Chapter VI: Part 6

"Let me explain that when I speak of the President's negro policy I do not mean to include his appointments of negroes to office. I think we of the South have in these matters to some extent confused the issues, and proportionately weakened our position before the outside public. Not that I approve of appointing negroes to office in the South, for I do not. I think the weight of all considerations is against it. But the considerations either for or against it are considerations of expediency. They are not vital. If the President wishes to vindicate his negro appointments on the ground that his appointees are of his party, the best men of his party, and fairly efficient,--let him. Such reasons have been given for political appointments time out of mind, although they are not conclusive in any case and especially not in the matter of negro office-holding in the South. _But let him not_ go into cheap heroics such as were indulged in by a recent negro appointee, who tragically exclaimed that if his appointment was not confirmed his race would be set back thirty years!

"Such rant is only ridiculous. Office-holding is not a recognized or an actual instrumentality for uplifting or civilizing a people; and it is not a theory of this or any other form of government that its mission or method is to uplift its citizenship, white or black, by making place-holders of them. It is not closing any legitimate door of hope to negro or white man to refuse him a Presidential appointment. The 'door of hope,' whatever else it may be to white or black, is not the door to a government office.

"The real basis of the race issue, Mr. President, has nothing to do with politics or political appointments, with office-getting or office-holding. If by some trick of chance a negro--some prodigy lofty in character and in the science and wisdom of statecraft--were President of this nation to-day, and were by unanimous consent a model Executive, the real race problem would not be affected a feather's weight. The world must understand that the Southern white people in the measures they have taken and will take to protect themselves against the negro are impelled by weightier considerations than the pre-emption of the dignities or emoluments of politics. It is true that they have taken the governments of the Southern States into their own hands, away from negro majorities in many sections. It may be true that in order to do this they have nullified provisions of the Federal constitution. But they have done so from no such small motive as a desire to hold public office.

"My people have all respect for the wisdom of the makers of the constitution, who framed an instrument perfectly suited to the conditions as they existed at the time and continued to exist for eighty years, prescribing the method of majority rule for a people who were of an approximately equal civic intelligence and virtue. But when the conditions were changed and a vast horde of illiterate and--in the hands of unscrupulous leaders--vicious voters were added to the electorate, stern necessity forbade them longer to give a sentimental support to so-called fundamental principles in the constitution and permit ignorance to rule intelligence and vice to rule virtue.

"The 'fundamental principles' in that constitution, Mr. President, are nothing more or less than wisely conceived _policies_ which were tried, proved, and found good under the conditions for which they were devised. The 'fundamental principle' upon which the race problem of the South may be solved will have been discovered with certainty only _after_ a solution has been accomplished by the conscientious effort and best thought of Southern white men.

"And they will solve this problem. It can never be settled, of course, till Southern white men acquiesce in its settlement. They will settle it in righteousness and will accept with gratefulness any suggestion which their fellow countrymen have to offer in a spirit of sympathy and helpfulness. But it may as well be understood that any such exhibition as the President's negro luncheon, which affronts the universal sentiment of the final arbiters of this question, must necessarily put further away the day of settlement. The negro problem cannot be worked out by any simple little rule o' thumb, and the negro will always be the loser by any such melodramatic display of super-assertive backbone and misinformed conscience.

"The President would settle this matter upon a purely theoretical academic basis, this matter that in its practical effects will not touch him nor his family nor his section, but will affect vitally the happiness, the lives, the destiny of a chivalrous people whose ideas, traditions, sentiments and convictions he carelessly ignores or impetuously insults. Such exhibitions do not become a brave man. They betoken, rather, a headstrong man, an inconsiderate man, a thoughtless man, a fanatical man. It does seem that President Phillips would have learned wisdom from the experience of his illustrious predecessor, President Roosevelt, who did somewhat less of this sort of thing once--and only once.

"Mr. President, it has been repeatedly said that the hostility of the white people of the South to social intermingling with the negro race is an instinct--a race instinct. I do not so consider it,--and for two reasons: first, because many men of Anglo-Saxon blood--and of these President Phillips is the most conspicuous example--do not have such an instinct; second, because instinct is not the result of reason, while the Southern white man's opposition to social recognition of the negro is defensible by the purest, most dispassionate reason. These convictions are so well fixed in the Southern mind that they may appear to be instinctive and measurably serve the purpose of instinct; but the vital objections of my people to intermingling socially with the negro are not founded in any race antipathy, whim, pretence, or prejudice. They are grounded in the clearest common sense, and as such only do I care to present or defend them.

"In face of the disaster to be averted, I could wish that it were an instinct; for instinct does not fail in a crisis. But men are more than beasts: the power to rise is given to them conditioned upon the chance to fall. So in this race matter: instinct does not forbid a white man to marry a black woman; instinct--more's the horror!--does not forbid a white woman to wed a negro man. For this reason it is--for the very lack of a race instinct is it--that the social intermingling of the white and black races, as advocated and practised by President Phillips, would inevitably bring to pass an amalgamation of the races with all its foul brood of evils.

"President Phillips, living in a section of the country where negroes are few--especially such as are of sufficient intelligence to be interesting to a man of his attainments--does not dream of amalgamation. I would not insult him by assuming such a thing. And yet upon a superficial estimate of conditions in the South he gives us this impulsive exhibition of what in one of his high official position is criminal carelessness.

