Chapter IV: Part 4

“Yes, that’s true. She once asked me to call but I never felt I could do so under the circumstances, though Clavering himself, who is a pachyderm so far as the ordinary feelings of mankind go, is as chummy as you please with me whenever we meet. And he actually invited me to visit his house! Miss Clavering probably knows nothing of the specific reason that keeps me away, but Clavering does, you may be sure. I have met Miss Clavering everywhere, and every time I see her I am lost in wonder as to how she came to be Senator Clavering’s daughter or the sister of Mrs. Denman and that youngest daughter, Lydia.”

“A couple of painted Jezebels, that are enough to drag any family to perdition. The old woman, I hear, murders the king’s English and eats with her knife, but is a good soul. And if it wasn’t for the determined stand Anne Clavering has taken for her mother, I don’t imagine there is much doubt that Senator Clavering would have divorced her long ago. But Anne stands up for her mother and makes them all treat her properly, and is assisted by the brother,—a poor rag of a man, but perfectly respectable,—Reginald Clavering. Did you ever notice how common people run to high–flown names? None of our plain Johns and Georges and Marys and Susans and Jameses for them—they get their names, I think, out of Ouida’s novels.”

Richard Baskerville rose and stood in front of the fire. Mrs. Luttrell could not complain of any want of interest on his part in the subject under discussion. “Miss Clavering, as I told you, invited me to call on her, when I first met her. However, I had scruples about going to the house of a man I was fighting as I am fighting Senator Clavering. So I never went, and she never repeated the invitation. She is a very proud woman.”

“Very. And she is the only one of her class I have ever seen who was really a scientific fighter.”

“How pitiable it is, though, for a girl to have to fight her way through society.”

“Yes—but Anne Clavering does it, and does it gallantly. Nobody can be impertinent to her with impunity. Do you know, the first thing that made me like her was the way that she hit back when I gave her a gentle correction.”

“I am delighted to hear it, and I hope she whipped you well.”

“Not exactly—but she stood up before me long enough to make me respect her and ask her to come to one of my little Saturday dinners.”

“Mrs. Thorndyke is always asking her to dinner, and I know of no woman more discerning than Mrs. Thorndyke.”

“Yes, Constance Thorndyke knows a great deal. But you see her husband is in the Senate and so she has to have some sorts of people at her house that I don’t have. However, I know she is really a friend of Anne Clavering, and it is perfectly plain that although Miss Clavering is a _nouveau riche_ herself, she hasn’t any overwhelming respect for her own ‘order,’ as Ouida would say. She is ten times more flattered to be entertained by people like the Thorndykes and myself than by the richest pork–packing or dry–goods family in Washington.”

“Certainly she is, as a woman of sense would be.”

“As for that divorcée, Élise Denman, and that younger girl, Lydia, they are the two greatest scamps, as they are the two handsomest women, in this town. They are not deficient in their own peculiar sort of sense and courage, and they have whipped the Brentwood–Baldwins handsomely about that pew in St. John’s Church. The religion of these brand–new people is the most diverting thing about them, next to their morals!”

“They also are the sons of God!” replied Baskerville, quoting.

“Don’t believe that for a moment! Most of ’em are sons and daughters of Satan and nobody else. If ever the Episcopal Church—the Anglican Church, they call it—comes out squarely against divorce, I don’t know where it will land the smart set or what they will do for a religion. They will have to become esoteric Buddhists or something of the sort. At present a pew in a fashionable church is the very first round on the social ladder. I have gone to St. John’s all my life, and my father was one of the original pew–holders; but I declare, if I could find a well–warmed Episcopal church in southeast Washington or Anacostia even, I’d go to it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would. I don’t know how the dispute with the Brentwood–Baldwins came about, but there was a pew near the President’s which both the Claverings and the Brentwood–Baldwins wanted, and those two pagan daughters of Senator Clavering got it. You ought to have seen the Brentwood–Baldwin girl and those other two girls pass each other last Sunday morning coming out of church; they exchanged looks which were equivalent to a slap in the face.”

“And you wouldn’t have missed seeing it for worlds.”

“Why, it’s true I like to see a fight.”

“For pure love of fighting I never saw your equal, Sara Luttrell.”

“I come by it honestly. I am of as good fighting stock as you are, Richard Baskerville. But the Clavering–Brentwood–Baldwin row is not the only religious war in this town. You know Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner—I know her husband was originally Jim Skinner before he went to glory.”

“Now who told you that?”

“Oh, nobody; I just felt it in my bones. Well, Mrs. Skinner has a new and original fad—that woman is clever! She has seen the automobile fad, and the fancy–ball fad, and the monkey–dinner fad, and the dining–on–board–the–Emperor’s–yacht fad, and the exclusive–school fad, and the exclusive–theatrical–performance fad, and the marrying–of–a–daughter–to–a–belted–earl–like–a–thief–in–the–night fad. She has done horse shows and yacht races and dinners to the Ambassador, and now she has outfooted New York and Newport, and left Chicago at the post. She has a private chapel, and she’s going to have a private chaplain!”

“Oh, Lord, you dreamed it!”

“No, I didn’t, Richard, my dear. You see, the Jim Skinners”—Mrs. Luttrell pronounced it as if it were “jimskinners”—“were originally honest Methodists; but these people shed their religion along with their old clothes and plated forks. And now Mrs. Jimskinner has become Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner and an ardent Episcopalian, and so has Gladys Jimskinner, and Gwendolyn Jimskinner, and Lionel Jimskinner, and Harold Jimskinner, and I believe that woman has set her heart on having what she calls an Anglican archbishop in these United States.”

