Foxcroft Davis

“ The spring was in its full splendor, and the town was beautiful in all its glory of green trees and emerald grass, and great clumps of flowering shrubs and sweet-scented hyacinths and crocuses and tulips. No city in the world has in it so much sylvan beauty as Washington, and in the spring it is a place of enchanting verdure. All this awakening of the spring made Elizabeth Darrell only the more sad, the more dispirited. The old, old feeling came upon her of the dissonance of nature and man—the world beautiful, and man despairing. ”

“ Every time she went out of doors, or even looked out of her window, she saw the evidences of Clavering’s fortune—his magnificent house, his army of servants, his superb equipages, his automobiles of every description. She could not get away from it, and it made her own shabby home seem the shabbier and the narrower every day she lived in it. Moreover, she was at that dangerous age when a woman is brought face to face with her destiny; when she is forced to say good-by to her girlhood and to reckon upon life without first youth or first love. ”

“ Two tears dropped upon his brow. Baskerville looked up and took her hands in his. He spoke no word, but he knew that the memory of the man so long dead was poignant still; and Mrs. Luttrell, after a pause, said in a low voice:—
“I hope Anne Clavering will love you as I loved my Richard. And if you can make her as happy as he made me—Good night. I can’t bear to speak much of it, even to you.”
“If any woman ever loves me as you loved my uncle, I should think myself eternally blessed with such love. Good night, Sara dear.” ”

“ Luttrell society was a necessity, as a thing becomes after a lifetime of habitude. Anne Clavering would have liked society well enough if it had been merely a means of pleasure. But she had to maintain before the world a position which her father and her two sisters jeopardized every hour. The place of the Claverings in society was by no means a fixed one. All the idle and careless people, all the worshippers of money, all those who love to eat and drink at somebody else’s expense, all those who pursue pleasure without conscience or delicacy, thronged the Clavering house. ”

“ Had the Scotch solicitor known it, he had done more toward driving Elizabeth into marrying Clavering than any of Clavering’s offers, vows, urgings, and inducements. As she stood, pale and frightened, with a wildly beating heart, her eyes fell involuntarily on the superb house opposite her.
At that moment Clavering dashed up in a magnificent automobile, and got out. Elizabeth noticed that he did not walk with his usual graceful and springy step, and that he leaned against one of the stone pillars of the doorway, before the ever ready, gorgeously caparisoned flunky opened the entrance door. ”

“ With that much money and Elizabeth Darrell—for Elizabeth entered into all his calculations—life would still be worth living.
When the mob of gayly dressed people were gone, when the laughter and the dancing and the music and the champagne and the feasting were over, and Clavering sat in his library alone under the brilliant chandelier, he grew positively cheerful. He was not really fond of public life, and although he would have liked to get out of it more gracefully, he was not really sorry to go. He had found himself bound in a thousand conventions since he had been in Washington. ”

“ At twelve o’clock Baskerville came, and was promptly admitted into the Clavering house. There had been no time to remove the festal decorations. The Moorish hall was odorous with flowers; the mantels and even the hand-rail of the staircase were banked with them. Masses of tall palms made a mysterious green light through the whole of the great suite of rooms. The ceilings were draped with greenery, and orchids and roses hung from them. The huge ball-room was just as the dancers had left it, and everywhere were flowers, palms, and burnt-out candles on girandoles and candelabra. ”

“ Pelham noticed that she was always surrounded by men, young and old. She treated the young men like patriarchs and the patriarchs like boys.
Baskerville, quiet, rather sedate, and seeking the middle-aged rather than the young, struck Pelham as one of the pleasantest fellows he had ever met. It looked as if this chance incursion of the Charity Ball would reveal more of the real American life to Pelham and Darrell than they might have met in a month of ordinary traveller’s advantages. Mrs. Luttrell had already engaged them for a couple of dinners and Baskerville for a club breakfast. ”

“ A silence had fallen between Baskerville and Elizabeth, while listening to the commotion outside. A sudden wild impulse came to Elizabeth to tell Baskerville, of all men, her struggles about consenting to marry Clavering, without mentioning any name. Baskerville had been kind and helpful to her; he had come to her immediately at her request; and before she knew it she was saying to him, in a nervous voice: “I could be free from all these anxieties about money, my father could end his days in ease—all, all if I would but marry a divorced man—a man to be divorced, that is. ”