"The positive element of crime in it is not in the affront which a Presidential negro luncheon puts upon Southern sentiment, but in the suggestion to Southern and Northern people alike that a social intermingling of the races--which means amalgamation, however blind he may be to the fact--is the solution of the race problem. The crime would be complete in all its horror if the South, if the nation, should follow his lead and achieve the logical result of his teaching.

"From long and intimate acquaintance with the negro's character, my people know that the Phillips negro luncheon stimulates not the negro's ambition and endeavour to improve himself as it tickles and arouses his vanity. When the ordinary darkey hears of it he thinks it not a recognition of the superior abilities of Bishop Martin and Doctor Woods, but a social recognition of the negro race; and forthwith deems himself the equal of the white man and desires unutterable things. And not without reason.

"The black people appreciate what the President's act means for them. They do not misinterpret its tendency. A prominent negro said in a recent mass meeting in Richmond: 'No two peoples having the same religion and speaking the same tongue, living together, have ever been kept apart. This is well known and is one of the reasons why the dominant race is crushing out the strength of the negro in the South. I am afraid we are anarchistic and I give warning that if this oppression in the South continues the negro must resort to the torch and the sword, and that the Southland will become a land of blood and desolation.'

"This inflammatory utterance indicates the interpretation put by negroes upon President Phillips' open-dining-room-door policy, and the nature of the hopes and aspirations it arouses in the black man's heart. And the serious thing is the element of truth in the negro's erroneous statement. It is true as gospel that no two races of people, living together, have ever _intermingled socially_ without amalgamating. It is hardly necessary to cite evidence of that fact or to give the reasons underlying it. It might be taken as axiomatic that social intermingling means amalgamation.

"If men and women were attracted to each other and loved and mated because of equal endowments of virtue, or intelligence, or beauty, or upon any basis of similar accomplishments, tastes, or mental, moral or physical excellences, then a gulf-stream of Anglo-Saxon blood might flow unmixed and pure through a sea of social contact with the negro race; but until love and marriage are placed among the exact sciences, social intermingling of races will ever result as it ever has resulted: in the general admixture of racial bloods.

"When racial barriers are broken down and it is proper for negroes and whites to associate freely and intimately, when you--white men--receive negroes on a plane of social equality, your women will marry them, your sons will take them to wife. Shall you say to your daughter of the negro whom you receive in your home: 'He is an excellent man but--do not marry him'? Shall you say to your son enamoured of a quadroon: 'She is a very worthy young woman and an ornament to our circle of friends, but--I have chosen another wife for you'? When did such considerations ever guide or curb the fancy of the youthful heart or diminish the travel to Gretna Green? No, the line never has been drawn between free social intercourse and intermarriage; and while the Southern people believe they could draw that line if any people could, they do not propose to make any reckless experiments where all is to be lost and nothing gained.

"A president of one of our great universities is quoted as saying: 'The Southern white sees a race danger in eating at the same table with a negro; he sees in being the host or the guest of a negro an act of race infidelity. The Northern white sees nothing of the kind. The race danger does not enter into his thoughts at all. To be the host or the guest of a negro, a Mexican or a Japanese would be for him simply a matter of present pleasure, convenience or courtesy. It would never occur to him that such an act could possibly harm his own race. His pride of race does not permit him to entertain such an idea. This is a significant difference between Northern white and Southern white.'

"In noting significant differences between Northern white and Southern white this authority must have been advertent to the fact that the pride of race of his 'Northern white' does not prevent them from furnishing the overwhelming majority of interracial marriages with negroes, as well as with Chinese, Japanese and every other alien race--this, too, with a very small negro population. If the negroes were proportionately as numerous in the North as in the South and such sentiments prevailed, how long, with interracial marriages increased in numbers in proportion to opportunity, would there be an Anglo-Saxon 'Northern white' to have a pride of race? If with these facts before his eyes the distinguished educator sees no race danger in the social mingling of white and black people, it easily may be inferred that he sees no objection to amalgamation.

"The Southern white man does see a race danger in these social amenities, Mr. President; for he cannot view amalgamation or the faintest prospect of it with any sentiment save horror: and he fortifies himself against that danger not only with the peculiar pride of race--of which he has a comfortable supply--but with every expedient suggested by his common sense, his experience, and by the horrible example which that distinguished educator's 'Northern white' has furnished him.

"In providing against this danger my people are moved from without by the sight of no occasional negro such as at odd times crosses this New Englander's vision, nor from within by any unreasonable or jealous hatred of the negro such as has characterized certain 'Northern whites' from the time they burned negro orphan asylums in resentment at being drafted to fight their country's battles down to this good day when they mob a negro for trying to do an honest day's work. No! the Southern white man is driven to his defences by a sentiment void of offence toward the negro, and by the daily impending spectacle of black, half-barbarous hosts who menace the Anglo-Saxon civilization of the South and of the nation.

