or would he care if he did remember? Must not personal matters seem of small account to-night? Or was he too weary to care for anything but sleep? Perhaps he had flung himself down on a sofa in the cloak-room, or in his Committee Room, and forgotten the national disaster while she watched.
She had been walking rapidly up and down the room. Her thoughts were not yet coherent, and instinct prompted her to get the blood out of her head if she could. A vague sense of danger possessed her, but she was not capable of defining it. Suddenly she stopped and held her breath. She had become aware of a recurring footstep on the sidewalk. Her window abutted some thirty feet away. She craned her head forward, listening so intently that the blood pounded in her ears. She expected to hear the gate open, the footsteps to grow softer on the path. But they continued to pace the stone flags of the sidewalk.
She opened her door, ran down the hall and into the parlor. Without an instant's hesitation she flung open a window and leaned out. The light from the street lamp fell full upon her. He could not fail to see her were he there. But he was not. The man pacing up and down before the house was the night watchman.
Betty closed the window hurriedly and stumbled back into the dark room. The disappointment and reaction were intolerable. She felt the same blind rage with Circumstance which had attacked her the night he had kissed and left her. In such crises conventions are non-existent; she might have been primeval woman for all she recalled in that hour of the teachings of the centuries. Had he been there, she would have called him in. He was hers, whatever stood between them, and she alone had the right to console him.
Her mind turned suddenly to his house. He was there, of course; it was absurd to imagine that his cool deliberation would ever forsake him. The moment the Senate adjourned he would have put on his hat, walked down to the East door, called a cab and gone home. And he was in his library. Why she felt so positive that he was there and not in bed she could not have told, but she saw the light in the long wing. She put her hands to her face suddenly, and moved to the door. She stumbled over a chair, and then noticed the intense darkness of the room. But beyond she saw distinctly the big red brick house of Senator North, with the light burning in the wing. Was she going to him? She wondered vaguely, for her will seemed to be at the bottom of a pile of struggling thoughts and to have nothing to say in the matter. Surely she must. He was a man who stood alone and scorned sympathy or help, but he would be glad of hers because it was hers; there was no possible doubt of that. And in spite of his record he must for the hour feel a bitter and absolute failure.
A pebble would bring him to the window. He would come out, and come back here with her. She opened her arms suddenly. The room was so dark she almost could fancy him beside her. Would that he were!
She had no adequate conception of a morrow. The future was drab and formless. His trouble drew her like a magnet. She trembled at the mere thought of being able to make him forget.
And he? If he came out and saw her standing there, he would be more than a man if he resisted the impulse to return with her here and take her in his arms. And he too must be in a state of mind in which to-day dwarfed and blotted out to-morrow.
For the moment she stood motionless, almost breathless, realizing so vividly the procession of bitter and apprehensive thoughts in the mind which for so long had possessed and controlled hers that she forgot her intention, even her desire to go to him. It was this moment of insight and abstraction from self that saved her. Her own mind seemed to awake suddenly.
It was as if her thinking faculty had descended to her heart during the last hours and been made dizzy and dull by the wild hot whirl of emotions there. It climbed suddenly to where it belonged, and set the rested machinery of her brain to work.
Doubtless his impulse had been to come to her, to the room where he knew she was alone and would receive him if he demanded admittance. He had put the temptation aside, as he had put aside many others; and it had been in her mind, was in her mind still, to make the temptation irresistible. And if he felt a failure to-night, she had it in her power to wreck his life utterly.
It was more than possible that in the remaining years of his vigour dwelt his tardy opportunities for historical fame. The great Republic had sailed out of her summer sea into foreign waters, stormy, unfriendly, bristling with unimaginable dangers. Once more she would need great statesmen, not merely able legislators, and there could be no doubt in the mind of any student of the Senate that she would discover them swiftly. North was the greatest of these; and the record of his future, brilliant, glorious perhaps, seemed to unroll itself suddenly in the dark room.
Betty drew a long hard breath. Her cheeks were cool at last, and she wondered if her heart were dead, it felt so cold. What mad impulse nearly had driven her to him to-night, independently of her will; which had slept, worn out, like other faculties, by a day of hunger, excitement, fatigue, and physical pain? The impulse had risen unhindered and uncriticised from her heart, and if it had risen once it could rise again. The days to come would be full of excitement. She fancied that she already heard the roar of cannon, the beating of drums, the sobs of women. And below the racket and its sad accompaniment was always the low indignant mutter of a triumphant people at those who had dared to set themselves above the popular clamour and ask for sanity. The intolerable longing that had become her constant companion would be fed by every device of unpropitious Circumstance. Again and again she would experience this impulse to go to him, and some night the blood would not recede from her brain in time.
She groped her way out of the dark parlor and down the hall, grateful for an excuse to walk slowly. Her boudoir was brilliant, and the struggle of the last few moments seemed the more terrible and significant by contrast with the dainty luxurious room. She wondered if she ever should dare to enter the parlor again, and if it always would not look dark to her.
She sat down at her desk and wrote a letter. It ran:—Dear Mr. Burleigh,—I will marry you if you still wish it. Will you dine with us to-night?
Betty Madison.
She was too tired for emotion, but she knew what would come later. Nevertheless, she went to the front door and asked the watchman to post the letter. Then she went to bed.