Chapter II: Book I: The Reaping (2)

It was twilight, and Mrs. Allestree sat alone by her drawing-room window watching for her son’s return from his workshop. She had been a very handsome woman, and even in age retained much of her beauty and dignity, and her figure and face were finely outlined as she sat against the folds of heavy velvet curtains, looking down into the street where the lamps had just been lighted and shone with the vivid whiteness of electricity on the smooth pavements, while the carriages and motor-cars were beginning to wheel by on their return from afternoon receptions, teas, and matinées. Below, at the circle, she saw the gayly lighted electric cars sweeping around the curve and receding to a final vanishing point of light at the top of a distant hill, while above it the sky was still bright with the afterglow and one star shone like the tip of a naked sword. The city in this retired quarter showed its most kind and friendly aspect, suggesting nothing of the struggle and rush of modern life, but only the whirl of winter gayety, the ceaseless rounds of society.

Within was an atmosphere of repose and comfort; the tea-table was set by the open fire, and the rose-patterned, silver tea kettle was emitting a little cloud of steam when Allestree finally opened the door.

“Well, mother, you here alone in the dark?” he remarked, as he turned on some light and revealed the warm homeliness of the large old-fashioned room, with its mahogany furniture, its soft rugs and velvet hangings, and its long, oval mirrors framed in gold and surmounted by cupids and lovers’ knots.

“Never less alone than when alone,” she replied brightly, and then glancing shrewdly at his slightly perturbed expression, she added: “you’ll take some tea, you look tired.”

“No,” he replied, throwing himself into an easy chair by the fire; “Rose made some tea in the studio, and it’s a bit too late now for another cup.”

“So Rose kept her appointment? I hope you got on with the portrait.”

Allestree shrugged his shoulders. “Impossible, Fox came and then Lily Osborne. The gods don’t mean that I shall finish that picture. And Reynolds painted several of his best in eight hours!” he added despairingly.

But his mother ignored the latter part of his speech. “Fox?” she glanced at him keenly, “then the House adjourned?”

“Yes, and he knew Rose was to be there,” Allestree laughed a little bitterly; “it was the merest chance in the world, he was with me when I met her the other day. Of course he came in as handsome, as gay as ever--and as careless!”

Mrs. Allestree had left her seat by the window and was mechanically pouring out a cup of tea, her fine old hands under their falls of lace as firm and deft as a girl’s. “I wish he was less careless,” she observed quietly; “I’ve just heard some more gossip about him; Martha O’Neal was here to lunch. It appears that he was really selected for the Navy, could have had the portfolio for the lifting of his finger and, at the last moment, when there was no apposite reason for a change, there was a deal and White got it.”

“Well, we can’t blame him for that, can we?” said her son smiling, “you know the saying is that the Administration will not ‘stand hitched.’”

She shook her head. “That’s not it--he made the deal himself; he deliberately favored White, and you can imagine what is said; every one believes that silly story that he’s desperately in love with Margaret still, and, of course, it looks like it. He could have saved Wingfield, and he didn’t, and you know Mrs. Wingfield hates Margaret!”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Allestree calmly; “Fox is too much of an egoist. Probably he didn’t want to go into the Cabinet; in fact I’ve heard him say it was a safe receiving-vault for the defunct candidates. Can’t the women ever forget that he was in love with Margaret?”

“Possibly they could,” his mother replied shrewdly, “if Margaret wasn’t in love with him.”

“Good Lord, how you all flatter Fox!” her son exclaimed, with exasperation, “for my part, I can’t fancy that Margaret ever loved him; she treated him abominably to marry White, and now she has everything she wants, money, luxury and power; she’s a perfect little sybarite.”

The old woman looked at him with an expression of affectionate tolerance. “My dear boy,” she said quietly, “Margaret is wildly unhappy; money never yet purchased happiness; that’s the reason she behaves so outrageously. Have you heard of her latest? She danced a kind of highland fling or a jig after her dinner the other night. White was furious, and they’re telling a story of an open quarrel after the musicale when he swore at her and she laughed in his face.”

“White is a brute, but Margaret chose him with her eyes open,” he replied, “and I think Fox feels it. At any rate there’s nothing in that gossip about Wingfield; he had quarrelled with the President. You know the story is that he was found walking up and down his hall, the Wednesday after Congress met, shaking his fist and shouting about the message. ‘That damned message!’ he said, ‘it will ruin the party--if I’d only been here!’ He was away at the time it was written and, of course, that paragraph did virtually condemn his administration of the department. He had to resign; that goes without saying!”

“I suppose so, and Mrs. Wingfield talked; we all know what a tongue she has!”

Allestree laughed, leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. “Well, she’s going, anyway.”

“But she isn’t,” sighed Mrs. Allestree; “she’s to stay over two months, heaven knows why!”

“The Lord deliver Margaret then!” exclaimed her son, still laughing.

Mrs. Allestree nodded sagely. “Margaret can hold her own though, Robert, and everybody knows how she has insulted Mrs. Wingfield. Margaret’s _bon mots_ have convulsed the town time and again. You know, as well as I do, that it was Margaret who set half the stories going about her. Margaret can do and say the most shocking and heartless things at one moment and be the most charming creature at the next. She often seems to me to be a perfect Undine, to have no soul! Really, sometimes her treatment of White is impossible. Even Lily Osborne professes to be shocked at the dance the other night; she told Martha O’Neal that it was as suggestive as Salome.”