“ Elizabeth looked up, smiling and weeping. It was the first time since her husband’s death that she had not seemed in everybody’s way. General Brandon gazed at her, at the changes that ten years had made, at the marks of the recent shipwreck of her hopes and joys, at the pallor and thinness that brooding over her misfortunes had brought upon her; and then he said, with a tremulous smile and with tears in his honest eyes, “It is doubly sweet to have you back unchanged.” ”

“ She had in truth regained much of her lost beauty, and when she saw him and recognized him, the pallor, the shame, the repulsion, in her face were eloquent. She drew back from him involuntarily, and her greeting, although gentle, did not conceal her feelings in the least.
As usual, Clavering appeared to be in the pink of condition. The crisis through which he had lately passed, the shock of the disappointment contained in Elizabeth’s letter, his four days of hard travel, had left no mark upon him. He was a strong man in physique as well as in will. ”

“ But it was far from James Clavering to show himself astonished in any man’s presence, least of all in an enemy’s presence. His mind, which worked as rapidly as it worked powerfully, grasped in an instant that this was really a good stroke of fortune for Anne. He knew too much of human nature to suppose that it counted for anything with him. Men like Baskerville do not change their characters or their principles by falling in love. ”

“ It would not be all loss, however, for her path in Washington had not been entirely roses. Washington is a place of great and varied interests, where one may live any sort of life desired; and it is not easy to adapt those who have lived there to any other spot in America. But now these words of Richard Baskerville’s, his manly, compelling love, had changed all that for her. She felt it to be her destiny—her happy destiny—to live with him in Washington. ”

“ The warmth of Clavering’s greeting to General Brandon delighted the simple old warrior. Clavering, who had too much sound sense to avoid allusions to his early life or to tell lies about it, recalled the time when he was a sutler and General Brandon was an officer. Then he carried the latter off to an alcove in the library, which was now deserted except by Élise and Lydia. These two young women, reclining like odalisks among the cushions of a luxurious sofa, discussed Rosalka and the rest of their swains in low voices and in terms which luckily their father did not overhear. ”

“ Elizabeth listened under a kind of bewitchment, while Clavering, in his rich voice, told the story of those years—a story pulsing with movement, brilliant with adventure, with life and death at issue every moment. She began to understand this man’s power over men, and to recognize a kind of compulsion he exercised over her. She might have remained out of the study, where, with a map spread out, to amuse General Brandon, Clavering talked to him and at Elizabeth. ”

“ Luttrell cherished her husband’s memory with a smouldering and silent passion,—the only thing she was ever known to be silent about in her life.
Mrs. Luttrell sat bolt upright, after the ancient fashion, in her carved ebony chair, while Richard Baskerville lounged at his ease on the other side of the marble mantel. He was a well-made man of thirty-five, without any particular merit in the [121] way of beauty; but so clear of eye, so clean cut of feature, so expressive of a man’s intelligence and a man’s courage, that people forgot to ask whether he was handsome or not. ”

“ The next moment, Élise and Lydia drove up in a gem of a victoria. They were enveloped in the costliest furs, and so were the immaculate coachman and footman. The pair of perfectly matched bay cobs was worth a fortune. The harness was gold-mounted, with the Clavering initials upon it. As the two girls got out of the victoria Elizabeth caught the gleam of a long chain dotted with diamonds around Élise’s neck. Both of them seemed to radiate wealth; and there stood she, forlorn and despairing for the lack of a few hundred pounds! ”

“ Baskerville had got into his present agreeable situation by simply not waiting for an invitation, and furthermore by saying authoritatively to the footman, “Miss Clavering wishes to drive out Connecticut Avenue until she directs you to turn.”
It was all done so suddenly that Anne did not realize it until it was over; but what woman who loves is averse to having the man of her choice sitting by her side in the intimate seclusion of a brougham at dusk of a winter’s evening? Baskerville, however, was there for a purpose—a purpose quickly formed but to be resolutely carried out. ”

“ Elizabeth’s agitation had subsided somewhat, [241] but she was still unable or unwilling to speak. The gray mist was becoming denser, and they could see the gas-lamps studding the fast-falling darkness like jewels; the sound of wheels and hoofs upon the asphalt was deadened by the fog and grew fainter, the street was quieter, more deserted even than Washington streets usually are. In the little park, with the masses of evergreen shrubbery around them, they were as alone, as little subject to intrusion, as if they had been on a desert island. After a considerable pause Clavering spoke again. ”

