Part 5

She made no reply; she could have answered that she had given up Fox to marry him, but the sting of the insult cut her to the quick, his allusive familiar tone was a whiplash. She turned away, her white face set, a singular light in her eyes. The passion of her hatred of him at that moment was almost beyond restraint; her very flesh quivered under the throb of her maddened nerves. His coarseness, his brutality, his sensuousness revolted her; she felt, under the sting of his lecture, a mere bondswoman, and her fetters fairly burned into her soul. It seemed to her that she could no longer breathe the same air with him.

The child caught her sleeve timidly. “Mamma, don’t!” she whispered, “please don’t make papa look so--I’m afraid!”

Margaret looking down at her saw anew that hateful likeness. “Go away!” she shuddered, “you’re just like him--I can’t bear it; go, I tell you!”

The child’s hand dropped and her lip quivered with impotent anguish; she could not understand, but she read her mother’s chilled, repellant look and it frightened her still more; she drew her arm across her face and fell away with a sob. Margaret, whose heart would have been touched at another moment, hardly heard her.

“I want you to understand,” White began again, angrily, unmindful of the little girl’s presence, “my position. I’m a--”

Margaret interrupted him with an impatient gesture. “Gertrude is coming with my gown,” she said coolly, “I think you may spare me any more at present.”

White turned with a frown, and seeing the maid at the door with her arms full of white satin and lace, he gave way with a growl of discontent while his wife smiled calmly at the startled girl and bade her hurry; it was nearly eight o’clock.

* * * * *

At the dinner Margaret was the most conspicuous and observed figure at the table; she was strikingly dressed in white satin, her lace bodice fastened on the shoulders with jewels, her long, slender throat wound with pearls, and the black lace scarf--which she wore in deference to her hostess who was dining a cardinal--only accentuated the peculiar pallor of her face and the whiteness of her bare arms. She was radiant, witty, vivacious; her reckless tongue never ceased its unmerciful chatter. She talked Spanish to the Spanish ambassador, Italian to the Papal delegate who sat opposite, she entertained the cardinal. Every eye was on her; she was at once the most unusual and the most talked of woman in Cabinet and Diplomatic circles, and she had a wit as keen as it was unmerciful.

White watched her with an increasing feeling of uneasiness, he read defiance in her manner and began to dread some overt challenge; he had been untimely in his remonstrance, and he felt it too late.

Meanwhile their hostess loved the fair offender, and aided and abetted her in her wild sallies. Martha O’Neal was an old, old woman, the widow of a famous and wealthy jurist, and she was herself famous as a hostess and a social leader. Her eyes were still bright and keen, though her hair was white as snow; she knew everybody, everybody knew her; a worldly old woman who pursued society with the eagerness of a young débutante, played bridge for high stakes, smoked cigarettes in an exquisite holder of gold and amber, hurried to receptions, balls and routs with a tottering gait and a slightly vibrating head; a woman of large knowledge of the world, shrewd political partisanship and, withal, an eager and determined Romanist. Her dinners were famous; no more than ten ever sat down at her table, and usually five or six was the limit; she believed in conversation, not in isolated pairs. She had a service of gold, she would have no lights but candles. Huge candelabra were set in niches in her walls and on her table; her cut glass was famous, her roses the rarest money could purchase, yet nothing was lavish, nothing glaring or vulgar or new. The flavor of her old wine was as famous as the subdued taste of her surroundings; in a season of display and a city where riches are ostentatious, her drawing-room had the effect of space and repose, there was no crowding of useless and glittering furniture, no blaze of gold, no medley of bric-à-brac and sculpture. What she possessed represented the expenditure of a small fortune; for the rest, her beautiful mahogany, her rare silver were inherited.