“Mrs. Osborne is a hypocrite,” retorted Allestree scornfully; “by the way, I’m to paint her portrait. I put it at a figure which, I thought, was prohibitive and precluded all possibility of an order, but she closed it at once, without turning an eyelash.”

Mrs. Allestree gave him a long, comprehending look. “White pays for it then,” she remarked dryly.

“Of course,” he replied, “and White pretends to quarrel with his wife’s wild ways!”

The old woman set down her teacup and looked mournfully into the fire. “It’s a terrible business from beginning to end,” she said finally; “when I think of those two poor babies! Little Estelle is just beginning to notice things too, and Margaret seems utterly indifferent to them. What is the world coming to?”

Allestree laughed and patted his mother’s hand. “You can’t regulate it, mother,” he said cheerfully.

“Heaven forbid! There are too many divorces; one can’t go out now without meeting men with two wives and women with a plurality of husbands; yet we are objecting to seating the Mormons in Congress!”

“After all, is a divorce worse than such a marriage as Margaret’s?” her son rejoined, indolently enjoying the controversy.

“There should have been no marriage,” she retorted firmly, pushing back her chair and rising with a rustle of silks, “White could never have loved her, he hasn’t been true to her for a moment. Her beauty pleased him, or that charm which is more subtle than beauty and which makes her what she is. Now he’s lost his head over the gorgeous coloring, the flesh and blood of Lily Osborne; she would have pleased Rubens, Robert. By the way, Martha O’Neal told me of a curious rumor about her; it is said that she is in the secret employ of the Russian Government; you know she has no conscience.”

“A spy?” Allestree laughed, “but why here? We’ve done Russia a good turn, it’s Japan that is chewing the rag.”

“Robert! what a disgusting expression. But of course you know the tales of the Black Cabinet and that our embassy dispatches were tampered with.”

“Now you’re in your element, mother; you love a mystery!”

The old woman put her hand on his head, stroking back his hair with a fond gesture. “Tell me about Rose,” she said, watching him narrowly, with all her maternal intuition alive; “did she sit patiently--and will your portrait please you? That’s really the only question; every one else is sure to be pleased.”

He shook his head. “I can’t get it to please me,” he replied quietly; “after all, Rose’s beauty is less a question of feature than I thought. I might interpret a soul if I were a Raphael or a Fra Angelico--as it is, it will never look like her.”

“Nonsense! Rose is very human; don’t put her on too high a pedestal, my dear,” his mother counselled wisely; “you are too sensitive, too imaginative. Fox would never make the mistake of treating a woman like a saint on a pillar!”

Allestree made an inarticulate sound and rose also. “Fox--no!” he said a little bitterly; “Fox could make love to Saint Catherine without offending her; he’s one of the men whom women love!”

His mother smiled but made no reply; at heart she was fully aware that there was much truth in the saying. Old as she was, she felt the indescribable spell of Fox’s genius, and knowing her son’s heart as she did, she foresaw difficulties in the way of his happiness if his cousin should forget his old love and find a new one. Much as she had desired and endeavored to break up the unfortunate intimacy between Fox and the Whites, she had not foreseen that her own son’s happiness might be, in a way, dependent on Margaret’s power to hold her place in the regard of her early lover. As she stood looking at the fire in silence the shrewd old woman reflected that the ways of Providence are inscrutably hard to divine and that, after all, it is sometimes fatal to thrust one’s hand into the fire to save a brand from the burning.

V

THAT Mrs. Allestree’s divinations were not very far short of the truth, or unlikely of fulfilment, would have been apparent to her could she have looked in, a few weeks later, on Rose and Fox together in Judge Temple’s fine old library. In the judge’s estimation the library was the one spot of the house, the sanctum sanctorum, and its noble book-lined walls imparted a warmth of color and an erudite dignity to a room of fine proportions lighted by an immense southern bow-window which overlooked the walled garden, where Rose had cultivated every flower which blooms in summer and every evergreen vine and ilex which lives in winter.

Over the high wide mantel was one fine old painting which testified both to the extravagance and distinctive taste of the judge’s grandfather, and on the book littered table stood a slender vase filled with roses. There was an exquisite delicacy, a refinement, an atmosphere of culture, even in such minutiæ as these, which gave a detailed charm to the perspective of the entire house.

Rose herself sat in a high-backed chair by the open fire, her bright head and slender figure outlined against the dark background, while she listened, with all the freshness and enthusiasm of girlhood, to Fox’s gay, easy talk, his dog, Sandy, lying stretched on the hearthrug between them in the blissful content of physical comfort and the instinctive assurance of safety and friendship which Rose’s presence seemed to increase.

To Fox, half the girl’s charm lay in a certain rigid mental uprightness, a clear ethical point of view, which was entirely different from the careless tolerance of the smart set in which he had hitherto almost exclusively moved. Fox had no religion; Rose was devout, and swift in her denunciation of wrong, for she had all the terrible unrelenting standards of youth and the religion of youth which is wont to be the religion of extremes. Her character was indeed just emerging from that raw period of girlhood which is full of passionate beliefs and renunciations as well as a shy pride which can inflict keen mental suffering for a little hurt; a season when the mind is wonderfully receptive and the young, untried spirit full of beautiful inspirations, hopes, and beliefs which are too frequently destined to woeful annihilation in later years.

