Part 13

December found Washington a little aghast; Congress had just re-assembled, Wicklow White had somewhat hastily resigned, almost on the date which, in the previous year, had seen the retirement of Wingfield, and one of the ambassadors had been as hastily recalled, clearing the atmosphere of an international situation with the accustomed scapegoat! That the Cabinet would have to be reorganized was evident, and Berkman’s prophecy of eight months before was apparently on the eve of fulfilment. The very atmosphere, surcharged with excitement, seemed to breathe the name of William Fox; only those who knew the secret of Margaret’s divorce, which had just been granted in Omaha, divined the fatal combination of circumstances.

Fox had been absent for months in his own state, taking part in a campaign of unusual bitterness and importance, and his remarkable powers of organization, his keen policy, his magnetic eloquence, had carried all before him. There had been, in fact, a storm of applause; every newspaper in the country had discussed him as a possible candidate for the Presidency in the following year, his own party with triumphant confidence, and the opposing faction with reluctant admission of his great strength. If anything had delayed his invitation to take a seat in the Cabinet, it was openly hinted to be the jealousy of the Administration and an uncertainty whether such a position would conveniently shelve him or increase his popularity.

To those who knew the whole truth Fox’s position was almost tragic, but the man had returned more than usually brilliant and untiring.

Rose had sailed for Europe in the previous June in charge of an elderly cousin and Aunt Hannah, and no one knew the secret of that parting or the cost of it to Fox; no one indeed even surmised it but old Mrs. Allestree.

The last six months had been trying ones to her and she was meditating upon them, sitting before the open fire in her drawing-room, her tea-table at her elbow, waiting for Robert.

She measured the tea into the old Canton tea-pot, she looked at the lamp under the kettle, and then she turned back to her knitting, working fast without looking at it, counting stitches now and then and making an elaborate pattern with incredible swiftness, her knitting needles flashing in and out as the work slipped from one to the other and back again. The glow of the fire played on her face and showed the soft lines there, the alert bright eyes, the snowy hair on the temples. The clock struck six and she looked up expecting Robert, but instead her parlormaid opened the door to admit Mrs. O’Neal.

“Why, Martha, I’m delighted to see you! It’s such a bitter evening I didn’t expect a call. Sit down and have a cup of my tea.”

“I don’t take much tea now, I hear that it’s bad for the complexion; but you can give me some hot water and lemon, Jane,” replied her visitor, seating herself with a rustle of silks and a rattle of chains which made a distinct sensation in the quiet room.

Mrs. Allestree poured out the hot water and put in the lemon. “I’m eighty-one,” she remarked, with a queer little smile, “and I’ve rather forgotten my complexion.”

“A mistake, my dear Jane,” replied Mrs. O’Neal calmly, taking the steaming cup and slipping back her sables; “I keep young by constant attention to such details; I have my face massaged every day, and even study my bonnets and veils with that point in view.”

Mrs. Allestree cast a covert glance at the vibrating head under the large, flaring bonnet with its cascade of ostrich feathers and said nothing, instead she knitted violently.

“I suppose you’ve heard the news?” Mrs. O’Neal remarked, after she had sipped the hot water with a slightly wry face; “Margaret White has returned.”

Mrs. Allestree dropped a knitting needle. “When?” she exclaimed rather hastily, while she tried to recover the fugitive.

“Yesterday; she’s taken the apartment that she had last spring.” Mrs. O’Neal mentioned one of the more expensive but quiet apartment houses; “have you any idea how much alimony she got?”

“Good heavens, no!” exclaimed Mrs. Allestree; “Gerty wrote me that White was disposed to be very liberal, and he ought to be!”

Mrs. O’Neal nodded. “He’ll marry Lily Osborne, of course, and I shall cut them dead.”

“I should hope so!”

“Well, of course Lily’s footing was slippery enough at the best and this passes endurance. Mrs. Wingfield told me that it is absolutely certain that she got money from Von Groten for some kind of information; Lily has no conscience and she’s only half an American, thank Heaven! Mrs. Wingfield says she saw the check--”

“Martha, that woman will say anything!”

Mrs. O’Neal shrugged her shoulders. “So does everybody! If Margaret had only let her get into society she wouldn’t have been so bitter now that she’s got her chance; I often think that it pays to be polite to these parvenus! I only hope Margaret doesn’t expect me to hold her up until this blows over.”

Mrs. Allestree smiled involuntarily. “I can’t imagine Margaret in the light of a suppliant,” she said quietly.

“A mere _façon de parler_, of course, on my part,” Mrs. O’Neal retorted; “but, Jane, this is all a bad business, it will have to be patched up, but--” she set down her cup and looked earnestly at Mrs. Allestree--“Jane, does she mean to marry your nephew?”

Mrs. Allestree dropped her knitting and held up both hands. “Heaven knows, not I!” she replied; “of course she can’t be in the fashion unless she marries again.”