"President Phillips has modestly borrowed from one of his predecessors words with which to defend his social amenities to negroes. He quotes and says he would 'bow his head in shame' were he 'by word or deed to add anything to the misery of the awful isolation of the negroes who have risen above their race.' Two things may be said of that, Mr. President: first, isolation has been the price of leadership in all ages, and the negroes who are the pioneers of their race in their long and painful journey upward may not hope to escape it: second, the President's borrowed sentimental reason cuts the ground from under his feet, for that forcible Rooseveltian phrase, 'the misery of the awful isolation of black men who have risen above their race,' concedes the premises on which the South's contention is based, since it admits there is such a great gulf between the negro _race_ and the _risen_ negro that his isolation fitly may be described in the words 'misery,' 'awful.' It is a peculiar order of Executive intellect and sensibility that can have such a keen sense of the misery which association with the lowly of his own race brings to an educated negro--who cannot in the very nature of things have put off all his hereditary deficiencies and tastes in a generation; and that yet seems not to be touched with any sense of the unspeakable misery such association and its inevitable consequences would have for my people--his Anglo-Saxon brethren--who, if there be any virtue in the refining processes of civilization, any redemptive power in the Christian religion, any progression in the purposes of God in the earth, are a thousand years ahead of the negro--any negro--in every racial excellence.

"Oh, but, you say, President Phillips means for us to associate only with those who are worthy, those who have 'risen.' Even that would be fatal, Mr. President. Beyond the truth already stated that considerations of merit will be forgotten and brushed aside if the social racial barrier is broken down at any point, and that social intermingling inevitably leads to intermarriage, there is a greater fact, a deeper truth, underlying this question. That fact, that truth, is that in estimating the result of mixing racial bloods not the man only and his personal accomplishments or individual culture must be considered, but his heredity, his race peculiarities and proclivities, every element that has gone into his blood.

"An occasional isolated negro may have broken the shackles of ignorance, measurably and admirably brought under control the half-savage passions of his nature, acquired palpable elegances of person and manner, and taken on largely the indefinable graces of culture: yet beneath all this creditable but thin veneer of civilization there slumber in his blood the primitive passions and propensities of his immediate ancestors, which are transmitted through him as latent forces of evil to burst out in his children and grandchildren in answer to the call of the wild. A man is not made in one generation or two. Every man gets the few ruling passions of his life from the numberless endowments of a hundred progenitors, and these few show out, while scores of others run so deep in his blood that they never crop out in his deeds but pass quietly on as static forces of good or evil to his children and their children before rising to the surface as dynamics in life and character.

"A Northern gentlewoman in a recent magazine article, defending her willingness to offer social courtesies to a prominent negro, speaks of him as one 'of whom an exquisite woman once said he has the soul of a Christian, the heart of a gentleman, and the eyes of the jungle.' That illustrates the idea perfectly, Mr. President,--_the eyes of the jungle_. Despite the fact that it is easier to breed up physical than temperamental qualities in man or beast, easier to breed out physical than mental or moral or spiritual blood-traits, this negro, with all his culture, with a large mixture of white blood in his veins, has yet in his very face that sinister mark--the eyes of the jungle: and in his blood who shall say what jungle passions, predilections and impulses, nobly and hardly held in check, that hark back to the African wilds from which they are so lately transplanted.

"A negro--any primitive being--may be developed mentally in one or two generations to the point where a certain polish has been put upon his mind and upon his manners; his purposes may be gathered and set toward the goal of final good; the whole trend of his life may be set upward: but there is yet between his new purposes and the savagery of the primitive man in him a far thinner bulwark of heredity than protects a white man from the elemental brute and animal forces of his nature. A number of educated negroes in this country to-day are superior in culture of mind and in personal morals to many white men, but even these individual shining lights of the negro race do not possess the power to endow their offspring so favourably as white men of less polish but longer seasoned hereditary strength of mental and moral fibre.

"It always offends a proper sense of decency to hear the suggestion that the negro may be bred up by crossing his blood with that of white men,--for the obvious reason that with our ideas of morals the most common principles of the breeder's art cannot be applied to the problem: but one single fact which eliminates such cold-blooded animal methods from our consideration is that when animals are cross-bred it is in the hope and for the purpose of combining mutually supplementary elements of strength and of eliminating supplementary weaknesses; while in this race matter the Anglo-Saxon is the superior of the negro in every racial characteristic--in physical strength and grace, in mental gifts and forces, and in spiritual excellence. Even if amalgamation did the very best that could be expected of it, it offers to the world nothing and to the white man less than nothing: for it would be a compromise, a striking of an average, by which naught is added to the total: it would pull down the strong to upraise the weak, degrade the superior to uplift the inferior: it would be a levelling process, not a method of progress. _And yet amalgamation does not even that much_, for it does not make an average-thick, even-thick retaining wall of culture between the hybrid product and the weaknesses of his mottled ancestry. There are always blow-holes in this mongrel culture, for heredity does not work by averages. It is an elusive combination of forces whose eccentricities and resultants cannot be formulated, calculated, or fore-determined. It is certain only that by no mere manipulation of it can the slightest _addition_ be made to the stock of ancestral virtues. Only slow processes working in each individual through generation after generation can add increments of strength to racial fibre.