Fox had recently made a great speech, a speech which had filled both the floor and the galleries of the House to suffocation, and even thronged the corridors with spectators who could gain no admittance, yet, while it had thrilled Rose’s pulses with excitement and enthralled her with the spell of its eloquence, her rigid sense of the proprieties had been shocked; she had felt its flowing periods its scornful references to mysteries which seemed to Fox as rotten as they were immaterial, and the fact that she had taken umbrage at phrases of his, which seemed to him sufficiently innocuous to escape all criticism, amused and pleased him. It was a new point of view; he liked to tease her into expressing a shy opinion, or into a sudden outburst of righteous disapproval which brought the color to her cheek and the sparkle to her eye. It delighted him to feel that even disapproving of him she could not hate him, for in their dawning intimacy he found ample assurance of her liking, and the unguarded friendliness of her feeling showed in her eagerness to win him to her side on any mooted question.

He leaned back in his chair, watching her with a keen appreciation of her loveliness and her unconscious betrayal of her own emotions. “So! after all you didn’t approve of me the other day?” he said, with perfect good humor; “you were really condemning my ethics while you applauded--you know you did applaud, you told me you congratulated me on my ‘great speech.’”

Rose returned his teasing look seriously. “I did congratulate you; it was a great speech, but I didn’t like it,” she said in a low voice and with an evident effort.

“And why?” he asked, his brilliant gaze bent more fully on her.

She turned away, her cheek red, and resting her chin on her hand she fell to studying the fire though she was still courageous. “I didn’t like the tone of it; you belittle your own great gifts,” she said softly, hesitating slightly and choosing her words with care; “you make them of your own creation when they are really given you, given you as the five talents were given to the man in the Scriptures. You haven’t laid them away in a napkin; why then are you ashamed to give the glory where it is justly due? You can’t deny that there is glory in it all!”

He smiled. “You make me feel like a thief. To be entirely honest, I’m not religious, but I read the Bible and Shakespeare as dictionaries of eloquence. Do you think me a dreadful sinner--worse than those on whom the tower of Siloam fell?”

Rose bit her lip. “I’ve no doubt you think me a hypocrite!” she replied.

“I should like to tell you what I think of you,” he said softly, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, looking across at her, “but I’m afraid--afraid of you!”

She laughed a little with a charming diffidence, for she had met the sweetness of his glance which was full of gentle admiration.

“I sometimes wonder,” he continued, “how you would meet a great moral question which involved your happiness and, perhaps, that of another whom you loved.”

She shivered a little, stretching out one slender hand to the fire. “Ah,” she said, with a faint smile, “I hope I may never meet such a question! I see you make me a Pharisee.”

“God forbid!” he replied quickly, “you belong rather to the Christian martyrs; I’m either a Barbarian or a Scythian!”

They both laughed softly at this, and Rose forgot her momentary embarrassment. “I should try to be just!” she said.

He shook his head with that rare smile of his which seemed half mocking, half caressing. “You couldn’t be!” he retorted provokingly, “you are a little Puritan, narrow, firm, righteous; I begin to be more and more afraid of you!”

She lifted her chin. “You think me too narrow to be just? Isn’t that the charge that you worldlings always bring against--against--”

“The righteous?” he supplied quickly.

They laughed again. “You convict me out of my own mouth; I shall dare no more arguments!”

“Ah, now you know how I feel under your criticisms!” he flashed back at her.

His manner wore its happiest aspect, it was delightful to be with her; through all contradictions he began to feel the temperamental sympathy, and she, too young to understand these subtleties, was aware of the glow and warmth of his presence, the sweetness of his manner which could be, when he was neither stern nor angry nor self-absorbed, one of a delicacy and sentiment uncommon in a man; with all his egotism, his spoiled acceptance of the world’s homage, he retained qualities that were inherently noble and lovable.

“But I have more reason,” she declared with warmth, “it’s unworthy of you to espouse any cause for the mere sake of party, ‘to stand pat’ when your heart is against the issue; I don’t believe in it!”

“You have been reading revolutionary documents; you are full of this new heresy,” he retorted, still laughing softly; “you are like some of the new politicians; they pull down the pillars of the temple on their own heads.”

She leaned forward eagerly, her eyes sparkling. “Do you know what this party worship reminds me of?” she said, “this devotion in a man to his party? The tomb of Rosicrucius and the statue which crushed the worshipper who entered there! So your party’s graven image crushes out a man’s originality.”

“Little heretic!” he mocked, “little revolutionist! A party is a great machine; we can’t do without it!”

She shook her head vehemently. “The children of Israel thought they couldn’t do without the golden calf! You were not so strong a party man five years ago, do you remember?”

He looked at her quickly. “Do you?”

“I read your speeches,” she confessed with charming ingenuousness, her eyes kindling with emotion; “I read the first speech they ever printed in the newspapers here. I’ve wanted to tell you how beautiful I thought it, how eloquent!”

He regarded her a moment in silence; he felt suddenly that there had always been a link between them, that across space and time he had spoken not to the public but to her, and even been understood by her; that the virgin whiteness of her young soul had received the inscription of his mind. Then he was as suddenly and vividly conscious of his folly, his egotism, his unworthiness! She was too lovely and too innocent to have received the impression of his spirit; and he--the thought of his careless life, his worship at Margaret’s shrine, the strength of the old fetters which bound him, made him suddenly humble. And then, the beauty of her smile, the warm sympathy of her temperament created an angry impatience of such restrictions; with characteristic scorn of conventionalities he thrust them aside. The perfect innocence and spontaneity of her praise and appreciation was the most subtle of all flattery, and he possessed the temperament of genius which is, at one moment, above the consideration of either praise or blame and the next quivers with sensibility at the breath of either. He returned her shy but glowing look with one of unusual humility. “I feel as if I didn’t deserve it,” he said gently; “it is an exquisite happiness to be praised by you!”