“If she has, I know it was you who put the microbe in her head.”

It was a chance shot, but it hit the white. “I think I did, Richard,” meekly replied Mrs. Luttrell. “Mrs. Jimskinner—I mean Mrs. James Van Cortlandt Skinner—was urging me to join the Order of St. Monica; that’s an order in which widows pledge themselves not to get married again. I told her there wasn’t the least reason for me to join, for, although I’ve never told my age to any living person, I hardly consider myself on the matrimonial list any longer. And then Mrs. Van Cortlandt Skinner told me of the various beautiful brand–new orders in the Church, and said she thought of getting an order founded for one of her boys; the other would have to marry and perpetuate the family. And I suggested a contemplative order with a nice name, like the Order of St. Werewolf.”

“Oh, Sara!”

“Yes, I did. I told her St. Werewolf was much respected in the Middle Ages; one heard a good deal of him; and she swallowed the wolf and the saint at one gulp. She said she rather liked the notion and might build a beautiful monastery on her estate on the Hudson, and whichever one of her boys she decided to indulge in a life of celibacy she would have made the first superior. And then I said—now, Richard, don’t be rude—I said how much simpler all these delightful things would be if we only had an archbishop like the Archbishop of Canterbury; and Mrs. Van Cortlandt Skinner said that she had often longed for an archbishop and had always thought that the development of the Church in America required one; and then I caught Senator Thorndyke’s eye—we were coming out of church—and I ran away.”

“You wicked old woman! What will you do next!”

“I haven’t done anything. You see, Mrs. Jimskinner belongs to that class who don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t have anything they happen to fancy. If they get married and don’t like it, they get a divorce and a new husband or a new wife as they get a new butler when they discharge the one they have. If they want a title, they go and buy one. If they want a crest, they simply take one. They can’t understand why they shouldn’t do anything or have anything they want. I declare, Mrs. Jimskinner was talking to me with the simplicity of a child, and she’s as bent on that private chaplain and that archbishop as if each was the latest style of automobile. I don’t wonder the London newspapers guy Americans, remembering what kind of Americans find their way into London society.”

“That reminds me—I met General Brandon two days ago, and his daughter Mrs. Darrell.”

“Yes, Elizabeth Darrell has come back, as poor as a church mouse, and dreadfully changed. I shall call to see her. She will find a very different Washington from the one she left ten years ago.”

“Miss Clavering,” announced the negro butler.

Anne Clavering, graceful and self–possessed, entered the room. She had not the sumptuous beauty of her sisters, nor remarkable beauty at all; yet, as Elizabeth Darrell had seen in that first accidental view of her, she was more than beautiful—she was interesting. She had no marks of race, but she had every mark of refinement. Her gown was simple, but exquisite, and she wore no jewels. Mrs. Luttrell received her amiably and even affectionately, and her quick eye noted that both Anne and Baskerville blushed at meeting.

“So you are not above coming out to an unfashionable dinner with an old fogy,” she said, taking Anne’s hand.

“I believe it is considered one of the greatest privileges of Washington to dine with you at one of your ‘unfashionable dinners,’” Anne replied, with her pleasant smile. This made Anne’s fortune with Mrs. Luttrell.

In a minute or two more Senator and Mrs. Thorndyke were announced, and they were promptly followed by Judge Woodford, a handsome antique gentleman, who had for forty years counted on being one day established as the head of Mrs. Luttrell’s fine house. The Thorndykes were not a young couple, although they had not been long married. Their love–affair had covered a long period of separation and estrangement, and at last when fate had relented and had brought them together in their maturity, it gave them by way of recompense a depth of peace, of confidence, of quiet happiness, and a height of thrilling joy at coming into their own inheritance of love, that made for them a heaven on earth. Thorndyke was a high–bred, scholarly man of the best type of New England, who hid under a cool exterior an ardent and devoted nature. Constance Thorndyke was exteriorly the scintillant, magnetic Southern woman, but inwardly she was as strong and as sustaining as Thorndyke himself. Neither of them had a grain of mawkish sentimentality, and they were always differing playfully when they really differed seriously; but they never differed in their love and admiration of what was good.

Baskerville took Anne out to dinner. He had several times had that good fortune, especially in Mrs. Thorndyke’s house, and so far as dinner companions went he and Anne were well acquainted. Anne had been deeply mortified at Baskerville’s ignoring her invitation to call, and the reason she at once suspected—his knowledge of her father’s character and his share in furnishing information to the senatorial committee which was investigating Senator Clavering. She did not for one moment suspect that Baskerville put compulsion on himself to keep away from her house. She was conscious of a keen pleasure in his society, and a part of the gratification she felt at being asked to one of Mrs. Luttrell’s intimate dinners was that Baskerville should know how Mrs. Luttrell esteemed her.

The dinner fulfilled all of Anne’s expectations. The Thorndykes were socially accomplished, and Judge Woodford had been a professional diner–out since the days when President Buchanan had made him a third secretary of legation at Paris. Anne Clavering found herself adopted into the small circle, so different in birth and rearing from her own, by the freemasonry of good sense and good manners—in which she, however, was the equal of anybody.