"Therefore, if the negro will insist upon some _race manipulation_ in order to raise the average of intelligence, thrift and morality in our national citizenship, the only safe and sane method is to take measures to restrict the increase of the negro race and let it die out like the Indian. But, you scream, that would be to suggest the annihilation of a race God has put here for some wise purpose! Even so: but amalgamation would no less surely annihilate _the race_--two races--and fly in the face of a Providence that has segregated all races with no less distinctness of purpose, and so far has visited with disaster all attempts to violate that segregation.

"Now, Mr. President, what is the immediate past history, status and condition in Africa and America of this race with which Southern white men are asked to mingle socially? What are the racial endowments of these _risen_ negroes whom we are urged by lofty example to invite into our drawing-rooms upon terms of broadest equality--for upon other terms would be a mockery--as eligible associates, companions, suitors, husbands for our sisters and daughters?--for a sensible father or brother does not admit white men to his home on any other basis. Of what essential racial elements and sources is the negro, risen and unrisen alike?

"Let answer the scientists and explorers, missionaries and travellers,--a long list of them, English, French, German, stretching all the way back a hundred years before there was a negro problem in the South. I quote verbatim, as nearly as the form will permit, their very words and phrases. Listen.

"The negro in Africa was, and is yet, in largest measure 'Without law except in its very crudest form'--'no law at all as we conceive it'--'in densest savage ignorance'--'no writing, no literature, no arts, no sciences'--'some development of perceptive and imitative faculties and of memory, but little of the higher faculties of abstract reasoning'--'in temperament intensely emotional, fitful, passionate, cruel'--'without self-control in emotional crises, callously indifferent to suffering in others, easily aroused to ferocity by sight of blood or under great fear'--'particularly deficient in strength of will, stability of purpose and staying power'--'dominated by impulse, void of foresight, unable to realize the future or restrain present desire'--'indolent, lazy, improvident, neglectful, happy-go-lucky, innately averse to labour or to care'--'given to uncleanness'--'an eater of snakes and snails, cannibal, eating his own dead'--'vilely superstitious, a maker of human sacrifices, charm-wearing, fetich-worshipping'--'of a religion grossly anthropomorphic, explaining all natural phenomena by a reference to evil spirits'--'his religion has no connection with morality, nothing to do with man's relation to man'--'thieving his beloved pastime, deception more common than theft'--'national character strongly marked by duplicity'--'lying habitually and thinking lying an enviable accomplishment'--'a more thorough and unhesitating liar than one of these negroes is not to be found anywhere'--'cruelly obliges his women to work'--'sensual, polygamous, unchaste'--'buying and selling his women'--'valuing his daughter's virginity solely as a marketable commodity'--'accounting adultery simply as a trespass upon a husband's property rights, and seduction and rape as a violence only to parent's property in daughters as destroying their marketable value'--'wifehood is but an enslavement to the husband's will'--'no conception of chastity as a virtue'--'of strong sexual passions'--'a devoted worshipper at the shrine of his phallic gods'--'sexual instincts dominate even the most public festivals, and public dances exhibit all degrees of sex suggestion.'

"Those in short, Mr. President, are some of the horrible details of the bestial degradation of the west-coast Africans, from whom our slave-marts were recruited almost to the time of the Civil War, and who, says Keane, are 'the very worst sweepings of the Sudanese plateau,' and, Ellis says, are 'the dregs and offscourings of Africa.'

"Such was the negro in Africa. What he is in America, only my people know. He has been the gainer at all points, the loser at none, because of his enforced residence here and his bondage to Southern white men: and yet that awful picture of the negro in Africa is so startlingly familiar to one who has spent his life in the South that he examines it closely with something of fear.

"He finds the colouring too vividly heavy and some details untrue for a picture of the negro in America to-day: but the negro as the Southern white man knows him is too alarmingly alike, too closely akin to, that African progenitor. He has advanced--yes! but just how much, and _just how little_, from out the shadow of that awful category of horrors, my people know.

"They know that he has but just emerged from those depths that those bestial racial traits held in check by the man's law have only well begun to be refined by a change of environment and the slow processes of heredity: and yet we, white men of the South, are in a way advised to treat as our social equals certain immediate heirs to such a blood inheritance because, forsooth, they have _risen_.

"We resent bitterly the insulting suggestion, however high or respectable or official its source: and we call upon you, white men of the North, to warn you against appeals for social recognition as a balm for 'the misery of the awful isolation of black men who have risen above their race.' When the blood of your daughter or your son is mixed with that of one of this race, however _risen_, redolent of newly applied polish or bewrapped with a fresh culture, how shall sickly sentimentalities solace your shame if in the blood of your mulatto grandchild the vigorous red jungle corpuscles of some savage ancestor shall overmatch your more gentle endowment, and under your name and in a face and form perhaps where a world may see your very image in darker hue there shall be disported primitive appetites, propensities, passions fit only to endow an Ashanti warrior or grace the orgies of an African bacchanalia? In Heaven's name think to the bottom of this question!--and think _now_! Await not the day '_when your fear cometh_ as desolation, _and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you_.' Do not be distracted by considerations that are superficial and incidental--such for example as the negro's record for criminal assaults upon women. The crime of rape will be abated by some means, but long after that must the negro develop before he loses his primal jungle habit of regarding woman as a personal possession. It is a matter of attitude and not of assault: and as in his fundamental attitude toward women, so in every racial characteristic the superiority of the white man is blood deep, generations old, ingrained, inherent, essential.