She smiled. “And I feel ashamed to have set myself up as a judge,” she replied quickly, “but it was because--because I didn’t want you to fall below your own standard! You see what it is to have a record of great achievements.”

“Hereafter I shall only seek to deserve your praise,” he rejoined, “but I feel myself a sublime egoist; I’ve sat here talking of myself, of my work, and meanwhile I remember that my aunt told me of your voice. Why do you never sing for me?”

“Because you have never asked me,” she replied simply, with an involuntary smile.

Fox leaned toward her with an eloquent gesture of appeal. “Did I deserve that? Am I such a miserable egoist?” he exclaimed, and then: “I ask you now.”

Rose was entirely unaffected, and she went at once to the piano in the room beyond, and seating herself began to play the first soft notes of a prelude. Fox had followed her and took his place near the instrument, again observing her with keen appreciation; her sweetness, her whiteness of soul had taken possession of his imagination with a force which he had supposed, until this moment, impossible. For, after one bitter and humiliating experience in the drama of love and passion, he had withdrawn with seared sensibilities, and assuming a new attitude had regarded women as a detached spectator, fancying that he possessed a high degree of eclecticism in comparing the emotional phases of their existence which should be henceforth quite apart from his; love and marriage were mere episodes in a man’s life, and feeling no need of assuming either the duties or the responsibilities of the latter state he had not seriously contemplated the former as anything but a remote possibility. Besides, in a curious way, his life seemed to be linked with Margaret White’s; she continued to make claims upon him, to tacitly presuppose his devotion, and he had been too uncertain of himself, too indolent, too easily drifting with the tide to make any effort to free himself from the shackles of that old love affair. But all these things slipped out of mind as he sat listening to Rose’s song.

It was a simple Italian love-song, soft, caressing, gently plaintive, and peculiarly suited to her voice, but the air and the words were nothing compared with that voice. When Mrs. Allestree spoke of it, Fox had thought of it as the usual vocal accomplishment of a raw schoolgirl, something young and sweet, no doubt, but full of crudity and weakness. Instead, he was suddenly aware that he was listening to a voice which had a scope and richness beyond any that he had ever heard except in opera, and there were but few of the great singers who had such a gift as this. The thrill and exquisite freshness of its tones touched his very soul. He found himself listening with a keen feeling of depression; this gift of hers lifted her at once into another sphere than his, and he reflected that her beautiful body was an exquisite envelope for the spirit, her voice its divine interpretation.

His mind drifted back to the sweeter and more sacred relations of life, to those simple emotions which approach more nearly the divine. The complex affairs of the world, of politics, passion, intrigue, slipped away from him, and the holier aspects of a pure and devoted life took visible shape to his imagination in this young and beautiful girl. He had never fully appreciated his own susceptibility to the uplifting power of music, and the charm of her voice seemed more poignant because so unexpected; he lost himself in a delightful revery, the poet in him awoke with a thrill of pleasure,--the joy we feel in discovering a new power, a larger grasp; he was no longer conscious of his surroundings, but only of the supreme delight of her presence.

As she finished singing, her hands slipped from the keys into her lap and she turned and looked at him, smiling, expecting some applause, unconscious of the depth of his emotion. For a moment he said nothing, then he rose and held out his hand, his eyes eloquent of feeling.

“Exquisite!” he said, and she blushed with pleasure, knowing that he could not express his appreciation in words.

She laid her hand in his, rising too. “Thank you,” she exclaimed, “I’m so glad!”

As she spoke and while he still held her hand, intending to tell her how profoundly she had moved him, they were both suddenly aware of some one’s entrance, and turned to see Mrs. White standing just inside the drawing-room door. She had entered unannounced, and stopped abruptly as she came upon the little scene. She was elaborately dressed in black velvet with ermine furs, and an immense bizarre hat of violet velvet and chiffon with masses of violets on the wide brim. Under her arm was a toy Pomeranian as black as her gown and as glossy as silk, its little black head just appearing over her immense ermine muff. She had evaded the servant’s intention of announcing her, she had thought only of surprising Rose at her music and had come upon this! She stood still, a sudden spiritual perception sweeping over her and thrusting a blade of agony into her heart. Every vestige of color ran out of her cheeks, her gray eyes dilated. When they turned they surprised a look on her face which distorted its usual gayety and defiance. Then she thrust it aside with a great effort of will, with the force of a new and vivid determination, and greeted their amazement with her light little laugh.

“Caught!” she said, “next time I shall send a footman--or ring a bell!”

Rose came forward with a blushing but eager welcome, but Fox stood in a moment of awkwardness which both vexed and amused the woman. Men have no resources, she thought bitterly.

As for him he experienced a shock of dismay; he was trying to shake off a vague feeling which possessed him that he had no right to be there, that he owed allegiance still to Margaret, that her look, her manner, her very presence demanded it while, in fact, she had long ago forfeited all claims upon him.