Mrs. Luttrell shone at her own table, and the restraint she put upon her own tongue revealed her to be, when she chose, a person of perfect tact. And, indeed, her most courageous speeches were matters of calculation, and were in themselves a species of tact. When entertaining guests in her own house, however, she showed only the amiable side of her nature; and she was always amiable to Richard Baskerville, the one human being in the world whom she really loved and feared. Anne was extremely amused at the attitude of Baskerville to Mrs. Luttrell, shown by such things as calling her by her first name and hectoring her affectionately,—all of which Mrs. Luttrell took meekly, only prophesying that if he ever married, he would make an intolerable husband.

Anne Clavering noted that among these people of old and fixed positions there was a great deal of chaff, while among the new people there was always great formality. The manners of the one set were simple, and of the latter elaborate. She also saw, being of a quick eye, that there were many differences in little things between the old and the new. The new had a different and complex fork for every course, but Mrs. Luttrell had, except some very old–fashioned oyster forks, the same handsome, plain old forks which had been in use in her family since silver forks were first adopted. There was no opportunity, if she had wished, to emulate a brand–new Washington hostess, who mentioned to a distinguished guest that he was eating his fish with the wrong fork. And Mrs. Luttrell had the temerity to have on the table her splendid old decanters, in which was served the very last old port in Washington, “laid down by papa in ’59.”

When the dinner was over they closed around the drawing–room fire and talked cosily, as people can seldom talk in the hurrying, rushing twentieth century; and then Mrs. Thorndyke, at Mrs. Luttrell’s request, went to the grand piano and sang sweetly some songs as old–fashioned as the piano. Anne remembered with a blush the professional singers who were considered essential to the Clavering house after one of the large, magnificent, and uncomfortable dinners which were a burden and an anxiety to all of the Clavering family.

When the carriages were announced, everybody was surprised at the lateness of the hour. Anne went up to Mrs. Luttrell and thanked her sincerely and prettily for one of the pleasantest evenings she had ever spent in Washington. Mrs. Luttrell, who declared herself totally indifferent to blame or praise from one of the new people, was hugely flattered by this expression from a Clavering.

Baskerville, having antique manners, put Anne in her carriage, and contrived to express in this small action a part of the admiration and homage he felt for her. Anne, driving home in the November night, experienced a strong and sudden revulsion of feeling from the quiet enjoyment of the evening. Bitterness overwhelmed her. “How much happier and better off are those people than I and all my kind!” she thought. “They have no struggles to make, no slights to swallow or avenge, no social mortifications, nothing to hide, to fear, to be ashamed of, while I—“ She buried her face in her hands as she leaned back in the carriage, and wept at the cruel thought that Baskerville would not come to her house because he did not think her father a decent man.

As she entered her own street she caught sight of Count Rosalka, a young attaché, helping Élise Denman out of a cab at the corner. Élise ran along the street and under the porte–cochère as Anne got out of the carriage and walked up the steps. Élise’s eyes were dancing, her mouth smiling; she looked like a bacchante.

“Remember,” she said, catching Anne by the arm, “I’ve been out to dinner, too.”

The door was opened, not by one of the gorgeous footmen, but by Lydia, handsomer, younger, and wickeder–looking than Élise. “Good for you, Lyd,” whispered Élise; “I’ll do as well by you sometime.” The footman then appeared, and grinned openly when Lydia remarked that as she was passing through the hall she recognized Miss Clavering’s ring and opened the door.

Anne went upstairs, her heart sick within her. As she passed her mother’s door she stopped, and a tremulous voice within called her. She entered and sat awhile on her mother’s elaborate, lace–trimmed bed. Mrs. Clavering, a homely and elderly woman, looked not less homely and elderly because of her surroundings. But not all the splendor of her lace and satin bed could eclipse the genuine goodness, the meekness, the gentleness, in her plain, patient face. She listened eagerly to Anne’s description of the dinner, which was cheerful enough, albeit her heart misgave her cruelly about Élise and Lydia.

When she had finished speaking Mrs. Clavering said, patting Anne’s head with a kind of furtive affection, “I think you know real nice, well–behaved people, my dear, and I wish the other girls”—“gurls” she called them—“were like you.”

At that moment Baskerville and Senator Thorndyke were sitting in Baskerville’s library, discussing a bottle of prime old whiskey and looking at some books from a late auction. Mrs. Thorndyke had driven home, and Senator Thorndyke, preferring to walk, was spending an hour meanwhile in masculine talk unrestrained by the presence of the ladies. The two men were intimate, an intimacy which had originated when Baskerville was a college senior and Thorndyke was on the committee of their Greek–letter society. There was a strong sympathy between them, although Thorndyke was a New Englander of New Englanders and Baskerville a Marylander of Marylanders. Both were lawyers of the old–time, legal–politico sort, both of them scholarly men, both of them independent of popular favor; and both of them, while preaching the purest democracy, were natural aristocrats. They belonged to opposite political parties, but that rather added zest to their friendship. The library in Baskerville’s home, across the garden from Mrs. Luttrell’s, was in the second story and extended the full width of the house. It was essentially a bachelor’s working library, plain, comfortable, well warmed and lighted, and with an engaging touch of shabbiness. A big leather–covered table was in the middle of the room, and under the green light from a student lamp were displayed the books, the whiskey, the water, and the glasses. Baskerville’s mind was not, however, on the books he was showing, but on Anne Clavering, and incidentally on Senator Clavering.

“How do you account for Miss Clavering being the daughter of Senator Clavering?” he asked Thorndyke, as they pulled at their cigars.