The old woman, with the keen perception of long social training, had discovered all Margaret’s gifts as an entertainer, and her occasional outbreaks--as the famous dance and other not less bizarre performances--only gave her an additional value as an element of the unexpected. Mrs. O’Neal, therefore, rarely gave a dinner without asking Margaret, though she included Margaret’s husband with a grimace and a shrug. To-night she was delighted with her guest’s gayety, her wit, her endless vivacity, and she watched her across the wide table with some curiosity, much too keen not to observe the haggard misery which Margaret tried in vain to hide. The dark, Italian face of the delegate, the broad heaviness of White, who wore a perturbed frown, the keen, fine lines of the Spanish ambassador, the placid commonplace fairness of the ambassadress, the vivid coloring of Lily Osborne, the thin, ascetic face and keen eyes of the cardinal were all in sharp contrast to the pale face, the shadowy hair, the brilliant eyes of Margaret White. Mrs. O’Neal, watching her, wondered and was amused.

The dinner was a splendid affair, the delegate talked with the smooth ease, the habitual guarded courtesy of the Italian churchman, the ambassador was genial and responsive, the cardinal said little, throwing in a word now and then, but a word which set the ball rolling, and Margaret never failed. She had never appeared so witty, so sweet, so dangerously amiable.

It was over at last, the cardinal leaving early, and as he rose to depart, the women present being all ardent Catholics except Margaret, rustled forward to kneel and kiss his ring, while Mrs. O’Neal, following the old custom abroad, had bidden her footmen bring the candles, and the Romanists present were gathered at the head of the stairs to light his eminence to the door.

There was a little pause, and Margaret, a slender, white-robed figure, her shoulders veiled in a diaphanous black scarf, came forward to bid the cardinal farewell. White, who stood apart uneasy and conventional in the midst of the dramatic little scene, turned in time to see her kneel devoutly and kiss his eminence’s ring.

* * * * *

They drove home early through the lighted streets and neither spoke a word during the short drive to their own door. The footman helped Margaret with her wraps and attended her up the steps; White had entered ahead of her, and when the servants were gone and she had crossed the hall to the stairs he called her. She turned, with one foot on the lowest step and her hand on the balustrade, and seeing the deep flush on his heavy face she smiled a little with a slightly scornful shrug.

He looked across at her with an expression of savage anger, ill-suppressed. “Your conduct passes all patience!” he said bitterly, controlling himself with an effort; “you know where I stand, that I want to be President, and you flaunt your defiance!”

She returned his look, her head thrown back, her eyelids drooping, the delicate hollows in her cheeks apparent in the half light. “Pray, what is it now?” she asked provokingly.

He gnawed his lip, the cords standing out again on his forehead. “You know,” he said in a low voice, “you make yourself ridiculous by kissing the cardinal’s ring! I don’t care a damn for your religion, but I do care for the Protestant vote; they’ll have this in the papers!”

She laughed a tormenting laugh. “I’m thinking of becoming a Romanist!” she said.

He stared at her,--words were inadequate but his face whitened. The slim elegance of her figure in its splendid dress, her dusky hair, the dazzling white of her forehead, all seemed to him so many additional reasons to hate her. He had bought her for these things, for her charm, her wit, her daring, and she had turned every weapon against him and defied him. He felt a shiver of rage sweep through him, controlled it and turned away at last with clenched hands.

She remained standing, one hand on the balustrade, the other lightly holding her cloak which was slipping from her bare shoulders, and her eyes followed him with ineffable scorn and mockery.

VII

MEANWHILE William Fox was plunged deeply into the vortex of a busy session. The holidays were over and Congress had settled down to its task; it was the short session year, and the bulk of the large supply bills were being pushed steadily through the House,--the routine of business being constantly interrupted by the _fanfaronnade_ of noisy members and the agitation of tariff revision which hung like a nightmare over the party in power, and was a delightful fetich for the minority to drag out of its hiding-place and dangle before the eyes of their opponents. Fox, who was a leader, besides being a great orator, was constantly employed in holding down his followers, stamping out any sparks of rebellion and silencing the enemy.

