Chapter IX: Part 9

He then inquired her plans for the present. Mrs. Clavering’s body was to be taken for burial to her old home in Iowa. Baskerville asked, or rather demanded, that within a month Anne should be prepared to become his wife. “And haven’t you some relations out in Iowa from whose house we can be married?” he said.

“Yes,” replied Anne, “I have aunts and cousins there. I warn you they are very plain people, but they are very respectable. I don’t think there is a person in my mother’s family of whom I have any reason to be ashamed, although they are, as I tell you, plain people.”

“That is of no consequence whatever. I shall wait until after your mother’s funeral before writing your father and having our engagement announced, and within a month I shall come to Iowa to marry you.”

And Anne, seeing this sweet refuge open to her, took heart of grace and comfort.

Clavering himself, sitting in his darkened library, was in no way awed by death having invaded his house. He had been brought face to face with it too often to be afraid of it; he was a genuine, throughgoing disbeliever in everything except money and power, and he regarded the end of life as being an interesting but unimportant event.

His wife’s death was most opportune for him; it made it certain that Elizabeth Darrell would marry him. He had fully realized that stubborn prejudice on Elizabeth’s part against divorce, and although he had not seriously doubted his ability to overcome it, yet it had been stubborn. Now all was smoothed away. He would act with perfect propriety, under the circumstances; he surmised enough about the women of Elizabeth’s class to understand that a breach of decorum would shock her far more than a breach of morals. There would be no outward breach of decorum. He would wait until after the funeral before writing her; but it would be useless, hypocritical, and even dangerous to postpone writing longer.

With these thoughts in his mind he sat through the day, receiving and answering telegrams, scanning the newspapers, and digesting his own disgrace as exposed in print. Even that had come at a fortunate time for him—if there is a fortunate time to be branded a thief, a liar, and a perjurer, a suborner of perjury, a corrupter of courts, a purchaser of legislatures. Elizabeth would feel sorry for him; she wouldn’t understand the thing at all. He would insist on being married in the autumn, and Elizabeth would no doubt be glad to be married as far away from Washington as possible. Perhaps she might agree to meet him in London and be married there. He would go over in the summer, take the finest house to be had for money, and transport all the superb equipment of his Washington establishment to London. He also remembered with satisfaction that he had now nothing to fear on the score of divorce from that soft–spoken, wooden–headed, fire–eating old impracticable, General Brandon, with his fatal tendency to settle with the pistol questions concerning “the ladies of his family.”

In these reflections and considerations James Clavering passed the first day of his widowerhood. On the third day after Mrs. Clavering’s death the great house was shut up and silent. The Claverings left it, never to return to it. It stood vacant, a monument of man’s vicissitudes.

The day after Mrs. Clavering’s burial took place, in the little Iowa town where her family lived, a line appeared in the society column of a leading Washington newspaper, announcing the engagement of Anne Clavering and Richard Baskerville. Coming as it did on the heels of the tragic events in the Clavering family and Baskerville’s share in a part of these events, the announcement was startling though far from unexpected. Mrs. Luttrell took upon herself the office of personally acquainting her friends with the engagement and declaring her entire satisfaction with it. Being by nature an offensive partisan, much given to pernicious activity in causes which engaged her heart, Mrs. Luttrell soon developed into a champion of the whole Clavering family. She discovered many admirable qualities in Clavering himself, and changed her tune completely concerning Élise and Lydia, whom she now spoke of as “a couple of giddy chits, quite harmless, and only a little wild.” These two young women had speedily made up their minds to fly to Europe, and arranged to do so as soon as Anne was married, which was to be within the month.

The catastrophes of the Clavering family made a profound impression on Washington. Their meteoric career was a sort of epitome of all the possibilities of the sudden acquisition of wealth and power. Whatever might be said of them, they were at least not cowards—not even Reginald Clavering was a coward. They were boldly bad, or boldly good. Anne Clavering had won for herself a place in the esteem of society which was of great value. Not one disrespectful or unkind word was spoken of her when the day of reckoning for the Claverings came.

The Senate allowed James Clavering two weeks to recover from his grief at his wife’s death before annihilating him as a senator. Clavering improved the time not only by arranging for his second marriage, but by forestalling, when he had no fighting ground, the criminal indictments which might be expected to be found against him. He paid out secretly in satisfaction money, and reconveyed in bonds, nearly three millions of dollars. There were several millions more to be fought over, but that was a matter of time; and he would still have a great fortune remaining, if every suit went against him.

It would very much have simplified his property arrangements had Elizabeth Darrell consented to marry him within a few weeks of his widowerhood. But this Clavering knew was not to be thought of. A week after his wife’s death he wrote to Elizabeth. He quietly assumed that all arrangements had been made for their marriage, as soon as he should have got his divorce. In his letter he reminded Elizabeth there could now be no question or scruple in regard to her marrying him. He told her he would be in Washington at the end of the week, when the proceedings in the Senate would take place, and that he should expect to see her. He asked her to write and let him know where they should meet.