“But to marry Fox! That will create a perfect _furore_. Did you know he’s been offered the portfolio of State?”

A quiver of excitement passed over Mrs. Allestree’s pale face. “Actually--or only metaphorically, Martha?”

“Actually, to-day--I had it from two Cabinet officers.”

Mrs. Allestree’s hands fell on her knitting, and she sat looking into the fire. What a nightmare of a complication! To marry Margaret would ruin him, yet not to marry her--

“It isn’t generally known yet that he may marry Margaret; if he does--” Mrs. O’Neal held up her hands this time, and her plumes trembled.

“I don’t know anything about it, Martha,” Mrs. Allestree said judiciously.

Martha O’Neal looked at her shrewdly and smiled, but she changed the subject as she gathered up her furs again preparatory to departure. “Lily Osborne is reported to have made twenty thousand at bridge at the Hot Springs,” she observed casually; “I wish I didn’t entertain an awful doubt of her integrity.”

Mrs. Allestree looked up weakly. “You can’t mean she cheats at cards?”

Mrs. O’Neal laughed. “She’d be caught at that, my dear, and ostracized. She only happens to know who to fleece, you can see how rich she grows.”

“I heard; Gerty told me that Senator Turkman had advised her judiciously in placing some money in mining shares and there has been a rise; Lily told her.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Mrs. O’Neal, finally catching the other end of her sable boa; “it’s rather odd, isn’t it, that Senator Turkman didn’t make any money for himself at the same time? He’s terribly embarrassed.”

Mrs. Allestree leaned back in her chair and laughed silently. “Martha,” she said finally, “you’re a sinner and a publican, let me alone! I haven’t heard so much gossip in a year.”

“My dear Jane,” retorted the other woman dryly, “you live under a hill.”

II

IN the midst of these eddying swirls of gossip, little muddy pools in the thin ice on which he trod, William Fox made his way with singular self-absorption. Even the vortex of the political campaign had not succeeded in decentralizing his thoughts, and he could not now lose sight of the impending climax.

The clamor of applause, the proffered Cabinet portfolio, which was not without significance as an effort on the part of the Administration to bind him to its interests and avert his candidacy in the ensuing year, all fell short of their effect. Such brilliant prospects were indeed stultified to his mental vision by the chilling knowledge that he must soon outrage the feelings of his friends and reanimate his enemies. There were moments when the future which lay before him loomed so black and unfriendly that he could not endure the thought, and he found it well nigh impossible to picture himself playing the rôle of lover and husband to the woman who had twice thwarted his life; first by her careless rejection of his love and then by her determined demand upon his honor. He should marry her, but beyond that bald fact his mind refused to go. He had erred and he would resolutely pay the cost and it would be heavy. He realized that, realized the probable collapse of his career, the long years of building up which must follow, the impossibility of living down the scandal of such a marriage under such circumstances.

He knew that Margaret was in town, but he had not yet gone to see her; it seemed impossible that he should go. Yet the plain actualities of the case could not be denied. He was aware, however, of a feeling of keen thankfulness that the House, under pressure of some special business, was sitting late, and that the organization of committees and the hundred other calls involved him in such a round of duty that he could well excuse delay.

Yet when the House rose one day at five o’clock, and he had time to go to see Margaret, he went instead on foot to Allestree’s studio. He had seen but little of his cousin in the past few months; perhaps because he was haunted with a secret dread that Rose would finally marry Allestree, and he hated the thought, with all a lover’s selfishness.

The snow was falling fast and the streets were sheeted in white when he and Sandy approached the old house on the corner, and he noticed that the windows of Lerwick’s curiosity-shop were coated thick with frost. A bright light in the upper window assured him that the painter was still at work, and stamping the snow from his feet he ascended the narrow stair to the studio.

Allestree, in his shirt sleeves, was engaged in putting away some old canvases and cleaning up his workshop, and was somewhat startled by the unexpected entrance of Sandy and his master.

“I hardly thought to find you here so late,” Fox remarked as he greeted him, “but I saw the light and came up.”

“I was house cleaning,” Allestree explained; “I can’t trust the janitor in here until I put things in shape. Besides, mother is away and there’s no hurry about going home.”

Fox expressed surprise at his aunt’s absence at this season, and Allestree explained further that she had gone to Orange to visit a younger sister who was ill there; a fact which the nephew of both had forgotten.

“I’ve intended to go to see Aunt Jane every day,” Fox remarked, seating himself on the end of Allestree’s brass wood-box and looking at the general disorder with an absent eye, “but I’ve been busy and--” he laughed bitterly--“she has let me know pretty plainly that she doesn’t approve of me.”

“A sure sign of her devotion,” retorted Allestree dryly; “she is always taking sides when her affections are involved. I’ve often thought you were more after her own heart than I, William.”

