The Quest of the Silver Fleece Part 54

Both parties are back of it, and public opinion is aroused. Now our work is to force amendments enough to make the bill effective."

Discussion followed; not flamboyant and declamatory, but tense, staccato, pointed. Mrs. Cresswell found herself taking part. Someone mentioned her name, and one or two glances of interest and even curiosity were thrown her way. Congressmen's wives were rare at the Civic Club.

Congressmen Todd urged Mrs. Cresswell to stay after the discussion and attend a meeting of the managers and workers of the Was.h.i.+ngton social settlements.

"Have you many settlements?" she inquired.

"Three in all--two white and one colored."

"And will they all be represented?"

"Yes, of course, Mrs. Cresswell. If you object to meeting the colored people--"

Mrs. Cresswell blushed.

"No, indeed," she answered; "I used to teach colored people."

She watched this new group gather: a business man, two fas.h.i.+onable ladies, three college girls, a gray-haired colored woman, and a young spectacled brown man, and then, to her surprise, Mrs. Vanderpool and Zora.

Zora was scarcely seated when that strange sixth sense of hers told her that something had happened, and it needed but a side-glance from Mrs.

Vanderpool to indicate what it was. She sat with folded hands and the old dreamy look in her eyes. In one moment she lived it all again--the red cabin, the moving oak, the sowing of the Fleece, and its fearful reaping. And now, when she turned her head, she would see the woman who was to marry Bles Alwyn. She had often dreamed of her, and had set a high ideal. She wanted her to be handsome, well dressed, earnest and good. She felt a sort of person proprietors.h.i.+p in her, and when at last the quickened pulse died to its regular healthy beat, she turned and looked and knew.

Caroline Wynn deemed it a part of the white world's education to partic.i.p.ate in meetings like this; doing so was not pleasant, but it appealed to her cynicism and mocking sense of pleasure. She always roused hostility as she entered: her gown was too handsome, her gloves too spotless, her air had hauteur enough to be almost impudent in the opinion of most white people. Then gradually her intelligence, her cool wit and self-possession, would conquer and she would go gracefully out leaving a rather bewildered audience behind. She sat today with her dark gold profile toward Zora, and the girl looked and was glad. She was such a woman she would have Bles marry. She was glad, and she choked back the sob that struggled and fought in her throat.

The meeting never got beyond a certain constraint. The Congressman made an excellent speech; there were various sets of figures read by the workers; and Miss Wynn added a touch of spice by several pertinent questions and comments. Then, as the meeting broke up and Mrs. Cresswell came forward to speak to Zora, Mrs. Vanderpool managed to find herself near Miss Wynn and to be introduced. They exchanged a few polite phrases, fencing delicately to test the other's wrist and interest. They touched on the weather, and settlement work; but Miss Wynn did not propose to be stranded on the Negro problem.

"I suppose the next bit of excitement will be in the inauguration," she said to Mrs. Vanderpool.

"I understand it will be unusually elaborate," returned Mrs. Vanderpool, a little surprised at the turn. Then she added pleasantly: "I think I shall see it through, from speech to ball."

"Yes, I do usually," Miss Wynn a.s.serted, adjusting her furs.

Mrs. Vanderpool was further surprised. Did colored people attend the ball?

"We sorely need a national ball-room," she said. "Isn't the census building wretched?"

"I do not know," smiled Miss Wynn.

"Oh, I thought you said--"

"I meant _our_ ball."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Vanderpool in turn. "Oh!" Here a thought came. Of course, the colored people had their own ball; she remembered having heard about it. Why not send Zora? She plunged in:

"Miss Wynn, I have a maid--such an intelligent girl; I do wish she could attend your ball--" seeing her blunder, she paused. Miss Wynn was coolly b.u.t.toning her glove.

"Yes," she acknowledged politely, "few of us can afford maids, and therefore we do not usually arrange for them; but I think we can have your _protegee_ look on from the gallery. Good-afternoon."

As Mrs. Vanderpool drove home she related the talk to Zora. Zora was silent at first. Then she said deliberately:

"Miss Wynn was right."

"Why, Zora!"

"Did Helene attend the ball four years ago?"

"But, Zora, must you folk ape our nonsense as well as our sense?"

"You force us to," said Zora.

_Twenty-eight_

THE ANNUNCIATION

The new President had been inaugurated. Beneath the creamy pile of the old Capitol, and facing the new library, he had stood aloft and looked down on a waving sea of faces--black-coated, jostling, eager-eyed fellow creatures. They had watched his lips move, had scanned eagerly his dress and the gowned and decorated dignitaries beside him; and then, with blare of band and prancing of horses, he had been whirled down the dip and curve of that long avenue, with its medley of meanness and thrift and hurry and wealth, until, swinging sharply, the dim walls of the White House rose before him. He entered with a sigh.

Then the vast welter of humanity dissolved and streamed hither and thither, gaping and laughing until night, when thousands poured into the red barn of the census shack and entered the artificial fairyland within. The President walked through, smiling; the senators protected their friends in the crush; and Harry Cresswell led his wife to a little oasis of Southern ladies and gentlemen.

"This is democracy for you," said he, wiping his brow.

From a whirling eddy Mrs. Vanderpool waved at them, and they rescued her.

"I think I am ready to go," she gasped. "Did you ever!"

"Come," Cresswell invited. But just then the crowd pushed them apart and shot them along, and Mrs. Cresswell found herself clinging to her husband amid two great whirling variegated throngs of driving, white-faced people. The band crashed and blared; the people laughed and pushed; and with rhythmic sound and swing the mighty throng was dancing.

It took much effort, but at last the Cresswell party escaped and rolled off in their carriages. They swept into the avenue and out again, then up 14th Street, where, turning for some street obstruction, they pa.s.sed a throng of carriages on a cross street.

"It's the other ball," cried Mrs. Vanderpool, and amid laughter she added, "Let's go!"

It was--the other ball. For Was.h.i.+ngton is itself, and something else besides. Along beside it ever runs that dark and haunting echo; that shadowy world-in-world with its accusing silence, its emphatic self-sufficiency. Mrs. Cresswell at first demurred. She thought of Elspeth's cabin: the dirt, the smell, the squalor: of course, this would be different; but--well, Mrs. Cresswell had little inclination for slumming. She was interested in the under-world, but intellectually, not by personal contact. She did not know that this was a side-world, not an under-world. Yet the imposing building did not look sordid.

"Hired?" asked some one.

"No, owned."

"Indeed!"

Then there was a hitch.

"Tickets?"

"Where can we buy them?"

"Not on sale," was the curt reply.