“Those things can’t be accounted for, although one sees such strange dissimilarities in families, everywhere and all the time. Miss Clavering is, no doubt, a case of atavism. Somewhere, two or three generations back, there was a strain of refinement and worth in her family, and she inherits from it. But I see something in her of Clavering’s good qualities—because he has some good qualities—courage, for example.”

“Courage—I should think so. Why, the way that man has fought the courts shows the most amazing courage. He is a born litigant, and it is extraordinary how he has managed to use the law to crush his opponents and has escaped being crushed himself. And in trying to follow his turnings and windings in this K. F. R. swindle it is astounding to see how he has contested every step of an illegal transaction until he has got everybody muddled—lawyers, State and Federal courts, and the whole kit of them. As fast as one injunction was vacated he would sue out another. He seems to have brought a separate and distinct lawsuit for every right in every species of property he ever possessed at any time—of all sorts: lands, mines, railways, and corporations. He has pocketed untold millions and has invoked the law to protect him when ninety–nine men out of the hundred would have been fugitives from justice. He is the most difficult scoundrel to catch I ever met—but we will catch him yet.”

“I think you are hot on his trail in the K. F. R. matter,” answered Thorndyke. “I believe myself that when the great exposé is made before the investigating committee it will recommend his expulsion from the Senate, and three–fourths of the senators will support the committee. The legislature is safe, so the party won’t lose a seat; and in any event I don’t believe we can afford to hold on to a man like Clavering after the country knows about him—especially with a presidential campaign coming on within the year. I think, with all his talents, he would not be fitted for public life if he were as honest as he is dishonest. He has no idea, after all his litigation, of sound legal principles, and he is fully persuaded that any man, any court, any legislature, may be bought; and a more dangerous fallacy doesn’t exist for a public man than that. He has never submitted to party discipline and has played politics with every party that has ever made a showing in his state. For all his money, he has never been a contributor to party funds; so I think, making due allowances for the weakness of human nature, that a horrible example will be made of Clavering, and we shall thereby deprive you of an effective party cry in the campaign. You are really doing us a service by your course, because without your unravelling the legal tangle I doubt if anything could have been made out of the K. F. R. frauds. I have no sympathy to waste on Clavering or any of his family that I know of, except Miss Clavering. It will go hard with her.”

Baskerville’s tanned complexion grew a little pale, and he sat silent for some moments; so silent that Thorndyke began to suspect Mrs. Thorndyke’s idea was the right one after all—Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering. Thorndyke had laughed at it as a woman’s fancy, saying to her that a woman couldn’t see a man pick up a girl’s handkerchief without constructing a matrimonial project on the basis of it; but Constance Thorndyke had stoutly maintained her opinion that Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering. His attitude now certainly indicated a very strong interest in her, especially when he said, after a considerable pause:—

“If I had known Miss Clavering before this K. F. R. matter was started, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone into it. There is something very painful, you must know, Thorndyke, in dealing a blow at a woman—and a woman like Miss Clavering. By heaven, for all the luxury she lives in and all the respect and admiration she commands, there is not a woman in Washington whom I pity more!”

Thorndyke had been turning over the leaves of a beautiful Apuleius, which was one of the treasures Baskerville was exhibiting to him. He opened the volume at the fifth metamorphosis and read out of it a single phrase which made Baskerville’s face gain color:“‘The bold, blind boy of evil ways.’ There’s nothing in all those old Greek literary fellows which excels this in humor, although what there is humorous in modern love I can’t see. It’s the most tragic thing in life, and if it is genuine, it draws blood every time.”

Thorndyke had reason to say this. He had spent the eighteen best years of his life solitary and ill at ease because of a woman’s love and another woman’s spite, and not all the happiness of married life could ever make either him or Constance Thorndyke forget their starved hearts in those eighteen years of estrangement and separation. But as normal men deal with sentimentalities in a direct and simple manner, he added, after a minute: “Miss Clavering ought to marry. If she could be cut loose from Clavering himself and those two handsome and outrageous sisters of hers, it would be an unmixed blessing. But with all Miss Clavering’s merit and charms, that family of hers will always be a handicap with a man of the sort she would be likely to marry.”

“Not if he really loved her, Thorndyke.” Senator Thorndyke smoked on in silence. “And,” continued Baskerville, “her mother is a most worthy woman, if uneducated; and although Reginald Clavering is a great fool, I believe he is a thoroughly upright man and even a gentleman. So you see it is not wholly a family of degenerates.”

Thorndyke, seeing which way the tide was setting, remarked with perfect sincerity, “Miss Clavering is worthy of any man; and I say so not only on my own judgment, but on my wife’s.”

“Sanest, soundest woman in Washington—except Miss Clavering herself,” was Baskerville’s reply to this.

When Senator Thorndyke reached home an hour afterwards, he roused his wife to tell her that he believed that Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering after all.

“And has been ever since he knew her; but men are so dense, he didn’t know it himself—much less did you know it until it became as obvious as the Washington Monument,” was Mrs. Thorndyke’s wifely reply.

_Chapter Nine_

The next day was a bright November Sunday, and after an early luncheon Baskerville started out for a walk into the country. Anne Clavering was much in his mind, and he was beginning to debate with himself in this wise: if Senator Clavering had no delicacy about inviting him to call, why should he be too delicate–minded to go? Which proves that Baskerville was in love with Anne Clavering, or he would have said that for him to go to a man’s house under the circumstances in which he would enter Senator Clavering’s was an outrageous breach of propriety.