He was sharply conscious, too, of the tongues which were busily engaged in circulating rumors about him, for there was more than the proverbial mustard seed of truth in the story which Mrs. Allestree had heard. He had indeed been on the point of entering the Cabinet, but White’s double dealing and not his voluntary surrender had been the cause of the exchange. There had been an agreement between the two men who were both from the same state; White had been allowed to come to the Senate to serve out an unexpired term of two years under a pledge to keep out of Fox’s way in the matter of Cabinet changes. He had broken his word at every point and had succeeded in a shrewd manœuvre to prejudice the Administration against the more clever man, no difficult matter where jealousy of Fox already existed. Moreover White had the inevitable prestige of great wealth, powerful connections and an easy conscience.

Fox had known many of these things when White received his portfolio, but his later discoveries had placed him in a position where he no longer cared to be so frequent a guest in White’s house; to break bread with the man who had wilfully maligned him was an offence to his coldly scrupulous pride. Fox was careless of public opinion, fond of indulging his own whims and fancies, and easy in his tolerance of offenders against himself, but when a man transgressed the laws that he laid down in matters of personal honor and integrity he could be uncompromisingly severe and contemptuous. Of late, therefore, Fox had absented himself from White’s table and from those evenings--famous among the favored few who obtained invitations--when Margaret entertained the brains and the talent of the capital. Literary men were always there, artists, musicians, scientists; it was said of Mrs. White that she would entertain a famous thief if he had wit. But there had been another and a more potent attraction for Fox; he had found the seclusion of Judge Temple’s library, the old judge’s slow and studious speech, the magnificent voice of Rose, more potent charms than the conversation and music of Margaret’s _salon_. Having discovered the temperamental sympathy and ingenuous friendship in this young and beautiful girl, Fox had begun to pursue that interesting study of character which leads to but one result--whether it be tragic or happy.

At this stage, too, of the matter, Fox ignored the feelings and the possible claims of his less brilliant cousin; he was aware that Allestree loved Rose, but he considered it as an affair of little moment because he perceived clearly that Rose did not love him, that not even the most scrupulous adjuration on his own part could convert her indifference into a more tender feeling toward the painter. At first he had entertained very little serious thought of the matter, but the charm of Rose’s personality, both spiritual and physical, had very soon begun to take hold of his imagination, and if he secretly compared her fresh, sweet immaturity with Margaret’s worldliness and finish it was to plunge the thought instantly into oblivion. The girl was so young, so fresh, so easily responsive to his wit and his eloquence, that it was like discovering a pure and beautiful flower in a hedge of thorns. Between his work, therefore, and his study of Rose he had managed to refuse more than one invitation to the Whites’, and his absence was beginning to be sharply observed.

There was a rumor that White had quarrelled with him about Margaret, that Margaret had herself openly dismissed him, that he was vexed at the loss of the Cabinet place; in short, the usual crop of idle ingenious stories which spring up in the height of a winter season, like a growth of noxious weeds, were in full bloom and strength.

Fox was watching the slow progress of an important bill through the lower House, and busily engaged at the same moment on the Naval Appropriation Bill in which White was intimately concerned, and which offered a wide scope for the surmises of those who were watching the two men. It was an open question whether Fox intended to thwart the Secretary of the Navy or to support his effort to get a larger appropriation. Conscious of the scrutiny to which he was subjected, Fox worked on, with an enigmatical smile, and betrayed nothing of his thoughts or his position.

It was late one Thursday afternoon and he had been speaking on an important matter for more than an hour, endeavoring to close up a question which threatened to be of international significance, and, thoroughly fagged, he finally left the floor of the House amid a tremendous outburst of applause. As usual the galleries had been packed to hear him, and he managed to make his way out with many delays, stopped on all sides by members and personal friends, eager to congratulate him on another great speech.