Elizabeth realized that she had gone too far to refuse Clavering a meeting, nor, in fact, did she desire to avoid him. Her feelings toward him had become more and more chaotic; they did not remain the same for an hour together. She felt that a powerful blow had been dealt her objection to marrying him in the removal of the divorce question; she doubted in her heart whether she ever could have been brought to the point of marrying him had his wife not died.

And then there had been another interview with McBean. He had told Elizabeth he was about to leave Washington to be absent a month, as he was combining pleasure with business on his visit to America, but that on his return, if the necklace were not forthcoming, he should begin legal proceedings immediately. Mr. McBean was fully persuaded, while he was talking to Elizabeth, that the necklace was around her neck, under her high gown, or in her pocket, or in a secret drawer of her writing–desk—in any one of those strange places where women keep their valuables. Elizabeth, in truth, did not know whether the necklace was in America, Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia.

Then Baskerville, in spite of the crisis in his own affairs, had not neglected Elizabeth. He had managed to see McBean, and had discovered that the solicitor was perfectly justified in all he had done, from the legal point of view. When Baskerville came to inquire how far Major Pelham was responsible for what was done, he was met by an icy reticence on the part of Mr. McBean, who replied that Baskerville was asking unprofessional questions, and in embarrassment Baskerville desisted. It became clear, however, and Baskerville so wrote to Elizabeth, that her concealment of the pawning of the necklace, and her inability to pay back the money she had raised on it, were very serious matters, and she should at once lay the matter before her father.

Elizabeth, however, had not been able to bring herself to that. She thought of all sorts of wild alternatives, such as asking Clavering to lend her the money; but her soul recoiled from that. She even considered writing another letter to Hugh Pelham; but at that, too, her heart cried aloud in protest. She did not know where Pelham was, but surmised that he was still in West Africa. A letter addressed to the War Office would reach him—but when?

The more she thought of this, the simplest of alternatives and the one urged by Baskerville, the more impossible it seemed. She had loved Pelham well—loved him with all her soul, her mind, her heart; and that, too, when she was a married woman, loving another than her husband, without the slightest stain of any sort upon her mind, her soul, her heart. She doubted if she would have been half so dutiful a wife, but for Pelham’s love for her and her love for him. It seemed to her that his respect was as necessary to her as her self–respect. Their unfortunate attachment had been in the highest sense elevating. It had not required the soft consolation, the assurances, of weaker passions; but, lofty and austere, it was as strong and as silent as death, it seemed to be everlasting. And could a thing seem to be for ten years of storm and stress and not be?

As Heinrich Heine says, it seemed to Elizabeth as if there were no longer a great God in heaven since he had made his creatures so deceitful. What agony was Elizabeth Darrell’s? To have failed in her duty as a wife would have been the surest way to lower herself in Pelham’s eyes.

Clavering had reckoned upon Elizabeth’s neither knowing nor appreciating the effect of the revelations about him; in this, however, he was mistaken. She had read the newspapers diligently and understood his affairs far better than Clavering dreamed. The case had made a tremendous sensation. The tragic circumstances of the catastrophe, the probable action of the Senate which was known in advance, the far–reaching scandals which would result from the making public of the findings, all combined to give the country a profound shock—a shock so profound that it was known it would seriously jeopardize for the party in power the states in which Clavering and his gang had operated.

Among public men in Washington the feeling was intense. The senators who from a combination of honesty and policy had advocated going to the bottom of the scandals and punishing everybody found guilty, were in the position of doctors who have successfully performed a hazardous operation, but are uncertain whether the patient will survive or not. There was no doubt that many criminal prosecutions would follow, but there was a general belief that Clavering was too able and resourceful a man, and had too much money, to be actually punished for the crimes he had undoubtedly committed. His real punishment was his expulsion from the Senate.

Elizabeth Darrell knew all these things, and turned them over in her mind until she was half distracted. Another thing, small to a man but large to a woman, tormented her. She must meet Clavering—but where? Not in her father’s house; that could only be done secretly, and she could not stoop to deceive her father. The only way she could think of was in the little park, far at the other end of the town, where their first momentous meeting had taken place. So, feeling the humiliation of what she was doing, Elizabeth replied to Clavering’s letter, and named a day—the day before the one set for the final proceedings in the Senate—when she would see him; and she named six o’clock in the afternoon, in the little out–of–the–way park.

It was March then of a forward spring. The day had been one of those sudden warm and balmy days which come upon Washington at the most unlikely seasons. Already the grass was green and the miles upon miles of shade trees were full of sap and the buds were near to bursting. Six o’clock was not quite dusk, but it was as late as Elizabeth dared to make her appointment. Her heart was heavy as she walked along the quiet, unfamiliar streets toward the park—as heavy as on that day, only a few months before, when she had returned to Washington after her widowhood. Then she had been oppressed with the thought that life was over for her, nothing interesting would ever again happen to her. And what had not happened to her!

