Senator North Part 18

"So I have thought for years! When he got over his attack of you, I began to hope, although I'd got wrinkles crying about him. I never thought of any other woman in the case." She laughed, with a defiant attempt to recover her old spirits. "And I cannot have the happiness of seeing him one day in bronze, and feeling that he is all mine! For he hasn't even that spark of luck which so often pa.s.ses for infinitesimal greatness, poor dear!"

"How did you guess that she had the taint in her?" asked Betty, as they were about to land. "She has not a suggestion of it in her face."

"I _felt_ it. So vaguely that I scarcely put it in words to myself until lately. And I never saw such an amount of pink on finger-nails in my life."

VI

Betty went in search of Harriet, and found her in a summer-house reading an innocuous French romance which her professor had selected.

There was no place near by where Miss Trumbull might lie concealed, and Betty went to the point at once.

"Harriet," she said, "I am obliged to say something horribly painful--if you want to marry any man you must tell him the truth. It would be a crime not to. The prejudices of--of--Southerners are deep and bitter; and--and--Oh, it is a terrible thing to have to say--but I must--if you had children they might be black."

For a moment Betty thought that Harriet was dead, she turned so gray and her gaze was so fixed. But she spoke in a moment.

"Why do you say this to me--now?"

"Because I fear you and Jack--Oh, I hope it is not true. The person who thinks you love each other may have been mistaken. But I could not wait to warn you. I should have told you in the beginning that when the time came either you must tell the man or I should; but it was a hateful subject. G.o.d knows it is hard to speak now."

Harriet seemed to have recovered herself. The colour returned slowly to her face, her heavy lids descended. She rose and drew herself up to her full height with the air of complete melancholy which recalled one or two other memorable occasions. But there was a subtle change. The att.i.tude did not seem so natural to her as formerly.

"Your informant was only half right," she said sadly. "I love him, but he cares nothing for me. He is the best, the kindest of friends. It is no wonder that I love him. I suppose I was bound to love the first man who treated me with affectionate respect. I reckon I'd have fallen in love with Uncle if he'd been younger. Perhaps--in Europe--I may get over it. But he does not love me."

Betty rose and looked at her steadily. _What_ was in the brain behind those sad reproachful eyes? She laid her hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Harriet," she said solemnly, "give me your word of honour that you will not marry him without telling him the truth. It may be that he does not love you, but he might--and if you were without hope you would be unhappy. Promise me."

Down in the depths of those melancholy eyes there was a flash, then Harriet lifted her head and spoke with the solemnity of one taking an oath.

"I promise," she said. "I will marry no man without telling him the truth."

This time her tone carried conviction, and Betty, relieved, sought Sally Carter.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Carter, when Betty had related the interview. "He is in love with her, although for some reason or other he is making an elaborate effort to conceal it."

"She spoke very convincingly," said Betty, who would not admit doubt.

"Anything with a drop of negro blood in it will lie. It can't help it.

I wish the race were exterminated."

"I wish the English had left it in Africa. They certainly saddled us with an everlasting curse."

She was tempted to wish that Mr. Walker had never discovered her address; but although she did not love Harriet, she was grateful still for the opportunity to rescue her from the usual fate of her breed. But a.s.suredly she did not wish her old friend to be sacrificed.

Again she observed him closely, and came to the conclusion that Harriet had spoken the truth. He was gayer than of old, but his health was better and he was in cheerful company, not living his days and nights in his lonely damp old house on the Potomac River. He appeared to enjoy talking to Harriet, but there was nothing lover-like in his att.i.tude, and he was almost her guardian. True, he was occasionally moody and absent, but a man must retain a few of his old spots; and if he avoided somewhat the cousin whom he had once loved to melancholy, it was doubtless because she found him as uninteresting as she found all men but one, and was not at sufficient pains to conceal her indifference.

And then she admitted with a laugh that in the back of her mind she had never acknowledged the possibility of his loving another woman.

She but half admitted that she wished to believe no storm was gathering under her roof. She had no desire to handle a tragedy.

VII

It was Sat.u.r.day morning. Betty arose at four, brewed herself a cup of coffee over a spirit lamp, and ate several biscuit with it. She hoped Senator North would take the same precaution. Healthy animals when hungry cannot take much interest in each other.

She dressed herself in airy white with a blue ribbon in her hair. There was no necessity for a hat at that hour in the morning, but she took a white organdie one down to the boat and put it under a seat, lest she be late in returning and the sun freckling.