"Knowing this, my people despise President Phillips' social amenities to negroes of high degree. They do not fear the issue; but what insults and outrages them is that a personage in the highest official position, by an act in itself impulsive, empty, and futile, should put desires and hopes of miscegenation into the minds and hearts of the inflammable, muttering, passionate black masses of the South. Standing themselves ever in the shadow of dire calamity which they are facing and must face for long years to come as they painfully work out a righteous and practical solution of their problem, my people cry out to you, oh, white men of the North, of the insidious danger in these sentimental social practices of an exuberant Executive; and we tell you that, however well or ill you may guard the purity and integrity of your race, we will stand fast. Whatever else may or may not be true, we will never acknowledge any equality on the negro's side that does not _overtake_ the white race in its advancing civilization, and we will certainly not submit to an equality produced by degrading the white race to or toward the negro's level. We will not make with the negro a common treasure of our Anglo-Saxon blood by putting it in hotch-pot with his in a mongrel breed.

"The Anglo-Saxon has blazed the way of civilization for a world to follow in: but if he, the torch-bearer, the pioneer, goes back to join hands with the tribes who are following afar his torch and trail, then the progression of civilization and of character must not only stop but must actually recede for him to effect a juncture with the black and backward race in the blood of a hybrid progeny. There the fine edge would be taken off every laudable characteristic of the white man. There the splendid Anglo-Saxon spirit of leadership and initiative would be neutralized by the sluggish blood of the Ethiop race. There the Anglo-Saxon's fine energies and clear sensibilities would be deadened and muddled by the infusion of this soporific into his veins. There vile, unknown, ancestral impulses, the untamed passions of a barbarous blood, would be planted in the Anglo-Saxon's very heart.

"You may believe that in the dim beginning God by imperial decree set the dividing line between these races; or, less orthodox and more coldly scientific, you may know that Nature, impartial mother of men, giving her white and black sons equal endowment and an even start in body, mind and spirit, since has stood, in unerring wisdom still impartial, to watch the white bound away from the black in his rush toward that perfection of mind, of heart, of character, which she has set as goal for the striving of her children. From whichever view-point you look upon the age-long history of men and the age-long lead of white men over their black brothers,--whether evolutionist or traditionist, scientist or mystic, you offer violence to your own particular deity, be it God or Nature, when in their present measureless inequality of development you by amalgamation would beat back the white into the lagging footsteps and gross animalism of the black.

"Menacing thus the effectiveness and integrity of a race which is the pathfinder for the progress of a world of men, the danger is not only a race danger, but a danger to universal civilization; and the preventative is a social separation of the white and black races in America _from the lowest to the highest_,--at least, yes in all reason, at the dictate of the plainest common sense, _at least_, if so be, till the black becomes approximately equal to the white in racial excellence. After which let the ethnologists take the question and give us the answer of science as to the advisability of mixing racial bloods.

"Naturally you ask me when the time of equality in racial excellence will come. I answer that I commit myself unreservedly to the support of every means used for the negro's uplifting; I admit--nay more, I contend--that we white men cannot be dogs in the manger with civilization; we cannot as a Christian people even hope that the negro race may not come _up_ to our level, nor can there be any reason why we should refuse to acknowledge that race as our equal if it shall indeed become our equal. And yet, while I would not in puny wisdom presume to foretell the purposes of God in the earth, nor to set bounds to the efficacy of his unspeakable redemption, nor to appoint the places of white, black, yellow, red or brown men in the pageantry of 'that far-off divine event toward which the whole creation moves'--yet, I say, with carefully acquired information of the negro's history and habits in Africa, and with an intimate knowledge of his present status and rate of progress toward civilization in America, I tell you frankly that the day of his approximate equality in racial excellence with the white man is beyond the furthest reach of my vision into the future."

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Senator Killam was against the bill tooth and nail,--and he was against Rutledge. He obtained the floor and began to speak in a desultory but picturesque fashion in ridicule of some of the junior Senator's new-fangled heresies almost before Rutledge had caught his breath, and his vitriolic opening stayed the steps of many who in courtesy would have gone over to Rutledge's seat to felicitate him upon his maiden effort. Mr. Killam presented his felicitations openly and with such a mixture of sarcasm, irony and some seeming admiration that his colleague was puzzled. When Mr. Killam talked his dearest enemy would stop to listen. Rutledge, tired and blown, leaned back in his chair to hear him thunder.

As he sank back into a comfortable pose he caught sight for the first time of Lola DeVale and Elise Phillips in the gallery. They had heard his speech from start to finish,--and were differently affected by it. Lola was more impressed with the Senator's manner than by his words.

"Senator Rutledge verily believes all that he says against the negroes," she had commented; "but surely they are not so black as he paints them. Papa says that it is impossible for a Southern man to judge the negro fairly."

Elise did not reply. She was filled with revulsion amounting almost to nausea, and her temper was on edge. As her father's daughter, the personal element was unbearably irritating to her. She resented the entire situation and discussion. She had not known what was under consideration, nor who was to speak, and she would have left the gallery if she had not felt that it would be beating a retreat. She also had a desire to see whether Evans had the impudence to say what he thought right in her face.