When Elizabeth reached the park she found Clavering awaiting her. He could not but note the grace of her walk and the beauty of her figure as she approached him. She was one of those women who become more interesting, if less handsome, under the stress of feeling. Her dark eyes were appealing, and she sank rather than sat upon the park bench to which Clavering escorted her.

“You seem to have taken my troubles to heart,” he said with the air and manner of an accepted lover.

Elizabeth made no reply. She had not been able to discover, in the chaos of her emotions, how far Clavering’s troubles really touched her.

“However,” said Clavering, “the worst will be over to–morrow. I wish you could be in the Senate gallery, to see how I bear it. The vote on expulsion takes place to–morrow, directly after the morning hour, and I know precisely the majority against me—it will be quite enough to do the work.” Then he added with a cool smile: “I believe if you could be present, you would realize what a pack of rascals have sacrificed me to political expediency! Unluckily I can’t offer you a seat in the Senators’ Gallery, as I might have done a short while ago. The fools think I will stay away, but I shall be in my seat, and from it I shall make my defence and my promise to return to the Senate by the mandate of my state. It will sound well, but to tell you the truth I have no more wish to return than the legislature has the intention of returning me. I have something pleasanter in view—it is life with you.”

Elizabeth, beguiled in spite of herself, as women are by courage, glanced at Clavering. Yes, he was not afraid of any man or of anything, while she was consumed with terror over a paltry five hundred pounds and the loss of a necklace worth only a trifle in Clavering’s eyes. She longed that he would break through her prohibition and speak about the necklace. But Clavering did not, and he never intended to do so. He knew very well that Elizabeth’s necessities were his best advocates, and he did not purpose silencing any of them.

Elizabeth’s reply, after a pause, to Clavering’s remark was: “I shouldn’t like to see you to–morrow. It will be too tragic.”

“It’s a pity that I’m not divorced instead of being so recent a widower,” Clavering replied. “Then you could marry me at the moment of misfortune, as Richard Baskerville proposes to marry my daughter Anne. It would be a great help to me now, if it were possible. As it is, we shall have to postpone our marriage until the autumn.”

“No,” replied Elizabeth, decisively, “it cannot be until next year.”

Clavering’s eyes flashed. It was the first time that she had ever fully admitted that she meant to marry him, although he had from the beginning assumed it. He had very little doubt that he could induce her to shorten the time of waiting.

“We will talk about that later. Meanwhile I suppose you will stay here with your father. We can’t enjoy the London house this season, but I shall go abroad in June. I shall have straightened things out by that time, and I can select a house. It will be as fine a one as that which I have lived in here. I can ship all the furnishings, pictures, and plate, with the horses and carriages, to London in advance, and have your establishment ready for you when you arrive. Perhaps it would be better for us to be married in London.”

Elizabeth Darrell was not what is called a mercenary woman. She had hesitated when offered vast wealth, and had even declined it on the terms first offered to her; nor did she believe that she would ever have agreed to marry Clavering, in the event of his divorce, but for the removal of her scruples of conscience on finding that his first marriage was illegal. But these words of Clavering’s about the London establishment brought to mind her former life there. She made a rapid mental comparison of Clavering with poor, honest, brave, stupid dead Jack Darrell; with Pelham as he had been; with her father; and the comparison staggered and revolted her. If it were written, however, in the book of destiny that she should marry Clavering, it were better that they should be married in London, as he suggested. She would rather escape her father’s eye when that transaction took place, and nobody else in the world cared how or when she was married or what might become of her.

Clavering spent the time of their interview in planning their future life together. He offered her luxury in every form, but he was too astute a man to make his purchase of her too obvious. He by no means left out his love for her, which was in truth the master passion of his life just then. But he did not force it upon Elizabeth, seeing that she was as yet restless and but half tamed to his hand. Elizabeth listened to him, with the conviction growing in her mind that she must marry this man.

Their conversation lasted barely half an hour. Clavering urged Elizabeth to meet him again before he left Washington, which would be the next night, at midnight; but to this Elizabeth would not agree. Clavering saw that he must wait at least six months before she would tolerate any attentions from him, and he quickly made up his mind that it was best not to urge her too much now. He had practically received her promise to marry him at the end of a year, and considering the obstacles he had to contend with he felt pretty well satisfied. As on the former occasion when they had met in the little park, Clavering went after a cab for Elizabeth, put her in it, and they separated.

Elizabeth spent a solitary evening. The calm which reigned in Clavering’s breast was by no means her portion. She felt that she had finally committed herself to marry him, and the prospect frightened her. She recalled Baskerville’s words—the “dreadful possibilities” which might await a woman married to Clavering. Their contemplation frightened her more than ever. She was so absorbed in her own troubles that she scarcely gave a thought to Clavering’s impending fate on the morrow. She remained up late, and the clock had struck midnight before her light was out.

Once in bed, Elizabeth was seized with a maddening restlessness, against which she fought for four hours. When the sky of night was wan and pale with the coming dawn, she rose and, going to her writing–table, began to write steadily. Her letter was to Hugh Pelham. She told him everything, without concealment—the story of the need that made her pawn the necklace, the story of Clavering, the story of her life in Washington, of her grief and amazement at what seemed to be Pelham’s persecution of her, and it closed with a torrent of reproaches that came from the depths of her heart.

