Bobby thought, "Can it be she really cares for that old war horse?"
CHAPTER VII
It was great fun traveling with Albee. He had engaged a drawing-room on the Congressional Limited, and with a forethought, old-fashioned but agreeable, had provided newspapers and magazines and a box of candy. His secretary was hovering near with letters to be signed. The conductor came and asked whether everything was all right, governor, and people passed the door deliberately, staring in to get a glimpse of the great man; and Lydia could see that they were murmuring, "That's Albee, you know, he's going down to testify."
Lydia did not know Washington at all. She had been taken there once as a child by one of the energetic young American governesses—had gone to Mt. Vernon by boat and home by trolley, had whispered in the rotunda and looked at the statues and seen the House and been secretly glad that the Senate was in secret session so that she couldn't see that, and there would be time to go up the monument—something that she really had enjoyed—not only on account of the view, but because her governess was afraid of elevators and was terrified in the slow, jerky ascent. Then during the period of her engagement to Ilseboro she had been at one or two dinners at the British embassy. But that had been long ago, before the days of her discovery of the Federal Constitution. Of governmental Washington she knew nothing.
The Senate committee met at ten the next morning. There was a good deal of interest in the hearing, and the corridors were full of people waiting for the doors to open. Miss Bennett and Lydia were taken in first through a private room to assure their having good seats. Lydia found the committee room beautiful—more like a gentleman's library than an office—wide, high windows looking out on the Capitol grounds, tall bookcases with glass doors and blue-silk curtains, a huge polished-wood table in the center; with chairs about it for the senators.
She recognized them as they came in from Albee's description—the neat blue-eyed senator who looked like a little white fox, his enemy; the fat blond young man, full of words and smiles, who was a most ineffective friend; and the large suave chairman, in a tightly fitting plum-colored suit, with a grace of manner that kept you from knowing whether he were friend or foe.
Not that you would have suspected from anyone's manner that there was such a thing as enmity in the world—they were all so quiet and friendly. Indeed, when Albee came in he was talking—"chatting" would be a better word—with the little fox-faced senator against whom he had so specially warned Lydia. The whole tone was as if eight or ten hard-working men had called in a friend to help them out on the facts.
Lydia thought it very exciting, knowing as she did how much of hate and party politics lay behind the hearing. She was only dimly aware that her own future depended on the impression Albee might now make upon her. In his own investigation in New York he was the chief, but here he would be attacked, ruled against, tripped up if possible. There he was a general, here he was a duelist. She saw several senators glancing at her, asking who she was, and guessed that the answer was that she was the girl Albee was in love with, engaged to, making a fool of himself over—something like that. She didn't mind. She felt proud to be identified with him. She looked at him as he sat down at the chairman's right, and tried to think how she would feel if she were saying to herself, "There's my husband." Could you marry a man for whom you felt an immovable physical coldness? She thought of Dan O'Bannon's kiss, and the continuity of her thought broke up in a tangle of emotion—even there in the white morning light of that remote committee room.
The hearing was beginning; it was beginning with phrases like, "The committee would be glad, governor, if you would tell us in your own words——"