Meanwhile she had led the way back to the library, driven Sandy away from her Pomeranian, and was seated in Rose’s chair, an elegant and conspicuously important figure, at once the centre of the stage; she had one of those personalities which are immediately predominant in society. “So,” she said lightly, “this is why William deserted my Sunday afternoons; I should have looked for him in vain!”

“It seems you are yourself a deserter,” Fox retorted, “this is your day at home.”

“You thought me safely anchored?” she laughed, with a little mocking intonation, caressing the Pomeranian’s ears; “I should be, but I had to make a call of condolence. Wicklow insisted; you know he’s so conventional and so determined upon being the popular public man! Mrs. Wingfield lost her grandmother two weeks ago so, of course, I must call and make my condolences!”

Fox laughed softly; her manner brought back the normal tone of affairs and he knew her moods to perfection. “Of course you condoled?” he said.

She shrugged her shoulder, looking at Rose. “My dear,” she said, “you will be interested; no mere man could understand. I’ve always been uncertain in my mind about the correct mourning for a grandmother; now I know,--it’s settled beyond appeal.”

“By Mrs. Wingfield?” Rose smiled her incredulity.

“By Mrs. Wingfield--it’s shrimp pink!” Margaret said, “she had on a tea-gown with lace ruffles; it was a violent, vivid shrimp pink, and her nose was red. Of course I said all manner of appropriate things. Everybody stared, then I made a grand finale and departed. She was furious. And Wicklow sends me out to make his way for him!” and she threw out her hands with a little gesture of mock despair.

“Why do you tease that poor soul so?” Rose protested laughing, “she falls an easy prey, too. I heard they were going abroad soon.”

“In three months,” Margaret said, “to the Riviera; they tried Switzerland, she told me, a year ago, but she found ‘it wasn’t really fashionable.’”

“Margaret!” Rose shook an admonishing finger, “you make her say such things, you know you do!”

Mrs. White raised her eyebrows, her eyes haggard. “One would suppose me a Sapphira. She truly said it and I kept on asking her what she said; she repeated it twice,--they were all listening of course, and M. de Caillou tried to look plaintive.”

“He’s solemn enough anyway, Margaret,” Fox said, amused; “he might well be shocked at your levity.”

“Oh, I always want to make him sit up and beg for a lump of sugar,” she retorted scornfully.

As she spoke she rose and went to the window, looking out with an abruptness of manner which seemed to take no account of their presence. She was struggling with an overwhelming dread; with the keen intuition of unhappiness she read Fox’s mood, and her very soul cried out against it. But she was an actress, an actress of long training and accomplishment. She turned carelessly, lifting her Pomeranian to her shoulder and resting her cheek against its long black fur. “There’s my motor back,” she said, catching a glimpse of it through the long window in the drawing-room. “I’m going home to receive Wicklow’s public. Can I borrow Fox, Rose?”

Rose turned easily, mistress of herself and aware of his annoyance, keenly alive to the possibility that his old love for Margaret might still be a factor in his life. “I’m afraid I haven’t asked Mr. Fox to take a cup of tea,” she said laughing; “father is late and you know we dine early on Sundays; we’re very unconventional and old-fashioned.”

Margaret was trailing slowly to the door, her velvet draperies and her long ermine stole seeming heavy and burdensome on her slender figure. “Oh, I know,” she retorted, “you’re Old Testament Christians; I’m always expecting to see the scapegoat caught in your fence-railing! In spite of my shortcomings though, you are going to sing for me some Sunday, Rose, and make my sinners think they’ve found the gate of Paradise.”

But Rose shook her head, laughing. “Ask father,” she said; “he declares that I shall not exhibit!”

VI

“MAMMA, give me the beads!”

Margaret turned reluctantly and looked down at the child, a girl between five and six years old, without even the ephemeral beauty of babyhood, and showing already a strong resemblance to her father. “By all means, only don’t swallow them; it’s after the doctor’s office hours,” she replied carelessly.

She was seated before her toilet-table clad in a silk kimono, and her maid had just finished doing her hair and gone in search of some minor accessories of the toilet, for her mistress was dressing for a large dinner at Mrs. O’Neal’s. Meanwhile Margaret sat looking into the oval mirror in front of her, making a keen and critical survey of her own face and figure. As she did so she moved a candle slightly, and thus throwing a stronger light on her features was startled by the haggard look in her eyes, the purple rings beneath them, the hollowing of her cheeks. Was she beginning to lose her beauty? The thought alarmed her, and she leaned forward looking at herself more closely. Yes, there were lines, and she was thin, deplorably, unquestionably thin. The vivid misery of her expression in this unguarded moment was apparent even to her. Heavens, did she look like that to others? The thought was pregnant with fierce mortification; she must be wearing her heart upon her sleeve! And Fox? Was she losing him? The keen pang of agony which had shot through her at the sight of Fox and Rose together, at the glimpse of that little scene by the piano, recurred to her with a burning sense of humiliation. Was she to taste this bitter cup also?

She had known for years the miserable mistake of her choice of White, she had grovelled in the dust of repentance, but there had been one drop of honey in the cup of gall, one saving grace in the situation; she was sure that Fox still loved her, that he would be true to her. No other woman had been set up in her shrine. She knew how deep the hurt had been, and she had fondly believed that she alone could heal it. Through all those arid years, those years of gayety, of luxury, of false happiness and false show, she had hugged her secret to her heart; Fox still loved her!