She sealed the letter and addressed it to Pelham in the care of the War Office at London. She had no idea where Pelham was or when the letter would reach him; but some time or other he would get it, and then he would know how cruel his conduct was and how far–reaching was the effect of his ill–treatment of her. She had glossed over nothing about Clavering, she had painted him in his true colors; and she had told Pelham that but for him there would have been no temptation for her to have married such a man as Clavering.

When she had finished and sealed and stamped her letter, Elizabeth went to the window and drew the curtain. The flush that precedes the dawn was over the opaline sky; it was the beginning of an exquisite spring day. The city lay still and quiet; only one footfall was heard, that of the postman collecting the letters from the mail–box at the corner. As he passed briskly along the street under Elizabeth’s window, a letter softly fluttered down and fell at his feet. He glanced up and saw a window high above him being closed. The postman picked up the letter, put it in his bag, and went on, whistling.

Elizabeth, up in her bedroom, threw herself upon her bed and sank into a heavy and dreamless sleep that lasted until Serena knocked at her door at nine o’clock. Elizabeth rose, dressed, and breakfasted like a person in a dream. She remembered her letter instantly, and the recollection of it made her uneasy. Gradually her uneasiness turned to an agony of regret. She would have made almost any sacrifice to recall the letter, but she supposed it was now impossible.

Her great concern made her forget all about Clavering’s impending doom that day, until quite noon. As she began to consider it, the spirit of restlessness which seemed to possess her impelled her to wish that she could witness the scene in the Senate chamber. It might take her mind from her letter, which burned in her memory and was eating her heart out with shame and unavailing repentance. She knew there would be vast crowds at the Capitol, but she felt sure that not one of her few acquaintances in Washington would be there.

About one o’clock she suddenly resolved to go to the Capitol. Covering her face, as well as her hat, with a thick black veil, she started for the white–domed building on the hill. When she reached the plaza, she found a great crowd surrounding the north wing. Not in the memory of man had such an event as the expulsion of a senator occurred, and it was the very thing to stimulate the unhealthy curiosity of thousands. A steady stream poured into the doorways and jammed the corridors. Elizabeth doubted whether she would ever get nearer than the Senate corridor, much less be able to get into the small public gallery. She noticed, however, that the multitude was pouring into the ground–floor entrance; so she determined to mount the long, wide flight of steps on the east front and enter the rotunda through the great bronze doors.

It was a beautiful spring day, and the crowd was a well–dressed and cheerful one. Nobody would have dreamed that they were about to attend a great public tragedy. As Elizabeth reached the top of the flight, she turned involuntarily to look at the beautiful panorama outspread before her in the Southern sunshine. Fair and faintly green lay the park–like gardens around the Capitol, while the golden dome of the National Library flashed and gleamed in the noonday radiance. Never before had she thought Washington a joyous–looking city, but to–day, with sunshine and life and motion, with its animated throng of persons, this continual passing to and fro, it reminded her of Paris on a fête day.

While Elizabeth was looking upon the charming scene outspread before her, she heard the sound of trampling hoofs and the roll of a carriage below. Clavering, in his handsomest brougham, with a superb pair of horses, had just driven up. The coachman and footman wore the newest, smartest, and blackest of mourning liveries for the mistress they had seen ignored, when not insulted, during the whole term of their service. Forth from the carriage, a cynosure for the staring, curious crowd, stepped Clavering. He, too, was dressed in new and immaculate mourning, with a crape–covered hat.

Elizabeth shrank behind one of the huge pillars, but from it she saw Clavering’s dignified and ever graceful air as he braved the glances of the multitude. The lower entrance being jammed with people, he leisurely mounted the great flight of steps, a thing he had never before done in all his senatorial service. The crowd watched him with admiration and gratitude—it gave them the more time and the better opportunity of seeing him. He passed close enough to Elizabeth to have touched her, as she stood quaking with shame and fear; but, looking neither to the right nor to the left, he walked on, calm, courageous, and apparently at ease with himself and all the world.

Elizabeth, still moved by an impulse stronger than her will, pressed forward through the rotunda into the corridors. They were packed, and the doors to the public galleries had long been closed. Elizabeth found herself in the midst of a surging crowd, in the corridor leading to the reserved gallery, the place to which Clavering had told her he could no longer admit her. While she was standing there, crushed on either side, a pathway was opened, and a party of senators’ wives approached the door. At the same moment it was opened and some people came out. In the slight confusion several tried to get in; the doorkeepers, trying to separate the sheep from the goats, pushed the intruders back and pushed Elizabeth in with the senatorial party.

“But I have no right in here,” she said hurriedly to the doorkeeper who shoved her into the gallery.

“Just go in, madam, and let me shut these people out,” replied the doorkeeper, seeing the necessity for closing the door at once. So Elizabeth found herself in the last place either she or Clavering expected her to be, the gallery set apart for the senatorial families.

