Strange, that sort of thing. Somewhat my own case. I ought to have been able to get some girl with a bunch, yet I somehow always just failed to connect--until I got beyond the marrying age. Devilish lucky for me, too. I"m no end better off." And Mr. Whitesides, sitting correctly upon Madam Bowlder"s gray silk cushions, reflected complacently upon his ample salary, his carefully built-up and most lucrative commissions, his prospects for a "smashing-good legacy when her majesty deigns to pa.s.s away."
At four Madam Bowker, angry yet compelled to a certain respect, heard with satisfaction that Craig had come. "Leave me, Whitesides," said she.
"I wish to be quite alone with him throughout."
Thus Craig, entering the great, dim drawing-room, with its panel paintings and its lofty, beautifully-frescoed ceiling, found himself alone with her. She was throned upon a large, antique gold chair, ebony scepter in one hand, the other hand white and young-looking and in fine relief against the black silk of her skirt; she bent upon him a keen, gracious look. Her hazel eyes were bright as a bird"s; they had the advantage over a bird"s that they saw--saw everything in addition to seeming to see.
Looking at him she saw a figure whose surfaces were, indeed, not extraordinarily impressive. Craig"s frame was good; that was apparent despite his clothes. He had powerful shoulders, not narrow, yet neither were they of the broad kind that suggest power to the inexpert and weakness and a tendency to lung trouble to the expert. His body was a trifle long for his arms and legs, which were thick and strong, like a lion"s or a tiger"s. He had a fine head, haughtily set; his eyes emphasized the impression of arrogance and force. He had the leader"s beaklike nose, a handsome form of it, like Alexander"s, not like Attila"s. The mouth was the orator"s--wide, full and flexible of lips, fluent. It was distinctly not an aristocratic mouth. It suggested common speech and common tastes--ruddy tastes--tastes for quant.i.ty rather than for quality. His skin, his flesh were also plainly not aristocratic; they lacked that fineness of grain, that finish of surface which are got only by eating the costly, rare, best and best-prepared food. His hair, a partially disordered mop over-hanging his brow at the middle, gave him fierceness of aspect. The old lady had more than a suspicion that the ferocity of that lock of hair and somewhat exaggerated forward thrust of the jaw were pose--in part, at least, an effort to look the valiant and relentless master of men--perhaps concealing a certain amount of irresolution. Certainly those eyes met hers boldly rather than fearlessly.
She extended her hand. He took it, and with an effort gave it the politician"s squeeze--the squeeze that makes Hiram Hanks and Bill b.u.t.ts grin delightedly and say to each other: "B"gosh, he ain"t lost his axe-handle grip yet, by a durn sight, has he?--dog-gone him!"
Madam Bowker did not wince, though she felt like it. Instead she smiled--a faint, derisive smile that made Craig color uncomfortably.
"You young man," said she in her cool, high-bred tones, "you wish to marry my granddaughter."
Craig was never more afraid nor so impressed in his life. But there was no upflaming of physical pa.s.sion here to betray him into yielding before her as he had before her granddaughter. "I do not," replied he arrogantly. "Your granddaughter wants to marry me."
Madam Bowker winced in spite of herself. A very st.u.r.dy-appearing specimen of manhood was this before her; she could understand how her granddaughter might be physically attracted. But that rude accent, that common mouth, those uncouth clothes, hand-me-downs or near it, that cheap look about the collar, about the wrists, about the ankles--
"We are absolutely unsuited to each other--in every way," continued Craig. "I tell her so. But she won"t listen to me. The only reason I"ve come here is to ask you to take a hand at trying to bring her to her senses."
The old lady, recovered from her first shock, gazed at him admiringly.
He had completely turned her flank, and by a movement as swift as it was unexpected. If she opposed the engagement he could hail her as an ally, could compel her to contribute to her own granddaughter"s public humiliation. On the other hand, if she accepted the engagement he would have her and Margaret and all the proud Severence family in the position of humbly seeking alliance with him. Admirable! No wonder Branch was jealous and the President alarmed. "Your game," said she pleasantly, "is extremely unkempt, but effective. I congratulate you. I owe you an apology for having misjudged you."