And now? What had she read in the kindled sympathy of that look at Rose Temple? She bit her lip, staring into the mirror with haggard eyes. Could he give her up? She, who knew so much of the brutal egotism of which a man can be capable, she who had seen such a nature as White’s revealed in the scorching intimacy of married life,--dared she picture Fox as unselfish enough to be still true to her, to content himself with comforting her wretchedness when love and youth and beauty--beauty such as she had never worn--might be his? Her sore heart throbbed passionately in her bosom. She had expiated her mistake, she had suffered for her fault, she had a right to be happy! She would be happy; it is the eternal cry of the human soul. “Every pitifullest whipster,” says Carlyle, “seeks happiness, a happiness impossible even for the gods.” And Margaret’s wilful soul cried out for happiness; why should it not be hers? She was shackled, it was true, with fetters of her own forging, but--the eager thought of liberty darted through her mind like an arrow--others had been so bound and were now free, others were making new lives out of the old, and the ease with which such ties can be dissolved was not the least of her temptations.

Her glance fell suddenly on the child, Estelle, playing soberly with the amethyst beads which she had begged for. The little girl had learned to be quiet; if she was noisy or in the way she was immediately dismissed to the nursery, and she had her lesson by heart; she was making no noise but a soft crooning sound as she fondled the beads. Her hair was flaxen, her face dull and not pretty, her eyes like her father’s. Margaret shuddered and averted her gaze; how cruel that she should look like him! And the baby, only two years old but already like him; she felt it her curse, the retribution of her loveless marriage, that these two living and visible links to bind her to her vows were both like the man she had married without love and without respect, because she could not give up her life and its luxuries to be poor. A marriage with Fox then would have meant the renunciation of everything which seemed to her essential to existence, it would have combined the miseries of cheap living and self-denial, of small and hideous economies, which made her shudder even to contemplate; she had always been a sybarite. Brought up by an extravagant, pleasure-loving mother, by a father who had spent all to live well, Margaret had been unable to conceive anything more horrible than genteel poverty, and White had offered her a dazzling vista of wealth, position, social success. She was very young, raw, untried, and the temptation had been too great.

As she sat there, idly, at her toilet-table, surrounded by all the beautiful and splendid luxuries of a boudoir which had been fitted up with reckless expense to meet her whims and self-indulgences, she remembered with keen self-contempt her excitement over her own magnificent wedding, her tour through France and Italy in a motor-car which had cost a fortune; then a keen pang wrung her heart as she remembered the boy they had killed in the little crooked Italian village and the people who had stoned them! She had felt it then as a cruel prognostication of ill luck, a terrible beginning of her married life and now, whenever she closed her eyes, she could see again the narrow street, the brown Italian houses, that seemed ready to topple over on them, the children playing, the vivid sky above--then the cry, the awful scene, the child’s dead face. She shuddered; so had her gilded dream of happiness ended; a cry, a rush of misery, and now her sore heart to hide, the dance of death to go on to the end unless--again came the haunting thought; it had beset her lately, tempted her, teased her. It was so easy, it would be so easy to break the bonds, and who could blame her? To be happy!

“Mamma, it broke!” Estelle cried suddenly, with a quivering lip, “I didn’t do it!”

Margaret turned and looked at her. “No matter,” she said strangely, “it broke easily, didn’t it, Estelle? Thank heaven, one can break chains!”

As she spoke there was a knock at her door, and White himself entered. He was not a large man but his face was broad and heavy, his hair had been light but was now gray above the ears, and his jaws were slightly purpled by high living. There were some who thought him distinguished, chiefly those who always perceive a halo around officialdom and wealth. Actually he belonged to that type of man who has been in clubs, political and social, from boyhood, who has unlimited money, a mighty egotism and the unfailing preference for his neighbor’s wife. Meeting Margaret’s challenging glance he paused near the door, his hand on a chair, and looked at her with a cold fixed eye which neither changed nor wavered as he spoke.

“I have something to say to you,” he began in a hard dry tone; “it seems to me about time to speak out. I don’t know what’s come over you; you’re clever enough, but you seem to forget that I’m a public man. You were absolutely rude at the reception this afternoon, and your whims are intolerable. It’s all very annoying! If I choose to open my house to the public I expect my wife to accept the rôle and then to play it to the end.”

Margaret looked at him. “I fail to understand you,” she said ironically; “is this a lecture?”

“You may call it what you please,” he retorted angrily, walking to and fro; “you know well enough!”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m dressing for dinner--you’d better wait until another time,” she remarked with a yawn.

“There’s no time like the present,” he said harshly; “your manners were detestable to-day; you treated people like dogs!”

She laughed bitterly. “For instance?” she said, “Lily Osborne?”

“Mrs. Osborne knows better than to care!”

“She should!” Margaret mocked, “she should expect it; I congratulate you on her admirable humility.”

He gnawed his lip, the veins swelling in his forehead. “I warn you!” he cried fiercely, “I will not permit such behavior--your dance at the musicale is the talk of the town, and now you receive people who come here with indifference--and I’m a Cabinet minister!”

“Which is a miracle!” his wife replied, laughing softly and provokingly; “you made a mistake in your marriage, Wicklow; you should have chosen a more popular person.”