It was then almost two o’clock, when the morning hour expired, and the first business to be taken up was the resolution of expulsion against Senator Clavering. There was a subdued tremor over the whole scene; the senators who were to do a great act of public justice upon one of their own number were deeply moved over it. Not one of them had ever before taken part in such proceedings, and the species of civil death they were about to inflict on a man once counted worthy to sit among them was in some respects worse than the death of the body. The seriousness of the occasion affected every one present; a psychic wave of shame, regret, and solemnity swept over the whole assemblage, and a strange stillness reigned among the people who filled the galleries. Nearly every senator was in his seat, and the space back of them was crowded with members of the other house and persons who had the privileges of the floor.

Clavering sat in his accustomed place, a cool and apparently disinterested observer of the proceedings. His presence was highly disconcerting to the committee which had prepared the report, and indeed to every senator present. It had been hoped that Clavering would absent himself; there were no precedents in the present generation for such proceedings, and it would have been altogether easier if Clavering had chosen to remain away. But as he was a senator up to the moment the vote was taken, no one could say him nay.

Elizabeth found no trouble in concealing herself behind the large hats and feathers of the ladies in the reserved gallery, and she could observe Clavering closely. She thought she had never seen him look so handsome and even distinguished in appearance. Had he only been honest! Some thoughts like these raced through Clavering’s brain. He recalled Baskerville’s remark, “There is no real substitute for honesty,” and he remembered several occasions when he could have afforded to be honest and had not been, and he regretted it. Most of all he regretted not having taken greater precautions when he was dishonest.

At last, the morning hour having expired, the next business on the calendar was the reading of the report of the committee of investigation on the affairs of the K. F. R. land grants and the corporations connected therewith. The Vice–President, looking pale and worried, recognized the chairman of the committee, who looked paler and more worried. The stillness resolved itself into a deathlike silence, broken only by the resonant tones of the reading clerk. It was not a long report—the reading of it lasted scarcely three–quarters of an hour; but it was a terrible one. As the charges were named, and declared proved, a kind of horror appeared to settle down upon the Senate chamber. The senators who had been lukewarm in the matter were shamed for themselves; those who had been charged with the execution of justice were shamed for the cause of popular government. If such things were possible in a government by the people and for the people and of the people, it was an indictment against the whole people.

During it all Clavering sat with unshaken calmness. Not by a glance out of his handsome, stern eyes nor the least variation of color in his clear and ruddy complexion did he indicate the smallest agitation. Not even the last clause, which recommended his expulsion from the Senate of the United States, and which every member of the committee signed, without a dissenting voice, had the power to move him from his cool composure.

When the reading was concluded, the chairman of the committee rose and made a few explanations of the report. He spoke in an agitated and broken voice. Before introducing the resolution of expulsion, he hesitated and looked toward Clavering. Clavering rose, and on being recognized by the chair, asked to be heard in a brief defence.

Although he had always been a hard worker in his committee–room, Clavering had not often got upon his feet to speak in the Senate chamber. As he had told Elizabeth months before, he always knew his limitations as a debater. Having been used to lording over men for many years, the courteous assumption that every senator is a wise man had never sat well on him. When he spoke he had always been listened to, because he always had something to say; but he had shown his usual good sense and judgment by not measuring himself with the giants of debate. To–day, however, he had nothing more to hope or fear from those grave men, whose scorn of him was swallowed up in the execution of justice upon him.

As he rose to speak, to many minds came back that old Homeric line, “As the passing leaves, so is the passing of men;” and this man was passing from life into civil death before their eyes. Clavering, in his beautifully clear and well–modulated voice, began his defence, if defence it could be called. He told briefly but impressively of his youthful struggles, of his lack of education, of the wild life of the West into which he was inducted early, of the disregard of written laws in the administration of the justice with which he was familiar, how the strong men ruled by virtue of their strength, how great enterprises were carried through by forces not understood or even known in old and settled communities. His story was like a book out of the “Odyssey.” He described the effect of his operations in large sections of country, which made him hosts of friends and hosts of enemies. He subtly called attention by indirection to that unwritten law, noted by a British general in India, that there were in all partly civilized countries certain necessary and salutary rascalities, to be carried through by the strong and wise against the weak and foolish. Coming down to his own case, he made no appeal for mercy, and offered no plea in abatement. On the contrary, he became distinctly aggressive, and heaped ridicule upon the committee of elderly gentlemen sitting in their luxurious committee–room, passing judgment on the storm and stress of men and things as unknown to them as the inhabitants of another planet. His conclusion was a ringing defiance of his enemies, a promise of vengeance upon them, and a solemn declaration that he would return, rehabilitated, to the Senate of the United States, and every man who believed him guilty might count himself the everlasting enemy of James Clavering from that day forth.