“God help her, I hope not!” Fox exclaimed with such abrupt passion that his cousin stared.

“I heard this morning that you had been offered the State Department,” he said quietly; “are congratulations in order?”

The other man laughed with great bitterness. “My dear Robert,” he replied, “I’ve been offered the moon, but being merely mundane I can’t pull it down.”

“Well, I’m not sure that the Cabinet is even desirable for you! I’ve known it to quietly swallow up more than one bit of Presidential timber,” Allestree observed, turning his attention to the canvases he was tying together with unsteady fingers.

“Desirable or not, I have refused it,” Fox said curtly.

There was a pause; Allestree put away some boxes and collected his scattered brushes. Fox, looking about the studio with a moody glance, observed that a curtain was drawn before the little tea-table where Rose had made tea, and the chair in which she had posed was gone. He was not at a loss to understand these signs, and he recalled the whole little scene, with its air of domesticity, their gayety, the tender beauty of her drooping profile as she bent over her tea-cups, he even remembered how the light from the alcohol lamp glowed softly on her face and caught the golden tints in her hair. He stifled a groan. The whole covetous passion of his soul had surged up at the thought, and he was to see her married at last to this good, harmless, slow cousin who was so worthy of her because of his clean unspotted life and his honest love! He glanced keenly at Allestree and saw the haggard trouble of his face, the lines on his brow and about his mouth, with almost a pang of joy. There was no assurance of happiness here, only a kindred trouble. The hard element of his personal feeling melted a little, and he turned to the painter with renewed friendliness. “You have heard of the Temples?” he said guardedly; “is the old man out of his troubles, and has Rose returned?”

Allestree shook his head, avoiding his eye. “The judge is still in the quagmire; he was miserably imposed upon and I fancy there is nothing left but his salary. He has been making gigantic efforts to save that old house; you know it’s mortgaged, and he seems ill and worn, though he goes regularly to court.”

“Who holds the mortgage?” Fox asked absently.

Allestree named a large trust company, and began an eager search behind his easels, apparently excluding Rose from his reply. But Fox was not done. “And his daughter?” he said, in a low voice, caressing Sandy who had laid his head upon his knee as a gentle reminder that it was time to go.

“She is still in Paris; she wrote my mother that she was succeeding very well with her lessons and hoped for the best.” Allestree’s voice betrayed his extreme reluctance to produce even these hard facts.

Fox rose abruptly and going to the window thrust aside the curtain and looked out. The storm had increased and the street light opposite shone behind a dazzling whirl of snow-flakes which were swept before the wind and hurled themselves against the pane in a wild rush of blinding white.

Fox turned away and began to walk to and fro, his hands plunged into his pockets and his head sunk on his breast. Allestree glancing at him once or twice was shocked by the drawn grayness of his face, the absolute despair in his dark, deep-set eyes. At last he looked up with a bitter smile. “Good God!” he exclaimed abruptly, “if I were only coward enough to shoot myself!”

“A very unprofitable move,” remarked his cousin coldly, “and it leaves the blame to others.”

Fox nodded. “Precisely,” he said, “and to a woman. But, my dear Allestree, if you want to create a hell for a man, find one who loves a young lovely untried girl with all his soul, and then force him to marry another woman!”

His cousin bit his lip, the color rushing over his face. “No easy matter, I fancy,” he said; “you couldn’t make the man do it; he’d back out at last!”

Fox gave him a strange look; he had never intended to make such an admission to Allestree, it had been wrung from him by the stress of his own feeling and now he would not recall it. “You think so? You think it cannot be done? The shooting would be preferable,” he added grimly, “but, unhappily, a man’s honor lives after him.”

His cousin turned sharply and held out his hand; the gesture was involuntary. “Upon my soul, William, I’m sorry for you!” he exclaimed, with much feeling.

Fox took his hand and wrung it. “You’ll make her happy, Allestree!” he exclaimed with profound emotion; “she’ll marry you.”

Allestree smiled sadly. “She’s refused me,” he said, with a tone of finality which carried conviction if not relief.

Fox turned away with a smothered groan, and groping for his hat and coat went out without another word.

At that moment the tumult of his heart repudiated every other claim and demanded happiness with an unscrupulous passion which excelled Margaret’s own.

III

IT was the following evening that Margaret rose restlessly and looked out of the window of her little hotel drawing-room. She knew that the House had risen at five, she had telephoned twice to ascertain that fact, and her note of the morning should have brought Fox straight from the Capitol.

It was now almost six o’clock, the streets were lighted and thronged with people, some hurrying home from office or shopping, others still on those endless social rounds which had once been the orbit of Margaret’s life. She thought of that existence now, its brilliance, its flattery, its hollowness, with a shudder. Between the two periods of her life there was a chasm. It had been only a few months, but those months had been years in her emotional existence, and her stormy soul struggling through the depths of it had worn away the body which with her seemed but the beautiful ephemeral garment of a wild spirit. When it was over, the divorce with its hideous publicity, its sordid details, its piercing accusations, and freedom had come to her with almost blinding reality, she had declared that she should rebuild her life, forget all, be happy--happy!