He gave her a shrewd look. "I know little Latin and less Greek," said he, "but, "timeo Danaos dona ferentes." And I"ve got no game. I"m telling you the straight truth, and I want you to help save me from Margaret and from myself. I love the girl. I honestly don"t want to make her wretched. I need a sock-darner, a wash-counter, a pram-pusher, for a wife, as Grant would say, not a dainty piece of lace embroidery. It would soon be covered with spots and full of holes from the rough wear I"d give it."
Madam Bowker laughed heartily. "You are--delicious," said she. "You state the exact situation. Only I don"t think Rita is quite so fragile as you fancy. Like all persons of common origin, Mr. Craig, you exaggerate human differences. They are not differences of kind, but of degree."
Craig quivered and reddened at "common origin," as Madam Bowker expected and hoped. She had not felt that she was taking a risk in thus hardily ignoring her own origin; Lard had become to her, as to all Washington, an unreality like a shadowy reminiscence of a possible former sojourn on earth. "I see," pursued she, "that I hurt your vanity by my frankness--"
"Not at all! Not at all!" bl.u.s.tered Joshua, still angrier--as Madam Bowker had calculated.
"Don"t misunderstand me," pursued she tranquilly. "I was simply stating a fact without aspersion. It is the more to your credit that you have been able to raise yourself up among us--and so very young! You are not more than forty, are you?"
"Thirty-four," said Craig surlily. He began to feel like a cur that is getting a beating from a hand beyond the reach of its fangs. "I"ve had a hard life--"
"So I should judge," thrust the old lady with gentle sympathy. It is not necessary to jab violently with a red-hot iron in order to make a deep burn.
"But I am the better for it," continued Craig, eyes flashing and orator lips in action. "And you and your kind--your granddaughter Margaret--would be the better for having faced--for having to face--the realities of life instead of being pampered in luxury and uselessness."
"Then why be resentful?" inquired she. "Why not merely pity us? Why this heat and seeming jealousy?"
"Because I love your granddaughter," replied Craig, the adroit at debate. "It pains, it angers me to see a girl who might have been a useful wife, a good mother, trained and set to such base uses."
The old lady admired his skillful parry. "Let us not discuss that," said she. "We look at life from different points of view. No human being can see beyond his own point of view. Only G.o.d sees life as a whole, sees how its seeming inconsistencies and injustices blend into a harmony.
Your mistake--pardon an old woman"s criticism of experience upon inexperience--your mistake is that you arrogate to yourself divine wisdom and set up a personal opinion as eternal truth."
"That is very well said, admirably said," cried Craig. Madam Bowker would have been better pleased with the compliment had the tone been less gracious and less condescending.
"To return to the main subject," continued she. "Your hesitation about my granddaughter does credit to your manliness and to your sense. I have known marriages between people of different station and rank to turn out well--again--"
"That"s the second or third time you"ve made that insinuation," burst out Craig. "I must protest against it, in the name of my father and mother, in the name of my country, Mrs. Bowker. It is too ridiculous!
Who are you that you talk about rank and station? What is Margaret but the daughter of a plain human being of a father, a little richer than mine and so a little nearer opportunities for education? The claims to superiority of some of the t.i.tled people on the other side are silly enough when one examines them--the records of knavery and thievery and illegitimacy and insanity. But similar claims over here are laughable at a glance. The reason I hesitate to marry your daughter is not to her credit, or to her parents" credit--or to yours."
Madam Bowker was beside herself with rage at these candid insults, flung at her with all Craig"s young energy and in his most effective manner; for his crudeness disappeared when he spoke thus, as the blackness and roughness of the coal vanish in the furnace heat, transforming it into beauty and grace of flames.
"Do I make myself clear?" demanded Craig, his eyes flashing superbly upon her.
"You certainly do," snapped the old lady, her dignity tottering and a very vulgar kind of human wrath showing uglily in her blazing eyes and twitching nose and mouth and fingers.
"Then let us have no more of this caste nonsense," said the young man.
"Forbid your granddaughter to marry or to see me. Send or take her away.
She will thank you a year from now. My thanks will begin from the moment of release."
"Yes, you have made yourself extremely clear," said Madam Bowker in a suffocating voice. To be thus defied, insulted, outraged, in her own magnificent salon, in her own magnificent presence! "You may be sure you will have no further opportunity to exploit your upstart insolence in my family. Any chance you may have had for the alliance you have so cunningly sought is at an end." And she waved her ebony scepter in dismissal, ringing the bell at the same time.