When he sat down there was from the public galleries an involuntary burst of applause, which was instantly suppressed. Two or three women wept aloud; an aged senator attempted to rise from his seat, fell back, and was carried out half–fainting. There were a few minutes of nervous quiet and whispering, and then the final proceedings began. They were short and exquisitely painful. The resolution of expulsion was put, and received a three–fourths vote in its favor. Half a dozen senators in a group voted against the resolution, and a few others were absent or refrained from voting. Of the half–dozen senators who voted in Clavering’s favor, some voted in a spirit of sheer perversity, and the rest by absolute stupidity. When the result was declared amid a deathlike silence, Clavering rose and, making a low bow toward the senators who had voted for him, left his seat and went toward the aisle. As he reached it he turned to the chair and made another bow, full of dignity and respect; and then, without the least flurry or discomposure, retired from the Senate chamber which it had been the summit of his lifelong ambition to enter and of which he was never again to cross the threshold. He was to see no more service of the great Demos. But not Alcibiades, when he called the Athenians a pack of dogs, looked more sincerely contemptuous than did James Clavering of the United States Senate when, a disgraced and branded man, he walked out of the Senate chamber.

_Chapter Eighteen_

In the first week of April Richard Baskerville and Anne Clavering were married, in the little Iowa town where Mrs. Clavering’s family lived and where Anne had remained since her mother’s death. The wedding took place at Mr. Joshua Hicks’s house, one of the best in the town.

Mr. Hicks was Anne’s uncle by marriage, a leading merchant in the place; and a better man or a better citizen could not be found in the state of Iowa. He wore ready–made clothes, weighed out sugar and tea and sold calico by the yard, was a person of considerable wit and intelligence, and had a lofty self–respect which put him at ease in every society. His wife was a younger, better–looking, and better–educated woman than Mrs. Clavering, and as good as that poor woman had been. Their sons and daughters were ornaments of the high school, had mapped out careers for themselves, but meantime treated their parents with affectionate deference. In their drawing–room, called a front parlor, furnished in red plush and with chromos on the walls, Anne Clavering was made the wife of Richard Baskerville, the descendant of the oldest landed aristocracy in Maryland and Virginia. Clavering himself had said he would be present, but at the last minute telegraphed that he would be unable to come, having been suddenly called to Washington. He sent Anne a handsome cheque as a wedding gift. Élise and Lydia, who had spent the intervening time between their mother’s funeral and their sister’s marriage in shopping in Chicago and preparing for a precipitate trip to Europe, returned to the little town and remained over a train in order to be present at the wedding. Baskerville would have been glad if they had decided to stay away. Reginald Clavering gave his sister away.

It was the plainest and simplest wedding imaginable. The bride wore a white muslin, made by the village dressmaker. The bridegroom arrived on foot from the village tavern, where he had been staying. They began their wedding tour by driving away in the Hicks family surrey to another little country village seven miles off. It was a golden April afternoon, with an aroma of spring in the air; and the fields and orchards echoed with songs of birds—it was their mating–time. Mr. Hicks’s hired man, who drove the married lovers to their destination, where they spent their honeymoon, declared he had never seen a bride and bridegroom so little spoony. He had in truth, although he knew it not, never seen a bride and bridegroom who loved each other so much.

Clavering’s call to Washington, which prevented him from attending his daughter’s wedding, in reality consisted of a few lines from Elizabeth Darrell. After that March day in the Senate chamber, Elizabeth fell into a settled listlessness. She felt herself obliged to marry Clavering eventually, as the only way out of an intolerable position; and this listlessness from which she suffered always falls upon those who succumb to what is reckoned as irrevocable fate. The spring was in its full splendor, and the town was beautiful in all its glory of green trees and emerald grass, and great clumps of flowering shrubs and sweet–scented hyacinths and crocuses and tulips. No city in the world has in it so much sylvan beauty as Washington, and in the spring it is a place of enchanting verdure. All this awakening of the spring made Elizabeth Darrell only the more sad, the more dispirited. The old, old feeling came upon her of the dissonance of nature and man—the world beautiful, and man despairing.

Reading, her sole resource, no longer amused her. It was a solace she had tried, and it had failed her; so she read no more, nor thought, nor worked, nor did anything but quietly endure. She affected cheerfulness when she met her father in the afternoons, and General Brandon, whom a child could deceive, thought how improved in spirits she had grown since the autumn. The General’s confidence in Clavering continued quite unshaken, and he proclaimed solemnly that no man in public life, since the foundation of the government, had been so hounded and persecuted as “that high–toned gentleman, sir, ex–Senator Clavering.”

Next to the thought of marrying Clavering, the most heart–breaking thing to Elizabeth was the memory of the rash letter she had written to Hugh Pelham. The only mitigation of this was that he would not get it for many months, perhaps never. Her cheeks burned at every recollection of it. The month had passed away at the end of which McBean had promised to appear, but so far she had heard and seen nothing more of him. She felt sure, however, that McBean had not forgotten her, and she looked for him daily. Then she must ask Clavering for money, and that would settle her fate.