It was faintly dawn as she pulled out into the middle of the lake and rowed toward its northern end. Even the trailing thickets on the water's edge looked black, and the dark forest rising on every side seemed to whisper of old deeds of war and heroism, the bravery and the treachery of Indian tribes, the mortal jealousies of French and English. Every inch of ground about her was historical. These forests had resounded for years with the ugly sounds of battle, and more than once with the shrieks of women and children. To-day the woodp.e.c.k.e.r tapped, the bluejay cried in those depths unaffrighted; the singing of a mountain stream, the roar of a distant waterfall alone lifted a louder voice to the eternal whisper of the pines. The forest looked calmly down upon this flower of a civilization which no man in its first experience of man would have ventured to forecast, skimming the water to keep tryst with one whose ancestors had hewn a rougher wilderness than this down to a market-place that their inheritor might win the higher honours of the great Republic to come.

But Betty was not thinking of the honours he had won. She was wondering if by so much as a glance he would betray that he cared a little for her. Or did he care? In her thought he had been as full of love as herself. But reality was waiting for her there in the forest,--reality after three months of uninterrupted imaginings. Perhaps he merely found her agreeable and amusing. But the idea did not start a tear. The uncertainty of his affections and the certainty that she was about to see him again were alike thrilling and gladdening. Pleasurable excitement possessed her, and her hands would have trembled but for their tight grip on the oars.

He stood watching her as she rowed toward him, and she was sure that she made a charming picture out on that great dark lake below the pines. The forest rose almost straight behind him, but she knew the winding paths which made ascent easy, and many a dry leafy platform where one might sit. A hundred times she had imagined herself in that forest with him; its dim vast solitude had become almost his permanent setting in her fancy. But as the boat grazed the sh.o.r.e, she said hurriedly,--

"Get in and let us float about. I am sure it is cold in there. I am so glad to see you again." As her hands were occupied, he took the seat in the stern at once, and she pulled out a few yards, then crossed her oars.

"You see, I have obeyed orders," he said, smiling. "Fortunately, I am an early riser, particularly in the country."

"I thought the change would do you good. It must be hot in Was.h.i.+ngton."

"It is frightful."

He looked as well as usual, however, and his thin grey clothes became his spare though thickset figure. He was smiling humorously into Betty's eyes, but his own were impenetrable. They might harbour the delight of a lover at a precious opportunity, or the amus.e.m.e.nt of a man of the world. But there was no doubt that he was glad to see her and that he appreciated the picture she made.

"I hope I never may see you in anything but white again," he said. "You are a gracious vision to conjure up on stifling afternoons in the Senate."

Betty did not want to talk about herself. "Tell me the news," she said.

"How is that Tariff Bill going?"

"A story has just leaked out that a stormy scene occurred in the Ways and Means Committee Room between our friend Montgomery and two members of the Committee whose names I won't mention. He openly accused them of accepting bribes from certain Trusts. It even is reported that they came to blows, but that is probably an exaggeration. We have had our sensation also. One of our fire-eaters accused--at the top of his voice--the entire Senate of bribery and corruption. He is new and will think better of us in time. Meanwhile he would amuse us if such things did not affect the dignity of the Senate with the outside world.

Unfortunately we are obliged to accept whomsoever the people select to represent them, and can only possess our souls in patience till time and the Senate tone the raw ones down."

"Is he representative, that man? And those hysterical members of the House, whose speeches make me wonder if humour is really a national quality?"

"They are only too representative, unfortunately, but they are more hysterical than the average because they have the opportunity their const.i.tuents lack, of shouting in public. The House is America let loose. When a former private citizen belonging to the party out of power gets on his feet in it, he develops a species of hysteria for which there is no parallel in history. He seems to think that the louder he shouts and the more bad rhetoric he uses, the less will his party feel the stings of defeat. Some of them tone down and become conscientious and admirable legislators, but these are the few of natural largeness of mind. Party spirit, a magnificent thing at its best, warps and withers the little brain in the party out of power. But politics are out of place in this wilderness. There should be redskins and bows and arrows on all sides of us. I used to revel in Cooper's yarns, but I suppose you never have read them."

Betty shook her head. "When can you come up here to stay?"

"Probably not for a month yet. There will be a good deal more wrangling before the bill goes through. I don't like it in its present shape and don't expect to in its ultimate; neither do a good many of us. But I shall vote for it, because the country needs a high tariff, and anything will be better than nothing for the present. Later, the whole matter will be reopened and war waged on the Trusts."

"Sally says they have bought up the atmosphere."