When he got well out of the town, he met the scanty congregation of a small Episcopal chapel in the suburbs. Among those strolling homeward he speedily recognized General Brandon and Elizabeth Darrell—and with them Reginald Clavering. This only son of Senator Clavering’s was no more like him than Anne was, and, indeed, very much resembled Anne, except that he had neither her grace nor her intelligence. He had a good and affectionate heart, and in a foolish, blundering way was both an honest man and a gentleman. His life, however, was given over to small and futile things, and even his piety, which was genuine, embodied a childish worship of ecclesiastical trifles. He was the mainstay, chief financial backer, and clerical man–of–all–work in the little chapel, while his sisters, Élise and Lydia, fought with the Brentwood–Baldwins at St. John’s, and Anne, after going to an early morning service at the nearest church, devoted the rest of her Sunday to her mother.

Baskerville stopped and spoke with great cordiality to the party. He had known Elizabeth Darrell well in her girlhood, and there was a remote, seventeenth–cousin, Maryland–Virginia connection between the Baskervilles and the Brandons. His first glance at her in her mourning costume showed him that she had suffered much, and her beauty was partially eclipsed. She had gained interest, however, as the case often is, by learning the hard lessons of life, and Baskerville saw that she might regain all and more of her good looks with returning flesh and color, and a loss of the wearied and forlorn expression in her still glorious dark eyes. He asked permission to call upon her, and Elizabeth assented with outward grace and cheerfulness; but, in truth, it mattered little to her then whether she ever saw any one again, except her father, and—humiliating thought!—Pelham, once more. For, deeply incensed as she was with Pelham, the thought of ever again meeting him was profoundly agitating to her. She inquired of Baskerville about Mrs. Luttrell, and sent her a kind message; then they parted and went upon their several ways.

Half an hour afterwards, when Elizabeth Darrell was nearing her own door, Senator Clavering—who, sitting at his library window, caught sight of her graceful black figure as she stopped with her father and talked a few minutes with Reginald Clavering—started to his feet, his keen, handsome eyes fixed upon her with admiring approval. He remembered her perfectly well, that beautiful girl he had seen on the icy night ten years ago when he had watched the gay people flocking to the Charity Ball, and the little trinket he had unconsciously crushed under his foot. He had wondered a dozen times since he had been in Washington, and had often asked, what had become of General Brandon’s beautiful daughter, and was told that she had married a British Army man and had disappeared in the wilderness. He had never seen General Brandon from that hour, although they lived opposite, General Brandon’s hours being very different from Senator Clavering’s and their habits being as dissimilar as could possibly be imagined.

Clavering was a connoisseur in feminine beauty, and all forms of it appealed to him. He thought Elizabeth twice as beautiful as he had done in that passing glimpse of her, ten years before, in the bloom of her girlhood. Strange to say, the languid, interesting, and somewhat tragic type which Elizabeth Darrell now represented was the most attractive to him—perhaps because it is the rarest. “By Jove, what a woman! I must know her,” was his inward comment. He watched Elizabeth intently, her fragile figure, her peculiar grace of movement, the note of distinction in her whole person and air; and then and there he determined to resurrect his acquaintance with General Brandon, whose relationship to her was obvious, and whom Clavering had no more forgotten than General Brandon had forgotten him.

Presently Reginald Clavering entered the house, and the first sound that met his ears was something between a wail and a shout which came from the upper region. Reginald winced at the sound. His mother still held to her original Baptist faith—about the only thing pertaining to her early life which she had not meekly given up. She was at that moment enjoying the spiritual ministrations of a Baptist minister who came sometimes on Sundays to pray with her and sing camp–meeting hymns—to the intense diversion of the smart English footman and gay French maids, of whom Mrs. Clavering was in deadly fear. And to make it worse for Reginald, Anne Clavering, instead of setting her face against this unchurchmanlike proceeding, actually aided and abetted her mother in her plebeian sort of religion, and joined her clear note to the Rev. Mr. Smithers’ bellowing and Mrs. Clavering’s husky contralto. The whole thing offended Reginald Clavering’s æsthetic sense; but it was a proof that he had much that was good in him that he bore these proceedings silently, as became a gentleman, a Christian, and an Anglican, and made no complaint to any one except Anne.

As he passed the open library door, Senator Clavering called out to him in that rich and melodious voice which the stenographers in the Senate gallery declared the most agreeable and easily followed voice of any member of the Senate: “Hello! What is the name of that infernally pretty woman whom you were escorting just now?”

“Mrs. Darrell, the widowed daughter of General Brandon. General Brandon is one of the vestrymen at St. Gabriel’s Chapel,” replied Reginald, stiffly.

“Yes, fine old fellow. I knew him more than thirty years ago when he was a captain of infantry out on the plains and I was a sutler, as it was called then. Handsome old chap still, and his daughter is like him. You show good taste, my boy. I thought you’d find something more entertaining than religion out at that chapel.”

Reginald Clavering scorned to reply to this, but went on to his study in another part of the house. In a few minutes he heard his father’s step on the stair, and dutifully opened the door for him. Clavering entered, threw himself in a great chair, and began to look around him with an amused smile. The room was a museum of ecclesiastical pictures and gimcracks.

“When I was your age,” said Clavering, laughing openly, “I hadn’t a room like this—I shared a board shanty with a fellow from God knows where, who had served a term in state’s prison. But he was the finest smelter expert I ever saw, and had the best eye for a pretty woman. You couldn’t see the boards in our walls for the pictures of ballet dancers and the like. Nothing in the least like this.” And he laughed.