One soft spring night she sat at the open window of the drawing–room, looking out on the quiet street, where the great Clavering house loomed dark and silent and deserted. There was no light in the drawing–room where Elizabeth sat, but a gas–jet in the hall cast a flame of yellow radiance in at the doorway. Elizabeth sat in the shadow and the silence. Suddenly a peremptory ring was heard at the bell, and in a minute or two Serena entered the room and handed Elizabeth a white envelope with a telegram in it.

Elizabeth had more than the usual feminine dread of a telegraphic despatch, and she held the envelope in her hand for ten minutes before she could summon courage to open it. Only Clavering or McBean could be telegraphing her, and to hear from either meant a stab. At last she forced herself to tear the envelope open. It was a cablegram from London, and read:—

“Your letter just received. Am sailing for America next Saturday. You must not, shall not, marry Clavering. Why did you not write me before? HUGH PELHAM.”

Serena, who dreaded telegrams, went back to her own regions. Presently she returned and looked in the drawing–room door at Elizabeth. She was still–sitting by the open window in the half darkness, in the same position in which she had been half an hour before. The colored woman, who knew and had known all the time that Elizabeth was unhappy, went away and was troubled in mind. Half an hour later she returned. Elizabeth had changed her position slightly. She was resting her elbows on the window–sill, and her face was buried in her hands.

“Miss ’Liz’beth,” said Serena, in her soft voice, and laying a hard, honest, sympathetic black hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder, “fur de Lord’s sake, doan’ ’stress yo’sef so. Doan’ yo’ marry dat Clavering man, nor any ‘urr man, ef you doan’ want to. Me and de Gin’l will teck keer on you. Doan’ yo’ trouble ‘bout nothin’ ’t all, honey.”

“Oh, Serena,” cried Elizabeth, raising a pale, glorified, serene face and throwing her arms around Serena’s black neck, “I am the happiest person in the world! He is coming! He will start day after to–morrow. Oh, Serena, I am not distressed, I am not frightened any more!”

“‘Tain’ dat Clavering man!” answered Serena. She alone of the whole world had suspected Clavering’s intentions.

“No, no, no! It is another man—the man I—“ Elizabeth, without finishing the sentence, slipped out of Serena’s arms, upstairs to her own room, to be alone with her happiness.

Although she had heard Clavering’s name spoken, it was near midnight before she really gave him a thought. Then she wrote him a few lines, very humble, very apologetic; but no man of sense on earth could fail to know, on reading them, that the woman who wrote them was fixed in her resolution not to marry him. And as in the case of the former letter, she watched for the passing postman in the early morning and dropped the letter at his feet.

She summoned up courage to tell her father next day that Pelham was coming. “And I am sure,” she said, blushing and faltering, “all will be right between us, and he will explain all that seemed unkind in his conduct to me.”

General Brandon was sure of it, too, just as he was sure everybody meant to do right on all occasions, and was as pleased at the notion of rehabilitating Pelham as if somebody had left him a block of stock in the Standard Oil Company.

Elizabeth scarcely knew how the next week passed, so great was her exaltation. It is said that the highest form of pleasure is release from pain. She had that, and other joys besides. It was to her as if the earth had at last recovered its balance, with Pelham once more her friend. She did not dare to whisper anything more, even to herself. And every day brought her nearer to that hour—that poignant hour—when she should see Pelham once more as he had always been to her. She scanned the newspapers, and found what steamers sailed on the Saturday. She guessed by which one Pelham would sail. She watched out eagerly when they should be reported, and the morning and afternoon papers were in her hands by the time they were left at the door.

On the Saturday afternoon, which was warm and summer–like, Elizabeth was watching at the window for the afternoon newspaper—the morning newspaper had not chronicled the arrival of any of the Saturday steamers. When the negro newsboy threw it on the doorway, she ran out, and in her eagerness stood bareheaded on the steps, looking for the names of the incoming steamers. She found them—all the Saturday steamers had arrived to the day, and at an early hour. And Hugh Pelham might come at any moment! The thought brought the red blood to her cheeks and a quivering smile to her lips.

She looked down the street, under an archway of green, where played a fountain in a little open space, with brilliant tulip beds. The avenue into which the street debouched was gay with carriages and autos and merry, well–dressed girls and men, tripping along by twos and threes. As she gazed toward it, a hansom clattered up and in it sat Clavering. His arrival was so sudden that he could not but note the change in Elizabeth. He had thought on his first glance that he had never seen her look so youthful and so handsome. She had in truth regained much of her lost beauty, and when she saw him and recognized him, the pallor, the shame, the repulsion, in her face were eloquent. She drew back from him involuntarily, and her greeting, although gentle, did not conceal her feelings in the least.

As usual, Clavering appeared to be in the pink of condition. The crisis through which he had lately passed, the shock of the disappointment contained in Elizabeth’s letter, his four days of hard travel, had left no mark upon him. He was a strong man in physique as well as in will. Elizabeth showed great embarrassment, but Clavering met her without the least awkwardness. As soon as they were alone in the drawing–room, cool and darkened from the too ardent sun, Clavering came to the point.