In her stay in the South she had seen a very disreputable class of negroes, and under the spell of Rutledge's words her antipathies were over-excited to such a degree that she was faint with disgust. On the other hand she was full of barely suppressed anger. Rutledge smiled a salutation to the young women; and though Elise was looking straight at him she did not join Lola in her gracious acknowledgment.

"Don't you see Mr. Rutledge, Elise? He waits for your smile like a dog for a bone."

"I wish that man were dead," Elise declared.

Lola raised her eyebrows and scanned the profile of her friend for some moments, and there came into her mind an idea that appeared to be worth some thinking over....

If Senator Rutledge was distasteful to her, Elise had little cause to complain of him: for seldom had any of the scores of young fellows who followed in her train the good fortune of a minute's talk with her alone; and Rutledge, oppressed by the result of their last meeting at Senator DeVale's, unsatisfied with the empty nothings which passed for conversation in the brief glimpses he had of her at formal gatherings, and chilled by the coldness of her manner which had been oh, so different in that halcyon summer when he had lost his heart to her, was well content to stand further and further away from her in the crowd that was always about her, and to worship in spirit the real Elise Phillips unfettered by convention and unaffected by untoward incident. He took what comfort he could from the fact that as yet no favoured one appeared among Elise's admirers, and that among the sons of fortune, army officers, attaches, and all that sort who aspired to make life interesting for the President's eldest daughter it seemed none could flatter himself he was preferred above another.

As for those who exhibited the liveliest interest in Elise, gossip gave that distinction to two. One evening at a reception at Secretary Mackenzie's Senator Rutledge was talking to Lola DeVale when Elise passed, accompanied by a stalwart young fellow whom Rutledge had never seen.

"Who is Sir Monocle?" he asked.

"Where?" asked Lola.

"Miss Phillips' escort."

"Oh. He has no monocle."

"I know. But he should have. He looks it. Who is he?"

"Captain George St. Lawrence Howard, second son of the Earl of Duddeston. He was taking a look at America, but an introduction to Elise seems to have persuaded him to limit his observations to Washington City."

"Sensible fellow," commented Rutledge.

"Yes," said Lola, "and a very likable fellow. He won his captaincy with Younghusband in the Thibetan campaign before he was twenty; and the fact that an invalid brother is all that stands between him and the earldom doesn't make him any the less interesting."

"Titles are talismanic--whether military or other. With two, he ought to be fairly irresistible."

"Yes, and besides that he has plenty of money and leisure to make love with a thorough care for detail."

"With all those and a manifest supremely good taste," said Rutledge, "I would back him for a winner."

"You are forgetting Senatorial courtesy!"

"How now?"

"Senator Richland."

"What of him?"

"He also is in the running."

"Richland? I hadn't heard."

"Yes; and remember that his fortune is ten times that of the Earl of Duddeston, and his brains are of the same grade as his bank account."

Rutledge was interested. He had a thorough respect for Richland's ability.

"He is nearly twice Elise's age," Lola continued, "and Senatorial dignity will not permit a display of violent enthusiasm. But Senator Richland has acquired the habit of winning, and he is young enough and abundantly able to make the game interesting both for Elise and for any rivals. He is young indeed for his honours, has the ear of the people, and is a politician of rare acumen. His followers predict for him nothing less than the Presidency itself when his time is ripe. What more could a girl wish? Don't lay all your salary on the Englishman--you might lose."

* * * * *

Lola DeVale had not misread Senator Richland's purposes. He was seriously in the running. Elise was the first woman he had ever thought of marrying. She seemed to him to fit perfectly into all the plans which his ambition had made for the future. He had met her at Mr. Phillips' inauguration, and after thinking over her charms during the summer vacation had come back to Washington in December fully determined to wage a vigorous campaign for her hand.

Of the other men who were rash enough to dream of Elise it is needless and would be tiresome to go into detail. They were more or less interested, enamoured or devoted: but the Senator and Captain Howard were too fast company for them, and they are of interest only as a numerous field which made the running more or less difficult for the leaders.

Evans Rutledge willingly would have entered the lists against Richland or the Englishman--against anybody--if Elise had been ordinarily civil to him; but he had been in such evident disfavour since the Smith knock-down that he deemed himself one of "the gallery" at this game of hearts. Elise when indeed she had time to think of it, felt that she had dealt with him ungenerously if not unjustly, but that only made his presence less grateful to her.

The unreasonableness of Elise's attitude toward Rutledge and Rutledge's behaviour whenever she saw him near Elise, mildly stirred the womanly curiosity of Lola DeVale to the point of investigation. She found Elise averse to the slightest discussion of Senator Rutledge or of anything connected with him. Baffled there, she turned with more determination and softer skill to the man. He will never know how he came upon terms of such friendliness and sympathy with Miss DeVale. Soon doubtless he would have confided the story of his love to her. But events came about differently.

A score of young people were at Senator DeVale's country-place one evening in May. Elise had met Evans with something of her old-time friendliness and he was in an uncertain state of happiness.

"Now don't make an ass of yourself because the Lady Beautiful is in a mood to be gracious," he solemnly admonished his heart. "Sir Monocle may just have proposed and been accepted."