Once out of the lobby, he was crossing the corridor on his way to a committee-room when he heard his name spoken, and turned, to see Margaret detach herself from a party of fashionables who had been in the Diplomatic Gallery, and come toward him. As they met he was immediately aware of the change in her that a few weeks of absence had made sharply apparent. She was extremely pale and her eyes seemed abnormally large and shining under the brim of her immense picture hat, her elaborate dress only accentuating the slightness of her figure. She held out her hand without smiling. “I want to speak to you,” she said, almost with an air of command, “where can we go?”

He turned, hesitating a moment as to some suitable spot, arrested by the thought that Margaret’s presence there or anywhere, alone with him, would be so much fuel to the fire.

But she solved the problem for him. “Come outside,” she said; “it’s heavenly on the terrace, the sun is setting. Besides, I can’t breathe here in these corridors--heavens, where do they get their tobacco?”

“Not where you buy your Egyptians,” Fox laughed.

She shrugged her shoulders. “The doctor says I mustn’t smoke any more,” she said, “but I shall.”

“The doctor?” Fox cast a startled glance at her white face; “what’s the matter, Margaret?”

“A cigarette heart, I suppose!” she replied laughing, and then as the smile died on her lips an expression of dull misery fell like a veil over her features.

They had crossed the Rotunda together and gone out by the same door where Allestree had waited months before. As they emerged upon the terrace they were enfolded in a radiant atmosphere, the sun was setting, and the whole western façade of the Capitol, the fluted columns of the loggia before the old library rooms, the long rows of shining windows, the magnificent arch of the dome, were bathed in the glowing light which seemed to flood the world. There was still a little snow on the sheltered slopes of the terrace and under the trees, but the promise of spring was in the air and in the deep blue of the sky above them. Margaret stopped abruptly and stood looking down at the panorama at their feet; absorbed in her own emotions, she did not immediately perceive the expression of her companion’s face; it was one of extreme reluctance, of reserve, almost of resentment. He had a man’s hatred of a scene, of being “talked about,” and he knew that such a circumstance as their tête-à-tête at such a time could scarcely escape unnoticed. He was annoyed and disturbed, but for once she was blind to those potent signs.

Keen as Margaret’s perceptions were, she shared with other women the passionate blindness to change in another when her own heart was clamoring to be satisfied; her vision was warped by one aspect of it all; she remembered those moments, long past, of comradeship and sympathy and passion on his part; she remembered and she refused to believe that change was even possible.

The silence for a moment was almost oppressive, then she spoke without trusting herself to meet his eyes. “You have refused two invitations to dinner, and you have quite deserted my evenings and my Sundays,” she said in a low voice.

Slightly embarrassed he began some conventional excuse, but she lifted her hand with a peremptory little gesture. “I know--I quite understand,” she said; “Wicklow has behaved abominably but--am I to suffer, too?”

“My dear Margaret,” he replied, without too deep emotion, “such a possibility is absurd!”

She looked up, searching his face, and her smile was the shadow of itself, pale and suddenly controlled. “You do not mean to accept his hospitality again?” she said, with an effort.

He was deeply annoyed; why must she force this issue upon him? He was capable, at times, of extreme hardness toward others. To-day she was unfortunate enough to jar upon him, to recall too sharply White’s conduct. “I’m not prepared to say,” he replied with some impatience; “can’t we avoid the subject? Tell me of yourself, Margaret, you look tired and pale.”

She bit her lip, a sudden color refuting his charge. “I am very well,” she replied coldly; “I danced until two o’clock this morning; at eleven I received a delegation of Wicklow’s jackdaws; at two I lunched with Madame de Caillou--she is so diplomatic that she only discusses generalities and parrots; she has three--M. de Caillou not included; he belongs to the poodle class. At four I came here with Mrs. O’Neal and Lily Osborne; I give a dinner to-night and then go to the opera. It is much the same to-morrow. Have you a cigarette, William?”