Reginald’s pale face flushed with many emotions. His father’s tone and manner expressed a frank scorn for him and all his surroundings. Clavering kept on:—

“My roommate—nobody had a room to himself in those diggings—taught me how to differentiate among pretty women.” Clavering was diverted at the spectacle of a man shrinking from such a discussion. “Now, of your sisters, Anne is really the best looking—the most effective, that is. Élise and Lydia are of the tulip variety. Anne is something more and different.”

“Élise and Lydia are both of them strikingly like you, sir,” replied Reginald. It was the nearest approach to sarcasm he had ever made in his life. Clavering enjoyed the cut at himself immensely.

“Very neat; thank you. Now I should say that Mrs.—what’s her name?—old Brandon’s daughter is a remarkably attractive, even beautiful woman, although she strikes me at first glance as one of those women, not exactly young, who haven’t yet found themselves. Perhaps you’ll show the lady the way.”

“Sir,” said Reginald, after a pause, “you shock me!”

Clavering was not in the least annoyed at this. He looked at Reginald as one studies an amusing specimen, and said, as if to himself, “Good God! that you should be my son!” He then took up some of the books on the table and began to turn them over, laughing silently to himself the while. The books corresponded with the pictures and ornaments. Reginald Clavering found all of his family a cross, except his sister Anne, and his father the heaviest cross of all. He was sincerely relieved when Clavering took himself downstairs to his own library again.

It was a handsome library, and quite what the library of a senator, if not a statesman, should be. The walls were lined with encyclopædias, histories, and the English classics. Clavering, however, was a student of far more interesting documents than any ever printed in a book. He had studied unceasingly the human subject, and knew men and women as a Greek scholar knows his Sophocles. This knowledge of men had made him not only dazzlingly and superbly successful, but even happy in his way. The most saintly man on earth might have envied James Clavering his mind, ever at ease; for he knew no morals, and was unmoral rather than immoral.

Two things only in life disturbed him. One was that he would have liked to get rid of his wife, whom he had married when he was barely twenty–one. She had served his turn. Although homely, shapeless, and stupid now, she had made him comfortable—in the days when his miner’s wages barely kept a humble roof over his head. She had brought her children up properly. Clavering had enough of justice in him not to hold her accountable for the fastness, the vagaries, the love of splendor, the lack of principle, that made his eldest and youngest daughters the subject of frequent paragraphs in scandalous newspapers, and had landed one in the divorce court. They were like him—so Clavering admitted to himself, without a blush. His one fear was that they would, as he expressed it, “make fools of themselves.” He admired chastity in women and even respected it, so far as he could feel respect for anything; and he would, if he could, have kept all the women in his family strictly virtuous. But he never was quite at ease about either Élise or Lydia; and when he saw the simple way in which Élise had slipped off the matrimonial fetters, Clavering had begun to fear greatly—those two girls were so extremely like himself!

He knew well enough from whom Reginald inherited his temperament. Mrs. Clavering’s father had been a weak, well–meaning Baptist preacher, and Reginald was a replica of him, plus a university education and a large allowance superadded. Where Anne came in Clavering frankly acknowledged himself beaten. She inherited his own strong will and her mother’s gentleness of address. But she had an innate delicacy, a singular degree of social sense, a power of making herself felt and respected, that Clavering admired but the origin of which he could not trace. She was the one person in the world whom he feared and respected. It was due to her that the Claverings had any real social status whatever. It was through her, and for her alone, that certain honest, dignified, and punctilious senators and public officials came to the grand Clavering dinners and musicals, and allowed their wives to come. It was Anne who would have to be vanquished when, as Clavering had always intended, he should get a divorce from his wife and marry again. He had not attempted this, merely because, so far, the women who would have married him he did not want or could get on easier terms, and the women he might have wanted would not have him at any price. Anne was known as her mother’s champion, and Clavering knew that she would fight the divorce with all the skill, courage, and pertinacity which, as Baskerville had truly said, was all she had inherited from her father. She had in her, disguised by much suavity and sweetness, a touch of aggressiveness, a noble wilfulness that would not be reasoned away. Clavering knew that the tussle of his life would come when the divorce was seriously mooted; but he was not the less ready for the tussle.

The first sight of Elizabeth Darrell had impressed him wonderfully, and the second vision of her had determined him to renew his acquaintance with General Brandon; and while he was turning the mode of this over in his mind he was summoned to luncheon. At luncheon all of the family assembled—Élise and Lydia in elaborate negligées, Anne simply but properly dressed. She sat next her mother at the table and was that poor creature’s only outspoken champion.

“So you had a nice morning, with the psalm–singing and all that,” said Élise to Anne.

“Very nice,” replied Anne. “Mamma seemed to enjoy it very much.”

“We had a nice morning, too,” replied Élise. “The Brentwood–Baldwins glared at us as we went into church; they will never forgive us for getting that pew in the middle aisle, so close to the President’s. Then, after church, Count Rosalka asked to walk home with me. Lydia got Laurison, the new British third secretary; so we sent the carriage on and walked out Connecticut Avenue with all the Seventh Street shopkeepers. It was very amusing, though.”

“It must have been,” said Clavering, gravely. “You must have recalled the time when you would have thought yourself as rich as Pierpont Morgan and Rockefeller combined if you had been as well dressed as a Seventh Street shopkeeper’s daughter. It was only twelve years ago, you remember, since I struck pay dirt in mines and politics.”