The thought was as bracing as a cold shower and gave him a vigorous grip on his rebellious affections. Then he danced with her--on the wide, dimly lighted veranda--a slow, lotus-land waltz, just coming back in vogue after more than a decade of galloping two-steps.

He took another grip on himself. He must not think of the woman in his arms. Luckily the old-fashioned dance was diverting: while the movement was intoxicating it was reminiscent. He remembered his first waltz--the Carolina hill-town--the moonlight, the smell of the roses--the plump little girl in the white dress, with the red, red sash, and the cheeks as red, with the black eyes and the blacker hair, with the indefinable sensuous physical perfume of Woman, and the very Spirit of the Dance,--she who--yes, she who married the station-agent and was now such a motherly person. He began a speech that would have been cynical. Elise stopped him.

"Don't talk," she said. "Let's dream."

Tumult! Riot! What's the use to hold one's pulses steady when the Lady Beautiful herself incites revolt!

"Let's dream." His heart-strings were set a-tremble by the vibrant richness of her voice, which seemed to have caught the dreaminess and rhythm and resonance of the violins that drew them on. And--

"Don't talk." No: he would not profane the enchantment of that waltz with words; and yet surely My Lady Beautiful were heartless indeed not to catch the messages of love which, pure of the alloy of breath and speech, his every pulse-beat sent unfettered to her heart.

He held her for a moment after the violins had ceased, and the spell of the slow-swinging waltz was still upon them both--when a quick jerk of the fiddles in the ever rollicking two-step brought Sir Monocle to Elise's side. Evans resigned her with a bow and, without so much as a "thank you," went out on the lawn to commune with his heart.

How long that two-step continued, he, seated in a retired nook, did not know. Sometime after it was finished he saw Elise and the Englishman walk down the winding path that led from the front door to the roadside. They stood talking together a minute perhaps till Captain Howard boarded a passing car city-bound. Rutledge noted with a twinge of jealousy the cordial good-bye the girl gave the man, but even at that distance and through the uncertain light he thought he saw--and, queer to say, resented--a certain formality in Captain Howard's adieus to the woman.

He watched her through the trees as she came slowly back up the hill following the turns of the smooth hard walk as it wound through darkness and half lights from the broad gateway to the house. She moved along, a white shadow, slowly at first, and Evans imagined that she was in some such mood as possessed him. Then she started suddenly and ran at a stone stairway which mounted a terrace. She tripped, stumbled and fell against the granite steps.

Rutledge was flying to her before she was fairly prone. He spoke to her and tried to help her up. She made no answer, and her hand and arm were limp.

"Elise!" he said, with fear in his voice. Still no answer.

He took her in his arms and made directly up the hill for the front door.

"Elise," he whispered fearfully again. "Oh, my heart, speak to me!"

Her cheek was against his shoulder. He buried his face in her hair, as he prayerfully kissed the snow-white part visible even in that darkness. Her head dropped limply back, and a sigh came from her lips so close to his. Still she answered not his call. He loved her very much and--he kissed her again, softly, where the long lashes lay upon her cheek, and--"Elise!" he murmured appealingly. She turned her face feebly away from him, like a child restless in sleep.

He had not delayed his climb to the house.

"Here!" he cried. "Get Dr. Sheldon quick! Miss Phillips is dangerously hurt!"

There were excited screams among the women and a stir among the men as he carried his burden across the piazza and into the wide hall. There in the full light he saw--Miss Elise Phillips talking quietly to Donald MacLane. He almost let fall the woman in his arms. He looked again at her face. She was Lola DeVale.

Dr. Sheldon and Lola's mother fortunately were at hand. At their direction Rutledge carried the young woman up the stairs and laid her on a couch in her sitting-room. She opened her eyes and smiled languidly at him as he put her down.

Elise and all the other young people knew of Rutledge's mistake as to Lola's identity, but Elise could not understand why he blushed so furiously as he gave her an account of the mishap.

* * * * *

At her next _tete-a-tete_ with Rutledge Lola gave him her very sincerest thanks and--laughed at him till he was uncomfortable. Finally she said: "You are a very gallant but a very mercenary knight, Mr. Rutledge." Rutledge was hopelessly confused.

Lola continued, mischief in her eyes: "Alas! the spirit of commercialism has pervaded even Southern Chivalry, and forlorn maidens must pay as they go." Rutledge was plainly resentful.

"Now I am very unselfish, Mr. Rutledge, and--I wish it _had_ been Elise." Her mischief dissolved in a confiding smile, full of sympathy,--and Rutledge was very humble.

Lola DeVale's sympathy was warm and irresistible, and before he was aware he was telling her of his love for Elise in a way to set her interest a-tingle.

"Why don't you tell her of it?" asked Lola. "Tell her that it just overwhelms all earlier loves."

"Earlier loves? I never loved any other woman," Rutledge answered.

"Oh, of course not." Lola could scarcely repress a smile at the thought that a man always swears only his last passion is genuine.

"But tell her--tell her!" she repeated.

"I have told her."

"When?"

"Three years ago."

"Plainly? or with artistic indirectness?"

"Plainly."

Lola looked at him incredulously, but saw that he was telling the truth.