Craig drew himself up, bowed coldly and haughtily, made his exit in excellent style; no prince of the blood, bred to throne rooms, no teacher of etiquette in a fashionable boarding-school could have done better.
CHAPTER XIV
MAGGIE AND JOSH
Wrath is a baseless flame in the intelligent aged; also, Margaret"s grandmother was something more than a mere expert in social craft, would have been woman of the world had not circ.u.mstances compressed her to its petty department of fashionable society. Before Craig had cleared the front door she was respecting him, even as she raged against him.
Insolent, impudent, coa.r.s.ely insulting--yes, all these. But very much a man, a masculine force; with weaknesses, it was true, and his full measure of the low-sprung"s obsequious sn.o.bbishness; but, for all that, strong, persistent, concentrated, one who knew the master-art of making his weaknesses serve as pitfalls into which his enemies were lured, to fall victim to his strength.
"Yes, he will arrive," reflected Madam Bowker. "Branch will yet have to serve him. Poor Branch! What a misery for a man to be born with a master"s mind but with the lack of will and courage that keeps a man a servant. Yes, Craig will arrive!... What a pity he has no money."
But, on second thought, that seemed less a disadvantage. If she should let him marry Margaret they would be dependent upon her; she could control them--him--through holding the purse strings. And when that remote time came at which it would please G.o.d to call her from her earthly labors to their eternal reward, she could transfer the control to Margaret. "Men of his origin are always weak on the social side," she reflected. "And it wouldn"t be in nature for a person as grasping of power as he is not to be eager about money also."
With the advent of plutocratic fashion respect for official position had dwindled at Washington. In Rome in the days when the imperators became mere creatures of the army, the seat of fashion and of power was transferred to the old and rich families aloof from the government and buying peace and privilege from it. So Washington"s fashionable society has come to realize, even more clearly than does the rest of the country, that, despite spasmodic struggles and apparent spurts of reaction, power has pa.s.sed to the plutocracy, and that officialdom is, as a rule, servant verging toward slave. Still, form is a delusion of tenacious hold upon the human mind. The old lady"s discoveries of Craig"s political prospects did not warm her toward him as would news that he was in the way of being vastly rich; but she retained enough of the fading respect for high-t.i.tled office to feel that he was not the quite impossibility she had fancied, but was fit to be an aspirant for an aristocratic alliance.
"If Margaret doesn"t fall in love with him after she marries him,"
reflected she, "all may be well. Of course, if she does she"ll probably ruin him and herself, too. But I think she"ll have enough sense of her position, of how to maintain it for herself, and for him and her children, not to be a fool."
Meanwhile Craig was also cooling down. He had meant every word he said--while he was saying it. Only one self-convinced could have been so effective. But, sobering off from his rhetorical debauch in the quiet streets of that majestic quarter, he began to feel that he had gone farther, much farther, than he intended.
"I don"t see how, in self-respect, I could have said less," thought he.
"And surely the old woman isn"t so lost to decency that she can"t appreciate and admire self-respect."
Still he might have spoken less harshly; might have been a little considerate of the fact that he was not making a stump speech, but was in the drawing-room of a high-born, high-bred lady. "And gad, she IS a patrician!"
His eyes were surveying the splendid mansions round about--the beautiful window-gardens--the curtains at the windows, which he had learned were real lace, whatever that might be, and most expensive. Very fine, that way of living! Very comfortable, to have servants at beck and call, and most satisfactory to the craving for power--trifles, it is true, but still the substantial and tangible evidence of power. "And it impresses the people, too. We"re all sn.o.bs at bottom. We"re not yet developed enough to appreciate such a lofty abstraction as democracy."
True, Margaret was not rich; but the old grandmother was. Doubtless, if he managed her right, she would see to it that he and Margaret had some such luxury as these grandly-housed people--"but not too much, for that would interfere with my political program." He did not protest this positively; the program seemed, for the moment, rather vague and not very attractive. The main point seemed to be money and the right sort of position among the right sort of people. He shook himself, scowled, muttered: "I am a d.a.m.n fool! What do _I_ amount to except as I rise in politics and stay risen? I must be mighty careful or I"ll lose my point of view and become a wretched hanger-on at the skirts of these fakers.
For they are fakers--frauds of the first water! Take their accidental money away from them and they"d sink to be day laborers, most of them--and not of much account there."