He opened his case and she selected one and lit it; Fox was not smoking. “I presume that it will be in the newspapers to-morrow that I was seen with a cigarette on the terrace talking to the next President,” she remarked dryly; “I mean you to be the candidate,” she added, “Wicklow is playing for it but--” she laughed, blowing the cigarette smoke into rings before her face.

“He will probably be nominated,” Fox rejoined easily; “he has a large following; I shall like to see you in that rôle, Margaret.”

“To see me?” she shrugged her shoulders; “my dear William, do you happen to know what Lily Osborne is doing?”

He laughed. “Ask me something easier!”

Margaret stopped in her promenade and looked out over the city; it seemed to float in a golden mirage, all commonplaceness, all familiarity lost in the radiance of the western sky, against which, here and there, a cross-crowned spire thrust its slender, tapering height, or a campanile rose, dark and sharply pictured, above shining roofs. Far off the bells were ringing, sweetly and insistently, an evening chime.

“She is using Wicklow to attain her ends,” Margaret said, a little mocking smile on her pale face; “he is dull and infatuated. I am told she’s in Russian employ and there is information, plenty of it, in his reach. You mark my words, she’ll ruin him--he’ll never be a candidate.”

Fox frowned. “Pardon me,” he said abruptly; “I cannot listen.”

She tossed her cigarette over the terrace and watched it descend, a mere spark in the dusk below, where evening lay in purple shadows. “Forgive me,” she returned lightly, “I forgot--men are such conscientious creatures and I--I’m an unscrupulous wretch, but I’m not cruel, William!”

“Nor I!” he replied, with a slight change of color, “but, Margaret, can’t you see how impossible--”

She laughed bitterly. “I’m very dull,” she remarked.

A shuddering recognition of some new, terrible barrier between them tore her heart. She held out her hand. “Good-by,” she said in a low voice, “I’m going to ask you to dine again--will you come?” her feverishly glowing eyes fixed themselves on his face.

Fox colored again, conscious that he must seem an ill-mannered brute. “Of course I’ll come,” he assented, vexed at himself and touched by the sudden sweetness of her manner.

But her smile was wan; she felt as if the universe moved beneath her feet; as yet the moment was delayed when her wounded heart would refuse to submit, and her whole passionate, sensuous nature rise up to battle for life and love.

VIII

ROSE let the bridle lie loosely on her horse’s neck as they halted at the elbow of the path. Rock Creek, leaping over its gray boulders and flowing between them with little swirls of foam, comes rushing madly past, slips under the trailing branches of a weeping birch and suddenly widening, hushes its tumult and drops placidly below the ford, where, in summer, in a wide shallow basin, the swan and the little white ducks lie. The scene was wild; the untouched forest rose behind them, its bare gray limbs against the sky, the black green of an occasional spruce or cedar breaking the monotony above the brown-leafed earth and closing the long vistas of stripped tree trunks which stand on the shoulder of the hill in serried ranks in the teeth of the north wind, like soldiers, with their faces to the foe. Below, the stream gurgled and murmured; on the farther bank the dense growth of young maples showed here and there a scarlet bud. The air was sweet, redolent with fresh pine and the promise of the spring; overhead the crows were flying by twos and tens and twenties, lost at last in the soft blue distance.

Fox, who was riding with Rose, dismounted and turning back the dead leaves on a sunny slope found a single spray of arbutus. She uttered a little exclamation of pleasure, holding out her hand.

He laughed. “When I was a boy I always found the first wild flowers,” he said; “I knew just where the blood-root grew and the anemone. Since then I’ve been making speeches at the primaries and getting votes for my party. There’s no comparison between the two pursuits!”

She had the arbutus in her hand and gave him a challenging glance; she began to understand him better, but her convictions were too strong to be subdued. “You mean that you’ve given up your life for politics, just to be a part of a machine?”

He assented, still smiling as he remounted, and the horses moved on at a walk.