“ The League was in no way bound by senatorial courtesy, and it had a formidable array of evidence to produce, which pointed straight to criminal as well as civil indictments. Baskerville found himself in a difficult position. He had gone too far in one direction toward exposing Senator Clavering, and his heart had carried him too far in another direction, for he was at last beginning to realize that he had fallen in love with Anne Clavering—a path upon which a strong man never halts. It is your weakling who falls halfway in love and then stops. ”

“ As an American woman of good birth, she had never seen or heard of any one who was above her, and would have been perfectly at her ease with royalty itself. The admiring glances and compliments of Pelham and Darrell flattered Elizabeth and brought the wild-rose color to her creamy cheeks; and with the consciousness of looking her best, she entered the gardens with her husband walking on one side of her and Pelham on the other, and was duly presented to the Colonel’s lady. ”

“ General Brandon’s whiskey and cigars were poor—he smoked a pipe himself, declaring he preferred it. But no army man of any rank ever animadverted on the General’s whiskey or cigars; and, although both were evilly cheap, they drank and smoked cheerfully, with a relish for the man if not for his entertainment.
General Brandon had no knowledge of the words “getting on in society,” or anything like them. He belonged to that sturdy oligarchy in Virginia which, whatever might be its shortcomings, knew nothing of snobs or snobbery, because everybody was just as good as everybody else. ”

“ With these thoughts in his mind he sat through the day, receiving and answering telegrams, scanning the newspapers, and digesting his own disgrace as exposed in print. Even that had come at a fortunate time for him—if there is a fortunate time to be branded a thief, a liar, and a perjurer, a suborner of perjury, a corrupter of courts, a purchaser of legislatures. Elizabeth would feel sorry for him; she wouldn’t understand the thing at all. He would insist on being married in the autumn, and Elizabeth would no doubt be glad to be married as far away from Washington as possible. ”

“ Luttrell, who, although she was out every night, did not disturb herself to appear in public until four o’clock in the afternoon. That particular form of barbaric entertainment known as a ladies’ luncheon had no charms for Mrs. Luttrell, because there were no men to be found at them; for this woman, who cherished with an idolatrous recollection the memory of the only man she had ever loved, and who had refused more offers of marriage than any other woman of her day, frankly admitted that she couldn’t enjoy anything without a masculine element in it. ”

“ Elizabeth remained silent for a while, and then forced herself to say: “My husband was one of the best of men. He was as good as my father.”
“That settles it,” replied Clavering, with grim humor. “I never knew a woman in my life who spoke of her husband’s goodness first who was really in love with him. When a woman is in love with a man, it isn’t his goodness she thinks of first; it is his love. ”

“ Chapter Seven The return of a woman once married to a home under her father’s roof is always a tragic episode. It implies death or disaster, and means the giving up of the prestige and independence a woman is supposed to attain by marriage. It may be the most sordid or the most dignified of tragedies that brings her back. Nevertheless it is a tragedy, and almost invariably has its sordid aspects, because it is oftenest poverty, to the accompaniment of divorce or death, which leads her, wounded and smarting and hungering, to that last remaining refuge, her father’s house. ”

“ She had a huge, old-fashioned bedroom, with an ancient four-poster mahogany bed, with green silk curtains, and a lace valance; and everything in the room was big and square and handsome and comfortable, like the bed. There was a large fireplace, with shining brass fire-dogs and a monumental brass fender; and Mrs. Luttrell frequently admitted that when she got her feet on that fender and her dressing-gown on, she grew so communicative that she would tell the inmost secrets of her soul to the veriest stranger, if he had his feet on the fender at the same time. ”

“ Thorndyke had been turning over the leaves of a beautiful Apuleius, which was one of the treasures Baskerville was exhibiting to him. He opened the volume at the fifth metamorphosis and read out of it a single phrase which made Baskerville’s face gain color:“‘The bold, blind boy of evil ways.’ There’s nothing in all those old Greek literary fellows which excels this in humor, although what there is humorous in modern love I can’t see. It’s the most tragic thing in life, and if it is genuine, it draws blood every time.” ”

“ Baskerville sat up then, sobered in an instant. What Mrs. Luttrell knew or suspected all Washington would shortly know. “Why do you say that?” he asked quietly.
“Because I think it, that’s why. It’s one of the strangest things in the world that people in love think all the rest of the world blind and deaf. And a woman lets her secret out just as readily as a man. I say Anne Clavering likes you. I don’t say she is pining and can’t eat and sleep for you; but I do say she likes you, though. ”