"Oh, it is work that sits very lightly on me, and is very congenial: I am going to do all I can to allay this war fever in my own State. It is not too late to appeal to their reason; but it might be at any moment."
"Well, at all events, you go to the bracing climate of the North. But I am sorry you go so soon. Mother cannot stay in Washington after the third week in May. I am afraid we shall not meet again until you come to the Adirondacks."
"Ah, the Adirondacks!" he said. "Yes, I shall see you there. Good-bye."
He did not smile. There were times when he seemed to turn a key and lock up his features. This was one of them. Betty felt as if she were looking at a mask contrived with unusual skill.
He shook her warmly by the hand, however. "I forgot to say that I shall be in Washington off and on--for a day or so. My wife remains here. It is still too cold for her in the North. Good-bye again."
He left her, and she did not return to her luncheon.
XXII
Betty, after several long and restless nights, decided that she was not equal to the ordeal of sitting down patiently in Washington awaiting the rare and flying visits of Senator North. If she could place herself quite beyond the possibility of seeing him before the first of June, she could get through the intervening months with a respectable amount of endurance, but not otherwise. Hers was not the nature of the patient watcher, the humble applicant for crumbs. She might put up with slices where she could not get the whole loaf, but her head lifted itself at the notion of crumbs. Her heart had not yet begun to ache. She determined that it should not until it was in far more desperate straits than now. When Lady Mary Montgomery, who was tired and wanted a long rest before December, invited her to go to California, she accepted at once; and, a week after the adjournment of Congress, went through the formality of obtaining her mother"s consent. "Well," said Mrs. Madison, philosophically, "I have lost you for three months at a time before, and I suppose I can stand it again. I think you need a change. You"ve been nervous lately, and you"re thinner than you were.
As long as you don"t marry I can resign myself quite gracefully to these little partings."
"You"re a dear, Mollyanthus. I only wish you were going with me, but I"ll keep a journal for you and post it every night. I am glad you do not dislike Harriet. Of course if you did I should not go, for it is too soon to turn her adrift."
"She is inoffensive enough, poor soul, and so deep in her books that I should not know she was in the house if she didn"t come to the table."
"Make Jack take her to the theatre once a week. She has promised me that she will go for a walk every day with Sally."
"Sally says she is convinced Harriet is a Roman empress reborn, and may astonish Washington at any moment," said Mrs. Madison, anxiously. "Do you believe in reincarnation?"
"I don"t believe or disbelieve anything I don"t understand. We none of us can even guess what is latent in Harriet--for the matter of that I don"t know what is latent in myself. I can only suspect. I don"t think Harriet will ever go very deep into herself; she has not imagination enough. If circ.u.mstances are not too unfavourable, she may slip through life happy and respected, in spite of her tragic appearance: she is so slothful by nature, so much more susceptible to good influences than to bad. All of us possess every good and bad instinct in the whole book of human nature, but few of us have imagination enough to find it out. And the less we know of ourselves the better."
"Betty, you certainly do need a change. You looked tragic yourself as you said that; and if you became tragic it would mean something. I"m afraid your conscience is tormenting you about Mr. Burleigh, and perhaps I did not do right in asking him to come to the Adirondacks; but probably he would have come to the hotel, anyhow; and if I did have to lose you--"
"You"ll never get rid of me." And she went to her room to consult with Leontine.
The night before she left Harriet came into her room and said timidly,--
"Betty, I sometimes wonder if you have told Mr. Emory the truth about myself--"
"Certainly not. Why should I tell Mr. Emory--or anyone else?"
"Well, he is so kind to me and we have become such friends, I thought perhaps you would think he ought to know."
"That is pure nonsense. Do you suppose I tell my friends everything I know? No friend is so close as to demand to know more than you choose to tell him."
"All right, honey; but I am always afraid he will see my finger-nails when he is helping me with my lessons--"
"He is very near-sighted; and I doubt if anyone would notice those faint blue marks unless they were looking for them."
"Of course they seem the most conspicuous things I"ve got, to me."
"Are you happy here, Harriet?" asked Betty, gently. Harriet nodded and looked at her benefactor with glowing eyes. "Oh, yes," she said.
"Yes--yes. It is like heaven, in spite of the hard work they make me do.
I"m right down afraid of that old Frenchman, and when Professor Morrow shuts his eyes and groans, "Door--d-o-o-r, Miss Walker, _not_ d-o-u-g-h," I could cry. But I"m happy all the same, and I forgot _that_ for a whole week."
"Well, forget it altogether. And remember to have a thin travelling dress and a lot of summer things made. And of all people do not confide in Jack Emory or Sally Carter--or any other Southerner."
_Part II_
_Senator North, Miss Betty Madison, and several other Characters in this History go in search of a Mountain Lake and find an Ocean._
I
Betty never denied that she enjoyed her visit to California, despite the several thousand miles between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, and Senator North"s rooted aversion to writing letters. She received exactly three brief epistles from him in almost as many months, but in one he said that he missed her even in the North, in another that Washington was not Washington without her, and in the third that he looked forward with pleasure to the cool Adirondacks and herself. And a woman can live on less than that. Betty read and re-read these simple and possibly perfunctory statements until they were weighted with love.
And although she visited all the wonders of the most wonderful State in the Union, and was deeply grateful to them, they never pushed the man from the forefront of her mind for a moment. The egoism of love reduces scenery to a setting and the splendours of sunset to a background.
Betty thought of him by day and by night, in company and in solitude, but even the agony of longing to which her imagination sometimes rose contained no heartbreak. For the future was all over there, on the far side of the continent; its grave-clothes were deep under lavender and rosemary. To think of him was a luxury and a delight, and would remain so until Imagination had been pushed aside by the contradictory details of Reality. Sometimes she wept pleasurably, but she smiled oftener. And still, although she laid no reins on her imagination, she refused to look beyond the summer among the Adirondack pines, the frequent and more frequent hours at the close of busy days. If pressed, she would doubtless have answered that she must bow to Circ.u.mstance, but that in Thought he was wholly hers.
II
Betty reached her part of the Adirondacks late at night. There were two miles between the station and the house, and Jack Emory and Sally Carter came to meet her. They told her the recent news of the family as the horses toiled up the steep road cut through the dark and fragrant forest.
"Aunt is unusually well and seems to enjoy interminable talks with Major Carter," said Emory. "Harriet is very much improved; she holds herself regally and sometimes has a colour. She studied until the last minute, and even here is always at her books. I don"t say she hasn"t intervals of laziness," he added with a laugh, "but she always pulls up; and it is very creditable of her, for she is full of Southern indolence. She would like to lie in the sun all day and sleep, I am sure; although she won"t admit it."
"Does she seem any happier? She had suffered too much privation to have become really happy before I left."
"I am sure she is--" Jack began, but Sally interrupted him.
"I think she is one of those people who hardly know whether they are happy or not. She seems to me to be in a sort of transition state. One moment she will be gay with the natural gayety of a girl, and the next she will look puzzled, and occasionally tragic. I think there must be a big love affair somewhere in her past."
"I am sure there is nothing of the sort. Have the Norths come?"