“I’m aware of my mistake!” he retorted, still walking, and picking up first one knick-knack and then another and setting them down again; “I was a damned fool! I thought you witty and fond of society; I fancied you a success and you can be one if you choose, but everything’s upside down with your whims. You keep Fox hanging around here--you know that he and I are at sword’s points in politics, you know that he--”

“Leave him out please!” Margaret interposed in a cold, hard voice. She had risen and her eyes glowed with passion.

White turned a lowering look on her. “Fox didn’t marry you!” he said cuttingly, “he was too wise!”

She made no reply; she could have answered that she had given up Fox to marry him, but the sting of the insult cut her to the quick, his allusive familiar tone was a whiplash. She turned away, her white face set, a singular light in her eyes. The passion of her hatred of him at that moment was almost beyond restraint; her very flesh quivered under the throb of her maddened nerves. His coarseness, his brutality, his sensuousness revolted her; she felt, under the sting of his lecture, a mere bondswoman, and her fetters fairly burned into her soul. It seemed to her that she could no longer breathe the same air with him.

The child caught her sleeve timidly. “Mamma, don’t!” she whispered, “please don’t make papa look so--I’m afraid!”

Margaret looking down at her saw anew that hateful likeness. “Go away!” she shuddered, “you’re just like him--I can’t bear it; go, I tell you!”

The child’s hand dropped and her lip quivered with impotent anguish; she could not understand, but she read her mother’s chilled, repellant look and it frightened her still more; she drew her arm across her face and fell away with a sob. Margaret, whose heart would have been touched at another moment, hardly heard her.

“I want you to understand,” White began again, angrily, unmindful of the little girl’s presence, “my position. I’m a--”

Margaret interrupted him with an impatient gesture. “Gertrude is coming with my gown,” she said coolly, “I think you may spare me any more at present.”

White turned with a frown, and seeing the maid at the door with her arms full of white satin and lace, he gave way with a growl of discontent while his wife smiled calmly at the startled girl and bade her hurry; it was nearly eight o’clock.

* * * * *

At the dinner Margaret was the most conspicuous and observed figure at the table; she was strikingly dressed in white satin, her lace bodice fastened on the shoulders with jewels, her long, slender throat wound with pearls, and the black lace scarf--which she wore in deference to her hostess who was dining a cardinal--only accentuated the peculiar pallor of her face and the whiteness of her bare arms. She was radiant, witty, vivacious; her reckless tongue never ceased its unmerciful chatter. She talked Spanish to the Spanish ambassador, Italian to the Papal delegate who sat opposite, she entertained the cardinal. Every eye was on her; she was at once the most unusual and the most talked of woman in Cabinet and Diplomatic circles, and she had a wit as keen as it was unmerciful.

White watched her with an increasing feeling of uneasiness, he read defiance in her manner and began to dread some overt challenge; he had been untimely in his remonstrance, and he felt it too late.

Meanwhile their hostess loved the fair offender, and aided and abetted her in her wild sallies. Martha O’Neal was an old, old woman, the widow of a famous and wealthy jurist, and she was herself famous as a hostess and a social leader. Her eyes were still bright and keen, though her hair was white as snow; she knew everybody, everybody knew her; a worldly old woman who pursued society with the eagerness of a young débutante, played bridge for high stakes, smoked cigarettes in an exquisite holder of gold and amber, hurried to receptions, balls and routs with a tottering gait and a slightly vibrating head; a woman of large knowledge of the world, shrewd political partisanship and, withal, an eager and determined Romanist. Her dinners were famous; no more than ten ever sat down at her table, and usually five or six was the limit; she believed in conversation, not in isolated pairs. She had a service of gold, she would have no lights but candles. Huge candelabra were set in niches in her walls and on her table; her cut glass was famous, her roses the rarest money could purchase, yet nothing was lavish, nothing glaring or vulgar or new. The flavor of her old wine was as famous as the subdued taste of her surroundings; in a season of display and a city where riches are ostentatious, her drawing-room had the effect of space and repose, there was no crowding of useless and glittering furniture, no blaze of gold, no medley of bric-à-brac and sculpture. What she possessed represented the expenditure of a small fortune; for the rest, her beautiful mahogany, her rare silver were inherited.

The old woman, with the keen perception of long social training, had discovered all Margaret’s gifts as an entertainer, and her occasional outbreaks--as the famous dance and other not less bizarre performances--only gave her an additional value as an element of the unexpected. Mrs. O’Neal, therefore, rarely gave a dinner without asking Margaret, though she included Margaret’s husband with a grimace and a shrug. To-night she was delighted with her guest’s gayety, her wit, her endless vivacity, and she watched her across the wide table with some curiosity, much too keen not to observe the haggard misery which Margaret tried in vain to hide. The dark, Italian face of the delegate, the broad heaviness of White, who wore a perturbed frown, the keen, fine lines of the Spanish ambassador, the placid commonplace fairness of the ambassadress, the vivid coloring of Lily Osborne, the thin, ascetic face and keen eyes of the cardinal were all in sharp contrast to the pale face, the shadowy hair, the brilliant eyes of Margaret White. Mrs. O’Neal, watching her, wondered and was amused.

The dinner was a splendid affair, the delegate talked with the smooth ease, the habitual guarded courtesy of the Italian churchman, the ambassador was genial and responsive, the cardinal said little, throwing in a word now and then, but a word which set the ball rolling, and Margaret never failed. She had never appeared so witty, so sweet, so dangerously amiable.