She had expected at once some message from Fox, some sign of sympathy, but when none came she interpreted his silence by her own heart; he was loth, she thought, to show too much joy at once. They could wait! How sweet it was to think that once again they had their lives before them; they were still young, the world had potent possibilities of happiness for them. The sheer joy of the thought drove the blood to her heart; she could not breathe sometimes but lay panting, her head thrown back on her pillows and her arms flung wide and helpless, until Gerty came and with trembling hand administered restoratives and threw up the windows. They called them heart attacks but it did not matter, nothing mattered now; she would begin all over again. Her old life had slipped from her, as though its shackles, having been stricken off, had left no scar. She had been in Washington a week, but she had not asked to see her children; she could not, the thought of them sent a shiver through her; they were the visible and actual links which bound her to the past, the past which her soul loathed.

She had waited eagerly for Fox, aware that he was in the city before her arrival, and when he did not come she still attributed his absence to a reluctance to be too soon to claim her. That he loved her she never doubted, and her heart trembled at the thought of that meeting which must come at last, with all its sweetness, its fulfilment, after her long waiting. That morning she had written him and now she watched the clock, carelessly aware that Gerty English was also watching it, and that the girl seemed disconcerted and awkward with her work over Margaret’s letters and books.

But to Margaret everything outside of that one absorbing fact was of little moment; what Gerty thought of no consequence at all, for while she had made only half a confidante of the girl, turning to her in uncontrollable moments and then relapsing again into reserve, she was actually indifferent to the nature and extent of Gerty’s knowledge; the little secretary seemed to her as unimportant as any other parasite upon the lives of the more fortunate.

Margaret went openly to the window therefore, and drew aside the curtains to watch the long brilliantly lighted street, where the snow lay yet in white drifts between the muddy slush of traffic, and she returned openly to the fire to look at the clock on the mantel. At first the delay had been almost sweet, she liked to dwell upon the thought of seeing him, of being happy again, but at last it grew irksome and she paced nervously to and fro, her hands clasped behind her head, scarcely vouchsafing an answer to Gerty’s occasional questions.

Time passed; it was nearly half past six before her maid came in to announce a visitor and Margaret turned, hiding herself a little in the shadow of the curtain that she might see him first when he entered.

As the door finally opened to admit Fox, Gerty English rose rather hastily and retreated to one of the other rooms, with her arms full of books and papers, and he found himself face to face at last with Margaret.

There was an eloquent silence; he was painfully aware of the change in her, that the delicate hollows in her cheeks were sharpened while her eyes seemed larger and more brilliant, and there was a wistfulness, a soft tremulous happiness and expectation in her expression which touched him to the heart. She had never looked so young, so fragile and so gentle since those old days when as half child, half woman, he had loved her. That dead love lying between them now made an impassable barrier, she could as little rekindle it as she could reclaim a fallen star. Some dim, half interpreted perception of this chilled her heart and stayed the passionate greeting on her lips; she stood a moment looking at him, terribly aware of the calmness of his bearing, his pallor, his dark troubled eye which neither kindled nor blenched at the sight of her, but met hers with a studied gentleness which expressed neither joy nor reluctance. A keen pang of dread tore her heart, but the next instant joy, wild, almost childish joy at the sight of him, welled up and swept away her doubts.

“Oh, William!” she exclaimed with trembling lips, holding out both hands, “at last, at last! It has been eons since we met!”

“And you look ill,” he replied kindly, “Margaret, I hoped to see you well again. How is this?”

Her eyes sought his face, eager, feverish, questioning; her heart trembled, was this all?--this stilted, quiet, commonplace greeting? She checked the cry of reproach which rose to her white lips, and smiled--a wan and pallid smile. “I’m quite well,” she replied with sudden calm; “you forget the months have been long and troubled ones; I suppose I grow old!”

“I never saw you look younger, more as you used to look ten years ago,” he exclaimed involuntarily.

“Do I?” there was a tremulous note of eagerness in her voice, and a faint blush passed over her face, but she evaded his hand, which he had stretched out again to clasp hers, and went quietly to a shaded corner where neither lamplight nor firelight fell too sharply on her. “Sit down, William, and tell me about yourself.”

He obeyed her mechanically, unconscious that his manner had betrayed anything, but aware of a sudden indefinable change in her, a restraint and repression. “There is nothing to tell,” he said, with some impatience; “the old story--primaries, conventions, a stormy campaign and finally, as you know, my re-election is assured, if I care for it!” he added, a hard new note of indifference in his voice.