At this scorn Margaret eyed his elegant attire, his face with its expression of an intelligence concentrated upon the petty and the paltry. Her eyes suggested a secret amusement so genuine that she could not venture to reveal it in a gibe. She merely said: "I confess I was more interested in him than in what he said."
"Of course! Of course!" said Grant, all unconscious of her derision. "Women have no interest in serious things and no mind for logic."
She decided that it not only was prudent but also was more enjoyable to keep to herself her amusement at his airs of masculine superiority. Said she, her manner ingenuous: "It doesn't strike me as astonishing that a man should make a sensible speech."
Grant laughed as if she had said something much cleverer than she could possibly realize. "That's a fact," admitted he. "It was simply supreme common-sense. What a world for twaddle it is when common-sense makes us sit up and stare.... But it's none the less true that you're prejudiced against him."
"Why do you say that?"
"If you appreciated him you'd be as enthusiastic as I." There was in his tone a faint hint of his unconscious satisfaction in her failure to appreciate Craig.
"You can go very far astray," said she, "you, with your masculine logic."
But Grant had guessed aright. Margaret had not listened attentively to the speech because it interested her less than the man himself. She had concentrated wholly upon him. Thus, alone of all the audience, she had seen that Craig was playing a carefully-rehearsed part, and, himself quite unmoved, was watching and profiting by every hint in the countenance of his audience, the old Justices. It was an admirable piece of acting; it was the performance of a genius at the mummer's art. But the power of the mummer lies in the illusion he creates; if he does not create illusion, as Craig did not for Margaret, he becomes mere pantomimist and mouther. She had never given a moment's thought to public life as a career; she made no allowances for the fact that a man's public appearances, no matter how sincere he is, must always be carefully rehearsed if he is to use his powers with unerring effect; she was simply like a child for the first time at the theater, and, chancing to get a glimpse behind the scenes, disgusted and angry with the players because their performance is not spontaneous. If she had stopped to reason about the matter she would have been less uncompromising. But in the shock of disillusionment she felt only that the man was working upon his audience like a sleight-of-hand performer; and the longer she observed, and the stronger his spell over the others, the deeper became her contempt for the "charlatan." He seemed to her like one telling a lie—as that one seems, while telling it, to the hearer who is not deceived. "I've been thinking him rough but genuine," said she to herself. "He's merely rough." She had forgiven, had disregarded his rude almost coarse manners, setting them down to indifference, the impatience of the large with the little, a revolt from the (on the whole preferable) extreme opposite of the mincing, patterned manners of which Margaret herself was a-weary. "But he isn't indifferent at all," she now felt. "He's simply posing. His rudenesses are deliberate where they are not sheer ignorance. His manner in court showed that he knows how, in the main."
A rather superior specimen of the professional politician, but distinctly of that hypocritical, slippery class. And Margaret's conviction was strengthened later in the day when she came upon him at tea at Mrs. Houghton's. He was holding forth noisily against "society," was denouncing it as a debaucher of manhood and womanhood, a waster of precious time, and on and on in that trite and tedious strain. Margaret's lip curled as she listened. What did this fakir know about manhood and womanhood? And could there be any more pitiful, more paltry wasting of time than in studying out and performing such insincerities as his life was made up of? True, Mrs. Houghton, of those funny, fashionable New Yorkers who act as if they had only just arrived at the estate of servants and carriages, and are always trying to impress even passing strangers with their money and their grandeur—true, Mrs. Houghton was most provocative to anger or amused disdain at the fashionable life. But not even Mrs. Houghton seemed to Margaret so cheap and pitiful as this badly-dressed, mussy politician, as much an actor as Mrs. Houghton and as poor at the trade, but choosing low comedy for his unworthy attempts where Mrs. Houghton was at least trying to be something refined.
With that instinct for hostility which is part of the equipment of every sensitively-nerved man of action, Craig soon turned toward her, addressed himself to her; and the others, glad to be free, fell away. Margaret was looking her best. White was extremely becoming to her; pink—pale pink—being next in order. Her dress was of white, with facings of delicate pale pink, and the white plumes in her hat were based in pale pink, which also lined the inside of the brim. She watched him, and, now that it was once more his personality pitted directly and wholly against hers, she, in spite of herself, began to yield to him again her respect—the respect every intelligent person must feel for an individuality that is erect and strong. But as she was watching, her expression was that of simply listening, without comment or intention to reply—an expression of which she was perfect mistress. Her hazel eyes, set in dark lashes, her sensuous mouth, her pallid skin, smooth and healthy, seemed the climax of allurement to which all the lines of her delightful figure pointed. To another woman it would have been obvious that she was amusing herself by trying to draw him under the spell of physical attraction; a man would have thought her a mere passive listener, perhaps one concealing boredom, would have thought her movements to bring now this charm and now that to his attention were simply movements of restlessness, indications of an impatience difficult to control. He broke off abruptly. "What are you thinking?" he demanded.