"The sly thing!" she exclaimed under her breath. "But tell her _again_! I declare if I were a man and loved Elise--and I would love none else--I'd tell her so every time I saw her."

"Oh I'll not love another--no fear of that," Evans replied half lightly; "but as for telling her again, self-respect will not--"

"Self-respect--fudge! If I loved a girl I'd tell her so a hundred times--and marry her too--in spite of everything."

"Perhaps so," Evans commented skeptically.

Lola was shooting in the dark, but her warm heart would not let her leave the matter at rest. Both because of her desire, being happily in love herself, to see the love affairs of her friends go smoothly, and because of the riddle it presented to her, she approached Elise again in order to straighten out the tangled skein for everybody's satisfaction. She thought to match her wits against Elise's and proceeded with more caution.

"By the way, Elise," she said, apropos of nothing at all, "I think you were right about Senator Rutledge's being very much in love with that young woman you told me about."

Elise exhibited a perfect indifference and said nothing.

"I asked him about her, after becoming duly confidential and sympathetic, of course, and he confirmed your statement. He still loves the girl--oh, you ought to hear him tell of it. 'He will never love another till he's dead, dead, dead,'--or words to that effect: but he will not tell her--"

Elise was listening with a polite but languid interest.

"--again. He thinks his self-respect forbids; but _I_ think--"

"Did he say that? To you?" Elise demanded.

"Yes; when I asked h--"

"Well now, once and for all, Lola, I tell you I despise that man, and never must you mention his name to me again!"

"But Elise, I think he--"

"Stop, Lola! I'll not hear another word!"

"But let me tell you, Elise. He--"

"No! Stop _now_! Not another word if you care for my friendship. I'll never speak to you again if you speak of him to me!"

Elise's anger was at white heat, and she looked and spoke like her father. Lola was frightened at her manner, but made another brave attempt to set matters straight, which was met by such a blaze of personal resentment in Elise's eyes that she gave up in abject defeat--though she did pluck up courage to fire a parting shot.

"Very well, my dear," she said, as if dismissing the subject.... "I have something of yours I must give you before I go. There--take it," and she kissed the expectant Elise warmly on the lips as she added: "Senator Rutledge gave it to me by mistake as he carried me up the hill the other night."

*CHAPTER XIX*

Lily Porter finally became conscious that she was the special attraction for a stranger who regularly every other Sunday evening sat in a forward pew and listened to her singing with attentive interest, but who showed little or no care for any of the service beside. Several months had gone by before she noticed him and his faithful attention to herself. When she did realize his presence she was conscious that he had been paying her this tribute for a long time. She observed him quietly and satisfied herself that he came only to see or to hear her. He did not force himself upon her vision, but none the less did she understand that she was the chief object of his respectful consideration.

The preacher's manner and style of thought did not appeal to Hayward, while Lily Porter's face and voice did. He always sat where he could look at her in the choir-loft, for he argued that as he went only to see her he would see as much of her as possible. His face was mobile and easily read, and as he was good to look upon and so evidently appreciative of her efforts the girl came ere long to sing with an eye to his approval and admiration--to sing for him and to him. This interested her for a time, but she was piqued at length for that he seemed content to admire at a distance and made no effort to come nearer to her.

One evening, unexpectedly to them both, a negro prominent among his race because of his position as Registrar for the District, John K. Brown, with whom Hayward had picked up a mutually agreeable though casual acquaintance, introduced him to the singer in the aisle of the church.

"Miss Lily, I want to introduce my friend Mr. John Hayward, who goes into extravagances about your singing--as he very properly should."

Hayward was overjoyed at his good fortune. To be presented as John Brown's friend was a passport to the best negro society in Washington. He was as much pleased to know that Brown regarded him so favourably as he was delighted to meet the young woman. As he walked with her to the door she presented him to her mother, a bright mulatto woman about fifty or more, who did the grand dame to the best of her ability: which was indeed perfect as to manner but was betrayed the moment she tried to do too many things with the English language.

When he had opportunity Hayward was profuse in his thanks to Brown, and told him volubly of his love for music. Finding a sympathetic listener, he was led on to an impulsive story of the social longings and lackings in his life. Brown, more than ever impressed with the young fellow's intelligence and worthiness, was at some pains thereafter to look after him and set him going in a congenial social current.

With Brown's approval and his own gifts and graces it was not remarkable that Hayward won his way to social popularity as fast as his confining duties would permit. He began to see much of Lily Porter and was consistent in his devotion to her despite the fact that the habit of his college days of being attracted by each new and pretty face still measurably clung to him. His information and accomplishments were of a sort superior to that of any of the young women he met, and none made a serious impression on his heart. Lily Porter was more nearly his equal in education and general cultivation of mind and manner, and was really the most attractive to him; but his harmless vanity could not forego the admiration of the others, and he gave some little time to small conquests. He did homage to Lily by his evident admiration of her talents and comeliness and by his unconcealed pleasure in her friendship. At the same time he met her petty tyrannies and autocratic demands with an unmoved indifference.

He had become very well acquainted with Lily and had called on her several times before Henry Porter knew that his daughter was receiving the footman whom he had snubbed some months before.

"Lily, who was that young man that called on you last night?"

"Mr. Hayward."