“I was, of course, astounded to receive your letter,” he said. “I was on my ranch. I had just arrived, and was sitting down to supper when the mail was brought from the post–office twenty miles away. I found if I left at once I could make the midnight train, and that would give me fast connections all the way through. So, when I had finished my supper—it took me just twenty minutes—you know a ranchman’s supper isn’t a function, so to speak—I got on horseback and rode nearly thirty miles in four hours and a half. I had been riding all day, too. So you see I’m a very determined lover. This is my first love, you know,—the first like this, I mean,—and I couldn’t afford to throw it away.”

He was smiling now. The idea that the slim woman, dressed in black, sitting before him, with the red and white coming and going in her cheeks, could seriously resist him really seemed preposterous to him. Elizabeth remained silent, and Clavering knew that silence in a woman is momentous. As she made no reply he said, after a long pause, “And how about that other man?”

Elizabeth had said no word in her letter about any one else, and started at Clavering’s words. “I—I—” She could get no farther. It was in the beginning only a shrewd surmise of Clavering’s, but Elizabeth’s faltering words and shrinking manner had confirmed it.

“I knew, of course, another man had turned up; that’s why I came post–haste,” coolly remarked Clavering. “Now tell me all about him.”

Elizabeth was forced to answer. “It is—there was—my husband’s cousin, Major Pelham.”

“Oh, yes; the fellow that persecuted you after your husband’s death. He, however, is hardly the man to interfere with me.”

“I—I don’t understand it quite. I thought he knew all that was being done. But I had a cablegram from him.”

“You must have written to him.”

“Yes.”

“Before or after you wrote me?”

“Before. And when I got his reply by cable I wrote you.”

“I see. You prefer to marry him?”

“Major Pelham has not asked me to marry him,” replied Elizabeth, with dignity.

“But he will. Elizabeth, you are promised to me. I told you I loved you—not in the flowery style of a young loon, but of a man who has worked and thought and fought and seen enough to make him know his own mind. Of course I can’t coerce you, but the man who gets you away from me may look out for himself. See, the habits of a man’s early life and thought never leave him. My first instinct has always been to take care of my own, and I was bred and made my mark in a country where neither wife–stealing nor sweetheart–stealing is permitted. Sometimes wives and sweethearts were stolen, but it was a dangerous business. Oh, I don’t mean to use a gun; that went out twenty–five years ago. But there are many ways of ruining a man—and a woman, too.”

He spoke quite pleasantly, sitting close to Elizabeth and holding his crape–covered hat in his hand. There was nothing to indicate vengeance in Clavering’s easy, graceful manner and charming voice, but Elizabeth shuddered at the truth of what his speech might mean.

“Now tell me how you feel toward this man Pelham?”

“Major Pelham was my best friend during all my married life. I could not understand his conduct to me after my husband’s death. One night lately I felt the impulse to write to him—shall I tell you everything?”

“Yes.” Clavering was all calm attention then.

“It was the night after our last interview. It come over me that—that I would rather die than marry you. Yes, I mean what I say. I didn’t mean to kill myself. Oh, no! But I would rather have been killed than married to you.”

Clavering’s ruddy face grew pale. He got up, walked about the room, and sat down again, still close to Elizabeth. He saw she did not mean to be intentionally cruel, but was striving earnestly to tell him the whole truth.

“I have often heard of your power over other men, and I am sure you have great power over women too; for I felt in some way obliged to marry you unless some one came in to help me. And then I thought of Hugh Pelham, and I thought it would be at least two or three months before he got my letter; but he was evidently in London, and he cabled back. I feel sure he reached New York early this morning.”

“And did that money you owed have anything to do with it?”

“Yes. It troubled me dreadfully.”

“And for a paltry thousand or two you have broken your word to me, broken it when I needed most of all your faith in me?”

“It was not the money wholly.”

“It was also that I had lost my seat in the Senate of the United States?”

“Not altogether that; but I knew—I knew—I was at the Capitol that day.”

“Pardon me, but you don’t know. What does a woman know about such things? How do you know what it is for a man as strong as I am, as mature as I am, and with such a history as I have, to love? Yes, by God, to love for the first time. What does a woman’s pale reflection of passion know of the love of a man like me? I know all about life and death too. I have been a half–dozen times within six inches of a bullet that was extremely likely to be shot into my brain. I have felt the whir of a knife, that sometimes got planted in me, but never quite far enough to kill me. I have signed my name fifty times to things that meant either millions of dollars to me or state’s prison. These are only a few of the things that I know all about, but I tell you, Elizabeth Darrell, that they all seem like milk and water compared with what I feel for you. Do you know that the first time I saw you, when you were a mere slip of a girl, that night I crushed your little pearl heart under my foot, I felt a strange, even a superstitious interest in you? I never forgot you; and the first moment I saw you that Sunday afternoon, last November, something came over me which made everything in the world seem small, beside the thought of winning you. I have gone through a good deal since, but nothing has really mattered to me except you.” Clavering stopped. His voice, always earnest, had remained calm and even low.