Élise and Lydia both smiled pleasantly. They were their father’s own daughters, and along with many of his vices they inherited his superb good humor, which never gave way except to a preconcerted burst of imposing wrath.

“I remember those days quite well,” said Anne. Her voice, as well as her looks, was quite different from her sisters’. Instead of their rich and sensuous tones, beautiful like their father’s, Anne’s voice had a dovelike quality of cooing softness; but she could always make herself heard. “I remember,” she continued, touching her mother’s coarse hand outspread on the table, “when mamma used to make our gowns, and we looked quite as nice as the girls who could afford to have their clothes made by a dressmaker.”

“Them was happy days,” said Mrs. Clavering. It was her only remark during luncheon.

They talked of their plans for the coming week, as people do to whom pleasure and leisure are new and intoxicating things. Anne was plied with questions about Mrs. Luttrell’s dinner. She told freely all about it, being secretive only concerning Baskerville, merely mentioning that he was present.

“A more toploftical, stuck–up F. F. V.—or F. F. M., I suppose he is—I never saw than this same Mr. Baskerville, and as dull as ditchwater besides,” said Lydia.

Here Reginald spoke. “Mr. Baskerville is very highly esteemed by the bishop of the diocese,” he said.

“And by people of a good deal more brains than the bishop of the diocese,” added Clavering. “Baskerville is one of the brainiest men of his age I ever knew. He is fighting me in this K. F. R. business; but all the same I have a high opinion of his gray matter, and I wish you two girls—Élise and Lydia—knew men like Baskerville instead of foreign rapscallions and fortune–hunters like Rosalka. And I wish you went to dinners such as Anne went to last night, instead of scampering over the town to all sorts of larky places with all sorts of larky people.”

To this Lydia replied. So far, she had achieved neither marriage nor divorce, but she was not averse to either. “I think the dinners Anne goes to must be precious dull. Now, our men and our parties, whatever they are, they aren’t dull. I never laughed so much in my life as I did at Rosalka’s stories.”

Clavering’s face grew black. He was no better than he should be himself, and ethically he made no objection to his daughters’ amusing themselves in any way but one; but old prejudices and superstitions made him delicate on the one point upon which he suspected two of his daughters were the least squeamish. He said nothing, however, nor did Anne or Reginald; it was a subject none of them cared to discuss. When luncheon was over, Mrs. Clavering and Anne made ready for their early Sunday afternoon walk—a time to which Mrs. Clavering looked forward all the week and with which Anne never allowed any of her own engagements to interfere.

Meanwhile Clavering himself, interested for the first time in the tall, shabby house across the way, walked out upon the broad stone steps of his own place and watched the windows opposite, hoping for a glimpse of Elizabeth Darrell’s face. While he stood there smoking and apparently engaged in the harmless enjoyment of a lovely autumn afternoon, Richard Baskerville approached. Baskerville denied himself the pleasure of seeking Anne in her own home, but he often found himself, without his own volition, in the places where he would be likely to meet her, and so he was walking along the street in which she lived. Seeing Clavering on the steps Baskerville would have passed with a cool nod, but Clavering stopped him; and the younger man, thinking Anne Clavering might be within sight or might appear, compromised with his conscience and entered into conversation with Clavering. It was always an effort on Baskerville’s part to avoid Clavering, whose extraordinary charm of manner and personality was a part of his capital. Baskerville, deep in the study of Clavering’s career, felt a genuine curiosity about the man and how he did things and what he really thought of himself and his own doings. He reckoned Clavering to be a colossal and very attractive scoundrel, whom he was earnestly seeking to destroy; and his relations were further complicated with Clavering by the fact that Anne Clavering was—a very interesting woman. This Baskerville admitted to himself; he had got that far on the road to love.

The Senator, with the brilliant smile which made him handsomer than ever, said to Baskerville, “We may as well enjoy the privilege of speaking before you do me up in the matter of the K. F. R. land grants.”

The younger man cleverly avoided shaking hands with Clavering, but replied, also smiling, “Your attorneys say we shan’t be able to ‘do you up,’ Senator.”

“I hope they’re right. I swear, in that business the amount of lying and perjury, if placed on end, would reach to the top of the Washington Monument. Have a cigar?”

Such indeed was Baskerville’s own view of the lying and perjury, but he opined that it was all on Senator Clavering’s side, and he was trying to prove it. He got out of taking one of Clavering’s cigars—for he was nice upon points of honor—by taking a cigarette out of his case.

“I don’t know what you youngsters are coming to,” said Clavering, as he smoked. “Cigarettes and vermouth, and that sort of thing, instead of a good strong cigar and four fingers of whiskey.”

“I was on the foot–ball team at the university for three terms, and we had to lead lives like boarding–school misses,” replied Baskerville, toying with his cigarette. “Our coach was about the stiffest man against whiskey and cigars I ever knew—and used to preach to us seven days in the week that a couple of cigars a day and four fingers of whiskey would shortly land any fellow at the undertaker’s. I fell from grace, it is true, directly I was graduated; but that coach’s gruesome predictions have stuck to me like the shirt of Nemesis, as your colleague, Senator Jephson, said the other day on the floor of the Senate.”

“Jephson’s an ass. He is the sort of man that would define a case of mixed property as a suit for a mule.”

“Hardly. And he’s an honest old blunderbuss.”

“Still, he’s an ass, as I say. His honesty doesn’t prevent that.”

