Baskerville grew grave at once. The investigation was on in earnest. The committee which had been appointed before the adjournment of Congress had begun its sittings directly upon the meeting of Congress, and Baskerville had at once come into prominence as one of the representatives of the Civil Service League. The question of Clavering’s culpability with regard to the land grants was complicated with the open barter and sale of Federal offices, and the Civil Service League had taken it up actively. 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.
Mrs. Luttrell studied Baskerville keenly. Herself a sentimentalist in disguise, she loved Baskerville the better for doing what she had long dreaded—for she had a woman’s jealousy of another woman’s usurping the first place with this nephew-in-law, who was son, companion, and comrade in one. But at least he did not contemplate foisting a pink-and-white nonentity upon her; Mrs. Luttrell always declared herself afraid of silly women. She not only liked Anne Clavering, but she saw in her a large and generous spirit, who would not, by small artifices, try to come between Baskerville and Mrs. Luttrell. And the ineradicable interest which is every woman’s inalienable right in a love-affair was strong in Mrs. Luttrell’s breast. She began to wish that Baskerville and Anne would marry; and after sitting quite silent for ten minutes watching Baskerville’s moody face, she suddenly got up, went over to him, and smoothing the hair back from his forehead, kissed it tenderly. 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.”
He kissed her warmly, went out of the room and downstairs and across the garden to his own house, and into his library. The first thing he saw upon the big library table was a mass of documents relating to the K. F. R. land grants. Baskerville pushed them away, and taking up a well-thumbed volume of Theocritus tried to forget himself in the pictures of the fair shining of the Sicilian sun, in the sound of the pipe of Daphnis, in the complainings of the two poor old fishermen lying by night in their wattled cabin on the sand dunes.
All was in vain. His thoughts were no sooner diverted from Anne Clavering than they turned to Clavering and his affairs. How amazing was this man who had rough-hewn his way to a high place, to enormous wealth, to great power, from which he was likely to be thrown headlong into an abyss of shame! Baskerville had very little doubt that, no matter how successful might be the suits against Clavering, he would manage to retain great tangible sums of money. Men of the Clavering type hold on to their money more intelligently than to their supposititious honor. And finding it impossible to get away from his own thoughts, even in books which had heretofore been an unfailing sedative, Baskerville went to bed, and tossed in true lover’s fashion half the remaining night, before he fell into a troubled sleep to dream of Anne Clavering.
Chapter Twelve
It is said that all truly benevolent women are matchmakers, and although Mrs. Thorndyke would have indignantly denied the charge of being a matchmaker, it was an indisputable fact that within a fortnight of dining at Mrs. Luttrell’s she contrived an impromptu dinner at which Anne Clavering and Baskerville were the first guests to be asked; and if they had declined, it is doubtful if the dinner would have come off at all. However, they both accepted; and Mrs. Thorndyke, whether by inadvertence, as she stoutly alleged, or by design, as Thorndyke charged, had Baskerville take Anne in to dinner.