It was over at last, the cardinal leaving early, and as he rose to depart, the women present being all ardent Catholics except Margaret, rustled forward to kneel and kiss his ring, while Mrs. O’Neal, following the old custom abroad, had bidden her footmen bring the candles, and the Romanists present were gathered at the head of the stairs to light his eminence to the door.

There was a little pause, and Margaret, a slender, white-robed figure, her shoulders veiled in a diaphanous black scarf, came forward to bid the cardinal farewell. White, who stood apart uneasy and conventional in the midst of the dramatic little scene, turned in time to see her kneel devoutly and kiss his eminence’s ring.

* * * * *

They drove home early through the lighted streets and neither spoke a word during the short drive to their own door. The footman helped Margaret with her wraps and attended her up the steps; White had entered ahead of her, and when the servants were gone and she had crossed the hall to the stairs he called her. She turned, with one foot on the lowest step and her hand on the balustrade, and seeing the deep flush on his heavy face she smiled a little with a slightly scornful shrug.

He looked across at her with an expression of savage anger, ill-suppressed. “Your conduct passes all patience!” he said bitterly, controlling himself with an effort; “you know where I stand, that I want to be President, and you flaunt your defiance!”

She returned his look, her head thrown back, her eyelids drooping, the delicate hollows in her cheeks apparent in the half light. “Pray, what is it now?” she asked provokingly.

He gnawed his lip, the cords standing out again on his forehead. “You know,” he said in a low voice, “you make yourself ridiculous by kissing the cardinal’s ring! I don’t care a damn for your religion, but I do care for the Protestant vote; they’ll have this in the papers!”

She laughed a tormenting laugh. “I’m thinking of becoming a Romanist!” she said.

He stared at her,--words were inadequate but his face whitened. The slim elegance of her figure in its splendid dress, her dusky hair, the dazzling white of her forehead, all seemed to him so many additional reasons to hate her. He had bought her for these things, for her charm, her wit, her daring, and she had turned every weapon against him and defied him. He felt a shiver of rage sweep through him, controlled it and turned away at last with clenched hands.

She remained standing, one hand on the balustrade, the other lightly holding her cloak which was slipping from her bare shoulders, and her eyes followed him with ineffable scorn and mockery.

VII

MEANWHILE William Fox was plunged deeply into the vortex of a busy session. The holidays were over and Congress had settled down to its task; it was the short session year, and the bulk of the large supply bills were being pushed steadily through the House,--the routine of business being constantly interrupted by the _fanfaronnade_ of noisy members and the agitation of tariff revision which hung like a nightmare over the party in power, and was a delightful fetich for the minority to drag out of its hiding-place and dangle before the eyes of their opponents. Fox, who was a leader, besides being a great orator, was constantly employed in holding down his followers, stamping out any sparks of rebellion and silencing the enemy.

He was sharply conscious, too, of the tongues which were busily engaged in circulating rumors about him, for there was more than the proverbial mustard seed of truth in the story which Mrs. Allestree had heard. He had indeed been on the point of entering the Cabinet, but White’s double dealing and not his voluntary surrender had been the cause of the exchange. There had been an agreement between the two men who were both from the same state; White had been allowed to come to the Senate to serve out an unexpired term of two years under a pledge to keep out of Fox’s way in the matter of Cabinet changes. He had broken his word at every point and had succeeded in a shrewd manœuvre to prejudice the Administration against the more clever man, no difficult matter where jealousy of Fox already existed. Moreover White had the inevitable prestige of great wealth, powerful connections and an easy conscience.

Fox had known many of these things when White received his portfolio, but his later discoveries had placed him in a position where he no longer cared to be so frequent a guest in White’s house; to break bread with the man who had wilfully maligned him was an offence to his coldly scrupulous pride. Fox was careless of public opinion, fond of indulging his own whims and fancies, and easy in his tolerance of offenders against himself, but when a man transgressed the laws that he laid down in matters of personal honor and integrity he could be uncompromisingly severe and contemptuous. Of late, therefore, Fox had absented himself from White’s table and from those evenings--famous among the favored few who obtained invitations--when Margaret entertained the brains and the talent of the capital. Literary men were always there, artists, musicians, scientists; it was said of Mrs. White that she would entertain a famous thief if he had wit. But there had been another and a more potent attraction for Fox; he had found the seclusion of Judge Temple’s library, the old judge’s slow and studious speech, the magnificent voice of Rose, more potent charms than the conversation and music of Margaret’s _salon_. Having discovered the temperamental sympathy and ingenuous friendship in this young and beautiful girl, Fox had begun to pursue that interesting study of character which leads to but one result--whether it be tragic or happy.

At this stage, too, of the matter, Fox ignored the feelings and the possible claims of his less brilliant cousin; he was aware that Allestree loved Rose, but he considered it as an affair of little moment because he perceived clearly that Rose did not love him, that not even the most scrupulous adjuration on his own part could convert her indifference into a more tender feeling toward the painter. At first he had entertained very little serious thought of the matter, but the charm of Rose’s personality, both spiritual and physical, had very soon begun to take hold of his imagination, and if he secretly compared her fresh, sweet immaturity with Margaret’s worldliness and finish it was to plunge the thought instantly into oblivion. The girl was so young, so fresh, so easily responsive to his wit and his eloquence, that it was like discovering a pure and beautiful flower in a hedge of thorns. Between his work, therefore, and his study of Rose he had managed to refuse more than one invitation to the Whites’, and his absence was beginning to be sharply observed.