“Well, yes, in a way it does. I’m not a professional moralist, but I don’t believe there is any really good substitute for honesty.” Then Baskerville suddenly turned red; the discussion of honesty with a man whose dishonesty he firmly believed in, and was earnestly trying to prove, was a blunder into which he did not often fall. Clavering, who saw everything, noted the other’s flush, understood it perfectly, and smiled in appreciation of the joke. Baskerville did not propose to emphasize his mistake by running away, and was prepared to stay some minutes longer, when the entrance doors were swung open by the gorgeous footman, and Mrs. Clavering, leaning upon Anne’s arm, appeared for a walk. When he saw his wife, Clavering’s face grew dark; that old woman, with her bad grammar and her big hands, was always in his way. He said good morning abruptly and went indoors at once.

Anne greeted Baskerville with a charming smile, and introduced him at once to her mother. Something in his manner to Mrs. Clavering revealed the antique respect he had for every decent woman, no matter how unattractive she might be. He assisted Mrs. Clavering down the great stone steps as if she were a young and pretty girl instead of a lumbering, ignorant, elderly woman; and Mrs. Clavering found courage to address him, a thing she rarely did to strangers.

“I guess,” she said diffidently, “you’ve got an old mother of your own that you help up and down—you do it so easy.”

“No, I wish I had,” answered Baskerville, with a kindness in his voice that both the old woman and the young felt. “My mother has been dead a long time; but I have a fine old aunt, Mrs. Luttrell, who makes me fetch and carry like an expressman’s horse, and then she says I am not half so attentive to her as I ought to be. Perhaps Miss Clavering has told you about her—I had the pleasure of dining with Miss Clavering at my aunt’s last night.”

“Yes, she did, and she told me you were all real nice,” answered Mrs. Clavering—and was appalled at her own daring.

Anne and Baskerville talked about the dinner, as they walked along the sunny, quiet street. Anne had enjoyed every moment spent in Mrs. Luttrell’s house, and said so. Mrs. Clavering walked with difficulty, and the young man’s arm at the street crossings was a real assistance to her; and without talking down to Mrs. Clavering or embarrassing her by direct remarks, he skilfully included her in the conversation.

Mrs. Clavering felt increasingly comfortable. Here was a man who did not scorn a woman because she was old and plain. For once the poor woman did not feel in the way with another person besides Anne. She ventured several remarks, such as: “People ought to be kind to poor dumb brutes, who can’t tell what ails them,” and “Washington is a great deal prettier for having so many trees, because trees make any place pretty,”—to all of which Baskerville listened with pleasant courtesy. He began to see in this ordinary, uneducated woman a certain hint of attractiveness in her gentleness of voice and softness of eyes that were reflected and intensified in the slim and graceful daughter by her side. Anne turned her soft, expressive eyes—her only real beauty—on Baskerville with a look of gratitude in them. Her life at home was one long fight for the happiness and dignity of her mother, for whom no one of her family had the least respect, except herself and her brother Reginald; and Reginald was but a poor creature in many ways. If Baskerville had sat up all night for a month, trying to devise a plan to ingratiate himself with Anne Clavering, he could not have done it better than by his courtesy to her mother. And he, appreciating the strong affection, the courage, the absence of false pride, the unselfishness, of Anne Clavering in this particular, admired her the more.

As they walked slowly along and talked, a kind of intimacy seemed to spring into being between them. Gratitude is a strong incentive to regard on both sides, and Baskerville’s attitude toward Mrs. Clavering touched Anne to the heart. Their objective point was Dupont Circle, which at that hour was tolerably free from the colored gentry and the baby carriages which make it populous eighteen hours out of the twenty–four. But Mrs. Clavering was destined to receive further distinguished attentions during that episode of the walk. When she was seated comfortably on a bench Baskerville proposed to Anne that he show her, on the other side of the Circle, a silver maple tree in great autumnal glory.

“Now do go, my dear,” said Mrs. Clavering. “I’d like to set here awhile. Do, Mr. Baskerville, take her off—she ain’t left me an hour this day, and she oughter have a little pleasure.”

“Come, obey your mother,” Baskerville said; and Anne, smiling, walked off with him.

Mrs. Clavering, good soul, was like other mothers, and as her darling child went off with Baskerville she thought: “How nice them two look together! And he is such a civil–spoken, sensible young man. Anne deserves a good husband, and if—“

This train of thought was interrupted by General Brandon. He, too, after his luncheon, was out for a Sunday airing, and passing the bench on which Mrs. Clavering sat, the good woman, with new–found courage, looked up at him and actually ventured upon a timid bow. She had recognized him from the first time she had seen him, when she moved into their new and splendid house; and she had a perfectly clear recollection of the old sutler days, when General Brandon was a handsome young captain, who always had a polite word for the sutler’s wife. But she had never before, in the two years they had lived opposite each other, had the courage to speak to him. Her success with Baskerville emboldened her, and as General Brandon made her an elaborate, old–fashioned bow Mrs. Clavering said:—

“This used to be Cap’n Brandon—a long time ago, just before the war broke out.”

“Yes, madam,” replied General Brandon; “and you, I believe, are Mrs. Clavering. I remember quite well when Mr. Clavering brought you, a blooming bride, to the post.”

Mrs. Clavering sighed. She was so lonely in the big house, so continually snubbed by her husband, by her daughters Élise and Lydia, by the uppish footman and the giggling maids; she was so cut off from everything she had known before, that the sight of persons connected with those early days was like water in the desert to her. She smiled a deprecating smile, and answered: “I’ve seen you on the streets often enough. You live opposite our house, don’t you?”